Safe's Electric Bike Project #001

[John in CR]

The best defense is a good offense. Add more power and the SUVs won't be so much of a problem for you. ie You can't hit what you can't catch. Traffic moves a lot slower here than stateside and my current ebike keeps up pretty well. When I'm matching the speed of cars I feel 1000% safer than when they're passing me. I just need about 5mph more and a lot more acceleration, and I'll be home free like on a motorcycle.

John

 

[Link]

When I'm matching the speed of cars I feel 1000% safer than when they're passing me. I just need about 5mph more and a lot more acceleration, and I'll be home free like on a motorcycle.

I feel that. Problem here is that even shoulder-lane traffic regularly hits 40mph. I'd need a second motor or an X5 for that. I think could get used to a twin-motor bike, though. 8)

 

[safe]

When I'm matching the speed of cars I feel 1000% safer than when they're passing me.

This recent incident was a case of me slowing for a right hand turn... the SUV wasn't willing to wait those seconds while I safely took the turn off the main road and swung out across into the opposite lane to pass me. It's the sign of someone in a big hurry.

On my second "forced offroad excursion" all the power in the world would have done no good because the narrow backroad left no room for me to go with the big truck staring me down.

My power situation is fine, I almost never get passed based on not keeping up with traffic except in those occasional uphills that are long and flat where the speed does drop, but in those cases people tend to be pretty good.

What seems to have happened is the psychology has reversed and people are again sloppy with their driving now that oil prices have dropped. In Missouri a gallon of gas is down to something like $3.65 or so after hitting a high of over four dollars.

So just watch out... people are back to their old habits...

 

[safe]

Ebike Riders "Golden Age" Has Passed

It was the combination of rising oil prices and (for me) hot weather that kept all the cars off the roads for a while. Now the temperature is way down (my SLA's don't like 70 degree weather compared to 90 degrees) and the roads are filled with cars again. I'm guessing that there are about double the number of cars now compared to a few weeks ago at the same time of day. (there are a lot of factors that seem to be contributing to higher traffic)

Things were so bad this morning that I just gave up and went back to my private race track and did laps.

...that narrow time period (from a week or two ago to a month or more ago) has to go down as the "Golden Age" of street riding for someone with an ebike. :|

Well maybe there will be a war for oil someday... :wink: (Georgia maybe?)

 

[vanilla ice]

Don't wait for it to happen. Don't even want it to happen. Just see what does happen.

 

[TylerDurden]

Well maybe there will be a war for oil someday.

What would you call the Iraq invasion?

• No WMDs
  No Yellowcake
  No Link to 911
  No Link to BinLaden
  No Exit Strategy

>4,000 US dead
Countless Iraqi dead

Take oil outta the picture... we'd be letting the Iraqi people starve like all the rest.

 

[John in CR]

This recent incident was a case of me slowing for a right hand turn... the SUV wasn't willing to wait those seconds while I safely took the turn off the main road and swung out across into the opposite lane to pass me. It's the sign of someone in a big hurry.

On my second "forced offroad excursion" all the power in the world would have done no good because the narrow backroad left no room for me to go with the big truck staring me down.

Wait, you're whining about someone safely passing you while you were slowing for a right turn. As long as there's no one coming the other way and they can see far enough ahead, what's wrong with that?

wrt your "offroad excursion", if the truck was really wide enough to take up the whole road then you don't have much business riding so fast on what is essentially a one lane road that has oncoming traffic. You're on a very narrow vehicle, so I think what you've left out of the analysis is why you failed to thread the needle and hit the ditch whose true depth was obscured by tall weeds. Once again we're left with an accident where the rider is touting the virtues of safety equipment, when there could have easily been something hidden in those weeds to be impaled upon, making the safety equipment a mute point. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want to hit the ground period. Please explain exactly what happened and what, if anything, you could have done differently to avoid taking the ditch. Then we all might learn something from it. Full motorcycle helmet with leathers, and designing crash protection into our bike construction aren't viable options for most of us, so help keep us safe Safe.

John

 

[Lessss]

YA! Diagram that there road and generate some spreadsheets in your defense!

 

[safe]

Please explain exactly what happened and what, if anything, you could have done differently to avoid taking the ditch. Then we all might learn something from it.

The equation is pretty simple... wide truck on narrow road. I was only going 30 mph which for me is just a cruising speed. The truck driver simply didn't make the effort to give me any room when we passed and while I tried to dance on the edge of the road I ended up falling into the ditch. Missouri backroads seem to have no rules about width and they simply vary from place to place. Often the roads have ditches for water drainage, so bicyclists have nowhere to go. The roads have no shoulders to them.

