aquaratza

Haha, I feel like you need a hug. I love my eBike (which I bought as a direct result of this thread)... but I still ride my normal bike. Rode it both yesterday and today

I rode Jonkershoek last weekend with friends and a freshly bought annual pass eish. Both glad I got that ride in but also concerned about the future of the trails :/ If anyone is interested, below is a graph of atmospheric particulate over the last ~3 days. Data collected from an accurate homebrew laser sensor. Commissioned only a few days before. I'm based in Durbanville. The particulate is currently continuing to climb, again: You can see that up until the fire started the air quality was extremely good at around 0 ug/m3 for PM2.5. The US EPA considers anything above 55.5 ug/m3 for PM2.5 to be "unhealthy". and here are two nostalgic photos from my ride a week ago:

Soon we'll be using ebikes to fill in the shortfall during peak ????.

Restless youth roaming the streets causing trouble was a problem long before ebikes.

Looks like properties closed in France and Germany: I'd imagine there was nothing stopping people riding scramblers on that land in the past. Some people are assholes, doesn't matter if they're walking, running, riding a bicycle, riding an ebike or riding a scrambler. Disrespectfullness is technology agnostic. Opening your land, or it being open de facto will get abused. If you open your land you have to accept that you'll get assholes and either make peace with that as a land owner or put steps in place to limit assholes. You can't reason with a mob. It just takes one. Tygerberg club and the Traverse is a good example.

I have a ~25 kg Turbo Levo and a 13 kg Stumpjumper and it feels like the Levo goes down hill a lot faster than the Stumpy. There are sections on roads downhill where I stop pedalling on the Levo, but keep pedalling on the Stumpy. They have identical wheelsets. My Levo goes uphill faster, but it still feels like a heavy bike. It isn't as nimble as the Stumpy. I've also found the Levo feels a lot more forgiving on trails downhill; it seems to really stick to the trail. On the topic of speed limiting: my friend's Levo stops helping him at 32 km/h. His bike is a newer Levo and is still under warranty, so he hasn't tried modding it to remove the speed limit. As a result I always pull away on road downhill sections, regardless of the bike I'm on, which really irritates him. Such fun haha.

You can't automatically sync Wahoo rides to Vitality. You can do it manually (as above) or with some 1337 coding skills.

MTO is disappearing?

I'm a data bug, I try and log everything, within feasible constraints. My ebike emits power meter data, but I suspect it under-reads by 10% or 15% - the reason I say this is because my Quarq XX1 power meter on my normal bike always reads higher numbers for similar rides and is very flattering compared to the ebike. I base the "motor assistance" number on the battery % at the end of a ride vs the start multiplied by the battery capacity. My bike's BMS does coulomb counting (as many do), so the battery % is accurate. I started the ride on 98% and finished on 49%, delta of 49%. Battery capacity is designed to be 504Wh, but is 498 Wh currently, so utilisation of 244 Wh. 244 / 1.6 hours of riding is an average of 152.5w. I have an outboard battery that I use for longer rides. Battery usage depends on how much you put in and also the mode you're in. 100% assistance (aka Turbo) tends to be very inefficient, so it chows the battery. 50% (aka Trail) tends to give a good compromise but is still slutty and 15% (my "Eco", most bikes use 30% for eco) is mostly enough to overcome the weight of the bike. Eco is great for a good workout and when you need it you can jump into the higher modes. Power data keeps you honest to yourself.

Interesting question: I do more cross-country riding usually, so I run higher tyre pressures for reduced rolling resistance and better puncture headroom/tolerance. I do this for both my normal and ebike, which have the same wheels and tyres on them. So yes, in my case I was running high pressures which would have negatively impacted grip. I'll keep that in mind for next time and deflate them a bit, thanks!

A friend and I rode Jonkershoek yesterday on our Levos (mine's an alloy 2017 model, his is a 2020 S-Works). I've ridden there before on my nomal bike (Stumpy), but that was because I was riding with people on normal bikes (no point riding ebike if everyone else is on a normal bike imhpo/respect). It was huge fun climbing up the sides of the valley, but crazy how much upper body input was required to keep the bike going straight and keep the front wheel down. Turbo has the side effect of causing the rear wheel to slip a lot (power without control?). The steep sections of the terrain were super rocky/pebbly. I rode with 29" Lyne wheels (2.35" Maxxis on the rear) but I may try 27.5" / 3" fatties next time (which came with the bike). My friend and I didn't get to the top, maybe next week Average assistance of 150w, average human power input of 165w. Ended ride with 50% (on 500Wh) battery despite bourgeois riding.

They did delay it? Just like Sani. It isn't about whether worse things happened or not, or being able to afford to pay in the first place, that's immaterial. These operations are profit-generating businesses. It's about entries having been paid for, the associated service not being provided and refunds not being offered, full or partial.

Well said Mamba. My friends and I were booked to ride the August (and then this) event. The no-refund thing is dodgy and short-sighted.

I received some Makro vouchers around 7 years back from my bank and figured it would be a cool idea to rekindle my childhood farm cycling with a bike from Makro. I bought a HUFFY and then took it to Jonkershoek, as one does. It fell apart on the gravel circular route and it put me off cycling for another 5 years. To be fair when I eventually gave it love and fixed it up it was okay and made me want to get something better.

