Reuse parts from electric bicycle
We bought this second hand cargo bike in 2023 for 300 EUR. We use it to transport everything, from tools, groceries, workshop materials, fire wood, clay, soil… and even people! We were wondering if it would be possible to transform our beloved cargo bike into an electric bike so we could use it to transport more items for a longer distance.
We didn’t want to spend a lot of money so we decided to dismantle an old ebike for parts and try to integrate them into our cargo bike. For this we found a Sparta ION bike from 2003 for free. We dismantled the back wheel with the gears, brakes and the speed shift handle with all the cables. We were lucky that the back wheel was just slightly bigger than the original wheel, which made it possible to place it inside the cargo bike frame with a little bit of stretching.
The first Youtube video above showed us how to open up the back wheel and separate the engine inside of it. It also shows in detail how to remove the circuit board from the original manufacturer and reconnect all of the existing wires to a controller device. This a specific computer that allows all of the parts to efficiently communicate with each other. We connected it to the engine, a new display and a pedal sensor. To power everything we bought two 12 V batteries which we connected to create a 24 V battery.
After installing all of these parts we had to remove the old brakes and speed shift handle and replace them with the parts from the E-bike. We also had to install the derailleur from the E-bike onto the cargo bike, but since there was no attachment piece for it, we had to buy this.