This morning I was again faced with the same situation with a narrow road and a big truck... this time I hunted for the widest piece of road and parked myself into it. But this time the truck did the opposite and it stopped for me, so I went ahead and went by his stopped truck and waved a "thank you" wave.

So not all truck drivers are homicidal maniacs.

I just passed 4,700 miles today...

(I'm looking forward to making it to 5,000 miles)

 

[John in CR]

Ok Safe,

I'll let you off the hook. It sounds like you just got a bit too far into the angled and/or loose stuff and couldn't hold the line. One last thought...If that ditch was 1000ft cliff instead, what would you have done differently at the time? That's the attitude I ride with.

John

 

[recumpence]

If that ditch was 1000ft cliff instead, what would you have done differently at the time?

John

Prayed feverishly? :wink:

Matt

 

[Link]

If that ditch was 1000ft cliff instead, what would you have done differently at the time?

John

Prayed feverishly? :wink:

Matt

Not survived?

No Link to 911
No Link to BinLaden

I read fast, and that kinda tripped me up a little. :wink:

 

[Miles]

I read fast, and that kinda tripped me up a little. :wink:

Yes, I've been there, too :wink:

Miles

 

[Link]

I read fast, and that kinda tripped me up a little. :wink:

Yes, I've been there, too :wink:

Miles

The wonders of using a common noun as an alias.

 

[Miles]

I read fast, and that kinda tripped me up a little. :wink:

Yes, I've been there, too :wink:

Miles

The wonders of using a common noun as an alias.

Except, in my case, it's not an alias :lol:

I wish I'd used eMiles, now....

 

[safe]

One last thought...If that ditch was 1000ft cliff instead, what would you have done differently at the time? That's the attitude I ride with.

The weeds were five feet tall. They had grown so tall that you could not even see a ditch or even a depression for where a ditch might be. So from my riding perspective I was taking a detour off into a flat but weeded area. At the very least I was hoping for a foot of shoulder before it dropped off, but no such luck. There are no mountains in the midwest, so it's never like you are going to take a 1000 foot drop... I don't think there's even a 1000 ft hill in the whole area.

Another complicating factor was that this narrow backroad varied in width and also was a rolling road. So you can't see exactly what is over the top of each hill and the timing was such that we both came over the top of a slight rise into a valley at the exact same time. The chances of all these factors aligning "perfectly" to make it so once "in" I had "no exit" is very rare.

The lesson learned is to recalibrate roads based on wide trucks. If you see a wide truck ahead you have to rethink the same road as a different road than if it's a car or an empty road. I went back to that road and looked and at the point I went offroading it was only about 20 feet wide... (the truck was probably 12-15 feet wide) for what is supposed to be a two way road. There was just no room and so the "sacrifice" was the only rational choice.

Had the trucker squeezed to his right edge things would have been fine... but I think he was trying to stay in the middle because he was also concerned about where his tires were going. (this road turns out to have ditches on BOTH sides)

It was the last of a week of hot days and I suspect the guy was hot and tired out (people lose sleep in the heat) and his reactions were sluggish to non-existent. So another factor is the heat... beware of lazy/sloppy driving in high heat (and especially at the tail end of a heat wave) because people are exhausted. The next day the heat broke and now it's very cool in the midwest. If it were a cool day things might have been different.

Whew!

Hopefully that fully analyzes the topic...

Once I fell into the "trap" of circumstances I had only one exit to take... the way to have prevented the situation was to simply not be at that place and at that time. (it's difficult to anticipate such circumstances in advance)

My finger is already feeling okay and I can ride and work with it without any problems. So for having gone nearly 5,000 miles and only going down once I've done okay.

 

[safe]

Track Speeds Way Up

What's nice about this long two year development process is that I have been tracking my progress by watching my speeds everywhere I go. From that I can see how much improvement I've been able to achieve through refining the bike.

I'm now hitting 43 mph on the fastest back stretch on my private race track compared to something like 36 mph when I first started. Up the hill I'm up to 25 mph from a starting speed of maybe 16 mph. On the exit of my sweeper turn (entered at 43 mph) that has a serious hook to it I'm up to 24 mph after once barely making it out at 12 mph. It takes time to learn your bike and learn the roads... you get better and better with time.

This just sort of reinforces the idea to me that it takes a long time to really develop this stuff and while I'm now two years into the process I can see it taking a few more years before I really got something so good as to market it.

