I’m a 310 lb woman and I live in Pittsburgh and I’m looking for a new E-Bike to use for commuting, groceries, and maybe someday a full car replacement. My current return bike commute is 6 miles with 400’ of elevation gain. I also regularly need to get up slopes up to 10%.

This won’t be my first e-bike as I currently own an Aventon Pace 500.2 ST. I bought the bike over the summer and put 900 miles on it in 3 months. That would have been way farther too if it wasn’t for my last two months of ownership being plagued with constant issues. Notably the spokes kept breaking on the bike and after doing some research it appears that this is a common issue for bikes over their weight capacity. (The Aventon Pace 500.2 has a 300 lb capacity.) There’s also been issues with overheating, losing power through the ride, etc. I think this bike is a cute bike but it seems like it was built for casual riders, not what I do to it.

So I’m currently looking for a replacement bike and having difficulty finding one out there that is affordable and meets my needs. I want a bike that has a maximum payload capacity of at least 350 lbs but preferably more BUT I do not want a long, large, or heavy cargo bike or fat tire ebike. I need to get the bike up a short flight of steps with a sharp corner and a long cargo bike would be impossible to get up there. I’m also not super strong and I can’t push a heavy fat tire mountain bike up the stairs. I want something with a lot of torque to handle the hills and the weight. It seems like all of the pre-built options out there are either dubious or very expensive and not many of them have checked all my boxes.

Recently I picked up a 1993 Specialized Hard Rock Ultra off of Facebook Marketplace. The bike is in great condition and it’s got this sick purple and pink retro paint job. And I’ve been seriously toying with the idea of converting this into an ebike. I’m not sure if it’s the best bike for me to convert though.

I think I would like to do a mid drive conversion on this bike and put one of the 750 watt Bafang mid drive motors on it. I’m open to suggestions, is there anything out there that would be good at handling up to 400 lbs of weight up steep hills?

I’m concerned about wheel strength given my prior experiences but I think it’s worth noting those wheels were aluminum and the Hard Rock has steel wheels. I’m wondering if I should be considering a different frame that can accommodate wider wheels. That said bike aesthetics are important to me and I don’t really like the aesthetic of fat tire bikes.

I’m also wondering what I should be looking for with my gearing on this bike. I need something that can get me up hills with groceries but I also want something that can keep up in city traffic, up to 25 mph.

I’m also thinking I’ll need to put some good breaks on this bike since I have the weight and I’ll be going down some steep hills and I have to deal with stop and start traffic. Also don’t want to hit the pedestrians or other cyclists.

I don’t have any experience working on bikes except for fixing flats but I do have a couple of local bike collectives who may be able to help me with the basic bike stuff. I also found these videos and they’ve been very informative so far. I’m really interested in learning how to work on bikes and ebikes though.

My target price is somewhere less than the Surly Skid Loader. I test drove that ebike and it would be perfect to meet my needs if it wasn’t almost $5,000. I’m sure I can keep an ebike conversation (much?) cheaper than that.