Please help to choose E-bike for 2 child trailer and unfit parents.

[Gergeyl]

Hi everyone

Me and my wife are looking to buy an e-bike to drop of our 3 year old son at nursery that he starts in September.
Since our daughter (who is 18 months) cannot really look after herself alone, she'd need to come along for the ride.
We are looking to buy a trailer and a bike in the same time. Not necessarily the same place.

Neither me or my wife are fit I am 97kg she is 101kg.
New to biking we had not been on a bike for about 6 years.
It would be mostly her doing the drop off.
Our children are 13kg and 17kg so the bike would have to be quite strong.
Budget: looking to spend about £1200-1600 without the trailer
Distance: 2.5miles so 5 mile-ish roundtrip.
Mostly flat with 1 hill near our house.
All tarmac but there may be a bridleway part the way that we need to investigate.
We are in South Cumbria

My search so far led me to the following bikes:
Woosh big bear ls: I really like what I read and seen about the company but I couldn't try as I cannot find a retailer near me.

Wisper 705 se (or torque if you think it would be needed): I feel similar about this company and there are retailers near us.

Cube touring hybrid one 400 A bit on the expensive side I am not sure the Bosch motor and batteries worth it. And the styling doesn't really appeal her.

We really want to send our children to that school/nursery so it has to be reliable. Style and looks are secondary. Also we want to do something about the fitness issue too so I probably would get a second bike for me.

From the bikes above I favour the wisper one as we could try before buy and there is a local-ish dealer.
It would had been the woosh but I didn't realize until now that Britain has gone mad for e-bikes recently and it would be good to have a month or two to get used to it and the route.

I also looked at cargo bikes but it would be nice to be able to use just as a bike too plus those seem really expensive.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you
Greg

 

[Nealh]

For both of you it should do the job nicely without the need to drill out the original hitch. If I were to have one made up I would maybe want the plate to be about 20mm longer so all of the hitch sits on it.

 

[Gergeyl]

For both of you it should do the job nicely without the need to drill out the original hitch. If I were to have one made up I would maybe want the plate to be about 20mm longer so all of the hitch sits on it.

Luckily the bike guy whom serviced the trailer offered to drill up the hitch to 12mm he also tried to enlarge the rim but only got to 22mm before he had to stop because he was going to hit the welding.

What he advised after that to get a serrated flange nut with a smaller flange diameter.
I ordered some (15 in fact) should be here next week.

If that fails for some reason I get the one from eBay or ask the seller to make one for me.

Thanks for the help
I will post some impressions of the 705se and trailer in action.

Cheers
Greg

 

[Gergeyl]

Hi everyone
It has been a while and I thought I would give my impressions of the wisper 705se that my wife had been using since the end of June beginning of July.
This is not a review as you would expect it as biking is not something we have a lot of experience in. This is really just giving our impressions of it as 2 unfit parents who decided biking is something that we want to do.

I had only been on the bike 2-3 times but my wife had done around 400 miles on it.
It is a comfortable bike that is easy to ride. The assistance is very apparent not really jolty and although it is loud-ish I don't mind it is nice to know it is working. When I rode it I didn't find it hard to speed up or climb the hill at our house.

My wife described it that the assistance is just enough so she she can put in the work if she want it but it's there when she needed it.

Today was the first day when she took our son to nursery. But she has done many trips with the GIANT Peapod bike trailer. It is easy enough for her to pull the two kids in the trailer along and this bike is perfectly adequate to tow the trailer. However she wouldn't want to climb steeper hills.

Lastly I am so proud of her as she had been out with the bike at every opportunity going on mornings out with the kids and I don't think she would had been so successful if it wouldn't had been the right bike.

Ps: the most frustrating thing was to attach the trailer. The adapter recommended from eBay worked a treat and the guy who makes it unprompted recommended pedelecs forum in a message.

It's now time to look for a bike for me. But that's another thread.

Thanks everyone who gave advice.