Electric Bikes for Heavy Riders

hey guys Chris from propel here and today we're gonna be talking about electric bikes for heavier riders now I'm gonna talk about some of the factors you might want to consider when looking for a electric bike if you're a little bit heavier as well as some bikes you might want to add to your shortlist now most electric bikes can accommodate up to somewhere around 250 to 275 pounds depending on the manufacturer but there are some bikes that specifically made to carry more than that now some might consider you know 250 pounds to be heavy I don't really know I think it all depends but really I guess I want to primarily focus on bikes that can accommodate more than that now overall I just want to talk about some of the details you want to consider when thinking about whether a bike is gonna be able to accommodate your weight because you have the manufacturer's suggested weight rating but there's other details that I think we're gonna make the bike a lot stronger and therefore better to accommodate more weight starting with the wheels now if you have a larger wheel like a 28 inch or 700 C or whatever you the manufacturer might call it for that particular style if you have a narrower tire with a larger wheel it might be more susceptible to breaking spokes or potentially going out of true whereas if you have a slightly smaller wheel with the wider tire they're generally gonna be a lot stronger especially if you're riding on rougher terrain and that sort of thing if the wheels getting bounced and banged around a lot more especially with a little bit more weight on it that tire and wheel combo is gonna stand up a little bit better to some of those constraints now if you go with even a smaller wheel especially with the wider tire that's generally going to be a pretty good setup and something you might want to consider but I think starting with the wider tire is a good way to go and if you're looking for a bike as a heavier Rider I wouldn't really consider a tire any narrower than inch and 3/4 ideally you have a tire that's 2 inches or wider and that's really going to hold a little bit more volume support you a little bit better I think also having that wider tire is gonna be less likely to put stress on the frame because any you know bumps in the road and that sort of thing this tire can soak some of that up as opposed to like a really rigid frame with a really stiff tire as you hit those bumps it's all going to go into the frame if there's any weaknesses or any weak welds or anything like that the frame is gonna flex and potentially crack in those areas I don't want to scare you and thinking about these details but I think it's important to consider that because you want to be safe on the bike and make sure you feel confident and riding the bike that you're not concerned that it's gonna break underneath you or something like that that's part of the reason why I think it's also important to select a quality manufacturer one that's gonna be stand behind their product because the reality is bikes can break and you want to make sure that you're covered if something does happen now thinking about the tires you probably want to consider the rims as well going with the wider rim specifically a double wall aluminum rim which is pretty standard these days that's going to be heavier duty and then thinking about the wheel overall some of the other details like the axles now many bikes might have a standard quick-release axle where I think having a through axle something you might more commonly find on a mountain bike is generally going to be a little bit heavier duty and that's kind of the way I think about it and that's actually a way that a lot of electric bike manufacturers think about their bikes is really starting with a lot of these standards which are to develop for mountain biking because electric bikes are quite often going to be subjected to forces that are a little bit stronger you're going to climb up hills that you might not otherwise climb up and you're going to go down them as well potentially at a speed faster than you would otherwise so having heavy-duty brakes heavy-duty wheels tires etc those things are going to be fitting for electric bike but especially fitting for a heavier rider the next thing to consider is the brakes I think it's really going to be critical that you have ample stopping power especially if you live in a particularly hilly area going downhill with a lot of weight you're going to heat up those brakes quite a bit so having larger rotors and better brakes overall specifically hydraulic disc brakes I would recommend that's gonna give you good stopping power to have good heat displacement with those larger rotors and that's a important consideration when thinking about specking a bike specifically for you or finding a bike that's suspect for you sometimes people actually make modifications for their bikes to make it more fitting to their specific needs like adding wires hires or adding a larger rotor to brakes but you want to make sure that these are within the specifications recommended for the specific manufacturer another detail to consider is suspension for the most part most full suspension bikes are going to be challenging for riders say over 300 pounds because a lot of times that rear shock can't handle enough pressure to keep you in an appropriate sag the sag being when you set up the suspension specific to your weight that's really depending on the amount of air you put on it now some shocks can accommodate more weight than others but I think this is an important consideration and making sure that that bike is going to be able to fit you and work with you specifically because if the shock isn't rated for your weight or you don't have enough air in it to keep you in the appropriate active portion of the suspension you might find that you're prematurely wearing out the rear shock or different things like that I find that bumping up the rebound on the shock really helps especially for heavier riders and and again that air pressure up a bit higher will generally help you probably want to consider going for a bike with just a suspension front fork as opposed to a suspension front fork and rear suspension especially if you're over that 300-pound mark because most of the suspensions as I said they'd be a little bit challenging in that regard certainly if you have any experience with that on