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First 100 miles on my E-Bike

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Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#111

Post by waytogo »

chrisseaton wrote: post #61
waytogo wrote: post #27

I don't grok e-bikes. I like them and I'd like to get one but I just don't know how I will manage the charging. I am livinig in a big city and have no garage and no wall socket in front of my street door. And 100% of all destinations I ride to don't have wall sockets for charging neither. So, I would need to carry every time the heavy battery upstairs (3 floors)? I am anyway always full-loaded with bags or whatever a…

> Edit: Why the downvote? Maybe it's because you've said you don't understand e-bikes for the ridiculous reason that they don't fit your very specific living situation like what kind of housing you have, which floor you live on and how many bags you're prepared to carry. Other people have different living situations, and e-bikes suit them. It's not a mystery.

Then again what is the living situation ('use case') where an e-bike works? I also made the example with a house and garage. I don't see any killer use case but are happy to learn relevant use cases.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#112

Post by analog31 »

jpollock wrote: post #70
analog31 wrote: post #59

>>> If the ride is so great and economics so favorable, why haven’t I seen more adoption here in US and Canada? The author's answers to this question focus solely on the bike technology itself. This is a common thread in a lot of discussions about cycling: If we only built the right bike, more people would ride. This is usually followed by a CAD rendering of the perfect bike, that looks like nobody would want to ride…

I commute 38m/day, and tried an e-bike. Since it was speed limited to 19mph, it didn't save me any time compared to self-powered riding, and it provided considerably less exercise - about the same as walking. I had to return the bike after a week. :)

Admittedly, 19 mph would be a considerable increase for me. ;-)

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#113

Post by chx »

Too wrote: post #81
chx wrote: post #60

I swear the best commuter ebike is the Revelo Flex ( https://www.revelo.ca/pages/flex-electric-folding-bike ). It's like someone shrank a penny farthing and put a motor in the back wheel: the front wheel is 20" and has pedals attached to it (so you can help the motor when uphill), the back is 16" and has the motor inside (torque!). You can order it with bike ABS as well ( https://www.bikerumor.com/2012/11/27/hands-on…

With such a small front wheel and your feet on the front wheel, how do you climb a curb? That just looks like designed for a OTB. That funny one foot down maneuver kickbike-riders do to jump might work but doesn't look easy.

Vancouver, BC is a very accessible city so the curbs have ramps at crossroads. And we have a really nice bike lane network. I never had this problem.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#114

Post by weddpros »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #97
revelation wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most humans can't sustain 250W on a simple ergometer for 20 minutes. At 1000W, you are a motorcycle, not a bike. If that is what you want, fine, but then stick to roads, stay off bike paths.

Its a DC rear hub motor, I can throttle it fully up and still hold my bike in place. It accelerates poorly and has relatively little torque. I can get my bike up to the same speed manually with the benefit of the gearing all bikes have. On even terrain I don't have any reason to be driving around at over 15mph (and I don't), but we do have morons who will, and that's why the law is so restrictive in the EU.

Sure, morons always go by the law...

They don't bother with ebikes anyway, so they're reckless with a moped, which is way more dangerous.

The 250W limit in Europe is stupid (plus it shouldn't be a European law, it's not the correct scope).

Finally, you can be reckless with rollerblades or a bike, you don't need a motor. I guess it's more a problem of "250W is more than enough for people" just like 640kb was, for politicians.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#115

Post by mscb »

CydeWeys wrote: post #10

I'm surprised the author spent so much money building on top of a base bike of such low quality. That department store bike is what bike snobs would call a "bicycle-shaped object". You certainly shouldn't not be cheaping out on the actual bicycle for an e-bike, as you're putting the bike (and particularly the brakes) through forces they were not properly designed for. The author even admits such: > The brakes are oft…

Since 3 years and >10.000km I use a self made eBike based on a 250€ bike from Decathlon with a self made controller [1]. It is a sturdy bike with properly functioning brakes - and I have gone up to plenty of mountain passes including the Col de la Bonette (2800m) [2]. The reason to take a low budget bike is that it is less likely to be stolen - and if it happens I'll just buy a new one.

The advantage of a DIY eBike is that you can repair it yourself. Plenty of ebike dealers have no knowledge of the electronics and if something stops working, then the bike gets send back to the factory. As it is a seasonal business you may be without a bike for weeks in summer time.

