Ebike Commuting

[georgehenry]

Ebike commuting in the Heat Wave

I have just had a perfect four days commuting to work and back on my 2015 Haibike Yamaha. 14 miles cross country to work in the afternoon through beautiful countryside and on great tracks. Then 10 miles back home on the road in the evening.



I have enjoyed great weather and having seen the prediction for the heat wave had dragged out my 12ft by 3ft deep circular temporary pool from the shed and filled it with water. Luckily I am not on a water meter. So on my return from work it was straight in the pool to cool off. Sometimes when I had to pop to town to do some shopping before setting off to work on a different old rear hub electric bike I own I had a dip in the pool before setting off!


If you enlarge the picture above you can make out a Heron


Probably beyond the limits on the enlarge facility on my cheap digital camera

Fortunately at work I spend the majority of my time in an air conditioned environment. There is also a shower at work so I can clean up before putting my work clothes on. So 96 miles ridden pushing the total mileage on The Haibike ever higher and now standing at 13,918 miles ridden since I bought her, and still using the original battery which continues to perform very well.


Ferntastic, almost obscuring the track.

I am now formally working my three month notice to take my work pension and retire when I am 60 closing a very enjoyable chapter of ebike commuting to work and back. Although I am looking forward to not having to get up at stupid O clock in the morning or going to bed at three in the morning I will definitely miss my Ebike commute.



One interesting fact for any of you guys that travel at speed on the road on a crank drive Ebike mostly in your top gear. My experience of doing that is that it will wear out your top gear cog before the rest of the cassette.

I changed my chain at its wear limit and this time also changed my top gear cog as well as it had just started to start jumping under load but not the cassette as all other gears were working well. I had found individual cogs being sold on Ebay and that Ebay replacement top gear cog has so far completed 736 miles and extended the life of my part worn cassette by the same. The replacement chain I put on reached its wear limit very quickly in just over 400 miles and as the rear cassette and chain ring will need replacing next time I have just carried on riding and will change the whole drive system when my replacement top gear cog starts playing up. But there is no sign of that at the moment.

I have always used KMC chains, but the obvious issue from what I have said above is that in my experience all the drive train components, cassette, individual cassette cogs, jockey wheels, chain and chain ring wear at different rates and means if you run a worn out chain it will also take out the other components. However I can get a chain to the wear limit depressingly quickly as it gets dirty on my off road ride to work and then pounded home on the road when it is dirty.

Even only replacing a worn out chain once in the case above has extended the mileage of my rear cassette to 1772, rather than under a thousand if I had changed the whole cassette rather than just the top gear.

 

[passionate off roader]

The Haibike ever higher and now standing at 13,918 miles ridden since I bought her, and still using the original battery which continues to perform very well.

That's excellent service.

Enjoy your retirement.

 

[georgehenry]

By chance as I set off home from work my clock on the display on my bike was showing 14:00, and after my 10 mile undulating B road journey when my wheels stopped turning on my driveway it had just changed from 14:28 to 14:29. I used 41% of my 400Wh battery that is now 6 and a half years old. An average of over 20.5 miles an hour. Not bad.

 

[snafu]

All I can say George is "Living the dream" You can't retire I look forwards to reading about your trips. My trips would start with photos of a very busy A5 with numerous uninterested car drivers trying to kill me. Don't get me wrong there are some great local nature reserves etc where I can relax for refreshment but the 1st mile or so can be a life or death experience. Your experiences keep my aging vengeance battery going, I still see 25-30m per charge which I guess isn't bad for a 3 year old 8.8hr 250w setup.

TTFN
John

 

[georgehenry]

The highest risk part of my journey is the bit on the road from my house to where I access my first track, but after that I am indeed very lucky with lovely countryside.

We have more in common than ebiking, sadly, I was bereaved myself in August 2019.

I look after my Yamaha battery so carefully because it would cost a fortune to buy a genuine Yamaha replacement. It does however seem to be lasting very well.

I have two other electric bikes that have Chinese derived systems where buying a battery is much more reasonable.

I think retirement can be both an opportunity and potentially hazardous if you become inactive and mope around. I will have to try and keep busy.

"Living the dream", is the much used saying in my soon to end profession. I wonder if I am in the same industry as you?

 

[georgehenry]

It had to happen. I have been riding to work under the threat of heavy downpours of rain for a week or two now. I have been lucky, and dodged them all.

Four miles in to my 12 mile commute yesterday my luck ended.

I could feel it was about to happen and changed out of my T shirt, shorts and trainers into my wellies, rain jacket and over trousers.

I put my T shirt, trainers and shorts into my Ortleib panniers.

Wow, did it rain, almost biblical proportions. It made me realise that I must change my hand grips. When wet, the well used original hand grips with slightly polished surfaces become slippy. Not what you want in a hand grip.

It was actually quite fun. The tracks quickly became overwhelmed and in some places were more like small streams. Being an electric bike I was a little concerned for its electrical integrity, but it all kept working.

I was also concerned that the storm could have included lightning, but fortunately not.

I have fitted an assortment of mudguards to keep water of the motor and me as much as possible and they did their job.

My waterproof trouser are relatively new and did a good job of keeping the water at bay, important as the trousers stopped water getting into my wellies, and I had no spar socks. My jacket is old, nuff said, top half got very wet..

No rain coming home and I did so in my dry, T Shirt, shorts and trainers, thank you Ortleib panniers. My waterproofs had also pretty much completely dried while I had been working, so ready to face the fray again.