In dire need of a front hub motor kit recommendation...

Hi Jim,
I have had real good luck with the kit I got from Werelectrified, the seller for Wilderness Energy.
Customer service is pretty poor, you must call them because they rarely ever respond to email.
There is also a Canadian seller for the same kit, they have always been very prompt with email replies to my questions and they do ship to the US.
Yeah, $200 is a bit low, but there is a company, Golden Hub Motor (or something like that) that claims to sell an almost identical kit for $175.
This DOES NOT include the batteries.
You live in St Louis you should have a local source for the batteries.
I have never seen their kit though, so cannot personally vouch for it.
As with everything, you get what you pay for.

Jim,
Also, looking at the bike photo in your link it looks like the bike has suspension forks, yes? It's kinda hard to tell (bifocals and late night).
They do not recommend putting a hub motor on suspension forks, afraid the torque applied by the motor can cause a catastrophic fork failure.
I'll be glad to answer any other questions.

The Golden Motors kit is about as cheap as you are going to get for a system with any kind of decent power. My front wheel kit cost $300CND....without the battery...battery cost me $110. Same kits WERE (price has recently gone up because, frankly, they were abnormally cheaper than similar kits) selling for $175US and people reported having them at their door, shipping included for about $200US...Like I said, the price has recently gone up to $266US, shipping included. The Canadian distributer I got mine from still sells kits for $300Cnd. You won't find a cheaper kit than the Golden kit for a 500W, 750W max system. You can see from my sig, that this kit, on a Stiletto bike which I would wager is heavier than what most of you have, is powerful enough to straight out break the law here and in most places around the US. It surpasses 20MPH with ease, into the wind with a 190lb rider. And I have a 20" wheel! f course if you ask me, smaller wheels are the best way to get a hub motors power to the ground, but hey, the world seems to have a love affair with 26" wheels and mountain bikes that have you riding totally upright 10feet in the air, cutting a path through the air like a broken brick with mud all over it, just waiting to be tossed over the front handlebars, but that's a different story. I just always thought mountains bikes were ugly and stupid. If you don't do extreme trails with your water bottle filled with mountain dew, why a mountain bike for the streets, but anyway, I digress.If you want to be a cheapskate, buy one of those. Just don't expect great service if you buy it direct from China, find an American distributer (ther is at least one I know of) or get it from Smartbike canada if you expect customer service of any kind. They are cheap for a reason. But it all works quite well, goes together only one way and in 5 minutes...I had to tighten some spokes when it got here, but that was it. I have 378kms on this system so far, with no problems.
They aren't cheaper because they suck...they work very well...they are cheap, because if you buy direct from China, good luck trying to get help if anything is messed up, their customer service is almost non-existent....IF YOU ORDER FROM CHINA DIRECT IN AN ATTEMPT TO CUT OUT THE AMERICAN?CANADIAN DISTRIBUTER TO SAVE A FEW MEASLY DOLLARS. Buy from an American distributer or the Canadian one I got from and customer service is no longer an issue at all. So, really, it's not so much "it's cheap, so you get what you pay for", so much as with the other kits, "you pay for more than what you get"....Batteries included or batterries separate, you can't get a cheaper kit for less...period... order from a distributer instead of from the manufactireres website and you bypass the only flaw the company has....service to North American customers. Incicdentally, Golden Motors has been discussing increasing their North American presence, and increasing their level of support on this side of the water...when that happens, they WILL not be selling on price anymore, they will sell for the same marked up price that all the other kits sell for. For more speed, they have a 48V 1000W controller as well....if you need to go illegally and unsafely fast, well then get a crystalyte 5 series, 40A controller, and kill yourself. Any other 500W motor you will pay more for, and you won't get more out of it.

My father has an ebike...it cost him $1100 and change....Between the kit, battery, and cost of the bike (which isn't a cheapo bike and looks a hell of alot better than my dad's pee-wee herman mountain bike monstrousity) mine cost me $801Cnd total...period....I blow his bike away, completely...top speed is much faster, and acceleration is no contest...like lining up a Ferrarri and a Ford Escort.

Of course, next spring, I'm building another stiletto with a 5 series motor....strictly for off-road controlled situations...the stiletto forks and frame can actually take the motor unlike these 10 buck mountain bikes with spaghetti sized forks and aluminum everwhere that everyone seems to want to slap a 5303 onto....I will have 2 stilletos, one for the streets with the GM kit I just discussed and one with the X5 motor in it......the second stiletto WILL cost twice what the first one cost and I won't even be able to use it on the street...But there it is...Hope this helped. I have a Golden Motors kit, so don't let people that have never even seen the kit tell you that it's crap, and "you get what you pay for" nonsense.

You have children turned into slaves to make cheaper sneakers...but the sneakers don't seem much cheaper to me... What's NIKE's damn overhead costs if they have sweatshop slave kids making their shoes all day and they still cost more than anything else.....DO YOU BELIEVE YOU AE GETTING WHAT YOU PAYED FOR< OR ARE YOU PAYING FOR THE PRESTIGE OF THE SWOOSH AND HAVING THE SAME SHOES AS THE LOWLIFE RAPPER YOU IDOLIZE! Rant complete.

Giant Stiletto Bike
500W Golden Motors 20" front wheel kit
190lb rider
Flat ground speed: 36kph tested into a wind
Top speed: 44.8kph on a downgrade

Do not buy the 48v 500w kit marketed on ebay. I think the Go-Hub is a bulletproof design.

Have you made any more progress?

www.freewebs.com/echoppershop

16 pound hub motor and 20 pound bat. sounds fun well cheap is heavy. mabe that would end up being the perfect a123 project down the road