A few years ago, there were very few selections when it came to electric bike kits. Now, it seems there is finally a kit for every type of build that you can imagine. So what’s next?…Style! Personalizing your ebike to match who you are, and what you do with it.
This article is not about anything practical in ebike design. It’s all about FUN!…it’s about how your ebike looks, and about how it makes you feel. The reason this facet of ebikes has been on my mind is that…some of the kits out now are very easy to install, so new ebikers don’t have to learn a lot about electrical components to be able to have an ebike.
Turn-key factory ebikes are starting to add “some” variety of style to their line-ups (like the Vintage Cycles Cruz), but…they can’t stray too far from the median average of public taste, or they risk having a lot of unsold ebikes. This means that a builder adding a kit to a bicycle that they like, will usually be the best route…if you are a creative personality, and you want your ebike to really stand out.
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What style is the best style?
Fashion is what everyone is doing, style is what you do.
Your style doesn’t have to be outrageous, but…it can be. Style means putting together something a little different than normal, to show what YOU like. This means that the thing that one builder loves…it’s the same thing that another builder hates!
There is no “best” style, there is only YOUR style. If you have a vision in your head that you absolutely LOVE?…don’t let anything slow you down or hold you back. When you post pics of the finished product, be aware some responders will laugh at it…and other will say that it’s the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen. Just remember, the only opinion that matters is YOUR opinion. You may not be able to afford a customized car or motorcycle, but anyone can afford to customize a bicycle. Then, making it into an ebike with a kit is another way to create and add something truly useful to your life.
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Pre-War Motorcycles
The ebike below is the Italjet Ascot, and I fell in love with it when I researched it to write our article on it back in September of 2015. This type of leather saddle was made famous by the Brooks company. There is a wide variety of leather grips and also chrome teardrop headlights to choose from. This style of fork is sometimes referred to as a “Monark springer”, after the bicycle from the 1940’s that made it famous. If you are shopping for a Monark springer style of fork, do a lot of research. Some will have a mount for a disc brake, and some do not. The strength and quality of the different manufacturers varies widely, so beware.
These tires are 26 X 3.0-inch Kenda Flames, and they come in a variety of colors.
The Italjet Ascot
For a frame, notice that there is some space between the vertical seat-tube and the front of the rear tire. This indicates that there is some “stretch” to this frame, which makes them a little more stable at higher speeds. One frame that is similar is the aluminum Electra Lux Fat 7D.
If you want a steel frame (which is much easier to alter and weld onto), the Felt Bixby is steel. Most Felt frames are aluminum, but the Bixby is steel. There may be other viable candidates, but these two are the first that come to mind if you want to re-create a bike from this era of style…
A smaller and shorter frame that has “just the right curve” is the Nirve Starliner.
A frame that is halfway to being complete for this style is the Nirve Street King 3-speed.
The Mental Manno
I was really knocked out by the “Mental Manno” when I wrote about it back in December of 2013. It is a retro motorcycle themed ebike with 2WD, and full suspension. It was designed by a brilliant engineer named Zlatko Vidic from Croatia.
This style of fork is called a Girder. It is a very strong suspension fork from the early days of motorcycles. When the front wheel hits a bump, the fork moves up inline with the fork tubes. If you read the Mental Manno article, it has the contact info, so Zlatko can build a Girder fork to your spec, or even an entire Mental manno frame.
Two more ebikes that embrace the pre-war motorcycle frame is the Lampociclo, and also the Harrison.
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Turn of the Century “Board Trackers”
In January of 2016, we wrote about the “Juicer” ebike, which we gladly refer to as the “King of the Board Trackers”. Between the year 1900, and the economic depression of 1929, there was a phenomenon of spectators watching the early motorcycles racing on a track that wa steeply banked in the curves (so riders didn’t have to slow down in the turns) and they were paved with wooden boards. Motorcycles that won, would have proven their durability under race conditions, so these were very popular for the manufacturers and spectators alike.
