Deristricted E Bikes

[thebob]

Road e-bikes are assisted to 45km/h. 

Back to the MTB, there is an argument for guys hitting big jumps that the 32km/h limit is too low, especially if you hit the governor as you are on a jump face. Different kettle of fish, but worth noting.

As for the cheats: I've had people I call friends blatantly cut routes at Moto Enduro races and stand on the podium with zero shame. If someone wants to cheat, they will do it. The local scene is too small and does not have enough resources to check all the bikes before events. Even if they did, a skelm KFC would usually be enough for someone to look the other way

[Pieterlab1]

I am all for ebikes and I love riding mine, but if you want to chip your ebike, you should not race with it.

Ride your chipped ebike with your chommies and enjoy it, but when you enter a race, you race with a legal ebike.

[ChrisF]

13 minutes ago, thebob said:

Road e-bikes are assisted to 45km/h. 

Back to the MTB, there is an argument for guys hitting big jumps that the 32km/h limit is too low, especially if you hit the governor as you are on a jump face. Different kettle of fish, but worth noting.

As for the cheats: I've had people I call friends blatantly cut routes at Moto Enduro races and stand on the podium with zero shame. If someone wants to cheat, they will do it. The local scene is too small and does not have enough resources to check all the bikes before events. Even if they did, a skelm KFC would usually be enough for someone to look the other way

That is the reality

 

Cheats will cheat.  And this include mommy, on the ebike, waiting at a waterpoint to tow daddy to the finish ....

 

 

Separating start groups to negate any such benefit is the way forward

[Mook]

14 hours ago, Robbie Stewart said:

uhm. I would like to point out that I ride amish bikes with no electronic or other form of aid other than my legs. And I would also like to say that I can reach some seriously stupid speeds when I point the bike downhill and at my 120kg mass and the speeds I manage to achieve, I would probably cause some serious damage to anyone who would venture across my path causing a collision. And that is best case outcomes right there. I prefer not to ponder the outcome in the worst case scenario.

I am not too sure what e-bike limitations are supposed to achieve if that is the intended goal?

By way of example, I was catching, and overtaking, cars descending Suikerbos into Hout Bay a couple weekends back simply by lowering the dropper and tucking behind the bars and not even bothering to pedal. My momentum was enough to get me to hovering around 70kph with little effort.

Traditional weapon of mass destruction 😵

[The Ouzo]

you can have all the rules you want, but unless Johnny CheatAlot checks the e-bike box on entering, or you have expensive and slow checking of each bike at the start, policing the rules is very difficult.

[DuncanDoughnuts]

1 hour ago, thebob said:

Road e-bikes are assisted to 45km/h. 

Back to the MTB, there is an argument for guys hitting big jumps that the 32km/h limit is too low, especially if you hit the governor as you are on a jump face. Different kettle of fish, but worth noting.

As for the cheats: I've had people I call friends blatantly cut routes at Moto Enduro races and stand on the podium with zero shame. If someone wants to cheat, they will do it. The local scene is too small and does not have enough resources to check all the bikes before events. Even if they did, a skelm KFC would usually be enough for someone to look the other way

45km/h on road bike ? oh my I feel cheated now. I want a E-road bike now

[RustyHWR]

17 hours ago, NotSoBigBen said:

Whaaaaat 😲

Help my trap riders that cheat?

Can't be ... I've been told that the only ones riding them are the ones that really need them for health and other related reasons and are only out to have fun. In fact if they take a long time that's the whole idea... I'm shocked to the core!

I'll never look at them in the same light again 😜

 

[Heinrich Hattingh]

2 hours ago, Pieterlab1 said:

I am all for ebikes and I love riding mine, but if you want to chip your ebike, you should not race with it.

Ride your chipped ebike with your chommies and enjoy it, but when you enter a race, you race with a legal ebike.

Not sure what "racing" is being done here. It's taking part in an event with lots of people, coming in 1st or 350th doesn't matter, they just want to have fun. People want to take part in adventure sporting events and get outside. Racing happens for the analogue chaps at all the "marathon" events and at specific E-bike national and world championships for those on e-bikes. 

Anyway, the debate about ebikes and chaps not liking it is old. It's not a fad, it's not even the future of mountain biking, it is mountain biking. 