your own I always love to hear feedback but we're interacting with different customers all the time and I know that that's one of the big challenges that we've had we've actually been talking with some suspension manufacturers about maybe creating a shock that can accommodate a bit more I think that would be really helpful but if you go with a bike with just a suspension front fork and having suspension seatpost you can have a similar experience or feel where you're gonna not feel all the bumps in the road and it's going to be comfortable you can sit in an upright seating position and still be comfortable and the bike overall it's gonna be a little bit stronger because that rigid rear frame there's less moving parts to it and overall they can build up the frame to be a little bit more heavy-duty now as we're talking about these little details like the tires the rims the suspension and all that sort of thing you also want to consider some of the other smaller parts like pedals for example most people would think like oh yeah most pedals they should work fine but actually what I did find interestingly enough talking with one of the product managers from one of the manufacturers that we work with Risa Muller what they actually said is that some of the more premium high-end pedals actually they can handle less weight quite often because they make them to be very lightweight so the actual spindle on the pedal can oftentimes not be as thick but Martin from Risa Muller was saying with actually a standard spindle with a regular ball bearing as opposed to a sealed bearing can generally be a little bit thicker in there for a little bit heavier duty so that's important to consider I would say if you want a sealed bearing pedal I will generally look in the direction of a mountain bike pedal which is generally going to be a little bit heavier duty because as I said before similar to some of these other principles it's often going to be subjected to some heavier forces and that's a important detail to consider but outside of the pedals you also want to think about some other details like the saddle for example some saddles they're not rated for that much weight and one of the details on the saddle which generally can fail if it's not made to carry more weight is the saddle rails the rails quite often they can be made of different materials anywhere from steel - aluminium - summer even titanium and having a saddle that's specifically made to carry more weight is going to be a helpful detail ensuring that your bike is going to hold up under your weight and really last the test of time as I mentioned before suspension seatpost I think that that's another important consideration we actually have a special suspension seatpost which is made for riders that are a bit heavier and it's called the Cirrus Connect XL and that's specifically made for riders from 260 pounds to 320 pounds and they've upgraded some of the parts to make them a little bit heavier duty for accommodating more weight and the Cane Creek thud Buster is also available with a heavy duty elastomer that you can sub in to accommodate a bit more weight there as well one more detail that a lot of people don't really think about too much is the handlebars and stem on the bike now we work quite often with this company called Peugeot tech and they specifically make really heavy-duty stems and handlebars and one of the manufacturers Risa Muller that we work with they spec them almost exclusively on their bikes and I found that they hold up really well even under the most extreme condition so I really trust them and I trust the the testing that they put into those systems so I think that's a great product to consider and specifically they have safety rating so if you are a heavier rider you want to look specifically at a Peugeot text a more handlebar that has a safety rating of 5 or 6 ideally 6 that's going to be the strongest overall but as I mentioned before when talking about the pedals looking at mountain bike specific parts quite often could be a good direction to go because those will generally be heavier duty so thinking about the stem and handlebars but a lot of people want to be a little bit more upright and stuff like that so you might not find a mountain bike style stem or handlebar that's going to get you in that position but Peugeot tech they make some great products that do that quite well I have a few more details I want to cover before I get into some of the bikes I recommend checking out now one is the frame generally speaking a standard triangle frame like the standard triangle in the front and you have the triangle in the rear that frame is usually going to be one of the stronger versions but there's a lot of specific low step bikes which are made to be stronger and they're built up to accommodate heavier Rider so don't think just because you're heavier you need to get that standard frame there are some lower step bikes which are easier to get on and off of that could work really well for you and then in talking about the frame most people might be looking to just the standard style bike but one of the things you might want to consider is looking at a cargo bike cargo bikes are generally over built and their me to accommodate a very heavy payload overall and if you're a heavier rider that might work well for you even if you're not carrying much cargo because those wheels and tires and the frame are going to be built to carry more weight and that can work really well alright so now I just want to get to the list I'm not gonna go too much in detail and I'm probably not gonna cover all the bikes I would specifically recommend if you want more recommendations you can always reach out or leave them in the comments or maybe somebody has specific recommendations that they want to leave below but the first bike or really family of bikes I'd like to mention is Risa Muller now as I mentioned before we've worked with them for a long time and I know that they do some really extensive testing on their frames and they're made to be very over built so pretty much most of their standard style frames I mean non suspension frames have what's called a heavy duty package and that has a gross weight capacity of 350 three pounds so pretty high and those bikes are pretty similar to their other models but the main thing that's different is that they have different saddle different seat posts and different pedals