I'm a jerk - a story of an ebiker playing with roadies

[neoplasticity]

Well I put a small geared hub motor on a road bike so my bike looks like the ones ridden by the lycra set except it has a rear rack with a small rack bag. but its old and has a alum fram with steel fork so it definitely does not look "cool" like the carbon fiber machines that all the roadies ride around here. We have a pretty active cycling community around here and its good riding weather year round. When I'm going home from work around 5 or 6pm, thats the time when alot of roadies are out riding with their friends.

I never use my motor on the flats because 20+mph on the flat is pretty easily attained on a roadbike without power and my motor doesn't give any assist after about 21 mph. but on uphills, I turn it on and with pedaling, I can sustain 20mph up a hill for miles. On the ride home, there is one street that is very popular with roadies because it is very wide and has plenty of shoulder for riding and is a 4-5% grade for about 2 miles. Most roadies are doing this climb at about 10mph. Some really motivated ones are doing it at 14 or so. I will pass them all at 20mph. The bike is pretty stealthy so I'm sure most of them think I am some kind of cycling phenom. Once in a while, I will pass a group of younger guys in their 20s and 30s. They will invariably try to draft me up the hill. The really strong riders will stay with me for about a quarter mile before they are completely spent and drop off. It is pretty funny to see them absolutely killing themselves to stay on my rear wheel and the whole time, I know they are thinking "this guy cannot keep up this pace for much longer" Then they drop off and I just keep riding into the horizon at the same speed.


another time, I was riding on the road before this climb which is about 2 miles of completely flat road and this roadie passes me going around 24mph. I get on his tire and draft him. After about a mile, he decides he's going to drop me. He is clearly a stronger rider than me and he cranks it up to about 27 mph. I hang on for about a 1/2 a mile and he drops me. He looks back to make sure he has dropped me and continues onward. I see him make the right turn to the road mentioned above and then I know I will pass him soon. He sees me gaining on him up the hill and I can tell he is trying hard to not let me pass him. I put the motor at about 16mph so that i gain on him very slowly then as i get real close I max it out to 20mph and pass him poor guy looked totally out of steam when i passed him. I gave him a friendly nod and thanked him for the draft on the flats and said he was welcome to draft me up the hill. of course he was totally spent and couldn't

 

[BATFINK]

Haha. neo. Brilliant. I have a really nice Ridley cross bike with carbon forks etc but I bought it as a bit of a toy to be honest and I'm never on it. I will probably do the same as you at some point and put a small hub motor in there and blast some lipo volts into it just for a stealthy city hunter. That way they will think I'm a serious cyclist and take the bait just like they do now with my older trek mountain bike just now. It has huge pannier bags and the lycras always think I'm easy meat. They are all fast until they get to a good hill. I remember being congratulated by a Lycra body suit guy who I pasted on a hill with a 250 watt bafang. Haha. He said "your fast mate well done" to which I replied " you did well but keep practicing" before I took a left turn with my jelly legs. That bike only assisted to 15mph and I wa pedalling like a maniac to beat him

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[bissont]

I'm a competitive roadie and commute a few times a week on a mostly flat 17 mile (each way) commute. This past summer, I was passed by a ebiker. I got into his draft and we were doing about 28-30mph. I found it to be just like drafting in a race. At the stoplight I asked about his setup and he told me what he did. It got me really excited and I ended up buying a kit and converting an old mountain bike into a 30mph ebike commuter.

Now I enjoy ebiking to work. It shaves about 10 minutes off my commute. My average with ebiking is about 24mph and on my road bike it's about 20mph (with stoplights). Since the motor is only 250W I need to work pretty hard to keep the speed up and blow it up. I also bought a CA which has been really useful in monitoring the watts coming out of the battery.

Now, whenever I pass a road biker with my ebike during my commute, I always slow down to their speed and volunteer to give them a "lift". We usually cruise at 23-27mph and they are usually pretty grateful and interested in the setup.

Here's a pic of my ghetto ebike

 

[dumbass]

OMG.......dare I say that's a Currie kit? Are you sure you have a 250w motor and not a 450w? If you bought it from a US dist. it's likely a 450w setup. And it looks like you beefed it up with a lifepo4 pack.

