I wrote this Tuesday night and immediately my MacBook died. Here's the 2nd test run story.
After an almost amusing day of torture up a ladder welding a sculptural front fence on a fancy joint in north Melbourne with some other blokes and an ex SAS crane truck driver, the time for test run#2 was nigh. 6:45pm.
I'd missed the motorcycle wreckers who no doubt would've held the key to my gearbox nirvana- a KX80 gear lever. Never mind, some days ago I spied a DT200r carcass that was quickly becoming a skeleton, lying in the grass down by the creek. It had a gear lever, and a 10mm spanner later it was mine.
Getting to the point I predictably enough went for a rip up the street clicking away as smooth as you like. I'm really starting to comprehend the utter torque of electric power and the Trek was easily lifting the front wheel in 4th. Quickly ran out of street but was at the creek where the tracks are, I was getting excited.
Still suspect and suspicious that something was going to let fly I cautiously opened her up to full throttle over the rolling grassy hills and it wheelstood in EVERY gear?!? Good hearty illegal fun. I've radically under geared it and 1st is near useless and hard not to flip it,4th 5th and top is where it's at.
So anyway after trying my hardest to dribble by some innocent pram pushing types I headed for the single tracks where she truly came alive. Hard to compare this to my RMZ450, next to no horsepower, bulk torque, uber light with very sharp steering and brakes, you could easily put the wind up an MXer in the tight tracks if not give it a proper hiding given equal riders as others have shown. I was having a ball and starting to relax. It didn't last long.
I pulled off the single track and onto the flat open grassland, a makeshift local golf driving range, for a top speed run. Not a soul around, 7:20pm.It pulled a neat power mono in 4th hit 5th flat out, with the pace gaining and about to hit top gear the whole show locked up solid at what felt like at least 60kph. Shit and then some!! What the hell?? Came to a fishtailing broadsliding skidding halt.
Snapped the chain clean in half. Jammed in the caliper mount, bent the disc and chewed up some teeth on the sprocket and also bent the hub. Unrideable. It turns out that I'd left a neat little cavity for the chain to drop into between the caliper mount and the sprocket. A fellow cyclist helped me out with a spanner and I managed to bend the brake rotor straight enough to pass through the caliper and ride it home via pedals with the chain in my pocket. Classy.
This was Tuesday and I've since fixed the engineering feng shui issues. I'm going for a blat RIGHT NOW in fact. Video and pictures uploaded later today.
Gotta say thanks heaps to all who helped and cheers for the support! This thing is proper fun let me tell you