Glitch in Electric Bike Project

A few weeks ago, when it was 80°F instead of the 20°F and snowing it is now, I took the electric bike kit out to the garage to put it together to get up and running.

I wrenched the tire off of the original tire on the bike, moved it over to the motor-powered wheel and went to mount the wheel onto the fork and discovered a glitch.

The fork on this bike is too narrow to allow the wheel to spin, with the motor in there. This is what the makers say about fork width:

Make sure that your bicycle has a minimum of at least 3 ¾" distance between the front forks - 4" is better, 4 ¼" is pushin' it, and 4 ½" is too wide. Also, you will need to have 4" clearance to a minimum of 5" up from the fork mountings, so if your front bike forks taper in as you go up, you'd better check the distance where the forks narrow 5 inches above the fork mountings to make sure that you still have 4" clearance.

I hadn't really decided on what motor or kit I'd use when I bought the bike, so I didn't have that information before buying. However, last night, I stopped at both Target and Wal-Mart to take a look at the cheap mountain bikes with a tape measure and see what fits the bill.

It turns out that there are VERY few that would work. In fact, at Wal-Mart, there was only *1* bike that actually fit the bill. The suspended forks are surprisingly narrow and some of the bikes that would otherwise work have disc brakes, which I don't want to use because of the extra complication.

Now I've just got to go back and pick out a new donor bike. If this prototype setup works, I'll probably move up to a "real" bike, but I know I'm not into riding the regular bike if this doesn't work for me, so I don't want an expensive bike to start out.

Of course, I'm not in a rush to grab a bike given that I'll have to brush snow off of my truck this morning before I leave, but I do want to know that I've got this sorted out before it gets nice, so I should probably go pick one up after work today.