Bob

 

[Alan B]

I'm a competitive roadie and commute a few times a week on a mostly flat 17 mile (each way) commute. This past summer, I was passed by a ebiker. I got into his draft and we were doing about 28-30mph. I found it to be just like drafting in a race. At the stoplight I asked about his setup and he told me what he did. It got me really excited and I ended up buying a kit and converting an old mountain bike into a 30mph ebike commuter.

Now I enjoy ebiking to work. It shaves about 10 minutes off my commute. My average with ebiking is about 24mph and on my road bike it's about 20mph (with stoplights). Since the motor is only 250W I need to work pretty hard to keep the speed up and blow it up. I also bought a CA which has been really useful in monitoring the watts coming out of the battery.

Now, whenever I pass a road biker with my ebike during my commute, I always slow down to their speed and volunteer to give them a "lift". We usually cruise at 23-27mph and they are usually pretty grateful and interested in the setup.
...

Welcome to ES and great thing to do. Much better than pissing roadies off, we need support to keep ebiking growing!

 

[bissont]

OMG.......dare I say that's a Currie kit?

Yea, but not gonna touch that topic with a ten foot pole ...

I'm not sure it's 250w – I bought the kit from amazon.

I also bought a new controller and wired the Lifepo4 and SLA battery in series to give me the extra speed...

 

[corkscrew]

I prefer to pass cars in the bicycle lane. When I'm doing 33mph I can't hear the expletives yelled by roadies.

 

[dumbass]

OMG.......dare I say that's a Currie kit?

Yea, but not gonna touch that topic with a ten foot pole ...
quote]

Yeah, don't blame you.......But my point was that Currie motors (and yes that is a Currie motor) are 450w with a 24v 35a controller. The 250w with 20 or 25a controllers are sole elsewhere. But some do sneek into the US. That's why I asked.

What size lifepo4 pack did you add? I know some people tell me they get 30+ miles on their 20ah packs on simular setups. But they are doing a lot of peddling too.

Bob

PS...If your main quest is assist in riding to work and not doing a ton of hills you should look into DakAngel's modification of the freewheel. Normally a Currie setup without peddling is geared for only 16mph. So your doing most or all the work after that. But by changing the freewheel from the normal 20t to a 16t you increase the no peddle speed to 20ish mph. With your strong peddling this would be a major help for you.

 

[Hobbit]

I, personally, am still waiting for my first e-bike setup on the (very) slow boat from china but I've tracked down some of Hyena's golden moments.....

So I joined in on a lycra race today. I won.

I didn't realise it was a race until the "officials" expressed their displeasure at me being there :lol:

[youtube]7S3l4cftpvo[/youtube]

Yeah, I know, I'm an asshole.

 

[bissont]

What size lifepo4 pack did you add? I know some people tell me they get 30+ miles on their 20ah packs on simular setups. But they are doing a lot of peddling too.

It's a 16ah from goldenmotor. I'm pretty sure the Currie sla is 10ah. According to the CA, I use about 6.5 ah in 17 miles.

PS...If your main quest is assist in riding to work and not doing a ton of hills you should look into DakAngel's modification of the freewheel. Normally a Currie setup without peddling is geared for only 16mph. So your doing most or all the work after that. But by changing the freewheel from the normal 20t to a 16t you increase the no peddle speed to 20ish mph. With your strong peddling this would be a major help for you.

Yea, I did that mod. Right now, I've set it up so that when I'm working hard (~200W) the assist will keep me at about 30mph. With no wind the CA says it's pulling in around ~350W. I've also got a pretty aero position with the bike. If I don't pedal, the CA Watts usually spike up a couple hundred watts and the speed drops to upper 20s...

 

[kmxtornado]

OMG, how fast were you going? And dude, you gotta pedal. You have to at least fake it if nothing else. Hahha. Awesome video. So cool that you got it all on camera. Thanks for sharing. I gotta get something like that. Cool edit with the screenshot of the oldies crossing the street. Careful out there though bud.

 

[lcyn]

I agree with Amberwolf. This antagonistic attitude toward non electric cyclists is just plain silly and immature. Do not harm the cause by being a boorish jerk.

 

[Lyen]

There will be an official race between real lycra roadies and electric bicycle riders on February 11th, 2012 next month:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=35124

 

[StudEbiker]

[youtube]Z9j6f5eTkFU[/youtube]