What Full Sus bike will fit a bafang motor easily??

[jezhumphrey75]

hi all, whats a good full susp bike that needs to modifying or grinding etc to fit a bafang mid drive motor??

thanks all

 

[arTNC]

First question would be...which Bafang? You know they make a bunch of mid-drive motors and a ton of hub-drive motors. I'm going to assume you're probably referring to a mid-drive motor since this is a mountain biking forum.

The problem with the BBSHD and the other less powerful Bafang mid-drive...I forget the designation...is that they hang a little low on most of the more modern, full suspension MTB's that have that curved downtube. If you can find a more old school straight down tube into the BB design, the Bafang will have much better ground clearance.

In my case I used my 2003 Santa Cruz Bullit for a Bafang BBSHD conversion. This setup worked really and surprisingly well. The Bullit was more or less a freeride model and had a very high ground clearance. This suited the BBSHD well. I had tremendous ground clearance and almost no pedal strikes. I had initially mounted this motor on my 2008 SC Nomad, but the bike was too darned low on ground clearance.

I rode this Bullit/Bafang for the last 3 years until I recently bought a Trek Gen 2 Rail 7...which I love. The Bullit had a 27.5" front and 26", but I'm glad to move on to a full 29 inch'er.

 

[jezhumphrey75]

First question would be...which Bafang? You know they make a bunch of mid-drive motors and a ton of hub-drive motors. I'm going to assume you're probably referring to a mid-drive motor since this is a mountain biking forum.

The problem with the BBSHD and the other less powerful Bafang mid-drive...I forget the designation...is that they hang a little low on most of the more modern, full suspension MTB's that have that curved downtube. If you can find a more old school straight down tube into the BB design, the Bafang will have much better ground clearance.

In my case I used my 2003 Santa Cruz Bullit for a Bafang BBSHD conversion. This setup worked really and surprisingly well. The Bullit was more or less a freeride model and had a very high ground clearance. This suited the BBSHD well. I had tremendous ground clearance and almost no pedal strikes. I had initially mounted this motor on my 2008 SC Nomad, but the bike was too darned low on ground clearance.

I rode this Bullit/Bafang for the last 3 years until I recently bought a Trek Gen 2 Rail 7...which I love. The Bullit had a 27.5" front and 26", but I'm glad to move on to a full 29 inch'er. View attachment 134976

yeah sorry i was meaning the bsshd or bbs02, wanted something around the 2020/2021 designs full susp and about 1k in value used to buy, was thinking giant trance or specialized stumpjumper....those sorts of bikes.

 

[arTNC]

Mid-drive conversions can be great, even for fairly serious mountain biking, but just keep that ground clearance in mind on MTB's with that forward sloping downtube. If you ride trails that are more smooth and flowy without a lot of rocks and v-dips, it can work. But seriously, that motor can get really low on one of those sloping downtubes. I had a blast with mine. Good luck.