StokeMonkey/Xtracycle

[pdf]

Care to tell us the maker of your pack?

I don't know who actually makes the pack. I bought it from Cycle9 and that is who maintains it, but I doubt they do the original build. I would bet they are made in China initially. You could call them and ask; they are very reasonable to deal with. I'd recommend to anyone buying your battery in your "backyard" (so to speak) with a warranty. My logic is that a retail shop owner that has been in business a while knows which batteries are trouble and which are not and will quickly switch to hardware that is less trouble because it will cost them less in the long run.

The other approach is to buy from someone long distance whose hardware has a good record and hoping it pays off. Like anything man-made, reliability is not 100% and you should make your choice to minimize frustration and cost. In my case, I had read a lot about battery problems and decided it would be best to buy everything from one vendor I trusted. I will draw an analogy to the computer world. If you have a computer made by one company, application software made by another, and an OS made by a third, you will never get anyone to own the problem. They just point fingers around the circle. If you get everything for an ebike conversion from one vendor, then the blame for "hardware interactions" can't be laid elsewhere. And homespun ebikes are a natural for bad hardware compatibility.

That is my view on the subject of batteries. If you don't have someone close enough to return ship your battery to, then you have to take the latter approach. Sometimes the "cutting edge" of a technolgy is also the "bleeding edge".

 

[llile]

A little late arriving at this thread, but if you are considering a Stokemonkey, it is a great motor. Efficiency figures quoted above are true - stokemonkey can achieve 50% to 100% more miles per watt-hour than a conventional hub motor. I hacked one onto a recumbent, just by welding on a sturdy mounting bracket under the seat. One could probably mount one behind the seat on a conventional diamond frame if one were creative. I can climb any hill around here, an area known as the "river hills". Country roads are typically shot straight across the landscape, ignoring the hills at every little stream, making for some short but wicked hills. 20% grades are for real, and the stokemonkey walks up them although I don't have particularly low gears. My chainrings are set up 52:36 in the lowest gear, way too high to pedal up such a hill manually, yet I can crawl up with a load of groceries at 6-8 MPH.

 

[joe tomten]

Right now Clever cycles is having some difficulty in supplying the stokemonkeys:

"Stokemonkey overview
Note: As of October 2011, Stokemonkey is unavailable. Facing a near doubling of component costs and minimum order quantities from our suppliers, we are evaluating how to make Stokemonkey available again. We cannot respond to requests for status updates; we will publish all news. Thanks for your understanding."

http://clevercycles.com/products/stokemonkey/

I don't have much hilly riding (some though) and the 9C 2807 does very capable job with my xtracycle.

Though once you are doing heavy stuff with big hills - nothing beats the mid- drive through the gears approach.

 

[llile]

PDF,

That is a very interesting review, one of the few I've been able to find for the StokeMonkey. I wonder about those "20% hills" -- how long are they? The hills I need to climb are anywhere from 1-4 miles and more. I'd considered the SM but couldn't find any real-world accounts of its hillclimbing capabilities, especially over longer distances.

Also... am I correct that the pedals always move when the motor is engaged? If this is true, wouldn't it flog your ankles half to death if you suddenly have to use your feet to balance the bike while still under power? For example, if you bog down on a very steep grade and may need to take your feet off the pedals?

thanks!

My 20% hills are short, a few hundred feet, but here is the kicker: Since the stokemonkey is running at optimum speed all the time (equivalent to a 90RPM pedal cadence)it is always running cool. ANY hub motor is going to get hot on a long grade, if it is not running at ideal speeds, and you can use the ebikes.ca hub motor calculator to determine which hub motors will fry and die. A stokemonkey will run up a long steep hill just as well as a flat, always at optimum speed. ANY hill with a road on it.

It takes some getting used to when the pedals move under power. You quickly learn to back off of the throttle if the feet/pedal/motor gets out of sync. Then you are on a regular bike allusudden. You can't stop the motor with your feet, it is Lance Armstrong powerful, so either you bail out of the pedals (not more than once or twice) ungracefully, or back off the throttle. You WILL NEVER bog down on a steep grade unless you ride in deep mud. (Stokemonkey is not an off-road vehicle IMHO) I can stokemonkey up slopes that I cannot pedal up, at 6 MPH. My friend has a driveway that is steeper than any road I know, and I can accelerate up that road with the SM, can't even pedal up normally on an unpowered recumbent.

Stokemonkey is like having Lance Armstrong in the trunk.