Cargo Bikes

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  • orbea katsu

    FTFY

  • £1500 Bullitt (it's in Scotland)

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/385787120390?

  • Ah I see.

    Bosch's stated policy is they support systems for 7yrs after they've been discontinued, but Gen2 has only recently been discontinued so we'll see how it pans out.

    They did release a pretty in-depth service kit for Gen2 DUs that looks pretty promising. It's about $125USD retail and replaces most of the internals as well as the entire drive side of the DU including the chainring splines and lockring threads. I haven't done one yet, but looking at the procedure, my guess is it'd take about 60-90min to perform a DU overhaul.

    As far as upgrading aftermarket, the biggest issue is that Bosch doesn't generally sell DUs unless they're a replacement for an existing one. So upgrading to a completely different DU isn't really an option.

    But assuming you could get a DU, Gen4 is it's own standard, but the frame fitting for Gen2 and Gen3 DUs are the same. The latter uses a standard chainring however and a lot of the bikes we've seen transition between model years have had their frame designs altered to accommodate this, so an upgrade from Gen2 to Gen3 isn't always possible due to chainring clearance issues.

    We did see an interesting adapter on a Moustache tandem that allowed them to fit a Gen4 DU to a Gen2/3 frame that was pretty neat, but it doesn't appear to be available aftermarket...

  • Hmmm quite close to my parents house! Seems like a really good price but I haven’t been keeping abreast of prices…

  • Very good info, thanks.
    7 years is not that long, but it's better than nothing.
    And I guess motorbikes just will have more parts that break and are difficult to replace than human powered ones.
    There are gen 2/3/4 motors on ebay btw.

  • There are third parties that repair and sell bosch motors too - so I imagine unofficial support will continue much longer than that. I used to send all our broken motors that hadn’t been replaced on warranty to them, get them all back super clean and in perfect working order. Great service!

  • This is SO nice!

  • The bar end extension is a noice hack!

    Shame about the steering stops. Some you can’t adjust them but you can adjust where the arm mounts, which affects the turning circle.

  • I've seen the DUs on Ebay before, but there is the issue of programming. If the programming doesn't match your wheel size for example, the performance is going to be janky.

  • These guys are vital. I've considered moving into this field if/when I finally get sick of working at a bike shop.

  • Was wondering how much computering would be involved to DIY a bike with Bosch motor, and decided that I don't need to find out.

  • Yeah, most of the parameters of a given DU are programmed by the OEM and can't be changed even in the dealer diagnostic software.

    :EDIT: Was on the phone with Bosch tech support this morning following up on a case and I decided to ask about those Ebay DUs. They said there's no legitimate channel for buying new DUs in any sort of meaningful quantity for resale, so assuming they're even real, they're either defective units that were fished out the trash, refurbished used units, or were ripped out of stolen bikes.

  • Wait what? Some model displays have the option to set the wheel size, the motor just ignores this?

  • That setting is there if you change your tire size iirc, so range is rather limited. If the DU is programed for like 27.5"x2.4", you're not going to be able to adjust it for a 20" wheel bike for example.

  • In practice it basically has no effect on the assistance and top speed (guys that were repairing my DUnits said so)- but may have an impact on other metrics?

    The one little hack they said you could do with gen2 is put it in emtb mode and set the crank length to 165mm or shorter. The DU gives you a little extra torque to compensate for the short crank

  • The customer-facing adjustment does seem kind of moot, but we ran into at least one instance where a 27.5" bike was getting incorrect speed readings and hitting cap prematurely because the DU was one the customer had cannibalized from their wrecked Edgerunner.

    I hadn't heard of that EMTB trick, ha!

  • Ok fun, basically confirms i should go bafang versus bosch when i convert my cargo to middrive. (M4/500 not bbs)

  • Was also surprised that there were quite some available.
    My theory was warranty replacements and they got their old motor back to work.

  • The way bosch warranties work is you submit your old motor for them to collect, then they give you a replacement shortly after. They don’t let you keep the old one.

    Although in practice there was a period of time where didn’t collect 100% of the time, so I accumulated a few broken motors, and sent them all off to be repaired by a third party and kept them as spares.

  • Its totally strange but Woom and Omnium both do a propper kids cargo bike lol

  • How else are they going to get their 10 cuddly toys and picnic set to the park for the tea party?


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  • Well thats why we as parents exist, to haul all their crap lol.

  • And that is why I’d make an awful parent. You want it? You carry it.

  • Oops!

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Cargo Bikes

Posted by Avatar for mdizzle @mdizzle

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