I frequently tell people I am not a bike guy. All the bike guys I know would agree, all the non-bike-guys I know ask me what I’m doing with bikes I carefully explain by specific purposes, and how it is I have a considered taxonomy of folding bikes in particular.
Whatever.
Surly caught my eye with the Preamble because it’s an inexpensive, simple steel-frame bike that looked more like a canvas to me than a fully delivered solution. I wanted some versatility and simplicity. I wanted the equivalent of what motorcycle people refer to as a “grocery getter.” Easy 10-mile round trips or strolls down the Springwater.
I liked some parts of it right away. I put swept back bars on it for an upright ride. I put on Continental Contact Urbans to smooth out the ride. I added a Brooks saddle, a rear cargo rack, and fat pedals.
I never quite settled into it, though. My reference bike remains the Trek Crossrip, and I bitterly regret selling mine. The Preamble just sort of felt sluggish and off. With a Globe Haul ST sitting there on the “SUV of ebikes” end of the scale, and the Brompton C-Line down on the “nimble and surprisingly smooth plus I can toss it in a trunk to get a ride home after a night at the bar” end of the scale, the Preamble wasn’t getting a lot of use. At the same time, I’d added so much stuff to it and felt so close to what I was after, that I held on to it.
Looking around for ways to improve the Preamble I came across a YouTube video from someone who had converted his to an ebike using a Swytch Go kit.
Swytch Go conversion kits give you a front wheel electrical motor, a pedal sensor, a battery, and a harness with options for a display, brake sensors, and/or throttles. They promise 30-60 minute installation times for people who know how to change an innertube.
The installation
This part went down somewhat easily. There’s a decent manual that’s easy to follow along on. The hardest part was probably getting the pedal sensor right: It goes on the crank pretty easily, but it’s hard to get the disc that sits on the pedal to line up with the sensor that you stick/ziptie to the frame. That’s partly owing to that part of the Preamble’s frame being a little crowded.
Otherwise, getting the wheel on, running the harness from the motor to the battery, running the sensor harness, and mounting the display were all simple operations.
It would have taken 30 minutes if the pedal sensor had lined up more easily, and given that’s what tells the motor to engage I wasn’t satisified until I could turn the crank and see the sensor constantly firing vs. having enough wobble to keep one or two of the sensor magnets from being in range of the sensor.
I was pretty grateful for last season’s splurge on a lower end Park stand, too.
Swytch has some pictures of bikes with the kit installed, and I will tell you some of them are outrageous bullshit. The harness has a lot of leads: One for the display, two for brake sensors, one for a throttle, one for power to the wheel, one for the pedal sensor.
There’s enough slack in it all to allow a number of battery mounting options – which is great – but you’re left with a lot of cables to tidy up, ensuring there’s plenty of slack for all the connections to survive deep turns and shifting around.
I bought some spiral wrap to help consolidate some of the cable runs, and I did a few test rides just to see how it all hung together before snipping all the zip tie ends and considering it “done.” It’s tidy, but it’s still obviously a conversion job.
The Swytch marketing photos present a much neater, more integrated picture, and use careful angles to hide some of the runs.
Let’s get back to that, but note it as part of a key tradeoff.
Riding
I’ve put about 30 miles on it now. In terms of the basics, it’s pretty good.
This is my fourth ebike in about 13 years. I’ve owned an early Felt mid-drive, a Trek Verve+3 mid-drive, and my Globe Haul ST rear hub drive. The Felt and Trek used Bosch systems, and the Globe Haul has a proprietary system. The Felt and Trek presented as hybrids that weighed in around 50 pounds, and the Haul is more of a cargo short-tail that probably comes in over 80 pounds with the racks and top case I keep on it.
The Bosch mid-drive bikes both had five power levels ranging from “Eco” (which barely offsets the weight of motor and battery) to “Turbo,” (which makes hitting the 20 mph speed limit on those bikes close to effortless). Both had fairly sensitive pedal sensors but delivered power smoothly at pushoff. The Globe also has five levels, with the lowest being a little underpowered for the weight of the bike, and not a lot to differentiate between levels 2 & 3 and 4 & 5. It’s such a heavy bike that it helps to have a thumb throttle to push off with.
