Radon ZR Team 6.0 + MAC 8T

[gua_rana]

I haven't had a bicycle for a few years. I love driving my car, but it has been bothering me to use it for short trips which could have been made by a bicycle. My car really likes gasoline, it weighs 1700+ kgs, has a 3 litre straight six and 4 gear automatic transmission. My commute isn't long, 16-17 km one way by car and 11 km by bicycle. I calculated my commute costs me almost 7 euros per day in gasoline with our ~1,7 €/l price, so I thought I could save my car from wearing and make nice savings in gasoline costs if I'd buy a bicycle.

Then I remembered what I hated. 2007, when I commuted with a 1980's road bicycle, I pedaled about as hard as I could and did the 13 km trip at an average speed of 30 kph. I had the possibility to shower at work, but that didn't help much as my body pushed sweat out for 30 minutes after. Another annoying thing is bringing second set of clothes with you.

Going slower isn't an option , I want to minimize the time used in commuting. Somehow I found endless-sphere.com, read the board for 2-3 months sucking information and then made decisions.

First I tried to find a decent bike second hand, but couldn't find a suitable one with a 22" frame. So I bought a new hardtail. I chose this one mainly for the fork. Any cheaper bikes had lousier forks.

View attachment 4
For the part that gives the grin, I turned to Cellman. I bought a MAC HP 8T kit (40 A 12x 3077 FET controller, Alex DM24 rim), 7 speed cassette, CA, 16S 5P triangle battery, EV Falcon pouch and a 5 A charger.

Radon's dropout isn't ideal for fitting a torque arm

First I used CAD to get the right form.

Then I took a leftover piece of 6 mm steel (S235 or S355, I think) from work and spent hours sculpting it with a hacksaw and a dremel.

Finally it looked like this.
View attachment 2
This is how the bike looks now. The tyres are 2.35" Schwalbe Big Apples. A 203 mm rotor and an adapter for the rear brake should arrive next week.
View attachment 1

Bike's weight 26 kg (I'm 195 cm 100+ kg)
55 kph WOT on flat.
21.5 Wh/km on my commute.
Takes ~2,2 kW peak. 44 A is the max current I've seen on CA.

 

[gua_rana]

Had to try riding in the woods with my Slick Apples and front brake only 8). Some mildly abusive testing for the bike.

[youtube]LLfM0__cFVA[/youtube]


Edit: Video moved to youtube.

 

[zooz]

Welcome to ES!

Nice bike and very good decision to swap your car for an ebike. I did similar, I swapped my public transport (metro in particular), which is £200/month in London, to an ebike. Unfortunately it rains here in south-east England quite a bit, but some rainproof clothes and sealed connector on the bike help to be weatherproof

Good luck commuting.

 

[veloman]

Nice first build. Good job making the torque arms fit that frame. I bet you're liking the Mac on 2kw.

 

[gua_rana]

I bolted the 203 mm rear rotor and adapter on on Monday. Since then my avg speed on my commute has been over 36 kph with the three speed switch set to 75%, about 41-42 kph on flat. That is a good speed to pedal (or fake pedal) along. Consumption has been 22-23 Wh/km.

I bet you're liking the Mac on 2kw.

Absolutely! Everyone else who has ridden it like it too.

 

[gua_rana]

New picture with the rear brake rotor mounted. I also found a nice place for the U-lock.

(Click to enlarge)

 

[gua_rana]

CA shows total 727 km and 30 cycles. Everything else running smooth besides the battery pack/triangle bag, which tends to move left and the crank hits it.
I guess I'll have to make something like this to stop it moving:



I have logged all my rides to an excel file. Here's a couple of graphs:

 

[gua_rana]

It starts to get darker and darker when I'm leaving to work at the morning. I used LED-strips for making the bike more visible.


Front light has 54 pcs of 3028 ~6000K white leds drawing ~6 W and rear light has 12 red 3028s drawing ~2 W. They are powered by a DC/DC ($12 from eBay), which takes the battery voltage through CA's output. For the main driving light I'm planning to shorten my selfbuilt 30 W LED Mag-Lite to minimum and mount it on the handlebars. I'll have to take the power for it's DC/DC straight from the battery because of the CA's 500 mA output limit.
I also have an old Petzl Tikka mounted on my helmet.

More photos here

 

[gua_rana]

A couple of videos

This is from a couple of weeks ago, going to work.
[youtube]ttqkFD_QLHM[/youtube]



This is from last wednesday, coming back home from work.
30.4 km/h
19.4 Wh/km
[youtube]lWfPg_zpGwo[/youtube]

 

[litespeed]

Bummer on the wipe out. Cool videos though.

Tom

 

[gua_rana]

Climbing up the highest hill around here, ~60 m up from the start point.

[youtube]UrerLuexvbs[/youtube]

 

[gua_rana]

2065 km on the CA, no problems so far. Mostly commuting 23 km a day.

 

[gua_rana]

2945 km, still going without problems. I've only replaced one tube for the rear wheel, and now brake pads front and rear.

Made a new AVG speed record . Round trip ~13.5 km in suburbanish area.






All time average speed 31,8 km/h
All time average consumption 17,7 Wh/km
Average trip 21,8 km
Min average speed 24,9 km/h
Max average speed 43,3 km/h (13,57 km; 25,8 Wh/km)
Longest Distance driven 42,37 km (29,7 km/h; 10,4 Wh/km)

 

[Andytheswede]

How would you prepare this bike for the winter?

 

[gua_rana]

I never used it at winter. I'm too lazy to change spiked tyres and wear clothes warm enough. I just drove my Volvo.

I recently sold this bike to my brother, as I moved close to my workplace. My next bike will have Cromotor + max-E