My bike was originally a pretty generic mountain-bike-type, Carrera Crossfire 2 (2015), from Halfords.
It is security-marked – registered with BikeRegister, has their QR-code stickers on, and frame number is logged.
Ebike Stuff
I used a front-wheel hub motor conversion kit from Woosh Bikes here in the UK (not sponsored, not an affiliate link). The kit is great, it’s EAPC rules-compliant meaning my bicycle is still Legally A Bicycle (max 250w motor power limit and the motor stops assisting at 15.5mph). In doing the install, I learned a lot about being my own bike mechanic – at least, that I don’t want to do that again! If you’re not a hacker-tinkerer sort of person, I would recommend paying a friendly bike shop to do the conversion for you as there was a modest amount of frustration and learning to get it done.
I chose a front wheel hub drive kit as it’s the simplest to understand and install. I didn’t have to touch the existing regular drive train, beyond removing the cranks to install the pedelec (cadence) sensor – which also required replacing the bottom-bracket because the axle taper on my existing one was a weird shape and the sensor wouldn’t fit. But no need to fiddle with the rear wheel or gears or any of that stuff. The front disc brakes needed a little re-align when the brake rotor was transplanted from old front wheel to the new one with the motor built in.
I very much appreciate having a thumb throttle for the ebike kit, for getting moving from a dead stop at junctions.
Visuals
The bike also got a DIY ugly paint job, silver with red bits. I wanted it to look unique, but without being particularly fussed about the finish being in any way professional or even exceptionally tidy. Masking tape was barely used, I didn’t remove any parts to be able to do a better job of painting anything. I’m certain there are places where the original black/grey+green colour scheme is visible. Don’t care.
I also slapped some carelessly cut out red “carbon-fibre-look” vinyl on to the ebike battery to continue the theme. Plus some black retroreflective tape on the non-vinyl’d side areas, to increase visibility to car headlights (sparkly-black tape which shows up as kinda white when it reflects). There are also some patches of the same black retro tape on the side of the bike frame, plus silver retro tape (reflects as bright white) on the front aspect and red (reflects as bright red) on the rear.
The front and rear panels of the custom lighting system also have large chunks of silver and red (respectively) retro tape to make sure there are big and obvious front+rear Reflectors. I have encountered enough unlit and barely-reflective cyclists, as a driver, to be extremely militant about making my own bike very very conspicuous.
Lighting
In addition to a “should be official-rules compliant” bright white LED headlight mounted up on the red handlebar-extender, my bike has also had a complete custom-by-me lighting package added.
That lighting package, which I have decided to nickname “Project Lux” during its development, has its own entire page.