The mid-drive bikes were fairly quiet, making a low whine at high speed. The Globe makes a high howl that makes me feel uncomfortable on the quiet Clinton St. climb at any speed.
The Swytch kit compares favorably:
The pedal sensor gets the motor to engage after maybe a single turn of the crank. It’s not very aggressive and doesn’t deliver a ton of power from stand-still, so you have to downshift before stopping. If you think to do that, though, it’s easy to get enough assist with a light pushoff and a single turn that you’re not struggling with balance.
The handling is a great part of the experience. I don’t really notice the front hub motor, so the Preamble still feels nimble and maneuverable. With the hub and battery, its weight goes from 28 pounds to 36 pounds. My Verve+3 weighed ten pounds more than that, my Globe Haul ST weighs 42 pounds more, and my Brompton C-line weighs just 10 pounds less.
Speed and Power
On the higher power levels, it gets up to a maximum of 18mph pretty quickly. In combination with the Preamble’s gearing, levels 4 and 5 are a bit much on flats: They get you to 18 very easily, and if you’re a powerful pedaler it’s easy to get the bike up to 19 or 20, where the motor begins to cut in and out as the governor is tripped.
On levels two and three, the bike has a slower ramp to top speed, and it sort of wants to go somewhere between 16 and 18 mph depending on whether there’s a grade or not. It wasn’t hard to hit 17mph on flats and hold it on the eighth ninth ring without a ton of effort. Either way, there wasn’t so much power going to the wheel that I had that fallback effect as I broke 19mph.
I’m used to having a range display on off-the-rack ebikes. The Swytch doesn’t offer any sort of range estimate, but I did notice that the battery indicator has five pips, and they’re effectively range estimators: Ride around at level four and five for a while, the range indicator drops to three or four pips; drop to level two or three and it goes back up to five pips; hit a downhill grade on the Springwater, get back a pip; etc.
Practically speaking, the Swytch kit delivers a reasonable cruising speed at reasonable effort at level two. I expect I’ll tend to stick to that except on steep hills.
Based on my first 25 miles on the battery involving a mix of levels 2 through 5, I can see two pips still left on the battery, so I’m pretty sure the kit’s claimed 30-40 mile range is sound.
etc.
So, tradeoffs:
I mentioned that the cabling picture isn’t super attractive. A custom conversion job will tend to involve wiring cut to the appropriate length for the job, as will an off-the-shelf manufactured ebike. Swytch doesn’t know what kind of bike the kit is going on, so they offer two harness lengths, but there’ll still be extra cabling to manage.
Purpose-build ebikes also tend to have locking battery mounts. Swytch does sell one you can bolt to available braze-ons, but the legal team had a word with the marketing team and they warn you not to depend on them for security. Having taken a look at it, I’d say it falls in the category of “fine for a run into the grocery store, not sure about the length of a movie downtown.” I feel that way about parking bikes downtown in general, though.
Anyhow, out of the box the battery pack just comes with three hook-and-loop straps you can use to hang it off the top tube and secure to the seat tube. When you get off the bike you’re supposed to just unplug it from the harness, unstrap it from the frame, and toss it in a bag. At 5.5 pounds that’s not terrible.
I think I’ll live with the straps for a while and see if I feel moved to get the battery mount.
tl;dr
I’m glad I did it. I’m not a fan of a lot of ebike design: It’s all settling into a dull “chunky, overbuilt frame, fat tires, let the motor overpower the clumsy design” monotony. I know there are exceptions, but even Alison’s Trek Verve+2 is sort of a chonker.
Having a more standard bike design with leaner lines and lower curb weight is nice! A lot of people talk about ebike “stealth,” but I don’t care if people can tell there’s a motor: I just liked the Preambles lines when I first saw it, and it gets to keep them for the most part. It’s easy to get up on to the stand to work on, easy to maneuver around into its parking stand in the garage, and it handles better than the monster truck/fat tire designs.
So I’m pretty sure I will sell the Globe Haul ST now. I had an idea when I bought it that didn’t pan out, and the Preamble gives me city-crossing range on a comfortable steel frame. I’ll lose the Haul’s massive 150+ pound cargo capacity, but I never used it that much.