Failed on my first big hill
- Thread starter KevinMull
- Start date
Just before I go.... from one of our stockists... unprompted....
"I have been riding electric bikes for many years but can honestly say the Wisper 705Torque is the most impressive bike I have ever ridden. The way it sailed up the steep Cornish hills on our scenic north Cornwall coast road recently was amazing. I am used to electric bike motors being quite noisy, but the 705Torque is almost silent. Its performance was also truly superb, not only did I pass many non electric bikes in the hills, but also easily overtook a couple of electric bikes! At the end of our hilly bike ride from Portreath to Hayle and back, a total of just under 20 miles, I had only used a quarter of my battery, which was amazing".
Just saying!
"I have been riding electric bikes for many years but can honestly say the Wisper 705Torque is the most impressive bike I have ever ridden. The way it sailed up the steep Cornish hills on our scenic north Cornwall coast road recently was amazing. I am used to electric bike motors being quite noisy, but the 705Torque is almost silent. Its performance was also truly superb, not only did I pass many non electric bikes in the hills, but also easily overtook a couple of electric bikes! At the end of our hilly bike ride from Portreath to Hayle and back, a total of just under 20 miles, I had only used a quarter of my battery, which was amazing".
Just saying!
Yes it is but only when operating within motors ideal operating rpm range.
A car without a gearbox at a certain speed would be more efficient at its optinum speed..problem is we expect vehicles to operate over a massive speed range..hence gearbox becomes a necessary evil..
Yes its less so with electric motors but its still the case..
Take two identical so called 250w motors. Put one in a hub with a fixed ratio to back wheel. Put other in crank with facility of 10 ratios (or 20 with yam)
Are folk on here really trying to say the one with fixed ratio will prove the better solution.
Bosch and Yam have invested millions developing CD units ?? I suppose they have got it wrong ? Perhaps they should read forum ??
No with all due respect you are not just saying. You are advertising. Some forums do not allow it. Hardly think you are going to be objective ??
And with all due respect to other posters suspect this is an issue on forum.
How many posters on here have a vested interest in hub drives or modifying pedelecs into ilegal ones..???
Advice to any posters.
Get to a dealer who can lend you CD drives and Hub drives. Borrow both for a few days.Many authorities are currently lending out pedelecs absolutely FOC for 3 months.Borrow a few and decide for yourselves who is talking BS and who isn't..
Ofcourse I didn't try every hub drive..but each legal one I did was only ok..every cd bike I borrowed was brilliant. ( Impulse/Bosch/Yam were all extremely impresssive.)
Do your own research and see what you think..
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I know that hill in Castleton very well. Drove up and down it a few times but never cycled it. I'll give it a go later this year when i'm a bit fitter. It's slightly less steep than Cromford Hill
Kevin
I,m in Rotherham from early next week. We can meet up in Castleton sometime and do that climb together. If you wish have a go on mine to compare..
(Been around Lady Bower today, Winnats is not that far away)
The basic theory is that if you take the mass that would have been part of the extra drivetrain components and replace it with active motor mass, you will be better off.
It has already been stated that there is a lot of technical waffle in this thread and I am in agreement. It has moved far from its original point. The reason you were beat by the hill in your OP was due to the torque sensing control system and nothing else - when you needed the power most, you couldn't tell the motor to supply it.
Thanks for the offer, I may take you up on that. I'll ask my brother to come along too. He has a Bosch CD and also couldn't get up Cromford Hill. I'll let you know.
My 2p
I own a Tonaro crank driver and a Woosh Gale hub motor( Bafang 8-fun).
In Milford Haven, I had to ride up a very steep hill on the hub motor bike.
My problem is arthritis, so I cannot pedal hard or fast.
The hub motor bike gradually slowed down on the hill and I wound the derailleur down through the gears to bottom gear.
My problem was that I could not pedal hard enough to keep the speed above about 5mph, the sweet spot of the hub motor. Below 5 mph, the motor rapidly lost power and I knew that if I had the crank driver, I would have kept going without too much effort.
In short, the hub motor is only good for medium hills when it pulls like a train.
The crank driver will seemingly go up anything.
However, I only ride on roads, in Wales, we have some really steep parts, but I am sure that off road riders would find something too steep even for the crank driver
I own a Tonaro crank driver and a Woosh Gale hub motor( Bafang 8-fun).
In Milford Haven, I had to ride up a very steep hill on the hub motor bike.
