Hello? helloo llooo
ECHO! echooo echoooo oooo
Tyler? tylerrr lerrrr
wooHOO!!
I'm the first in the club!
Tried searching for it as I thought there was a 5 grand club already but it would seem just like the sperm that's the fastest swimmer,
I'M THE FIRST ONE TO PENETERATE THE BARRIER! (yay)
Although I thought I read some posts by a few members they do this much in a year?
I launched my inaugural ebike journey on Earth Day 2005.
Now a rather coincidental 3 years later almost to the day reached the magical 5 thousand mile mark, all without the benefit of gears & at a leisurely 19.5 mph max speed.
So let's see how many can get into the club ahead of safe while he's slowly accelerating spending his time shifting thru the cogs.
Would have been here last Sept. but my NiMH pack developed a weak cell just past 4800 miles.
Otherwise the bike has perfomed flawless with a broken kickstand the only failure, but with the kind of loads I haul, I'm not at all surprised tho.
So say 2.5 yrs., 2000 miles per year, very consistent mileage that I've acculmulated for over the 3 decades previous without power, only now I'm doing it while spending a little less time on the road.
I deliberately held off replacing the dud cell partly because I didn't want to be without power-assist in the snow & partly so that I could say the pack lasted 5000 miles.
The last 200 miles have been a slog tho, more pedal than power.
In trying to keep the weak cell from triggering the LVC I became intimately familiar with the pulse-n-glide throttle technique & discovered why it's more efficient.
And man, was I ever grateful to have even reduced power to help plow thru the drifts.
A week ago all the snow was long gone as we reached record high temps getting up to 70*F & managed to get in nearly hundred miles to just under the mark.
Then few days ago this last weekend we got a foot of snow & 15*F so I pulled myself up by the bootstraps to drive for the prize the last 15 miles I needed to hit the anniversary mark.
Adapting the Proclaimer's one hit wonder;
But I would ride 5000 miles
And I would ride 5000 more
Just to be the man who drove 10000 miles
To fall down at your door
Now to patch up my battery & see you at the 10 grand club in 2.5 years.
*UPDATE*
Coughed up a chain today (May19) at 5260 miles.
This is a first for me, I've never had a chain break b4 ever in the tens of thousands of miles in previous unpowered cycling.
This is the only new bike I've ever bought, all my previous rides being heavy steel cast-offs which made perfect winter beaters.
So either they don't make chains like they used to, or as I'm begining to suspect wax based chain lube, White Lightning in this case, doesn't live up to it's promise & isn't a very effective lubricant.
This incident reminded me that the one thing I wanted to be included in this thread was entries on some of the costs involved & that the 'club' not be strictly about rooster strutting.
The original outlay on the bike including motor, battery, shipping & tax was almost exactly $3 grand.
Accessories, front & rear racks with a couple of saddlebags, thudbuster & gel seat cover, lights, bell, fender, bar-ends, locks, I think that's about all it needed comes to a little less than $500.
As for consumable items, the 5000 miles must also be the magic number for when things break down.
In addition to a ded NiMH cell ($23) & now the chain ($30) needing replacement right around this distance figure, just a couple of days earlier I'd also replaced the brake pads ($25).
I was still on my original set of v-brakes that had worn right down to the nub including one pad that went a wee bit past the end (ouch).
That's when I also noticed that the combined weight of the motor & my usual payload on the rack had split the rear tire wall at several points along the rim.
The problem stemmed from the sidewall being continually chaffed by the rim as the tire flexed at the same point it had been weakened whenever I got a flat tire thru abrasion resulting from walking it home several miles without air.
I got three flat tires in the first two months of operating & for a while there it looked like the per mile cost of replacement tubes ($16) & tires would be a bigger expenditure than for the battery.
Since installing Mr.Tuffy tire liners ($24) I've only had one other flat a year after that when a shard of sheetmetal still managed to punch thru the liner & thick-wall tube clear to the other side & into the rim liner.
It seems the more things you put in the way to protect the tube the bigger & stupider the things that get attracted into it.
After that I'd bought a Specialized Crossroads Flak Jacket kevlar tire ($22) which I had planned to install after the next puncture, but haven't needed to thus far for better than a year & a half with no flats.
However the cumulative damage to the sidewall has taken it's toll so now it needs replacing regardless, which is a shame since there's still a lot of meat left on the tread.
Including the cracked kickstand which I haven't replaced yet & estimating $20 total cost of electricity that's about $175 in expenditures over the distance covered in past 3 years.
So depending on how you figure on amortizing costs, that equals anywhere from 3.5¢/mile in strictly operating cost, plus 70¢/mile (and dropping with each passing mile) total cost.
Personally I figure on the high side a realistic mean of 10¢/mile or more precisely about $2 per trip on a single charge, since the distance varies somewhat between 15 to 20 miles depending on the speed I average & how much I crank.
I hope this sheds some light on what to expect for anyone thinking about taking the plunge & hope that others that have stuck to it for this long will take a moment to share their experiences & some of their cost analysis.
