No, not bad. I think syonyk is way too hard on it in his review but you have to take into account that he is a titanium frame kind of guy.
Not really... I don't own anything with a titanium frame. Mostly, I live on the top of a bigass hill in the Seattle metro area, which is insanely hilly. Mine can't pull a moderate hill, and it just bogs out entirely on steep hills, which would be fine if the gearing went low enough to compensate for it, but it doesn't.
If you live in a flat area, it's probably fine. This is one problem with ebikes - the bikes that work in Seattle are totally overkill in Iowa, and the bikes that work in Iowa look at a Seattle hill, gulp, and promptly blow a fuse.
I own one of the Tailwinds and it is a stout bike with really excellent build quality, worth way more than the $350 I paid for it (but definitely not worth the $2800 msrp it started with). I followed syonyk's guide on hot-wiring the original battery pack and get the ride you'd expect out of a 100 watt-hour battery, so no lipo needed at the moment.
Crippled though because it is a fairly heavy city bike with an anemic 250 watt front hub motor, pedal assist only and the mentioned puny 100 watt hour battery. That means it's good for about five to eight miles on a charge, not very usable off city streets and pretty much hopeless without power.
:p You go about saying I was hard on it, then say pretty much exactly what I said. It's a heavy bike with a small motor and a tiny battery. At $350, if you're willing (and able) to hack the battery, it's better than nothing, but not by much. I'm not sure if I'd ride my pedal bike or the Tailwind if I had to pick between the two for a regular commute. The Tailwind is marginal with the motor running, and poor at best with it off, especially if you have any sort of hill.
I'm glad you found my guide useful, though! I need to get mine back so I can document replacing the pack with something else, and I kind of want to see if the controller will tolerate 36v...
I'll give it that it's stout. Build quality, eh. All the electric stuff is literally zip tied on. It's otherwise a heavy Schwinn. I do like the chain guard, though - that's a nice touch.
Newer bikes that fix Schwinn's design flaws and follow it's strengths seem a lot more practical as a transportation device. But they are priced about where Schwinn started, and failed to catch a market.
Electric bikes are interesting. You can (currently) go with cheap, Chinese-ish, fairly reliable, and DIY for repair, or you can go with nicely integrated, super expensive ($4k+ usually), and basically impossible to repair. There's not much middle ground except DIY.
