WoodlandHills
10 kW
I agree wholeheartedly, SA has a very good design for a robust 5-speed IGH, perfectly suited for ebike use and they have completely misread the market by only offering it in traditional widths. It's as though they had never heard of a fat or +type bike nor any of the wider dropout widths: 170mm & 197mm. I can understand financing all your R&D on a new design multi speed hub by OEM pre-orders and introducing the 135mm version for them first, but to omit even mention of a wider model indicates an engineering dept that has no communication with the marketing department at all. A 5-speed rotary IGH with a DD 3rd gear could be built in a 197mm version to withstand an easy 50% more torque than the current C-50 unit, itself a major improvement over their prior 5-speed model.
With all the chatter about imminent chainwheel options for the BBSHD, can a two ring system with front deraileur be too far off? Paired with a bulletproof 197mm 5-speed IGH one would have the ideal drive system short of adding a Gates belt! IGHs, BBSHDs and fatbikes were made for each other: the sum is far greater than the total of the parts, just ride one and see. Personally my heart belongs to a 10-speed full suspension fatty, but nothing is a nimble as a Karl Replica with an IGH!!
I am running mine on a BD Deadeye Monster and I shamelessly copied Karl at electric-bikeblog.com's installation in every particular. It is just about the only actual Fatbike that can run 4.25" tires on the rear and a 4.7" on the front available with a 135mm reared: maybe why it's only $399! Being a direct copy of a developed design it was a simple plug and play installation with no surprises, just as Karl figured out and put online for guys like me. The bike was a singlespeed and when I added the original Nexus 3, the gear sensors were unavailable in the US. So I trained myself to backpedal approx 1/8 turn as a sort of clutch, as I use the immediate pause in power to slide the cogs onto the next gear, the delay on the PAS is just long enough for the internal cogs to be seated before the machine torque inputs which gives a quiet up shift. Downshifting, I use the same process, but the grip shifter is able to jump several gears and get settled before the power arrives. I feel confident that I could train a novice how to operate this type bike smoothly in a matter of moments, a deraileur transmission, maybe not so fast? The swapping of the Nexus 3 for an SA 5-speed haven't changed that one bit. Just being able to shift at a dead stop is an important part of making a new rider comfortable with an ebike.
With all the chatter about imminent chainwheel options for the BBSHD, can a two ring system with front deraileur be too far off? Paired with a bulletproof 197mm 5-speed IGH one would have the ideal drive system short of adding a Gates belt! IGHs, BBSHDs and fatbikes were made for each other: the sum is far greater than the total of the parts, just ride one and see. Personally my heart belongs to a 10-speed full suspension fatty, but nothing is a nimble as a Karl Replica with an IGH!!
I am running mine on a BD Deadeye Monster and I shamelessly copied Karl at electric-bikeblog.com's installation in every particular. It is just about the only actual Fatbike that can run 4.25" tires on the rear and a 4.7" on the front available with a 135mm reared: maybe why it's only $399! Being a direct copy of a developed design it was a simple plug and play installation with no surprises, just as Karl figured out and put online for guys like me. The bike was a singlespeed and when I added the original Nexus 3, the gear sensors were unavailable in the US. So I trained myself to backpedal approx 1/8 turn as a sort of clutch, as I use the immediate pause in power to slide the cogs onto the next gear, the delay on the PAS is just long enough for the internal cogs to be seated before the machine torque inputs which gives a quiet up shift. Downshifting, I use the same process, but the grip shifter is able to jump several gears and get settled before the power arrives. I feel confident that I could train a novice how to operate this type bike smoothly in a matter of moments, a deraileur transmission, maybe not so fast? The swapping of the Nexus 3 for an SA 5-speed haven't changed that one bit. Just being able to shift at a dead stop is an important part of making a new rider comfortable with an ebike.