made specifically to accommodate that heavier weight now you might be thinking oh I could take one of my standard bikes and and fit it with those parts in it and it might be able to accommodate your weight and you're probably right because the way that they look at it is the bike is really rated for the weight rating of the part that has the lowest weight rating so maybe in a certain case it would be the pedals right so the pedals say our maximum weight rating is 300 pounds then the weight rating of the bike if everything else was higher than that would be 300 pounds so important to consider that so you want to look at those weaker parts and potentially replace them so you overall have a better weight rating and and a bike that's going to accommodate your weight a little bit better some other things to think about in that same regard now those models they specifically say that it's not available as high speed and and I guess the idea behind that as you're going faster there's more forces that you're subjecting the bike to but also that lower speed CX motor there's a little bit more torque off the line so it could improve your rider experience and that you're going to feel the bike is going to give you a little bit more help from that zero to 20 or the lower speed and in different regions but I guess my theory on that is that if you really wanted high speed and you swap those other parts out you're kind of getting closer to the right place but probably if a lawyer talked to me that would say like don't say that that's a bad idea but I don't have a lawyer nearby so we'll just kind of keep on rolling with that one I don't know but really I think that's where a lot of these things come in I mean it's really about like what they can reasonably prove that this is safe and tested and and okay for this sort of use I mean if you're taking the bike off some really extreme jumps and stuff like that maybe the weight rating might be less so you know it really depends on how you're riding it where you're riding at all these sort of details so as I mentioned Lisa Miller great consideration they have many different models that are available with the heavy duty so they have the nivo which is their low step model now available as an Evo 3 which is really cool they also have the charger 3 which is a great set up single battery now available with the second add-on battery as well the supercharger 2 which is also a hardtail as with the rest of those bikes and a great consideration as well some other bikes specifically made for heavy riders I'd like to call out the first one is called the Bulls Copperhead evo HD HD for heavy duty again I guess that's kind of become in the industry term for bikes which are made for heavier riders but that one can accommodate up to 330 pounds pretty heavy-duty and it's also a low step bike which is really nice to see because sometimes riders they might be heavier and they might be heavier because of a physical limitation so the idea that the bike is accessible and can accommodate a heavier rider I think is really nice so that low step makes it really easy you don't have to swing your leg over the bike you could just really step through and and I think that that's a nice accommodation in that regard that also has the high torque Bosch CX motor which is a great motor to consider and probably something I should have mentioned when talking about the bikes overall but getting a bike or a motor specifically with higher torque is a great consideration that CX motor has 75 Newton meters of torque which is quite a bit some might be looking at the wattage and I think a lot of these companies they market the wattage as being very important to accommodate heavier riders I don't really think that's the important detail torque is really from my perspective what's most important and then having a drivetrain that can handle that additional torque and has a wide enough range to cover the terrain that you're riding on if you're covering very large hills you want to make sure you have a low enough gear to climb up and be able to maintain a reasonable cadence and you know and have a high enough gear that you can go up to the higher speeds if that's important to you some other bikes you might want to consider our cargo bike specifically mid tail cargo bikes or potentially front loaders but I'd say a lot of the mid tail cargo bikes would work well one of them specifically is the bento Boost now that bike overall has a weight capacity of about 400 pounds so if you're a heavier rye or I think that it can accommodate you I wouldn't say to ride it as a 400 pound rider overall I don't think the rated for that but if you're in the 300-pound range maybe that'd be a good consideration and I think most of the parts on there are pretty heavy-duty and would work well for most heavier riders some other cargo bikes you might want to check out as well one of them I would say to take a look at would be the turn GSD I'd be slightly concerned with some of the folding parts to the bike but I think as long as you make sure that they are tight and you kind of keep an eye on them I think it's a great consideration because the overall capacity of that bike is over 400 pounds so it can really hold quite a bit and that frame is really heavy-duty with loads of reinforcements and as I said with most cargo bikes the wheels and tires and everything like that are generally made to accommodate more weight as well which i think is really helpful now i think that's about all that i want to cover today on bikes for heavier riders if you have more questions or if you have your own experience that you want to share and getting an electric bike and you're a little heavier or maybe you were heavier we know a lot of those stories which is really exciting just share them in the comments below or reach out to us we're always happy to help and I look forward to seeing you in the future video well see you soon you

Channel: Propel

Views: 80,201

Keywords: electric bikes, ebikes, electric bikes for heavy riders, heavy duty electric bikes, ebike, electric bike, high weight capacity ebike, strong ebike, powerful electric bike, bosch electric bikes, pedal assist ebikes, electric bike reviews, weight loss, fat bike electric, strong e bike, electric bikes 2020, weight loss workout at home, ebike review

Id: Kf1-9UJmURA

Length: 19min 8sec (1148 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020