Gave the whole bike and trailer (minus the top half of the kennel/carrier) a workout today. Found a couple cheapie-type bikes being given away on Freecycle, and I got picked as the recipient (this doesn't happen often anymore; too few people giving things away and are probably selling them instead). They're heavy steel bikes, a Royce Union MTZ something-or-other in good shape but with flat tires, and a Huffy AspenRidge in good shape with cracking tire sidewalls (not sunrot, looks like defects or slices) but with "airless tubes" inside the knobbies. Probably 80-90 pounds total between them (didn't weigh them).
Around a 13 mile round trip, WOT on Low just about the whole way, fully charged before I left. I forgot the wattmeter, though, left it on the charger at home. Fair amount of pedalling for 2/3 of the trip; lots of it for last 1/3 as battery was so low that even on only 80-90% throttle it hit LVC repeatedly as the constant mild wind I had to ride into slightly gusted against my travel direction. As I reached home, I stopped as I passed the neighbor's house to chat for about 5-7 minutes, and it recovered from resting at zero bars (and "dead" light on) to 5 of 6 bars.
I noted as I pulled the battery (slightly warm) out to charge it that the controller itself was fairly toasty inside the cargo pod with my backpack and stuff against it; I think I need to secure it's casing better against the cargo pod's aluminum front wall--right now just the tabs on the ends make contact, the rest of it is about a half a millimeter away, which I had not noticed before. I'll file out the screwholes on the endplate brackets of the controller a bit to allow me to slide them upward far enough so that bolting them tightly against the sidewall will force the surface of the controller against the sidewall too, and also add a bit of thermal paste on the controller fins to help contact/heat transfer.
The Fusin motor was only warm on the outside case, but I expect it is toasty inside. I should put a thermal sensor in there for summer use.
The trailer did quite well, especially since I deliberately picked some crappy roads to ride on to test it for behavior and pothole resistance, etc. One problem found is that even though the casters were held off the ground by about 1/2" for the ride itself (by tightening the stem hitch pivot so the trailer's front is lifted above ground level when the bike is upright), they often touched ground anyway, because of flex of the front edge of the trailer even when empty.
View attachment 1
This is a serious issue, because it is causing such flex of the whole front end that by the time I reached home, it cracked the aluminum at the corners of the front end, just in front of the caster mountings. There is zero problem with the back end, which has more weight on it, so it is not likely caused by the wheel vibration, but rather back and forth flex of the hitch. I'll have to put a T-frame there that bolts the top bar of the T across the front end inside the aluminum "box", just behind the hitch, with the hitch bolted to that, and the vertical of the T horizontally behind that toward the back, bolted in a couple of places along it's length to the top panel. That should stop the major flex.
Then I need to fix the corners, and reinforce them so I can safely put weight on those casters again (which only needs to happen when it's stopped/parked, usually). I'll probably just weld up some corner-plates to fit inside the corners and bolt to top, front, and side with the caster mounting bolts being the side bolts.
Around a 13 mile round trip, WOT on Low just about the whole way, fully charged before I left. I forgot the wattmeter, though, left it on the charger at home. Fair amount of pedalling for 2/3 of the trip; lots of it for last 1/3 as battery was so low that even on only 80-90% throttle it hit LVC repeatedly as the constant mild wind I had to ride into slightly gusted against my travel direction. As I reached home, I stopped as I passed the neighbor's house to chat for about 5-7 minutes, and it recovered from resting at zero bars (and "dead" light on) to 5 of 6 bars.
I noted as I pulled the battery (slightly warm) out to charge it that the controller itself was fairly toasty inside the cargo pod with my backpack and stuff against it; I think I need to secure it's casing better against the cargo pod's aluminum front wall--right now just the tabs on the ends make contact, the rest of it is about a half a millimeter away, which I had not noticed before. I'll file out the screwholes on the endplate brackets of the controller a bit to allow me to slide them upward far enough so that bolting them tightly against the sidewall will force the surface of the controller against the sidewall too, and also add a bit of thermal paste on the controller fins to help contact/heat transfer.
The Fusin motor was only warm on the outside case, but I expect it is toasty inside. I should put a thermal sensor in there for summer use.
The trailer did quite well, especially since I deliberately picked some crappy roads to ride on to test it for behavior and pothole resistance, etc. One problem found is that even though the casters were held off the ground by about 1/2" for the ride itself (by tightening the stem hitch pivot so the trailer's front is lifted above ground level when the bike is upright), they often touched ground anyway, because of flex of the front edge of the trailer even when empty.
View attachment 1
This is a serious issue, because it is causing such flex of the whole front end that by the time I reached home, it cracked the aluminum at the corners of the front end, just in front of the caster mountings. There is zero problem with the back end, which has more weight on it, so it is not likely caused by the wheel vibration, but rather back and forth flex of the hitch. I'll have to put a T-frame there that bolts the top bar of the T across the front end inside the aluminum "box", just behind the hitch, with the hitch bolted to that, and the vertical of the T horizontally behind that toward the back, bolted in a couple of places along it's length to the top panel. That should stop the major flex.
Then I need to fix the corners, and reinforce them so I can safely put weight on those casters again (which only needs to happen when it's stopped/parked, usually). I'll probably just weld up some corner-plates to fit inside the corners and bolt to top, front, and side with the caster mounting bolts being the side bolts.