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The whole industry is in something of a Renaissance right now but there's a serious fanboy culture and lack of introspection that I think makes it riskier than it should be for somebody to get into it. All reviews tend to be positively biased and criticism can be particularly rough. Some aspects to consider in an industry where returns can be hard to do if the bike just doesn't do what you need it to do: Speed: The wattage of the motor isn't everything. They could be putting in a 750W motor but the controller doesn't take advantage of it. They could be putting in a 500W motor and letting the controller zap it up to 750W in bursts. They could do some voodoo about claiming it's, like a 350W motor with comparable performance to a higher wattage motor. The other things that can affect speed independent of the rider: any gearing inside the motor, the bike's transmission (particularly for mid-drive), the controller, and the tires. The tires apparently don't matter that much compared to those other factors. Note that if you're planning to go at class 3 speeds regularly (20-28mph) that you want to try to find a bike that's specifically a class 3 e-bike or catch some videos of people zipping around at those speeds on the bike you're interested in. Most are being sold as class-2 e-bikes and even if they can be set to go faster than 20mph, they might not be designed to even reach 20mph in the first place. Range: Most range numbers are complete garbage. It's a scandal. The high ranges usually are calculating from the lowest possible pedal assist. You'll notice it helping you a bit when running with the lowest assist, but it's mostly paying for the extra weight of the bike in the first place. A rule of thumb I got from a blogger was to expect to eat 1Ah of battery per mile you want to ride. That's not the whole picture because a battery is a function of its amp-hour rating and its voltage, so I turned that into 50Wh (volt * Ah) per mile. So if you have a 48V, 21Ah battery then that's 1,008 Wh of riding or about 20 miles of pretty well-boosted riding. The bikes also don't perform consistently across that charge, but that calculation is "somewhat" consistent. For the first bike I tried, I had asked if I could do a 12-mile round-trip just holding down the throttle and go over 15mph and the company said it would. That was for a 48V, 14Ah battery. I learned that's ... just impossible. In reality, having medium assist for that trip had the motor just about dead in the last 4 miles of the return trip. Capacity: There's a notion to drag some more stuff along because now you have a motor. Most of the racks aren't any better and can be surprisingly low-rated. The Aurora Limited I was riding had a rear rack that was completely welded on and integrated into the frame with thick-rear end struts. It's weight rating was something like a meager 25kg and I couldn't replace it. One of the other ones I was considering was similar. The one I got at least can be replaced with one of the chonky touring racks. Cargo bikes can also be alarming about this. I saw a poor review of a Radwagon cargo bike. It's supposed to hold 350 pounds, but was grinding itself to pieces when some girl would try to rid it with her friend. Speaking of the community, their response to this was to call them fat. I ultimately bought a Bolton Foxbat. This makes me a Bad Boy because it technically has a 1000W motor; most places have a 750W limit for motors. I could do some crazy (and notably illegal!) speeding if I took off all the governors and pedaled like a maniac, but I'm happily humming along the exburbs here in the bike lane--where there is one--all to myself staying well below 28mph. The bike is ugly as hell but all the fundamentals are good. I was able to modify the order for a pair of 48V, 21Ah batteries and now can do the extended trip I had in my original plan. I got overly paranoid after my first attempt with an Evelo Aurora Limited as disappointing. The motor was supposed to be of comparable power to the electric trike I got for my wife but it was ultimately slower and the range was disappointing. I concluded a lot of it was the continuous-variable transmission and the Dapu motor. The trike has a Bafang motor in it and can sustain 20mph with my wife pedaling and me awkwardly spilling out of the back (it was a test). One other good point for Bolton is that the sell upgrade kits for some common ebikes--especially Radpower's stuff--if you have been underwhelmed. They are one of the companies that likes to put 500W motors in bikes and claim it's a 750W bike.
