Cargo Bikes

What’s the crack with bullittbike.de and the pinion ebullitts? Are they modified bullitts with a different motor/crankset housing?

When I first built my bike I had a box that was the same width and shape of the cargo frame and then changed to a 600mm wide one when the twins arrived, the difference i felt was insane (maybe placebo 🤷🏻‍♂️) but it felt like riding through treacle with a big flat square front pushing against the air.

Now my boys are riding pretty well on their own I think I’ll be making a narrower box again, will report back to see if it actually does make a difference

What’s the crack with bullittbike.de and the pinion ebullitts? Are they modified bullitts with a different motor/crankset housing?

Yea, it's a version that only they sell, it's equipped with the 6-speed Pinion gearbox.

Ha! Yeah this is quite a big box, I’m fully expecting it to be aero level zero!

I thought it was "just" a frame kit for a middrive motor in which they put a pinion in and add electric assistance in the rear hub. You should be able to do it yourself if you want, the parts are not custom or anything, just expensive.

The frame sets are not the same as the ones from LvH website and other LvH dealers. that mid-drive motor section is different.

Ha! You wanna try a 700w x 600h box into a headwind with a full load - fun
BTW, what's the alloy tubing you're using on the box?

What sort of load (kg) are you dealing with?

You’re on an UA right?

You are right, I should have realized that there are no standards within the bike industry and every manufacturer creates their own mid drive mount.

I can imagine!

The aluminium frame is 30x30mm extruded construction profile from MBS Item. Similar to Bosch Rexroth etc.

not too sure, but I'd estimate 30-100kg, so with the bike, box & me it's prob 160-230kg

What’s the crack with bullittbike.de and the pinion ebullitts? Are they modified bullitts with a different motor/crankset housing?

They modify the frames in-house to take Pinion. Also offer a shorter or longer version of the Bullitt bed.

Interesting. Do you have any idea how the pinion performs?

Hefty!

Yeah they do them themselves.
For domestic light use, overkill.
For couriers, just add a rear wheel motor (a good one) and you have the most dependable bike right there.
For home heavy use, yeah pinions ime are less prone to sudden implosion like igh are, but still aren't as efficient as a regular cassette /derailleur setup, and cost a lot more. Trick though!

The shell they use isn't a steps or bosch shell, its only for pinion afaik.

Why would you use pinion and hub motor over bosch / shimano mid drive motor and Rohloff? Cheaper?

I understand it to be significantly more expensive. It's just a clean, hassle free, simple looking set up.

Interesting. Do you have any idea how the pinion performs?

I've not tried it on a Bullitt, but I've built quite a few Tout Terrains. It's got some pros and cons - if you've ever ridden a Rohloff, the shifting is much lighter/smoother, but there's definitely the same lossiness in a Pinion that you feel from any other IGH vs a derailleur drivetrain.

Why would you use pinion and hub motor over bosch / shimano mid drive motor and Rohloff? Cheaper?

Two reasons in my experience:
1 - The rear-facing Bullitt dropouts for Rohloff fucking suck at keeping the hub in place.
2 - Mechanical Rohloff shifting feels like absolute garbage with a high-torque middrive motor and as of this posting E14 isn't compatible with STEPS

Ime mid drive motor + mechanical Rohloff shifting doesn’t suck, you just need to back off on pedalling while shifting, doing so makes it very reliable. Maybe in comparison to Pinion it sucks tho.

I haven’t seen the brake setup on bullitts. Although I know IS adaptors and horizontal dropouts are fiddly with Rohloff / other hub gears, they tend to work ok when set up correctly.. In fact Rohloff have a better system than other hub gears I’ve used (ie Nuvinci 🤮)

One thing I’ve read about Pinion that puts me off is that they roll less efficiently than Rohloff. It might not be noticeable with a huge rear hub motor but using cargo bikes and mid drive motors you’d notice as soon as you stopped pedalling when using a draggy rear hub, I also thought it was more difficult to cycle past the 16mph assistance (but maybe it was in my head). I wonder if the pinion would have the same effect.

Has anyone DIY dimpled the OG omniums chainstays?

I need a new rear wheel and just stuck a 650x47 to test - the clearance is close enough that a minor buckle is not going to be too much fun.

Ime mid drive motor + mechanical Rohloff shifting doesn’t suck, you just need to back off on pedalling while shifting, doing so makes it very reliable. Maybe in comparison to Pinion it sucks tho.

Out of curiosity, what bikes have you tried with a middrive and mechanical Rohloff? I've put too much time into an 2018 R&M Supercharger with mechanical Rohloff that never felt great (likely due in part of R&M's asinine approach to cable routing on Powertube bikes) and we also installed a mechanical Rohloff on an E8000 Bullitt as an experiment a couple of years ago. The Bullitt definitely worked better than the R&M, but the delay in the drive unit cutting power was significantly longer than the expected pause in pedaling force we're accustomed to on a Rohloff which made it feel pretty shit to me.

That said, if I hadn't spent so much time with E14 at this point, I likely would not have such strong feelings about mechanical Rohloff on middrive bikes.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to lecture you.

I was trying to respond to the fact you said the Rohloff shifts like shit with mid drive motor- but I couldn’t relate to that. Although my experience with pinion is non existent so maybe it is really a dream come true in comparison.

I’ve ridden a Rohloff / UA XL with Bosch mid-drive for approx two years almost daily, at times I was doing 50/60 miles a day. My only comparison was the same setup with Nuvinci. I’ve never used a Rohloff without the mid drive so I guess I have no expectation to how it should feel, I just know it feels 100x better than the Nuvinci in that same cargo bike / mid drive setup.

Interesting. Must have been the cable routing on the R&M then.

Or I’ve just become too accustomed to it. I’m keen on trying the E14 for sure