Garrik Palumbo

I started building ebikes after I retired from doing stuntwork and found myself behind a desk.  Looking for some exercise and adrenaline I started biking again. Due to knee issues from a life time of physical training and activities this could only be done periodically with lots of icing inbetween.

Ebikes were starting to become available and I found one I really wanted.  Once I saved up the money, I gave them a call with a few simple questions before I made my purchase.  That did not go well.  I was hit with an attitude that resulted in me putting my card back in my wallet and ending the call.

Next I headed to a local bike shop and gave a few a ride. At the time they all handled like crap and only had the simplest rear suspension, none with big travel. They were all horribly balanced with crazy price tags.

That’s when I decided to build my own ebike.  I first watched every video and read every article I could find on it and decided on a Bafang BBSHD. I already had a “DH” Bike I had gotten while living in Australia.  A Fluid Rapid.

My first attempt was by mounting the battery using the support from a bag carrier that attached to the seat post.  That worked well on the street so I took it to the nearby bike park.  Worked fine till I did my first jump and discovered it couldn’t support the weight of the battery under that stress.  This resulted with my first push back to the parking lot. Something I would relive often in the early days.

Next I mounted it to the underside of the down tube and fashioned a diamond plate cover to protect it and help stabilize it on the original single Bob’s (from Grin) I was using.  This worked remarkably well and I really liked how it lowered the CG and stabilized the bike.  That was until I let a much larger and heavier friend take it for a ride.  My occasional tire rub on the battery turned into a constant rub under his weight and a hole in the battery cover.  Thus my second creation the “Dirkes” cover for the top of my battery.  Originally I did it out of sheet aluminum.

Soon I was looking for new forks and discovered PinkBike classified.  Now at this point I really didn’t know anything about MTBs.  I started trying some different dual crown forks and that led to window shopping and research into some of these “unicorn” frames I was liking the look of.

After I purchased my first Intense M3 and built it up I was hooked. This led to quickly obtaining 5 more bikes and a variety of forks (my collect grew to 25 bikes before the end of covid).  As I was collecting these I received my first two ASI bac800 controllers from ERT.  At the time they were quite buggy on my battery setup and throttle response was not good.  Alan was very responsive and tried to help out.  I wanted 3 more from him but it was going to take too long. I managed to obtain 3 more directly from ASI and convinced them to let me purchase just those and the software. That began a long journey of finding the tuning I liked.

Let me just interject here a moment by saying I have been doing martial arts and gymnastics since I was in single digits. I was training and performing as a professional stuntman for more than 25 years.  I’ve done some shit.

Riding my M3 with the ASI controller caused me to experience something I never had before but have quite often since.  Without expecting it a spontaneous, guttural, slightly maniacal laughter  erupted from the depths of my soul as I got to test my courage/skill ratio in a sustained manner at a speed that made me feel like I was a child on a Star Wars speeder bike.

The VPP is such an amazing thing at speed. You can travel over rock gardens like you are on a magic carpet. No other suspension I have tried can do that. The crazy low CG makes them handle even better. Like they have a keel and they always want to land on their wheels.

Know what I discovered as well? I am old and I like the fact that I can go ride for hours and have fun the entire time.  Not have to spend 20 minutes of hardwork to get 5 minutes of fun.  As it turns out I get a much better whole body workout and overall fitness because I am standing up a lot more, riding for longer, and more often.

Over the years I have come up with solutions to common DIY ebike issues and am now making them available to others.