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Jul 20, 2020 05:14
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Safety Dance posted:Do you know the failure mode the two girls experienced on the Radwagon? Someone on Linus Tech Tips did a review of one where he loaded it down to 350lbs, and he found out that the spokes worked their way loose after some miles. That's one of the reasons I bought from a local shop: basically I wanted to be able to throw my crap pile through a window if it breaks unexpectedly. I think they had problems with the spokes too. Otherwise, it was squealing and grinding in a way that was expressing disapproval. The newer Radwagon has smaller tires and that's been a rare point of e-bike criticism. I suppose that could make the wheels sturdier and lower the center of gravity. However, the bike doesn't have a suspension so that makes it a smooth road queen. I've been surprised by the cargo bikes not really having much for a suspension leaning towards rear-hub components but I suppose that's offsetting the cost of having such a bizarre frame (?). Hawley-Smoot Tariff posted:Looking at the Bolton site, it looks like all of the bikes have fat tires. Is that necessary for the weight of the components, or just the hip new thing? Bolton is into them but I don't think they're particularly hot in the e-bike community. As far as wheels and tires go in particular, fat tires are hip but I didn't see it taking over all the bikes I was looking at. It makes getting a cargo rack more complicated due to the width. The other two bikes I was considering had either a more normal hybrid/mountain tire set or leaned more towards road bike tires. I would have expected fat tires to be a thing with cargo bikes. On the positive side, the bike is really smooth compared to the other ones I have tried and that has mattered at speed. They've been very useful for the parts of my trips that are beside highways with at best a lovely, rocky dirt trail grooved into the ground. I've heard that repairing them is a lot easier; they're so wide and big that you can kind of just slip them off by hand. The effect on speed and range is apparently negligible--not like that motor particularly cares. My main concern with it really is just aesthetics. It kind of screams "Check out this rear end in a top hat on his electric bike!"
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Jul 20, 2020 17:02
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n8r posted:I was out on a big backcountry ride yesterday and had a guy on an ebike haul rear end past me. I was pretty jealous. A thing that holds me back from an e-MTB is charging it away from home. Any ideas on this? I'll go for riding weekends where I'll camp for a night and ride two days. I could see this stretching into 3-4 days. How on earth do I charge an e-MTB in this situation? Somebody else did mention the chargers are not too bad. Beyond this, most batteries are easily removed. There are a few brands trying to make the bikes look less like obvious electric bikes that are making this complicated. They will build it into the frame. I only ever saw road/commuter bikes pulling that stunt but you'd want to verify with a mountain bike. If it looks like a black chunk hanging off the frame then I've never seen one that can't readily be popped off. So you can take that over to wherever to charge it up, and you can bring more than one. Those are a lot chunkier than the chargers. I got two batteries when I ordered mine, but I can't really deal with transporting the second one yet until I get my panniers. I guess this gets harder if you're really hauling on some rough terrain and don't want to deal with a rack. I saw two different people gloating about solar charging, but they were both living off the grid and were million-year-old graybeard flower children. Hats off to them, but you're probably wanting to be riding in a forest during the day. Final thing here is to make sure the places you want to take the bike are okay with you using it there. I haven't been following this closely because it isn't my jam, but I heard something about US National Parks opening up for electric bikes recently. State and lower parks are a crap shoot. I've wondered about this even cutting through a neighborhood to ride around. You'll see a sign about no motor vehicles and wonder if you're going to get poo poo about it. There's a common set of laws they're trying to get passed around the country that would exempt electric bikes of the typical classes in the OP from this, but some hardass can still hardass.
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Jul 21, 2020 07:08
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Epoxy Bulletin posted:My commute is not too long but includes steep hills, roughly paved roads, and seasonally, deep snow and heavy rain. I can't help directly here since I don't know what's available in Japan, what could be shipped to Japan, or even what can be bought outside of Japan and brought in. Most e-bikes can be configured to cut off at a lower speed, but I think you're in a legal frontier if software capping is insufficient. You're in more need of fat tires than I am, that's for sure. They apparently were first a thing for snow and beach cruising. The typical suggestion when it comes to hills is to get a mid-drive system so the motor is using your transmission. You then have to make sure the transmission is suitable for the kind of hills you're climbing. If you have a lower speed cap then this is probably not a problem and you might even have a good time with those hip automatic transmissions. They're not so good for zipping around 20+ mph. The down side is the motor will strain your chain because it's using it too. The next step up if you're just not having luck with chains is to switch to a belt system. I don't know anything about chains to say anything better. One thing I can point out about Japanese e-bikes is that Dapu is a Japanese company despite apparently a Shanghai address--the factory is in China like most e-bikes and their components. Their reputation is getting dinged; the gossip is that the leadership has turned to poo poo and it's trickled down to the motors. I know I had a bad experience with their motors.
