Turned my Mini Velo into a Mini Vano! Xtracycle leap for the win.

While visiting a friend, I rode his Specialized Haul LT around for a few days and decided I really wanted one, but my wife said we couldn’t afford one (whomp whomp)… so I picked up this minivelo ebike for $400 to pull the kids around in a trailer. After about a month in, I realized my oldest was about to reach the weight limit and around the same time I found a new old stock xtracycle leap kit on eBay and got it shipped to California from Australia.

At this point I’ve changed everything except the front wheel, fork, motor, and battery. So for about a grand less, I could have got the haul LT and not have a 5 year old motor and battery, lmao.

It was quite the project getting everything to work together, took a couple months to get everything sorted. I had to extend some wiring and was surprisingly more difficult to find brake hoses long enough to fit. I eventually found some BH90 sold by the foot online. I couldn’t get the nexus 8 speed hub to fit in the leap dropouts, so I built a new wheel (first time, but it was so much fun I’ve built a few more since!).

I also made my own mounting plates because I had to add a ton of space between the connections to get everything level with the 20” wheel and I wanted to beef it up a bunch, just to be safe… precious cargo and all.

The first real shakedown ride, after adding all the fixings, I took it on some light single track to make sure it wasn’t going to crumble before putting the kids on it. Coming down the steep hill was pretty sketchy, probably won’t be doing that again.

I’m currently working on channeling my inner electrical engineer to add lights and turn signals, because as soon as I got everything buttoned up the time changed and now it’s pitch black when I’m picking up the kids. They also now melt down when I show up without the bike, so I think it’s safe to say they like it!