The “Juicer” Boardtracker, by David Twomey
If you want to re-create a board-track racer like this, you could contact David Twomey to assemble a turn-key ebike made to your spec, or you could buy a steel “loop” frame from Worksman Bicycles, and build it up the way that YOU like…
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Choppers
This is the style category that almost always evokes a LOT of passion. It seems that some builders LOVE them, and others HATE them. Whichever you are, I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
A Basman frame from Ruff Cycles, customized to the builders personal taste.
One unusual thing about the custom Basman in the pic above is the “Leading Link” fork. I have seen this style with two forward mounted compression springs (which is a fairly normal fork layout, shown), and I have also seen them with a single tension spring in the rear (that pulls longer when the fork hits a bump). If they are dialed-in to the weight and loads of a specific bike, they are reported to not have any “dive” during hard braking.
Back in December of 2015, we wrote about a Basman frame built by Matt Parks from Australia. This frame style was designed by Bas Pruisscher, from Project 346 in the Netherlands, and it won a custom build contest. After that, the Ruff Cycles company (from Germany) licensed the design, and I have been seeing a LOT of custom builds using this frame.
The Vanguard Zeth
I have recently seen some cheap Chinese copies of this Vanguard Zeth stretch cruiser. It was designed for a “build off” and won. Notice it uses a “cantilever springer” fork. The bottom of the steerer-tube (inside the head tube) has a pivot, and the suspension uses a rocker motion. When the front tire hits a bump, the front tire actually moves up and forwards, just as the front of the spring (on top) moves backwards. This style works best on a bike with a slack head-tube angle.
Look closely at the saddle. If you like this reproduction of that vintage style, search for “Hairpin saddle” on Google images.
If you like having your feet being flat on the ground at a stop, this frame has just about the lowest seat you can buy…along with the bike frame just below!
The Ruff Cycles “Hard Time” frame.
There’s a phrase that says…”there’s no accounting for taste”, and that means that if you like something, there’s no way to change the mind of someone who hates it, and vice versa. The ebike in the pic above is using the “Hard Time” frame from Ruff Cycles. To me, this is beautiful, but is it practical? Hell no! It’s all about the style, baby…
The bike above has a “triple tree” solid fork with a dual crown.
Looking over the chopper section, I noticed that most of them have a lowered chainstay, and this is an interesting feature. Of course you can add a large rear hubmotor, but…if you choose to use a mid drive (like the Bafang BBSHD or the Lightning Rods big block), the chain might wear out faster than normal. With the frames that have a lowered stay, you don’t have to break the chain and re-attach it to swap them out. You can order a new chain to a certain length, and it slips right on, by simply loosening the rear axle and moving it forward a bit.
Plus, in these “open-triangle” frames, you can mount the mid drive inside the center of the frame triangle. Not to mention that these huge frame triangles will fit just about any size of battery you can imagine.
If you like these wild custom chopper ebikes, you need to check out Fabizio Bellagamba’s facebook page “Extreme Bicycle Electric garage”. I noticed that there are a lot of custom builds there using the Ruff Cycles Porucho frame.
Marks Cromotor Phatrod
Also, if you like hot rod chopper ebikes, we wrote about Marks Cromotor Phatrod back in August of 2015.
If you like the fat tire look, there are several brands of tires that have been seen on these “retro” cruiser bicycles. The Boa-G 26 X 3.45, and Hoggy-G 24 X 2.45. The Nirve Fat Ass 24 X 3 inch. The Schwalbe 26 X 2.35 Fat Frank (in various colors). The Felt 24 X 3 Thick Brick (also various colors). The Kenda 26 X 3 Flame also in 24 X 3 Flame (in various colors). The Duro 26 X 3 Soul Stomper tires. And last, the Duro 26 X 3 Beach Bum.
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Vintage “Tank Bicycles” from 1930-58
Young men everywhere back in the depression years had almost no hope of ever owning a car, but just about everyone could eventually own a bicycle. The Bikes from this era were built very strong so they could last. Many of them came with two horizontal top tubes, which made it easy to add a small single-cylinder gasoline engine, similar to the “Whizzer” mopeds. This way you could buy a bicycle as soon as you could afford it, and then add an engine later on.