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Jul 21, 2020 17:22
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Due to request, posting pic of bike: Edit: Stripping cross thread drama BS. Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 05:16
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I'm looking for any information about being able to ride along oil and gas pipelines. We have some clearly beaten-in trails along them in Austin with opened up fences but I don't know if it's cool to use them.
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Jul 23, 2020 00:40
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What's the deal with cargo rack weight limits? The one that came with my bike can only hold 45 pounds so I got a 110-pound one that is, in all ways, much smaller. Same kind of bolts for that size. I also deal with a bike with an integrated frame before that had a 55-pound limit despite being chunky as hell and welded into the bike's frame.Safety Dance posted:I can't offer any specific texas legal advice, but my philosophy when it comes to oil and gas pipelines is it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. If you're in the boonies, just ride and wear something blaze orange so you don't get shot for looking like a deer. If you get caught, there's a 99% chance they'll just tell you to get lost.
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Jul 25, 2020 22:50
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savesthedayrocks posted:I’m just starting to look into ebikes (going to have a son in November, I’d like to get some exercise with him), thanks for the recommendation. I love the setup, just not the price. Are there any similar alternatives, or is that the benchmark for quality bike vs price? My impression is that you're getting into that Tern GSD's price range if you want a smoother, more manageable ride. Cargo bikes are having to take cost into consideration with all the other changes they're making for producing a cargo ebike. You can take what I'm saying with some salt because I don't have personal experience hauling around tons of stuff on two wheels yet*. I ultimately just settled on a more conventional rack with the biggest panniers I can get. Those are still in the mail. I think I've come to terms like others have mentioned about just using a trailer if I need to do anything more. I would recommend some homework on that. In particular, how easy is it to tip over, and will to take the bike with it? Also, this thing with smaller wheels on the cargo ebikes comes some benefits. It's easier to mount and dismount. Apparently, you accelerate faster which would matter for hauling loads. That trades speed but this is fine if you're treating the motor like it's there to even make this at all possible, not to also make it super fast. It puts less stress on the spokes, and spokes going out was a problem with the larger Radwagon tires. The Radwagon complaint I saw a lot about their new 22" tires was that there was only one source for them, so you're locked into their stuff even for basic repairs. *I do have an electric tricycle with a suspension fork which has been pretty good, but it's a different animal because it naturally stays upright. It doesn't need a special kickstand to keep it level for loading. On the bad side, you can't make small steering adjustments by leaning because that force just gets soaked into the wheel on the side you're leaning. The first time you ride something like that in your adult life is pretty dangerous ("why won't it change direction?!").
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Jul 27, 2020 18:55
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Epoxy Bulletin posted:Thanks for the heads up on Dapu, the bike shop guy that loaned me his fat tire for the week gave me a catalog and it looks like most of the Jpn market bikes I would consider come with Shimano parts, which seem to have favorable reviews?
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Jul 28, 2020 16:50
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Ordering direct from China is a Faustian bargain. You get all this stuff, but they never said it would actually work, not have strange holes in them, be mounted in the right places, or come out of the box in a pile of dust. The savings is in omitting the middle man. E-bike companies take their share but also buy in bulk, inspect the bikes beforehand, and take some responsibility if the bike is defective. The better ones will develop a relationship with their manufacturers instead of being just a front end for AliXpress.
