Tour Easy: Bafang BBS02 Mid-Drive Motor

For reasons not relevant here, Mary’s Tour Easy recumbent now sports a Bafang BBS02 Mid-drive motor:

It pretty much Just Fit, although the lithium battery sits atop mounts conjured from the vasty digital deep:

Many cables connect all the doodads, which a custom-made e-bike can hide inside the frame, but … that’s not an option for us.

The Bafang BBS02 kit is basically plug-n-play, at least if you own a standard-ish bike. I included some useful options for our setup:

• Mini color display
• 48 V 11.6 A·h “Ultra Slim” battery
• 2 A charger
• 46 tooth chainring
• Brake sensors for existing levers
• Gear shift sensor (original design)

Changing the controller parameters, usually called “programming”, required firing up the Token Windows Laptop:

• USB-to-serial adapter
• Quasi-official software
• Original hacked software
• Some background
• Detailed parameter descriptions

As you might expect, I set up a relatively sedate and low-powered pedal assist mode in place of the default rocket sled mode.

The motor design seems a decade old, so Bafang (née 8Fun) has had time to work out some of the original design misfeatures. It definitely has shortcomings, but nothing insurmountable so far.

Early results suggest Mary is now riding her familiar bike over much flatter terrain.

Some background reading:

• Bicycling magazine can follow the money
• Powered bikes are quasi-legal in NYS
• Why powered bikes are widely ignored

More on all of this as I compile my notes …