[love2fly]

My racing days are mostly behind me but for sure, if I ever buy an e-bike, which is unlikely, I will derestrict it on the very same day!

I don't think you can correctly assess an e-bike class or even an event like the e-bike world's (won by Alan Heatherly previously). It's not just about derestriction. How do you determine if a bike pushes out an extra 50W? You could "dyno" them but it's not practical and you could hide a competition mode in the software.

The only way would be as per Karting races where the engines go into a pool, which is impractical in the e-bike scenario.

[Carla Gianchino]

18 hours ago, ChrisF said:

 

Amish Bikes

I really really like this description of non e-bikes, made my day 🙂

[BigDL]

For Sani this year, because we're doing the trail, which is where the e-bikers are located as well if I understand correctly, I had to select what type of bikes we were riding (e-bike or regular). Presumably they use this info to separate the motor supported guys from the non motor supported groups. It did get me wondering though about the extra organisational ball ache of providing enough charging points for e-bike batteries and creating rules about how many batteries you can use etc. - presume it's just another layer of complexity, but maybe balanced out by the increase in entries as folks who maybe wouldn't do events without e-bikes now have that option. 

[BigDL]

5 minutes ago, love2fly said:

My racing days are mostly behind me but for sure, if I ever buy an e-bike, which is unlikely, I will derestrict it on the very same day!

I don't think you can correctly assess an e-bike class or even an event like the e-bike world's (won by Alan Heatherly previously). It's not just about derestriction. How do you determine if a bike pushes out an extra 50W? You could "dyno" them but it's not practical and you could hide a competition mode in the software.

The only way would be as per Karting races where the engines go into a pool, which is impractical in the e-bike scenario.

Could you perhaps do it by battery capacity, almost like go as fast as you like but you're restricted to X or Y capacity battery for the event, so battery management becomes important?

[The Ouzo]

19 minutes ago, Heinrich Hattingh said:

Not sure what "racing" is being done here. It's taking part in an event with lots of people, coming in 1st or 350th doesn't matter, they just want to have fun. People want to take part in adventure sporting events and get outside. Racing happens for the analogue chaps at all the "marathon" events and at specific E-bike national and world championships for those on e-bikes. 

Anyway, the debate about ebikes and chaps not liking it is old. It's not a fad, it's not even the future of mountain biking, it is mountain biking. 

[DuncanDoughnuts]

1 hour ago, Heinrich Hattingh said:

Not sure what "racing" is being done here. It's taking part in an event with lots of people, coming in 1st or 350th doesn't matter, they just want to have fun. People want to take part in adventure sporting events and get outside. Racing happens for the analogue chaps at all the "marathon" events and at specific E-bike national and world championships for those on e-bikes. 

Anyway, the debate about ebikes and chaps not liking it is old. It's not a fad, it's not even the future of mountain biking, it is mountain biking. 

Ebiking is not Mountainbiking, it's a whole new sport. 

its the same as when Mountain-bikes came on the scene and the road bikers scoffed and turned there noses up (cycling in general is full of elitists ) Ebiking is a whole new sport and it is in the process of finding its feet. One day it will be classified as  different class of riding and racing on its own. 

There are many teething problems and they will eventually be sorted and once the numbers grow enough there will be events that are ebike specific and there wont be the cross contamination that some of the elitist on here are moaning about. 

 

But totally off topic now...

De-restricting ebikes is uncool. Just like some drugs

Edited February 7 by DuncanDoughnuts

[Iron]

E-Bikes are not going away so the lets just incorporate them .

The solution is simply give them their own class behind the " std " bikes and in that class they have two batches, Stock  UCI regulated bikes and "OPEN" class where you can do what you like to your e-bike.

[Pieterlab1]

1 hour ago, Heinrich Hattingh said:

Not sure what "racing" is being done here. It's taking part in an event with lots of people, coming in 1st or 350th doesn't matter, they just want to have fun. People want to take part in adventure sporting events and get outside. Racing happens for the analogue chaps at all the "marathon" events and at specific E-bike national and world championships for those on e-bikes. 

Anyway, the debate about ebikes and chaps not liking it is old. It's not a fad, it's not even the future of mountain biking, it is mountain biking. 

Huh?

Where did I say I don't like ebikes or that it's a fad?

I have two ebikes.

I have 2 Amish bikes.

I ride them all.

I race them all.