My motor doesn’t fit!
Posted by Tom Lee on
This is the most common problem that we find with eBike customers – the motor wheel doesn’t fit into the front forks
Sadly, even though this is a common problem, few eBike motor wheels will fit into every bike fork.
There is a certain amount of space that is required to fit all of the bits that you need for a motor. The magnets, coils, gears, casing etc. all take up room. So even with the most compact motors its common for the motor casing to end up rubbing on the forks.
However – don’t despair – usually it is fixable. Below we’ll got through a few examples of problems that might cause it not to fit and how to fix them
Motor disc screws interfering with forks:
If there is interference between the motor disc nuts and the forkslike in the picture below. Then you can fix it by removing the plastic disc spacer, and removing the disc screws:Interference with motor disc nuts
Motor casing interfering with forks:
If there is more interference between the motor casing and the bike forks then please use axle spacers sparingly to slightly expand the fork width.
f you have to use more than 2 axle spacers on each side then this could put the forks under unnecessary strain. So in this case we would suggest you please contact our support email for advice as this may be dangerous on some bike forks.
Aluminium forks are particularly susceptible to breaking if you have to spread them out to fit in the motor.
This is what an axle spacer looks like – we sell them separately on our site. Or if you buy a kit from us we will provide them for free if you need them.
Motor wheel axle spacer
You can’t screw on the wheel nut because of the fork shape
Sometimes the shape of a bike fork means that you can’t screw on the larger eBike wheel nuts. In this case the solution is again to put some spacers between the fork and the wheel nut so that you can tighten it up.
It’s something else…
If you have a problem that we haven’t mentioned here then let us know and we can look into it
Check before you buy!
It’s really important to check that the motor will fit before you buy any eBike kit. Ask the manufacturer for a motor diagram and check the dimensions. You can download our motor diagrams from the link provided in each of our listings.
As a rule of thumb, you need at least 80mm of space between the forks all the way up and down to be able to fit an eBike motor. Any less and you’re unlikely to fit a motor in there.
