Mid drive on a tandem - do you have to pedal?

boydsc331

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Hello all, i built a tandem fat tire ebike with rear hub drive motor. I was wondering if on a mid drive motor do you have to pedal with the motor or can you just sit and ride without pedaling ? Does the crank sprocket always turn and the pedals freewheel or does the crank sprocket always turn with the pedals and the freewheel is built into the mid drive unit ? I hope this makes sense
 
On a mid drive kits you can have a throttle which you can use instead of pedaling. You can rest your feet on the pedals without having to crank them and the front chainring will turn moving the bike.
 
ok thankyou. The reason i ask is because my girlfriend likes to pedal and i dont always want to pedal . So i was thinking of going mid drive and putting double chain ring on the front mid drive some how. But im sure theres alot more i didnt think of like then the cranks would not be in sink and the rear crank would always have to turn unless i did the same mid drive setup in the rear ?
 
You'd have to have a clutch mechanism on both cranks. The motor has one built in. Maybe there's a way to have 2 motors on the same bike and 1 chain? That would awesome and I'm sure a lot harder than it sounds.
 
I don't know if the parts are still available to do it, but there were cranksets available with freewheels built inside of them that were meant for use with a Cyclone mid drive that could probably be adapted for exactly this use (installing on the non-motorized pedalset).

here's what the whole assembly looked like:


You can look for 'cyclone motor ebike crankset' and pull up the Cyclone site in Taiwan. Possibly that site is active. You can find their version of the full crankset assembly in the Parts section.
 
Thats exactly what i would be looking for. Looks like they would fit on a regular bottom bracket ? Then i could just keep the hub motor set up i already have
 
Looks like they would fit on a regular bottom bracket ?
Yup they do. Unfortunately you are a few years too late to be able to get hold of these things easily. Cyclones have more or less gone out of general use. Used to be multiple sites that sold these parts. Sick Bike Parts for instance seems to be completely gone now and they were a good source.

Cyclones used to be in common use for pedicabs, as they were so powerful they were ideal for a multi-passenger vehicle. Maybe pedicab parts sources will be a good avenue to explore.
 
Ya i only saw one used on ebay. I will see what i can find elsewhere . Thankyou
The freewheels on those units were the frequent-wear part, and a used one would likely need a replacement freewheel. Which I DID find while out googling this. And I also found chainrings. The freewheels are distinguishable from their four bolt holes extending out from their outside edge. I did find some parts on pedicab sites but no complete cranksets... but I didn't look THAT hard. Just a couple of sites.
 
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