UKH

Is Cytronex worth the extra money?
How easy is DIY installation?
How do they perform on hills at low speeds? The rear hub motor on my Orbea bike gives you less power as you slow down to near walking pace uphill.

Any other comments?

I don't have any experience with Cytronex and a quick browse of their website doesn't tell me what capacity the battery is. 

Most DC motors are more efficient once rotating at a certain RPM. I haven't seen the curves for the ebikemotion X-20 or X-25 (assuming that's what you have on the Orbea) but I know for Bosch mid-drive motors the peak is around 80-90RPM. 

Swytch every time.

Cytronex is good, perhaps even better but the customer service if anything goes wrong is truly shocking.

My favourite E-bike kit was "Unlimited" a small Spanish company but sadly they went out of business in 2021.

I’ve just been talking to a guy at Bike Treks  in Ings who says they don’t fit any front wheel drive conversion kits because they don’t trust the batteries which they say can cause fires. Is there anything in this?

While I have no experience with E-bikes, I have to say, the second I read "any" of anything because "they cause fires", bearing in mind there are multiple products from multiple manufacturers at multiple price points, my immediate reaction is to say it's a load of bollocks.

Edit: My emphasis is on "any". I have no doubt that you can buy cheap stuff that will set itself on fire.

There have been significant numbers of fires blamed on ebikes in this country alone (and many more elsewhere) which have led to houses being destroyed and people killed. Is that all bollocks, then?

Please reread my message.

Edit: Just for the avoidance of doubt, what I am saying is that dodgy products cause fires. There is nothing /inherently/ dodgy about a front wheel drive conversion kit that will cause all of them to set your house on fire. Dodgy imports of dodgy products from questionable manufacturers can, and that is absolutely not specific to front wheel drive.

Edit 2: It’s not specific to just bikes either.

Plenty. These conversion kits are usually very poor quality and sold outside of "western" safety regulations. They don't have to be like this in theory, but the ones I have seen tend to be that way. Don't get a cheap one from the internet - this is what your bike shop guy is afraid of - unregulated, poorly made batteries that don't meet EU/UK safety standards. Much easier for a shop to have a blanket rule than evaluate every single random component someone brings in.

That said, the Cytronex one looks decent - hence the relatively high price I suspect. 

Of course the real solution there is to not accept to fit any dodgy kit, not specifically front wheel drive, this is the point I was, perhaps poorly, trying to make. If I were the shop I would only fit kit from reputable manufacturers, what kind of kit doesn't come into play because otherwise the blanket ban will just miss out other types of conversion kits that are just as dodgy. Just a quick Google reveals loads of rear wheel conversion kits that I wouldn't have inside my house.

For sure, the practical problem for a shop then becomes identifying what the kit a customer is supplying is. I'd blanket ban these too if I owned a bike shop - but probably have a supplier that I trust which I could order from should customers request conversions Or a good stock of manufacturer e-bikes

(I'm kidding, if I owned a bike shop nothing would cost under 7k and there would be nothing over 8.5kg in sight)