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Jul 28, 2020 21:54
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Duck and Cover posted:Of course there's risks involved it becomes a matter of weighing those risks with the potential for savings and or getting a better equipped bicycle. For the sake of giving advice, I'm going to frame it kind of like what I think I saw in the bike commuting thread about getting a conventional bicycle--and then double that to account for the e-bike-specific stuff. Basically, it's controllable if you have a good familiarity with bikes already as well as some comfort with working with e-bike components. As an example of something I had happen from a more conventional retailer, my front light wouldn't turn on. We ended up finding out that the connector for it had been crushed inside the motor assembly. The controller mounted into that assembly and the whole thing rotated in/out of place. The wires were doubled up and crammed into there. I'm guessing they slammed it shut at the factory and pinched that connector. I returned the bike because I was left having to otherwise either: 1. Run the cabling for a replacement light through the frame, which included running a rear light. 2. Splice in a new connector myself without being familiar with what is actually going on inside those cables. Now, if I had gotten the same bike at, like, half the cost, I'd probably have taken a shot at it (or just gotten battery-powered lights). However, I had paid the retail premium so I just sent it back. What fills me with the worst kind of my well-known analysis paralysis are the places that won't accept returns if you're just generally not satisfied with the e-bike. I ended up just dropping that brand but what I narrowed down to instead were three different companies that wouldn't let you try out the bike beforehand. There's one place in town that I investigated in some detail and concluded they were more of the "retail front end for AliXpress" type than anything else. I actually found some of the bikes they were selling on there! So it took two months to whittle things down and feel comfortable picking one. evil_bunnY posted:You can *definitely* tell the bosch mid drives were just not designed for 20". In 4/4 it'll yeet you off the line are the slightest hint of pedal pressure. Luckily i've never felt I've needed more than 2/4 basically ever. Oh yes motor-assisted wheelies is a thing, although I can't imagine it being as bad with the longer frames of those cargo bikes. I'd like to see that though ("check out this fat ride!"). Actually, uh, that's a thing, I guess... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVVy4uuL6ew The next video that came up was the Blix Packa promotional video, which was really jarring. It went from wheelies to "don't you want to ride a bike with BABY?"
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Jul 29, 2020 08:07
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kimbo305 posted:Barely concealed ad for Rad ebikes: This kind of thing I think will ultimately harm the industry. Electric bikes are getting pretty good right now, but you can't find many sources of people that talk about them unbiased and level headed. I have some feeling with the capital that Rad Power Bikes is getting that they'll lead the way to commoditizing electric bikes, reduce their price, but also kill off a lot of small outfits. People need to talk more about what that means but instead we get this "wow I totally never tried an ebike and I was given this one to review and weeeeeeeee!"
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Aug 4, 2020 23:26
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DELETE CASCADE posted:so i was reading about how the bosch motor in my ebike works, and the site lists its modes as eco, tour, sport, and turbo. That's the real-life version of dreaming about discovering your stick shift car has one more gear or your house has this extra room you didn't know about. DELETE CASCADE posted:aren't rad power bikes at least decent? they were one of the options recommended by the op. i ended up spending more based on a friend's personal recommendation, but if you can get a serviceable one for ~$1000 that won't kill you and is fun and popular etc, i'd say that's a good thing. there will always be a market in cycling for people who want to pay more "Decent," I suppose so. What got me a little worried was some of their wattage ratings coming from overcharging and underpowered motor. That is, a 750W e-bike actually having a 500W motor that they'll ram more current into in peak usage. There's an aftermarket for upgrading their bikes that speaks towards their prevalence but also towards missing customer expectations.
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Aug 5, 2020 19:13
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We'd love to see pictures of you riding it indoors even more!
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Aug 7, 2020 03:31
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Epoxy Bulletin posted:First is the Bolton Foxbat, which Rocko Bonaparte seems to be happy with? For what it's worth, 750W is, um, more legal. Regarding suspension stuff, I can say the Foxbat with the fat tires can ride over mowed grass on the side of the road just fine without using the front suspension. It gets uglier when I start to go on those dirt paths that have been plowed into the ground with all the exposed rocks. An issue there with going too fast there is the turning radius of that bike is pretty big. It's a large bike and the tires make it larger. Regarding the 1000W, yes, it helps greatly on hills. It hasn't directly made me a speed demon. I do most of my riding with level assist 3 out of the maximum of 5, and the display is implying that's normally a little over 500W. I might change out the front sprocket because I tend not to use the first gear even when I have stuff loaded up and I have an excessive battery capacity. Also, I bought the Foxbat with two 21Ah batteries instead of the stock configuration.
