Upgrade worthy?

[sunnyaunt]

I have a Raleigh Horizon Series Voyager that I purchased around 1997/98 from a small bike shop in Canterbury. It has no shocks on front or back, but Shimano gear shifters, derailleur and wheel hubs. 21 speed, 4130 cromoly frame, 26" wheels. What look like fairly flimsy cantilever brakes. I'm sort of attached to this bike. I rode it for many glorious miles around Kent in the late '90s. Then we moved to the USA and I haven't ridden it much since. I was looking to get an e-bike and wondered if this was a good candidate for a upgrade kit? Where we live now (sunny Southern California, inland from coast) has more hills than Kent (or it could just be that I'm that much older), and is not as bike friendly. In order to get anywhere useful I would need to use a fairly roughly paved maintenance access road with about 400ft of climb. Should I just sell it and buy an e-bike 'off the rack' or should I sell it and get a better upgrade candidate or could I upgrade it using a mid motor kit? Brakes seem to be the weak point here. Thanks for any help.

 

[goldcoastjon]

SunnyAunt,

As I have aged (I'm 69 now and I began riding at 6), I have lowered my gearing and played with lots of different parts to make cycling easier but have not felt any need to for electric assistance yet. Here are some thoughts:

IF you: 1) like your Raleigh, 2) it fits you well, and 3) you do not want to buy another one,
upgrading it is a good option.

You could simply upgrade your brakes and lower the gearing on that bike for less than the e-bike kits would cost. The thing to remember with e-bikes is that fixing one is far more complex - and, thus, more expensive - than fixing your bike as it was built and is now. Is that going to be an issue? Do you work on your own bike?

New brake pads plus some brake adjustments alone *might* give you much better braking. Have you worked on your brakes yourself to make them more effective? What does your local bike shop say about improving the braking or lowering your gearing? Both of these might be relatively inexpensive...

If you decide to go for an e-bike kit, make sure that your Raleigh will be able to handle the additional weight, the added stresses on the drive train and wheels, etc. Get lots of different perspectives from reliable sources before you buy one and ride different e-bikes before you take the plunge. (I know nothing about e-bikes or kits but have upgraded and traded LOTS of parts in my day...)

You should do whatever it will take to keep riding and the choice is yours, of course.

Best wishes!

Jon

 

[raleighnut]

Nice bike, not a good candidate for conversion though as with no rack mounts and the dual tube set up mounting a decent size battery pack would be a pain

Wouldn't sell the bike though, that's a nice bit of kit.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I really don't see why anyone would want to mess with the gearing on a MTB that is fitted with a triple front chainring. The lowest gear already fitted will get you up the side of a house. Just not very fast.
My view on ebikes generally is they are more trouble than they are worth. Heavy, expensive, range limitations, and potentially costly maintenance and repairs.

 

[Drago]

Those 4130 Raleigh frames are really nice. Certainly my experience of the male equivalent is that they are stiff yet comforable, and provide a good quality ride.

I wouldn't go nuts spending money on it, but its definitely worthy of, and capable of handling, an ebike conversion kit should you decide to do so.

 

[davidphilips]

If you can do the work yourself then perhaps changing to vee brakes would not cost a lot and if you are keeping the bike it would be money well spent as theres a big difference in cantilever vs vee brakes.

 

[Blue Hills]

If you can do the work yourself then perhaps changing to vee brakes would not cost a lot and if you are keeping the bike it would be money well spent as theres a big difference in cantilever vs vee brakes.

good point - I've fitted V brakes to 90s bikes that came with cantis. Pretty easy to do yourself - in fact easier to set up than cantis I think. And more reliably powerful.

 

[carpenter]

I really don't see why anyone would want to mess with the gearing on a MTB that is fitted with a triple front chainring. The lowest gear already fitted will get you up the side of a house. Just not very fast.
My view on ebikes generally is they are more trouble than they are worth. Heavy, expensive, range limitations, and potentially costly maintenance and repairs.

Agree with your thoughts on MTB gearing and up until last week agreed with your view on ebikes.

However, I cycled to my local the weekend before last and bumped in to an old friend (hadn't seen her all through the various lockdowns). We got chatting and after she had said a few nice things about my bike, told me that she had bought an ebike at the start of the lockdowns and had now covered 3000 miles on it

So even if she was only peddling for a third of the time that's pretty impressive in my view - not to mention just the fun of getting out and doing something.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Isn't there a bit of an issue at the front though with V brakes if the bars swing round and taking the brakes out?
I certainly see a lot of V-braked bikes with busted brakes, some of them scrappers, but more worryingly quite a lot still in use and being ridden!

 

[T4tomo]

Isn't there a bit of an issue at the front though with V brakes if the bars swing round and taking the brakes out?
I certainly see a lot of V-braked bikes with busted brakes, some of them scrappers, but more worryingly quite a lot still in use and being ridden!

before disc brakes came along, pretty much every MTB with front suspension had V brakes, as you could no longer mount a Canti in the usual manner, without some contraption attached to the post mounts to hold the brake hanger??? Given they were easier to set up, pretty much every bike with flat bars moved to V brakes, until disc became popular.

I don't see skip loads of busted v brakes littering the streets.

 

[Drago]

I never struggled setting up Cantis.

Once one knows how its actually no harder than setting up V's. After all, look how badly set up most V's in the wild are.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I don't see skip loads of busted v brakes littering the streets.

I do, all the time. Most of the bikes I see being ridden around locally are low end MTB and hybrid beaters, which are not well looked after - and a lot of them have obvious defects like one of the brakes visibly inoperative, or barely working derailleurs where the rider just leaves the bike in a sub-optimal gear all the time so might as well ride a single speed. The majority of riders I encounter are not what you would call enthusiasts and seem oblivious to how badly maintained and maladjusted their bikes are. V brakes simply seem more prone to getting damaged and becoming disconnected than cantis, which might not be very wel set up but at least do work after a fashion.

 

[Blue Hills]

I do, all the time. Most of the bikes I see being ridden around locally are low end MTB and hybrid beaters, which are not well looked after - and a lot of them have obvious defects like one of the brakes visibly inoperative, or barely working derailleurs where the rider just leaves the bike in a sub-optimal gear all the time so might as well ride a single speed. The majority of riders I encounter are not what you would call enthusiasts and seem oblivious to how badly maintained and maladjusted their bikes are. V brakes simply seem more prone to getting damaged and becoming disconnected than cantis, which might not be very wel set up but at least do work after a fashion.

I think this is simply because there are a hell of a lot of V brakes about* and also a hell of a lot of people who mistreat bikes. What you are seeing is the large crossover. I've never had any trouble with my many V brakes. I wouldn't like to set up many Cantis from scratch though - all that talk of optimum wire angles takes me back to dark afternoons of double maths.
* This is good - touring wherever you are going to have little trouble finding V brake spares.