[GRMNT] decided to bring his grandpa’s beautiful road bike into the future by making a sleeper e-bike conversion.
Going into the project, [GRMNT] didn’t really know what he was working with, but it turned out grandpa had good taste and was rocking a Bianchi. No stovepipe bike boom stuff here, only high quality Tange steel. After cleaning off the years of grime, it was time to rebuild a second-hand Bafang mid-drive electric motor for the electric boost for the ride.
We really like the custom solenoid-powered display that [GRMNT] built into the handlebars for an excellent electromechanical readout of the battery charge. Coupled with the hand-built battery pack inside a leather case and hidden motor actuation button, this build looks slick without screaming e-bike.
We’ve covered some other conversions in the past including this one using an electric skateboard motor or this plug-and-play kit. If you’d rather power things with your bike, you’ll like this hack that can make everything bike powered.
So… it has all the drawbacks of an e-bike, but at least it lost the advantages provided by road bike in its original state.
I’d say it’s a 10/10 YouTube™ Project.
#MORE
Drawbacks?
I love that this is done for craftsmanship and nostalgia only, not because it makes a lot of sense in the end.
Maybe there are different types of “sleeper things”.
This is the kind of “sleeper” in a sense that it used to sleep for a long time and then got restored, and then modified. More like a rare find that got restored to fully shinyness.
But then there is the “sleeper” that still looks like old crap, but has a hidden trick. Like a crappy vehicle but with a powerful engine inside.
That would have required to hide the batteries in the frame, to keep the dirt and to hide the motor. But this is not that video
If he wanted a true sleeper, he should put the motor and battery inside the seat tube like those cheating competition bikes.
They do that? How do they hide the sound? I wanna see these, this sounds interesting
In 2016 Femke Van den Driessche was banned by UCI for six years after a hidden motor was found in one of her bikes. She claimed that it was owned by a friend and was erroneously placed in her pit, but UCI regs prohibit the presence of motors in bikes regardless of intent or ownership. Video analysis of one of her previous races found unusual movements like breaking off from the pack on a cobble climb with apparent little effort.
Important bit: a good steel bike from the 50s can be a better daily driver than a modern high-tech carbon composite one.
Maaaaaybe. Still, for daily driving (and some off-road fun) my 2025 aluminium Trek MTB is the best bicycle I ever had. Hydraulic brakes that just work, 1×12 drive where you don’t need PhD in mechanical engineering to adjust the damn thing and wheels with standardized machine bearings on thru axles instead of this quick release nonsense.
It’s like, it was finally designed by competent engineers instead of morns blindly cargo-culting what some frenchman did 100 years ago simply because he didn’t have access to a lathe.
This. It might not fit the hipster commute profile though.
Sorry but we used quick release axles for a good reason.
Wheels need to come off a lot.
Also, “standard” sealed bearings are unsuitable for a bicycle wheel since they get plenty of axial load.
You need to use less standard sealed axial+radial bearings.
Also, standard race&cone adjustable wheel bearings are good for thousands of miles. And when you do need to rebuild them it is not hard. You don’t even really need specialized tools if you have wrenches thin enough to work. Contrast that with bearing presses and specialized removal tools.
Unless you are doing something extreme like riding saltwater marshes or cyclocross in the slush, sealed bearings are WAY more work for their extremely niche advantages.
Hydraulic breaks being cheap and available is FANTASTIC though. No argument from me there.
Being able to drop $35 for a front & rear set that only needs mineral oil and comes WITH the 180mm rotorsis amazing.
Also: I love my aluminum frames. Carbon ones too.
But I ALSO love how I can toss a CroMolly frame in a stand and stretch the dropouts to accommodate a wider modern hub spacing.
The “nice” old steel frames also have more vibration damping.
You know a thing or two ;)
Idk, I don’t like my bike to be heavy.
i’m not sure. one of the reasons i like old bicycles is that it’s easy to replace all their components but there’s definitely a cutoff in age where that becomes impractical, where compatibility is a challenge. say 1980s instead of 1950s, and i’d believe it without hesitation though.
i love steel but i broke two steel bikes last year and replaced one of them with an aluminum bike. trade offs abound. but from the durability perspective, the fact that i broke two (simple fatigue, a crack that eventually made it all the way through, and then eventually bent the remaining pieces beyond ride-ability) makes me skeptical of the “steel lasts forever” mantra.
the thing is, steel fails slowly. i’ve seen a few different failures and the bike always warns me for months that it is dying, without causing a wreck or even leaving me stranded. but the one aluminum failure i’ve seen, it was just fine one moment and then catastrophically wreck-inducingly failed the next. i’m afraid of aluminum in a way i’m not afraid of steel. but i think in terms of age, both can last decades and neither will last forever. a 75 year old bike is on death’s door.
Its really cool to try to fool people…people seems to love it when you trick them.
I had a friend that had a tennis shoe on his coffee table, but the shoe was actually a telephone. Ha ha …..now someone is trying to fool us into thinking that this ebike isn’t an ebike…….again …fun project. But why,???
The industry trys to hide batteries for the sake of having their bike look like something it isnt….again. why… we like Ebikes…No..we love Ebikes…..there hasn’t been this king of bike enthusiasm since Shwinn made the stingrays……build an Ebike…be proud of the Ebike…..the Ebikes are here to stay ….the hell with the bicycle purists……quit hiding the battery and motor…..display the battery and motor with pride……….
Side note….when plastic was first invented the plastic manufacturers did themselves a disservice by trying to make it look like wood….so right at very first plastic got a reputation of being fake….to this day people will say ….oh its made of plastic as though its a bad thing…..today plastics can do things that wood could never do…….the bicycle industry needs to quit trying to trick people…..
Very few e-bikes do not look like a pregnant guppy. The e-bike “enthusiasm” is because people are shit lazy bastards. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have someone do their daily commute with an e-bike than with a car, but the e-bike shit is getting out of hand. People are riding their e-somethings to the gym to work out. I mean, come on people. I am mountainbiking and I won’t buy an e-bike, because I want to stay moderately fit. When I’m old and slow and want to stay active that is fine with me. Until then I sweat and I curse that the uphill sucks and still love it.
About plastic. I’d take wood over plastic anytime, if there isn’t a technical reason not to. The world is already enough of a dump filled with plastics, and recycling is still a joke.
People like you ought to be whipped and thus motivated to drag around large stones, Egyptian-wise
The thing with oh, it’s made of plastic is more about it being cheap as wwell as mechanically weak and thus easy to form, which is why it get’s often used in places where a qauality product uses a fitting material.
This got even more pronounced with the rise of 3D printers; just look at all those fancy gearbox projects pretending to be more than a toy.
The little tactile solenoid graph is indeed way cooler than any TFT or OLED could hope to be. Has a certain luxury watch feel to it.
I’m a little concerned with the holes in the handlebars. I guess as a stress concentrator the cracks should start showing there first before failure though.
What the heck went wrong with the chain and chainring in the youtube thumbnail here? It looks like an AI delusion.
Ignore the angry gatekeepers above, this is awesome.
My main gripe is him calling it a sleeper when the motor is plainly visible. Other than that, it’s a very good vintage e-bike conversion: I like the minimalist approach, use of leather, and the solenoid-based battery indicator is honestly a stroke of genius. That said, I have to wonder how well the entire setup performs in rainy conditions, which makes me wonder if this is more of a Youtube project than a “build for actual use” one.