Even if you never intended to ever add a real engine, there were deluxe versions of bicycles that were popular, and they often had features that were reminiscent of the classic vintage motorcycles, and they came to be called “tank bikes”
The 1938-40 Deluxe Hiawatha Arrow “long tank” bicycle
The faux “fuel tanks” on these bikes often held a useful storage compartment (along with batteries for a headlight), but…their greatest appeal to their proud owners was simply the “motorcycle style” it imparted.
The 1946 Bowden Spacelander
In 1946, WWII had recently ended, and the new “Jet Age” had begun. Rockets were also being studied by every major nation, and it was speculated that humans could go into space soon. This stirred the public’s imagination in movies, TV programs, and also in automobile and bicycle style. The late 1940’s and the 50’s were awash in jet and rocket style. The Bowden Spacelander is a bicycle that made a splash in the news, but was initially unsuccessful in business.
The prototype was made in England from hand-formed aluminum panels, but when they went into a limited production (in the United States), it used the newest “miracle material”…fiberglass! This material doesn’t rust, and it can be designed so that it’s very strong while still being fairly light.
This style never caught on, but…nobody can argue that it looks just like any other bike!
1937 Elgin Bluebird
The Elgin Bluebird has flowing lines and lots of curves, and when I was looking at pics of vintage bicycles, this one stood out as a definite influence on the bicycles that came after it.
If you like the classic vintage bicycles from the era in this section, the best website to look at them is “Dave’s Vintage Bicycles“. There are many hours worth of pictures and reading there.
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Modern Body Panels
There’s no way to precisely define “modern”, but…here are two ebikes that have made a serious attempt at using body panels to make something that is distinctive in its style.
The 2014 Qoros eBiqe
The Qoros eBique is an exotic that we wrote about back in 2014. The side panels and tail-light boom are the most obvious styling touches. The facets on the rear swingarm may not seem to add much, but I feel they are a subtle but effective addition, and they seem to be similar to the swingarm on the recent HPC Revolution.
The 2014 BESV LX1
The BESV company in China is a standout example of bicycle designs that retain much of the “socially accepted” bicycle style, while still adding elements to bring some creativity and modern style to their look. The body panels on the LX1 shown above (and also the JS1) manage to stylishly hide wiring while being light, strong, and rust-proof.
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Lightly styled modern electric bikes
The Miele Evox (shown below) is from Canada. It doesn’t “scream” style, but they did put some effort into giving it’s shape a certain graceful “flow” that I find to be very engaging. It is only a mild-assist street-legal power system, but I felt is was one of the more attractive ebikes at the 2015 Interbike convention.
The Elby (shown below) also isn’t a screaming radical when it comes to design, but if you want to stay fairly mainstream, there isn’t a whole lot that you can change. I felt it did a reasonable job of adding some elegant curved shapes to the basic ebike “step-trough” frame.
The 2016 Elby
The Coast Cycles Quinn (below) isn’t even an ebike, but its unusual frame is advertised to be able to hold a large briefcase of some city office-worker. Of course I immediately realized how it could hold a large and common rectangular battery pack without any modifications. That being said, it had a certain “Swedish” flavor of style to it that I found to be subtle and very appealing.
The 2016 Coast Cycles Quinn
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Whats next in ebike style?
There’s no way to tell. Style varies from one place to the other, and from one year to the next.
Chopper styled ebikes have been popular in Germany and Russia the last few years. Vintage styled ebikes have popped up in the UK and Italy. I noticed that bobber motorcycles have been gaining popularity in recent custom motorcycle shows, so I think that there “might be” some bobber ebikes seen around here soon (it all depends on what custom builders put together!). Styling influences can come from any direction, and from completely unexpected sources.
One thing is for certain, the more that ebike builders see about special projects that have a great style, the more creativity we will see when they decide to build one for themselves…
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Written by Ron/spinningmagnets, July 2016