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Aug 7, 2020 17:30
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A 50S RAYGUN posted:my options are basically taking US 130 (the major road) for like 20 pct of the trip or 80 pct. there's a pretty good sized shoulder, but according to that heatmap it looks like no one really rides the stretch i was worried about (i would have to merge across two lanes of non-yielding traffic) How much of the year are the shoulders on the roads near your house plowed snowbanks and/or that black, salted sand-mush? I don't know what I might say differently depending on that but it might be some motivation to go with a fat bike or generally just something that can put up with poor road conditions. I've found at least in Texas that I got much better treatment on a more major road if I could fit comfortably on the shoulder than if I had to be in the way on the most minor of roads. Being in the way means everything they're feeling in that car at that moment is all your fault. I'm slowly building up more bike riding experiences, and so far the worst is literally right outside my house. It's a 55mph road that doesn't have a shoulder. I usually just take the grass. I only need to be on it for about a hundred yards, but I'm the loving Antichrist when I do. This is all countered with being on major commercial roads with a lot of entrances and exits. In that case, the problem is they don't care about you. That is, they don't even know you're there when they pull into you or out in front of you. In that case, I'd rather have somebody leaning their horn on me because at least I know they saw me. Note that these situations are not that common.
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Aug 11, 2020 18:12
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aldantefax posted:Even though the world is in hell quarantine and I don't have an office to commute to now, I'm expecting at some point in the future to bike commute to downtown Austin, which is about a 20-25 mile round trip. I'd also like to do some easy touring, so the extra power will be welcome there. Hello fellow Austin potential commuter. Let us work together to fund the white bike they'll put out in honor of us beside Mopac some day. I really think the only person you can completely trust on battery charging and interoperability would be an independent electric bike shop, which is still pretty rare. I've heard a lot of things and I'll vomit it here but I don't put too much faith in it. Regarding charging: The final take I got on that was a lot of the ritual over charging mattered much more in the earlier part of the decade. The technology implies a certain amount of coddling, but more recent batteries are generally going to live their quoted lives unless you habitually drain them dead. Extreme heat and cold are still concerns. If you want to honor the old rituals and/or want to get, like maybe 15% more performance lifetime out of them, then you want a 3rd-party charger that lets you control the voltage as a way of controlling how "full" it is. You charge it mostly to full using a lower voltage so you can walk away from it, but then give it the last bit of love right before taking it out for a ride. Regarding battery interoperability: I don't have a full experience with this, but it looks like there are standard connectors favored by each company that makes controllers. So Bosch motors with their Bosch controllers will have a certain type of port it's planning to use. Bafang will use something else. So within that family you have some choice. You worry about this when you're worrying about the mount for the battery, which is what you worry about when you can't find your manufacturer's battery any more and have to switch. The specific battery shapes are all whatever-what-the-heck. Sure, there are specific families of batteries, but I can't expect to interchange this company's stem-style battery with this other company's stem-style battery. Just looking at the flat, rear batteries, I saw tens of different dimensions, of which none were compatible with the mount I had for this electric trike. My only choice would be the manufacturer's specific brand, which was out-of-stock and not very powerful anyways. So I've been looking into just changing out the mount and have been worried too that I'll just get myself some other proprietary shape. Regarding range: Given a ~48-52V batttery, assume 1Ah per mile you want to travel if you want to be comfortable. My opinion is 40 miles is about what you can sustain this way with a pair of 20Ah batteries unless you do something really comical. The batteries I use are kind of bulky and eat into what I'm packing. It's like I'm riding around with a spare 10-pound, black baguette I have to strap somewhere to the bike. I usually only have the one battery and have some 19-mile round trips. At the end, my 1000W motor is only pushing out around 560W at full-assist on the return trip. I didn't charge it at my destination.
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Aug 19, 2020 21:23
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aldantefax posted:Indeed, I was paranoid enough about range that I decided to opt for the double battery pack option which gives about 1150 Wh on the Charger3. quote:In terms of spare battery carry, I see that Ortlieb has started rolling out ebike-specific panniers that have a battery sleeve, which could be potentially useful on those longer excursions. I'm going to have to see how things go once the bike is actually here and I can put some miles on it on what the 'reality of ebiking' is going to be. quote:I did look at an aftermarket charger like the Luna, and the shop said it voids battery warranty, it's the Bosch way or the highway, essentially.