My problem is arthritis, so I cannot pedal hard or fast.
The hub motor bike gradually slowed down on the hill and I wound the derailleur down through the gears to bottom gear.
My problem was that I could not pedal hard enough to keep the speed above about 5mph, the sweet spot of the hub motor. Below 5 mph, the motor rapidly lost power and I knew that if I had the crank driver, I would have kept going without too much effort.
In short, the hub motor is only good for medium hills when it pulls like a train.
The crank driver will seemingly go up anything.
However, I only ride on roads, in Wales, we have some really steep parts, but I am sure that off road riders would find something too steep even for the crank driver
Just put a message on here...I,ll see it.. I,ll be going around Lady Bower sometime next week a couple of times. Its a nice easy ride , welcome to join in.
The hub drive on my bike is pretty crap for hills and if the battery is down by 30 or 40% then the assistance on an incline is virtually nonexistent. Luckily i dont have many hills where i live.
I dont discount hub drive because of this though, i'm sure there are hub drives that are loads better than the one i have.
I do prefer the look of hub drives though and they just feel better to use to me than a CD.... just gonna have to get a better one for my next kit.
I dont discount hub drive because of this though, i'm sure there are hub drives that are loads better than the one i have.
I do prefer the look of hub drives though and they just feel better to use to me than a CD.... just gonna have to get a better one for my next kit.
That's another way exponents of hub drives have for saying you couldn't push pedals hard enough !!!
Which is sort of why I wanted an ebike in first place. To help me press pedals down..???
Umm, not sure what the point you thought you were making there? Torque sensors are in no way unique to mid-drives.
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No never !!!
Point is if hub drive/ pressure pedal relationship is so high ie.needing more force than rider can supply when tired there is a fault somewhere..it totally negates point of ebike..if you can exert high torque at end of a ride you don't need an ebike do you !!
Hmm wife on hub drive and me on crank drive. Well there are some very steep hills in Bristol and both bikes got up. Efficiency with the two speed hub drives that Daveh talks about and a max assistance speed of 25 kph the efficient zones will cover 3-25 Kph. Just like a crank will.
Some people use the wrong gears and make the engines run inefficiently.
Some might try to hard at the start of the season and then tire before the day is out.
And some like to eat popcorn and watch the fight
Some people use the wrong gears and make the engines run inefficiently.
Some might try to hard at the start of the season and then tire before the day is out.
And some like to eat popcorn and watch the fight
Exactly what you describe is the achilies heel of the torque sensor. It is not a fault though, just a feature by design.
Not true, but I'll let you off. Winnats is a whole 300 feet more of climbing, and even with the more gentle gradients at the top and bottom included in my segment it has an average grade of 11% compared to Cromford at 9%. A whole different league really.
Winnats http://www.strava.com/segments/10040936 there's a big error in this particular profile.
Cromford https://www.strava.com/segments/1494228?filter=overall
ETA Just made a new segment for the steepest part (although the new mapping doesn't allow for much accuracy on the start and end points.
http://www.strava.com/segments/11810750?filter=overall
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The most gears an electric motor could sensibly make use of over a legal pedelec speed range of 5 to 15 mph is two.
d8veh rightly suggested the Xionda as one of the hub motors that can compete. You may have missed the significance that it's an automatic change two speed hub motor.
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D
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That problem only relates to the hub-motor on a specific bike. If you had a hub-motor with more torque at 5 mph of which there's many, it wouldn't slow down and stall out.
I can turn your argument right around by saying that I tried a kalkhoff with 26v CD up a steep hill. It completely stalled out, leaving me to push it. Next, I tried a bike with a hub-motor up the same hill, and it sailed up with little effort.
another example: I just converted a Bromptom with a tiny 200w Q85 motor. It could drag my 100 kg up a 14% hill without pedalling. The guy that has it now complains that the front wheel has so much torque that it loses traction going up very steep hills.
Some bikes and motors are better at some things than others, but you can't make a general conclusion by testing an unrepresentative sample.
I've done lots of tests with wattmeters and side-by-side comparisons. That data tells me that crank drives are not more efficient, and it also shows me that crank-motors don't climb hills better than hub-motors.
Finally, when did a crank-drive ever win the Bristol World Championships hill climb? I'll tell you. Never! It was won each time by a bike with a 250w hub-motor, last time by a guy that had hardly ridden a bike. I rest my case.
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