Panasonic Folder

[guildbass]

Hi everyone! just thought I'd touch base. I recently bought a rare (in the UK) Panasonic folding Pedelec. It came to me having been crashed and the rear derailleur mech was torn up. The battery was pretty much dead and the wiring up to the handlebar was damaged. I put a healthy derailleur on and put new white-wall shopper tyres on the 20" rims, along with some smart composite chrome finish mudguards.
The battery was opened up and I found it full of 'C' type tagged cells, 20 of them. They were 3.5aH NiCads and dated from 2001 so I splashed out on 20 tagged 5aH NiMH cells and rebuilt the battery. The damaged wiring was repaired nicely and all properly heatshrinked up. After replacing a blown fuse from he time the control wiring was cut, it's now running beautifully...She's a little cracker! Here's what it looked like before I put road tyres and nice mudguards on!

Being a Panasonic it has the famous Panasonic crank drive, just like a Kalkoff or the earlier Giants. The bike itself is very high quality with an excellent locking folding system, Panasonic torque limiting brakes and excellent ancillaries. The effective range was originally claimed to be about 17 miles on 'Light' assistance and the new cells should up that to about 20 miles. We have found however that it is extremely easy to ride 'power off' and indeed at a reasonable cruising speed on the flat the assistance is not actually being used so it may well be possible to stretch the range by switching the assistance on only when hills loom.

anyway, I look forward to participating in this forum!

regards

Jon

 

[flecc]

Congratulations on that buy Jon, and for fixing it up, you've got a great bike there. It's good to hear that the tagged C cells fitted into the folder's small battery case ok.

 

[Blew it]

Hi Jon, welcome aboard.

Glad to hear your rescue project was a success, it certainly looks like a useful bike.

I hope you enjoy many miles of riding the machine.
Regards
Bob

 

[guildbass]

Hi Jon, welcome aboard.

Glad to hear your rescue project was a success, it certainly looks like a useful bike.

I hope you enjoy many miles of riding the machine.
Regards
Bob

Thanks! Mine isn't quite like that... the bizarre mudguards are (or were) the same but it doesn't have the suspension seat post and that battery pack is a bit more modern looking but it's essentially the same. Not particularly highly geared, and re-tyre-ing it with Raleigh Record 20" tyres has dropped the gearing slightly more too, so more a city commuter than a town and country ride. It doesn't seem to need it's 7 speed derailleur...It cracks along in top gear with little effort from rest so I'm temped to lose the derailleur system and fit a Sturmey Archer three speed. I can swap rear cogs easily with one of those to find a perfect set of ratios with a taller top gear, the 'power only when pedalling' system will sit nicely on the 'pedal backwards to shift' needs of the SA and best of all, the wheels I have kicking around have a hub dynamo built in. With the latest Cree LED lights kicking out massive gobs of white light for little current requirements that seems to be the way to go. I have a pair of extremely powerful lamp modules that run on anything from 4 to 18v and I've just ordered some Shottky diode bridge rectifiers so I should be able to get some pretty serious lighting going without needing batteries!

Living in the country is lovely but there is very little ambient lighting and everywhere is miles from everywhere else!

 

[guildbass]

Congratulations on that buy Jon, and for fixing it up, you've got a great bike there. It's good to hear that the tagged C cells fitted into the folder's small battery case ok.

It is,and I imagine many of the Panasonic crank drive bikes will have a similar battery so it isn't beyond the wit of many of us to re-cell a tired unit.

 

[flecc]

Indeed, I have a support site for the Panasonic units and there's a recelling page for the full size battery, using a prebuilt pack in this case:

Flecc's Panasonic support site