ECHO! echooo echoooo oooo
Tyler? tylerrr lerrrr
wooHOO!!
I'm the first in the club!
Tried searching for it as I thought there was a 5 grand club already but it would seem just like the sperm that's the fastest swimmer,
I'M THE FIRST ONE TO PENETERATE THE BARRIER! (yay)
Although I thought I read some posts by a few members they do this much in a year?
I launched my inaugural ebike journey on Earth Day 2005.
Now a rather coincidental 3 years later almost to the day reached the magical 5 thousand mile mark, all without the benefit of gears & at a leisurely 19.5 mph max speed.
So let's see how many can get into the club ahead of safe while he's slowly accelerating spending his time shifting thru the cogs.
Would have been here last Sept. but my NiMH pack developed a weak cell just past 4800 miles.
Otherwise the bike has perfomed flawless with a broken kickstand the only failure, but with the kind of loads I haul, I'm not at all surprised tho.
So say 2.5 yrs., 2000 miles per year, very consistent mileage that I've acculmulated for over the 3 decades previous without power, only now I'm doing it while spending a little less time on the road.
I deliberately held off replacing the dud cell partly because I didn't want to be without power-assist in the snow & partly so that I could say the pack lasted 5000 miles.
The last 200 miles have been a slog tho, more pedal than power.
In trying to keep the weak cell from triggering the LVC I became intimately familiar with the pulse-n-glide throttle technique & discovered why it's more efficient.
And man, was I ever grateful to have even reduced power to help plow thru the drifts.
A week ago all the snow was long gone as we reached record high temps getting up to 70*F & managed to get in nearly hundred miles to just under the mark.
Then few days ago this last weekend we got a foot of snow & 15*F so I pulled myself up by the bootstraps to drive for the prize the last 15 miles I needed to hit the anniversary mark.
Adapting the Proclaimer's one hit wonder;
But I would ride 5000 miles
And I would ride 5000 more
Just to be the man who drove 10000 miles
To fall down at your door
Now to patch up my battery & see you at the 10 grand club in 2.5 years.
*UPDATE*
Coughed up a chain today (May19) at 5260 miles.
This is a first for me, I've never had a chain break b4 ever in the tens of thousands of miles in previous unpowered cycling.
This is the only new bike I've ever bought, all my previous rides being heavy steel cast-offs which made perfect winter beaters.
So either they don't make chains like they used to, or as I'm begining to suspect wax based chain lube, White Lightning in this case, doesn't live up to it's promise & isn't a very effective lubricant.
This incident reminded me that the one thing I wanted to be included in this thread was entries on some of the costs involved & that the 'club' not be strictly about rooster strutting.
The original outlay on the bike including motor, battery, shipping & tax was almost exactly $3 grand.
Accessories, front & rear racks with a couple of saddlebags, thudbuster & gel seat cover, lights, bell, fender, bar-ends, locks, I think that's about all it needed comes to a little less than $500.
As for consumable items, the 5000 miles must also be the magic number for when things break down.
In addition to a ded NiMH cell ($23) & now the chain ($30) needing replacement right around this distance figure, just a couple of days earlier I'd also replaced the brake pads ($25).
I was still on my original set of v-brakes that had worn right down to the nub including one pad that went a wee bit past the end (ouch).
That's when I also noticed that the combined weight of the motor & my usual payload on the rack had split the rear tire wall at several points along the rim.
The problem stemmed from the sidewall being continually chaffed by the rim as the tire flexed at the same point it had been weakened whenever I got a flat tire thru abrasion resulting from walking it home several miles without air.
I got three flat tires in the first two months of operating & for a while there it looked like the per mile cost of replacement tubes ($16) & tires would be a bigger expenditure than for the battery.
Since installing Mr.Tuffy tire liners ($24) I've only had one other flat a year after that when a shard of sheetmetal still managed to punch thru the liner & thick-wall tube clear to the other side & into the rim liner.
It seems the more things you put in the way to protect the tube the bigger & stupider the things that get attracted into it.
After that I'd bought a Specialized Crossroads Flak Jacket kevlar tire ($22) which I had planned to install after the next puncture, but haven't needed to thus far for better than a year & a half with no flats.
However the cumulative damage to the sidewall has taken it's toll so now it needs replacing regardless, which is a shame since there's still a lot of meat left on the tread.
Including the cracked kickstand which I haven't replaced yet & estimating $20 total cost of electricity that's about $175 in expenditures over the distance covered in past 3 years.
So depending on how you figure on amortizing costs, that equals anywhere from 3.5¢/mile in strictly operating cost, plus 70¢/mile (and dropping with each passing mile) total cost.
Personally I figure on the high side a realistic mean of 10¢/mile or more precisely about $2 per trip on a single charge, since the distance varies somewhat between 15 to 20 miles depending on the speed I average & how much I crank.
I hope this sheds some light on what to expect for anyone thinking about taking the plunge & hope that others that have stuck to it for this long will take a moment to share their experiences & some of their cost analysis.
I think it helps to "go fast". (wasteful, but more fun)
You can build a hell of an ebike for that kind of money.