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Aug 20, 2020 04:48
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There was a kit Bolton sells that unfortunately doesn't work on the Foxbat for lighting. The lighting is not much of an upgrade other than the front being a bit brighter and the rear tapping from the main battery. The real fun is the horn. It seems to be car-grade, just kind of hanging naked on the bike. Loud as gently caress. More practically, I think I just need a nice bell for the rare overtake. I suspect phone speakers won't work for turn-by-turn. I have a cell phone mount and tried to listen to podcasts, but the whooshing made it unintelligible. My real thing I am looking for are helmet lights: front and back. I can't see my current gear and my beam is kind of narrow so I figured a front light would be smart. My wife wants me to have something pointing downwards behind me to better illuminate my whole back.
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Aug 21, 2020 06:38
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Would really really lovely lights work?
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Aug 21, 2020 06:52
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kimbo305 posted:When you sat you can’t see your gear, which parts are you talking about? My shifter in particular. I have no idea what the current gear is after dark and I already figured out I suck at counting and remembering it.
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Aug 21, 2020 06:58
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Literally Lewis Hamilton posted:Why would you need to see it? Wouldn’t you just shift if the gearing was too hard or too easy? Safety Dance is on the case: Safety Dance posted:When I'm coming to a stop I like to glance down and check my gear indicator to make sure I haven't screwed myself over when it's time to go again. When I downshift to decelerate to a traffic light, I'm more likely to screw up at night and not downshift very thoroughly. I'm don't feel the gears during that deceleration and I wanted visual confirmation. Fixating on that as an X instead of Y thing is ignoring that I want to be able to look off the side of the road and identify that skunk that's preparing to cross the road without having to, like, wiggle my front end to get a quick peek with the headlight. Some of my riding is in areas that aren't illuminated at night at all. aldantefax posted:Speaking of gearing, are there any major thoughts on the stepless gearing featured in an nuVinci / Enviolo setup vs. your standard chain and derailleur? The primary bike I was trying before I settled down was using one. I think they're okay for Class 2 e-bikes but they can't sustain themselves at higher ebike speeds. I ran into some glitches with mine and ultimately gave up on it; it would keep losing track of what it was doing and I was just stuck in whatever gear. It's enclosed and you can't really do anything about it. The parts you can do stuff about are rather fickle, and that's just for repair. The only method to adjust anything is your crank sprocket, which just makes everything faster/lower-torque or slower/higher-torque. The first bike I got with that on it had a fully-working transmission and it was fine other than tapering off around 16mph. I had to return that bike because the headlight wiring had been crushed inside the controller/motor housing. I'm saying that so you don't think they all are broken. It was convenient when I wasn't going fast. You could set a cadence you wanted and it would shift to maintain it. It just turned out with a 750W motor that gear was almost always the fastest gear anyways so I wasn't really taking advantage of it. I decided against changing my crank's sprocket to increase speed because I needed to keep the slowest gear if I didn't have any power. aldantefax posted:I also found this interesting video about belt drives, basically they are good all the way up to 30K km? That seems nuts, but I'd believe it: Yeah they're pretty cool. People complain that if they're shot that you can't do a spot repair on them. The counter is to just keep a spare belt, because who the hell replaces a chain link on the side of the road anyways. I'm thinking of switching to a belt system after I've chewed through this transmission I'm using with a direct-drive motor.
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Aug 21, 2020 17:30
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stephenthinkpad posted:See if your ebike has a throttle, you don't have to worry about where you gear is in front of the red light. Tell that to my poor mid-drive chain.
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Aug 21, 2020 18:02
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aldantefax posted:My mom who is near her seventies is interested in riding with me but she doesn't know how to ride a bike. Any suggestions for an e-trike? I don't go particularly fast on normal rides without e-assist and it is a bit hilly in my area of Austin. We have an Evelo Compass. My wife wanted that one as a pickup truck trike. It can support over 200 pounds of fatass sitting in the back, but the suspension was the deciding factor. If a trike's rear wheels can't move raise/lower independently, then it can flip the trike going around a curb in a tight turn turn. I don't know what kind of suspension it actually has but my wife saw it demonstrated in some video; it's not readily coming up in text searches. That particular model has a downside with the transmission. It just has three gears and you don't contribute much by pedaling for any of them--at least zooming around 15+ mph. I'm afraid to adjust those three gears because they're pretty necessary to move it if the battery's totally dead. There's a general downside to trikes: you can't shift your body on them to fine tune your steering. It's something you take for granted until you hop on, try to gently swerve around something, and wind up going straight into whatever you're avoiding. It all has to be done through the wheel. Leaning just gets absorbed into the rear wheels.