[1] https://hackaday.io/project/25337-smart-bldc-controller-for-...

[2] http://cyclehikemap.eu/mymaps/view.php?id=72

http://cyclehikemap.eu/mymaps/view.php?id=71

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#116

Post by patcheudor »

u801e wrote: post #100
patcheudor wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! I was a semi-professional (CAT 1/2) racer in college and routinely road in the 22 to 30+ MPH range. 30+ MPH is surprisingly easy on busy roads with a good draft coming off traffic. A day wouldn't go by while riding in the city that I didn't have a close call with a car and in fact a bus hit me once while passing me on a corner (the driver cut the corner, going over the white-line). In order to not die I did a l…

> I can't imagine anything past 15 MPH for the general public is a safe thing based solely on the bike handling skills of the majority of the general public. It's pretty easy for most riders to get to 25 MPH or above when going downhill. That's why I take the lane in those situations and keep an eye out at every single intersection. I think a lot of the situations that you describe could be prevented by taking the la…

That's pretty much where I road most of the time when I was racing but never underestimate how much road rage that causes. It was fine when I was training in Bend, OR. Those drivers were very polite and in fact would always move into the other lane to pass. I honestly can't say enough good things about the people of Bend back in the early 90's. Beyond polite. Boise, ID on the other hand is a completely different world. I've had drivers call the police on me for doing this and the police take this stuff seriously in that if you do this, you are the problem. Oh, how they love to lecture about how you MUST ride as far to the right as safe & if that's in the wheel track of a vehicle, that's not safe. On one stop I had an office try to take me to the station for not having a drivers license to 'prove' my identity to him. He decided not to only after I explained to him how much my bike cost and that if he scratched the carbon fiber frame I'd be filing a claim with the departments insurance.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#117

Post by whiddershins »

WA wrote: post #6

I have put about 3,000km on my E-bike in the last 1.5 years. It's limited to 25km/h, because then I don't need a license, it's fast enough for city traffic (mostly in bike lanes anyways) and I get to tow a trailer for my kid. Biggest advantage: Hills don't exist for me. We live in a city with quite a few hills and day care is about 70-100m below our appartment. Doing this trip twice a day with its 15% slope would tak…

Do you bring your kid in a trailer in city traffic?

I’ve seen people do similar and it gives me a nervous fit. Looks insanely dangerous from a bystander POV.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#118

Post by alfla »

CydeWeys wrote: post #101
monkmartinez wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't easily replace the frame though. You can. You just move the motor, battery/controller to another bike. What the author did is a great way to check the feasibility of the idea for himself without breaking the bank.

It took him ten hours of work the first time. Yes, it'll take him less the second time because he's gotten better at it, but it's still by no means easy or trivial. And we haven't gotten to how much he values his time yet.

Ten hours is a lot. I've mounted two similar kits. Both took less than four hours.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#119

Post by analog31 »

jdietrich wrote: post #87
mindB wrote: post #9

Author seems to think an internal drivetrain for a bike would be more reliable. Maybe somebody more mechanical can chime in, but my understanding was that the opposite was true: only reason cars have to use an internal drivetrain is for cooling and external ones are generally more reliable?

Internal gearhubs are drastically more reliable than derailleur gears and require almost no maintenance. They use an epicyclic gear train in a sealed oil bath, so most of the mechanical parts are protected from moisture and foreign objects. The use of a gearhub also facilitates the use of an enclosed chaincase, or a belt or shaft drive. The Sturmey Archer 3-speed gearhub has existed largely unchanged since 1938 and i…

Yup, I have 2 Sturmey-Archer 3-speeds in regular use, that are both 50+ years old and both have been virtually maintenance free.

Of course my legs aren't as strong as an electric motor, but an e-bike could have a beefed up gearhub.

Re: First 100 miles on my E-Bike

#120

Post by ufo »

hocuspocus wrote: post #91
lumberjack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fast e-bike would be dangerous, anyway. At that point, you should just get a small capacity motorcycle or a scooter.

I live in Switzerland where 45km/h speedbikes are fairly popular (since for once our laws are more lax than in most European countries). I don't really see how they're more dangerous than scooters in the same vehicle category.

The big difference is that many people drive e-bikes on bike paths or even pedestrian paths, while scooters tend to stick to roads.
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