marka-ee
Regular
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2020
- Messages
- 257
I went out on a limb and purchased a Dualtron 'City' electric scooter. This is the one that is sporting 15 inch wheels and a 1.5 meter overall length. So it's like a inflated version of a regular e-scooter. This scooter rides on the polyurethane style suspension system. In my experience, this type of suspension is much worse than regular springs.Even though my new scooter has 15-inch wheels, in riding around tattered sidewalks and roads, my Segway G2 Max is far more comfortable and smooth riding.( it uses old-fashioned springs.) This kind of surprised me. The glowing reviews of a few of the scooter reviewers on YouTube seem to message that the Dualtron City is a very smooth riding scooter. It really isn't. So these guys are basically paid shills that are basically lying.
So today, in a part exploratory, part solution finding exercise, I took apart the suspension to see what's going on. I was surprised to see that there is no real bearing involved at all in the suspension pivot points. saw pictures of older dual trons with PU suspension and they used some impressive tapered roller bearings in the pivot points apparently the new ones or at least mine doesn't use that whatsoever it has a cap with a pressed in what looks like steel bushing that rides against the shaft near where the splines are where these suspension arm attaches and to cap it off they didn't even put grease on it. the phrase 'out of sight, out of mind' seems to apply here. I adjusted the suspension arms to spline clicks to make the scooter ride lower and I also put a little graphite grease on what I thought was the bearing points which were completely dry.
This new scooter used a black suspension cartridge on the back which is their stiffest and a red suspension cartridge on the front which is slightly softer but in my opinion they are both way too stiff. I will give it a test ride tomorrow to see if the more horizontal suspension arms help soften the ride slightly. According to some trigonometry analysis of the geometry, it should be about 20 or 30% softer because of the angles getting closer to horizontal. (maximum 'moment', for the engineers out there.)
a couple of other observations that I'm not super happy about. The way that the stem folds down is still using a Very primitive, slide over tube with a couple of quick release clamps. I guess the patents cost too much to pay to get a proper quick release lever like other scooters have these days.Oh, and it squeaks and groans a lot, and people recommend putting lithium grease on it, which seems a little bit dangerous or stupid to me. The controllers are old-fashioned square wave type and make considerable noise. Apparently, Dualtron fans seem to like this sound, but I think it sounds like something that was made 20 years ago. Imagine if a Tesla made those sounds. Give me a break.
Now, for some positive comments, the overall build quality as far as how it's put together and the use of mostly stainless steel screws with thread lock is a good sign.The battery is removable, you can open the top of the deck and just disconnect the main power and bring it into your apartment or whatever to charge. This is also good. I also found that if I put the battery in my backpack, the scooter which is quite heavy is a bit easier to load into a train, for example. The headlight is quite powerful. I'm impressed by it. I couldn't care less about the ridiculous multi-colored light show and the fact that they label the Dualtron brand name on about eight different places on the scooter with the backlighting. It's a little bit overkill and too much showboating and making it look like some kind of a backstreet carnival for some reason. Positively, the i3 display is now Bluetooth enabled and you can turn off the light show, which is good, and also do many of the settings, which is also good. No more P codes or any rubbish like that. However, unlike a segway, it's not possible to read out cell voltages and they're using some kind of cheapo BMS, which of course doesn't report anything. Another positive point for Dualtron is they don't charge the batteries all the way up to 4.2 volts per cell. So I guess people are learning that professional EVs never do that and they're starting to get a hint.However, it's unclear whether the BMS cuts in and does any balancing at all with this reduction of charge voltage. So it's not clear, but I think people are recommending that you charge it up to 4.2 volts per cell now and then just to do some balancing. So of course the instruction manual doesn't say anything like that.Perhaps they're interested in selling more batteries after about two or three years.
Anyway, I hope I can cure the rough ride, which is bugging me by either re-addressing the suspension height again, or perhaps I'll have to spend a couple hundred dollars and change to a softer PU suspension unit.
So today, in a part exploratory, part solution finding exercise, I took apart the suspension to see what's going on. I was surprised to see that there is no real bearing involved at all in the suspension pivot points. saw pictures of older dual trons with PU suspension and they used some impressive tapered roller bearings in the pivot points apparently the new ones or at least mine doesn't use that whatsoever it has a cap with a pressed in what looks like steel bushing that rides against the shaft near where the splines are where these suspension arm attaches and to cap it off they didn't even put grease on it. the phrase 'out of sight, out of mind' seems to apply here. I adjusted the suspension arms to spline clicks to make the scooter ride lower and I also put a little graphite grease on what I thought was the bearing points which were completely dry.
This new scooter used a black suspension cartridge on the back which is their stiffest and a red suspension cartridge on the front which is slightly softer but in my opinion they are both way too stiff. I will give it a test ride tomorrow to see if the more horizontal suspension arms help soften the ride slightly. According to some trigonometry analysis of the geometry, it should be about 20 or 30% softer because of the angles getting closer to horizontal. (maximum 'moment', for the engineers out there.)
a couple of other observations that I'm not super happy about. The way that the stem folds down is still using a Very primitive, slide over tube with a couple of quick release clamps. I guess the patents cost too much to pay to get a proper quick release lever like other scooters have these days.Oh, and it squeaks and groans a lot, and people recommend putting lithium grease on it, which seems a little bit dangerous or stupid to me. The controllers are old-fashioned square wave type and make considerable noise. Apparently, Dualtron fans seem to like this sound, but I think it sounds like something that was made 20 years ago. Imagine if a Tesla made those sounds. Give me a break.
Now, for some positive comments, the overall build quality as far as how it's put together and the use of mostly stainless steel screws with thread lock is a good sign.The battery is removable, you can open the top of the deck and just disconnect the main power and bring it into your apartment or whatever to charge. This is also good. I also found that if I put the battery in my backpack, the scooter which is quite heavy is a bit easier to load into a train, for example. The headlight is quite powerful. I'm impressed by it. I couldn't care less about the ridiculous multi-colored light show and the fact that they label the Dualtron brand name on about eight different places on the scooter with the backlighting. It's a little bit overkill and too much showboating and making it look like some kind of a backstreet carnival for some reason. Positively, the i3 display is now Bluetooth enabled and you can turn off the light show, which is good, and also do many of the settings, which is also good. No more P codes or any rubbish like that. However, unlike a segway, it's not possible to read out cell voltages and they're using some kind of cheapo BMS, which of course doesn't report anything. Another positive point for Dualtron is they don't charge the batteries all the way up to 4.2 volts per cell. So I guess people are learning that professional EVs never do that and they're starting to get a hint.However, it's unclear whether the BMS cuts in and does any balancing at all with this reduction of charge voltage. So it's not clear, but I think people are recommending that you charge it up to 4.2 volts per cell now and then just to do some balancing. So of course the instruction manual doesn't say anything like that.Perhaps they're interested in selling more batteries after about two or three years.
Anyway, I hope I can cure the rough ride, which is bugging me by either re-addressing the suspension height again, or perhaps I'll have to spend a couple hundred dollars and change to a softer PU suspension unit.
