Some notes from riding with the lightest mid drive.
Not a fan of these 165mm cranks. My long legs hate them and my human power output sucks. I can get 170mm cranks aftermarket, but my legs really like 175. Kind of a sour point.
Crank wobble is unnerving to look at, but not causing problems currently. An
aftermarket crank should solve it.
Rear 26" versus rear 24" hub increases standover, which is pretty annoying even on a 1.75" tire.
Hard to get used to the crank area of the bike twisting when hitting the throttle. Some of this is because i have a cheap 21" frame. But this is on only 900w power. i wonder if this is harmful to the frame long term. This wasn't a problem on the recumbent, which is stiff as hell. This isn't specific to the lightest mid drive.
Don't like the feeling of the chain tensioner vibrating on power level 5 at high RPM, it's just unnerving. The effect is worse in single chainring mode.
Recently, I made it up my 5 mile hill test climb. Top speed with the 3lbs rear tire that's known to have almost the drag of a motorcycle tire is 25mph instead of the 28mph i was achieving on a regular tire, which is OK.
Overall this mid drive was a lot nicer in my semi recumbent whose top speed on the flat was 34mph.. 18% faster.
My running idea for Mini Hiryuu v2 has been a 29er with a 27.5" rear wheel and 29" front to get back to low standover height.
For comfymaxxing purposes, there exist fat 29ers ( 3.0" tires ) but they are quite expensive. 29 x 2.0" comes out to 2430mm diameter, and 32 x 2.0" is 2471mm, which is a small difference.
This has me thinking about instead going with a Kent Big league 32" bike. This gets me the wheel diameter of a 29 x 3.0", but the bike costs $500.
I called Kent and found out it has a 68mm bottom bracket and takes a 1-1/8 in fork.
We could run 32" rear, 29" front with a suspension fork to boost the comfy.
A big advantage of this 32" wheel is that i'd be able to run the lightest mid drive with a single chainring and hit the high speeds i'm after. Looking at the frame, we probably don't have a standover height issue, so the rear wheel doesn't need to go down a size to achieve that.
Also looks like a 44T chainring would be sufficient for hitting a max speed of 32mph or so in single chainring mode.
The fact that there are only 2-3 makes of 32" tire, and probably just one supplier of tubes, makes the option a potential pain in the ass. It's likely that i'd have to use a sealant on the rear tire because puncture proof tires aren't available in this size.
Still on the fence about this one!