I'm just getting an idea of the depth of consideration in kranswurm's position to see if there's an interesting debate in there or something to be learnt, but their answer was "No", so I guess it's time to make dinner .

If you put a motor on a bicycle, is it still a bicycle?

Yup, not an eBike. I alluded to these kinds of bikes becoming a problem back when Sani2C anounced they'd be allowing eBikes. I was thinking of the Greyp G12S at the time. I am an eBike owner.

lol ????, as shaper said. I also own a Kickr and my Garmins work fine with it.

Huh? My Garmin Edge 530 (2020), Fenix 3 (from 2015) and Fenix 5X all support power meter data. They log the data, they process the data internally into Garmin's VO2 performance model and they can display the data in a variety of ways, including charts colour-coded to power zone. Garmin's power-meter based metrics are high-end. There's more power-meter related functionality than what I've bothered to explore. The data also works well with platforms like intervals.icu and Strava (among others). Clever systems also know how to combine the HR and Power data to yield interesting stats (like intervals.icu's HR decoupling, which can indicate insufficient hydration, etc.) The Rival appears to be an incomplete product that's been pushed out into a very crowded marketplace. Good article by Ray/DCR.

Micro Robotics sells a 500mah LiPo battery for R 98, which is about 67% bigger than the original 300mah battery. The dimensions seem to match up with the original battery (2.5x1.8cm for the 500mah vs 3.2x2.4cm for the original). So if you're feeling intrepid you could try and replace the battery yourself This is my plan for my Fenix 3, but my unit's battery still functions well.

Was the eBike bright orange?

I pretty much already do that for 75% of my rides. It depends who I'm riding with. If it's with other eBikes then I up the assistance to match them, otherwise I usually ride with 10% assistance, which is enough to overcome the weight of the bike (24kg in my case). In practice 10% assistance mode on my bike, for the hilly routes I usually ride, works out around 40w average assistance. Always nice having that extra power for getting to and from the trails, for that I sometimes turbo. If I completely turn off my bike, I don't feel much of a difference on downhills and flats, but uphills are definitely harder... still do-able though. I raced someone the other day up a hill and I had completely turned off my bike. I would do it more, but it causes connection issues with my computer.

I must say it is very liberating to choose how hard you want to work. You don't ever have to "save yourself", say if you're riding one day with a fast group of friends and the next day with a different group. You can work as hard as you want on the first day and not worry about being incapacitated the next day haha. I met up with friends yesterday at Contermanskloof. I ran turbo there from my home, switched to 10% assistance mode at Conties and then when I was done rode turbo back home. It was so cool. I used 5% (38Wh) of my bike's battery at Conties and 45% (338Wh) there and back hahahahaha I run eco around friends with normal bikes and by "eco" I mean +/-10% assistance.

It's called trolling

Your post is very insightful. Like any tool, ebikes have their place. If I'm riding with friends who aren't on ebikes, out of respect, empathy and impatience haha I ride my normal bike. The ski-lift use is certainly an obvious use case in my mind. Good deals on ebikes come up occasionally in the used section of Bikehub. Several Specialized ebikes in the 2017 vintage, alloy, have sold over the last few months for between R 42k and R 48k. Transmission Wear: There seems to be some debate about how heavy ebikes are on transmission wear. The drivetrain will have to conduct a consistently larger amount of power through it compared to a normal bike, so one can expect additional wear from that but like any bike it heavily depends on how hard you ride the bike and how you change gears. Most ebikes in the Specialized range still come with 11-speed cassettes and the components in the drivetrain that will see additional wear are relatively cheap. A replacement cassette for my bike from Evobikes (11-speed X01 compatible) is about R 2500, which really isn't crazy. I haven't sorely missed a 12th gear (which I have on my normal bike). Motor Longevity and Servicing: In terms of motor longevity and maintenance, I've done some research (I like to know how my machines work and where the failure risks are). The Brose motor in my Specialized ebike seems to be at low risk of water ingress through a large gasket that runs the perimeter of the motor and gearbox case. The case sits "upright" in the frame, so if water gets in it always drains to bottom bracket side of the gearbox (as opposed to flooding the top part where the motor sits). There's a great video online from Performance Line Bearings where they disassemble and demonstrate the replacement of the bearings/sprag clutch and gasket on a motor damaged in that way. This should be at a low risk of occurring and if it does their overhaul kit is around R 3900 sans shipping and customs. The Brose motors have a rated life on the belt of 15000 km, which is easy enough to replace and costs around R 2000 with some extra bits. I suspect, as time goes on, more and more bicycle shops will up-skill themselves to be able to do motor overhauls (and/or replacements). In Cape Town it appears we have at least one person that can do overhauls (Knipe Racing apparently). The battery is the other major wear component. In the case of Specialized ebikes the battery packs consist of 18650 cells, which can be repacked locally (there's a shop in Milnerton that can do it). Specialized, AFAIK, still sells the older battery packs. One can make the packs last longer by not draining the batteries entirely, avoiding TURBO all the time and leaving the battery between 30% and 80% charged when not in use. I think future servicing and sustainability isn't hugely removed from a normal bike and will become easier over time. This isn't a promo for Spez, it's just what I'm familiar with.