I put on about 200 miles of dirt on the XT drive train without too many issues. Still learning how to ride it. Got the NuVinci on and now learning that system. I used an old derailleur as chain tensioner until I get one in the mail. The battery bag didn't hold up and I had to duct tape it together as I am on a week long trip in the high country. I couldn't mount the bag using all the straps didn't help. Got 30 miles of open road and about 70 on dirt trails on the NuVinci and the hub is leaking. I used 17.5ah on the 30 mile road ride averaging 27 mph. Never dropped below 25 or over 32. I pedaled fast but not too hard the whole way. Changing out gears today when I get back to the shop and will have to give up some top end. There just isn't enough range to do dirt and road. It really needs 2 chainrings. The big issue is wind resistance at speed and not near enough low gear for the steep trails. I find myself hitting the 26A mark frequently and 24A constant on the open road and that is with heavy and fast pedaling. Battery is dead on my cadence computer so I can't tell you the cadence. I can tell you that I can easily pedal at 90 rpm for extended periods of time.
I really love the trails and going off trail and chasing prairie dogs, rabbits and coyotes. This thing is a fricken motor cycle with skinny tires! I have looped this so many times and have done some crazy peroets trying to ride up stairs at the school and am paying for all this HP and fun. RIght now I can hardly breath, laugh, cough, sneeze or even get up easily. Feels good to have blood running down various parts of me and cactus needles in my shins and Russian Olive thorns in my head. The vintage late 70's bear trap pedals are once again reaping havoc on my legs.
90% of my riding is done at night. Usually the night rides average about 3.5 hrs and 25 miles. I use a Zebra H600 Mk II 18650 XM-L2 Cool White Headlamp
http://www.zebralight.com/H600-Mk-II-18650-XM-L2-Headlamp-Cool-White_p_130.html which is suprisingly bright and has a very low setting that is great for reading in a tent. You cannot use any UltraFire battery! Must use at least a NCR. I bought 4 different types of Ulta batteries with impressive numbers. None will work on high for more than a minute. Orbtronics is what I settled on and they work great and are a bit overkill.
I got an email from Eric at Luna. He said the watt meter was not meant to be mounted on the bars. I can hardly see the display in the day time and was looking for other options. Alot has to do with my failing eye site and the ability to focus on it and ride at crazy speeds. He told me that I should get a CA. I did not think they hooked up to this setup so I am waiting to hear back on how to do it and will get a couple of those for mine and the DH bike I did. I am still needing to play with different throttle positions and ordered 2 more types of throttles and have a bar mount 15w light on order from Luna. The bars are really busy as it is so I will probably have to make a new stem and bar combo to get some more rise and a wider bar. Also have some thermometers on order. Not looking forward to installing those.
For now I am using the Luna Samsung 52v 20ah 26f? pack. Have yet to do any programing to the controller and it needs it. There are a good bit of things I would like to change as I get used to this. It is a work in progress for sure. Building new batteries and making some type of hard case is in progress for the DH bike. I got a spot welder but decided against using it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hand-held-S...460933?hash=item35c3df5845:g:GSAAAOSwMmBVoxwV It only has a .12mm thickness limit which is not enough IMHO for what I will want to do eventually. I took apart the Luna battery and they used several layers of thin tab material and it was too wide for the holders and looked really bad. There was even a hole blown through a good part of one where something shorted out during production. Several of the spot welds were not even contacting the battery tops. These may just be connections between the layers and not actually contacts to the battery and the first layer was done well to the battery. Wishful thinking but looking at the rest of the pack I can hardly expect better quality in the unseen parts.
When I used to race RC cars we undid the spot welds and soldered on heavy copper bars. Later when I got a battery sponsor all the cells were soldered together. This is much better than spot welds for high current applications but soldering up 180+ cells is something I wasn't looking forward to, hence the spot welder purchase. I did spot weld some .15mm tabs on and it worked kinda. I just can't see the current flowing through such small points and with high resistance contact points the rest of the tab to battery contact as efficiently.
More as the saga continues.