On some of the turns I'm actually starting to have some frame flex because of the turning forces and that's never been a problem before. I'm finally starting to exceed the design abilities of the frame.

 

[TPA]

Track Speeds Way Up

On some of the turns I'm actually starting to have some frame flex because of the turning forces and that's never been a problem before. I'm finally starting to exceed the design abilities of the frame.

That's not very Safe. You better Link up some more framing members before you drive too many more Miles.

 

[AussieJester]

I'm now hitting 43 mph on the fastest back stretch on my private race track

:-| i seem to have missed when you obtained your own private race track safe...? was this around the same time your electric bicycle turned into a road racer 69km/hr is fairly hooting on a pushie though i must say, how are the bicycle tires holding up in the corners (staying on the rim wise i mean) if i recall you have grooves on this bike to help keep tires on? Is this still working well given that your now flexing the frame which to me looks very solid construction when before you weren't? Losing a tyre off a rim i know very well it ain't pretty particularly if its a front... Look forward to next installment anywayz, best of luck

 

[safe]

What I call my "private racetrack" is really a housing development project that was started and then because of the housing bubble (we Americans just went through) they abandoned it. So the roads were built, but no houses... no cars... some people do on occasion drive through it, but it's mostly unoccupied.

The picture is from the highest point on the track and the beginning of the fastest straightaway, which is actually more of a slalom. 43 mph is pretty fast for this stretch of road. (you can see the entrance and exit to the sweeper turn off in the distance) At this exact spot on the track I usually am going about 28 mph, by the time I'm making the gradual left turn in the slalom I'm up to about 38 mph and the 43 mph is just before I enter the sweeper.

The tires are 3" wide and I keep the tire pressure to the maximum in order to make them as stiff as possible. (and I do file grooves into the inside of the rim to help keep the tires from slipping) I'd prefer tires specifically designed for performance, but it's a little early to expect such quality parts. (maybe one day if my genre ever catches on)

 

[johnrobholmes]

Ever heard of Maxxis hookworm tires? 65psi 26x2.5 tire. They also make it in 24 and 20 inch

 

[safe]

Ever heard of Maxxis hookworm tires? 65psi 26x2.5 tire. They also make it in 24 and 20 inch

Wrap around tires are bad news for road racers. The lip in the edge of a road racer tire gives the rider feedback about how much traction you have and without it when the tire "goes" it goes without warning. I know about Hookworms, but the shape is wrong... you need the road racer edge shape:

Good

Bad

 

[johnrobholmes]

It has a lip, just a tad lower than the first tire

I have ridden them and they do ride nice at high speed. Of course 40mph isn't quite road racing speed.

 

[safe]

It has a lip, just a tad lower than the first tire

The history of road racing tires is actually rather interesting. In the beginning they had round tires much like the Hookworm and everyone was satisified at the time because you couldn't push them that hard anyway because they didn't have much traction to begin with. Then in the 1960's or so the road racers started experimenting with an extremely pointy shaped tire that almost had a triangular shape. The logic of the triangle was that you would lean and that would expose more surface area and give more traction which was true, but if you ever managed to get the tire to break loose it would slide a little then hook up again with HUGE force. (causing a massive and scary high side) Back in the 1960's the motorcycle road racing frames were super flexible and the idea was that you "rode the rails" through the turn and never, never, never risked a slide because that meant a near certain crash. Along came Kenny Roberts in the 1970's or so who had started out in the dirt track racing world and he was used to sliding his bike at 100 mph on the dirt and realized that it might be possible to also do it on the street. So Kenny Roberts racing team went about building a new stiffer frame and got some more rounded tires, but one's with a lip so that the tires would signal that they were breaking lose. A whole new riding style was adopted and all of a sudden people are sliding in and out of turns on the street... the modern road racing era had begun.

So the road racing tire shape has a long history to them, but you really only know about the value when you push things to the limit.

My rear tire is too pointy because the rear rim is too narrow to allow the tire to flatten out side to side. As a result the rear tire doesn't give the greatest feedback and is diffucult to break loose. (a wider rim might correct this) The front tire is the Kenda Krusader which (though now out of production) was a great tire... I'm hoping that some other company builds another tire at least as good as it was.

Anyway... rounded tires are not completely terrible, but there is a vageness about them when you are fully leaned over that does not help with your riding. It's like going backwards in time. (and on Hookworms you would lose traction before you ever got to that lower lip)

 

[johnrobholmes]

Is it more important on the front tire? I could see a totally round profile on the back being more rideable, depending on the steering tube angle.