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Sep 9, 2020 17:46
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I don't know RadWagon specifics but the thumb assist should make that easy in general. The first time you try might be a rite of passage though as it tries to tear off.
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Sep 12, 2020 20:52
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ElMaligno posted:Is this the the thread were i ask about ebikes??? Knowing actual ranges and expected speeds will help narrow down what will work. Since your wife can already commute on a motorless bike, then she has a lot of options and you can nitpick. Hilliness might be another consideration since it would determine how much torque you need and of a mid-drive would be better.
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Sep 17, 2020 19:43
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ElMaligno posted:She has two routes, they are both short (1 miles or 3 miles) the main difference is that the shorter one Up a hill then down the same hill. She used to walk to work, but pandemic and a broken ankle kinda brought that to a halt. Both distances are going to be doable with a thumb throttle by just about any bike with 300+wH battery, which is a really small battery. The issue comes with that hill and her ankle. If it has to be able to take her up that hill without any help and without her hoofing it, then the hill becomes an issue. I'm going to bet though that you need a 48V setup for the hill; a 36V setup is probably going to struggle in general. Yes, it's a function of wattage, but I saw a few bikes that give it away when they talk about using 36V. In terms of watts, you probably don't want a 250W motor, but 500+W will be safe. I would be uncomfortable recommending 350W just throttling it up a hill. This would be the kind of situation where you'd normally not buy something longer term for a shorter term problem, but the kind of bike that can take that hill unassisted is the type that you can go on longer rides later with the healed ankle, so I wouldn't compromise on it. Since you could shop this locally, you can pretty much go in and give this literal problem. Any good shop should back a claim about a nearby hill and accept the bike back if it just couldn't do it.
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Sep 18, 2020 02:06
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I think my house caught on fire after watching that.
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Sep 25, 2020 08:14
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Can I get stories about replacing a battery and mount? I want to get a spare battery for my Evelo Compass but it looks like it's $800 for a single 48V/10.5Ah battery. I'm trying the company directly but I didn't see it one their site. I have two concerns. First is that I actually don't have that much room. I'd be in the style of those rear rack batteries. Second, it's using a 4-prong connector that I don't really recognize.
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Oct 14, 2020 04:08
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evil_bunnY posted:I thought the compass could take 2 batteries to begin with? Yes it does, but it only comes with one. Getting a second one is $800 bucks and that's just for 10Ah.
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Oct 14, 2020 15:35
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Have to put that project on hold for what should be a more trivial problem. My fat bike's rear tire got punctured. My mom had a patch kit from her mountain biking day that I went to try on it. The tube of cement had all evaporated and just a bunch of air came out of it when I opened it. So I got some tire slime cement (and also some new patches). With the tire patched, I reinserted it into the tire and starting inflating. At around 15 psi, it completely burst and is now wrecked. So that was fun. I vaguely recall somewhere that you have to particularly pay attention while inflating a fat bike tire because their size really lend themselves to crimping up. It all looked okay so I'm not sure what else to do. All I can think of is to inflate a little, dribble the tire around a little, and then inflate some more, then repeat a few times.
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Oct 18, 2020 04:57
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Regarding my fat tire tube, what I think I did in retrospect was overinflate while prepping the tube before getting the tire fitted back into the frame. That's speculative because it burst on the outermost edge instead of along the rim. I don't know. I didn't exceed the psi at that point. Now I have to ask about bike shopping. I had done a whole lot of research for my own bike purchase, but now I'm looking into a bike for my mom for Christmas. She needs a step-through frame and is pretty short. When we were messing around with seat height for her on our trike, she came in around 28". I have to get her actual height and maybe inseam to be sure. So it looks like I'm looking for an electric bike with a 750W motor, a 10+Ah battery, a suspension fork of some kind (I know she'll put it on a trail because she used to mountain bike all the time), and a good cargo capacity for the odd trip out. I would love to get her a Bolton Sabre (probably show up after Christmas) because it would be similar to mine. However, I think it's too high up. The fat tires particularly don't help there. I'm contacting them for details just in case.
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Oct 19, 2020 05:54
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kimbo305 posted:Any decently designed bike accounts for its default tire size when setting the height of the bottom bracket (and thus pedals) off the ground. There's still some general limit there. Like, let's imagine we're trying to make a bike for a six-year-old using a 26" fat bike tire. You'd have to wind up with something that's more like a chopper or a recumbent for that to work. I mostly typed this so I could make somebody else visualize a six-year-old riding a huge fat tire bike like a three-patch biker.
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Oct 19, 2020 18:50
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Safety Dance posted:Edit: How would your mom feel about a Radrunner? Seems to fit most of your criteria aside from having front suspension, and suspension isn't *required* for basic trail riding.
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Oct 19, 2020 19:52
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I thought I'd post more about the misadventures finding a particular kind of electric bike frame for my mom. Apparently her inseam is somewhere between 24"-26.5". She says she has a pair of comfortable pants that are 26.5" and that goes to her ankle. When she was cycling, she had to ride small frames, although I wonder if she really meant an extra small. I haven't found a mid-drive bike that I think would work for her yeah. There's some rear hub stuff (like even a RadCity), but I figured she'd benefit from a mid-drive for how I expect she'd ride--as well as have it consistent with mine if it had a Bafang motor. I really wanted the Stunner X to work but even that looks too tall. They show the 26" wheel configuration, which is definitely too tall. The 24" configuration looks like it's still too tall. https://www.biktrix.com/pages/stunner-x-details#co Even their Stunner LT with 20" (note it's not a mid-drive) is looking a little too tall: https://www.biktrix.com/pages/stunner-lt-details Edit: kimbo305, I did run across one small-rear end frame that apparently takes 26" tires! So much for hyperbole! https://www.raleighusa.com/electric/pavement-2/sprite-ie-2-0-4619 Rocko Bonaparte fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Nov 1, 2020 |
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Nov 1, 2020 06:30
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28" was the top of the seat to the ground. At this point, I've dragged my sister into the shenanigans since she's just a little bit taller but has a similar body proportion. She has an older, foldable e-bike that fits her okay. We couldn't find any actual specifications on it, so we were going to just take some numbers with her and see what that gives us. Current wind is blowing towards "gently caress it, mom gets a RadCity."
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Nov 1, 2020 07:08
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She's short but the bigger problem is she has little stubby legs and no flexibility. Where this is a problem is straddling the bike at a stop since apparently both feet have to be on the ground around here. We didn't really think about that with the trike when we sat her on it and played around on the driveway and road in front of our house. Since it's a trike, she could just sit there at a dead stop.
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Nov 1, 2020 07:34
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Apparently the city here has an ordnance that you have to have both feet flat on the ground at a stop. Also, I can't find where this is spelled out. Maybe it's crap. Nobody does it. You'd think then that most step-through bikes should just be fine by default, but apparently they're not (?). I guess the angle of the frame could be so steep that the front of your crotch would still wind up riding on it. I looked at my wife's bike again and took that 28" seat height my mom apparently used. It looks like the seat-post-to-crankshaft length typically used for a bike frame's size would be about sixteen inches. My mom was apparently comfortable there. That's also consistent with a small mountain bike frame. It implies to me that the Stunner X with 24" tires will work for her. I'm still terrified to pull the trigger on it and I hope some emails with the company will help me straighten things out. That's been a mixed bag in the past.
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Nov 2, 2020 04:13
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BikTrix came back with a measurement they recommended that put my mom's "inseam" at 27". That gives her a lot more choices and the Stunner X with 24" tires is now a safe choice.
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Nov 3, 2020 08:40
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 19:30 |
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Heh this reminds me I need to order a chain cover because my right leg gets loaded up on grease every time I use my bike.
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Nov 22, 2020 17:09
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