Swizzbee owner stands up, this is secondsimon
Hello ladies and gentlemen!
Hope you are all doing well. I found this thread sometime ago, and I should post something here, as I happen to own a Swizzbee 50c.
I bought mine as a (supposedly) 1 year old occassion from a private person and eventhough the cycle wasn`t as advertised (the batterypack wasn`t LiPo as the First Simon has in his swizzbee, but NiCd 10 Ah), nevertheless I gave it a try and in short my experiences.
I have to note something about hills, sadly we haven`t got much of them overhere, in Hol(low)land, so therefor I can`t say much about the behaviour on (big) hills. We do have little concrete obstacles, where roads and cyclepaths go over the highways and I never had any problem getting up and even passing other cyclists on them.
The big disadvantages of this cycle: When you are out of juice, YOU are out of juice. What I mean is, it being a fairly heavy cycle, once your batteries are drained, You will become drained shortly after. So the manual driving mode is somewhat heavier, less comfy. Anyway you will get home.. eventually...
Another disadvantage, I managed to interrupt the electronics somehow, and the batteryunit had to be sent back to swizzbee. Good news is though, they have excellent service.
Another thing, there are things which can malfunction, such as the little sensor, which watches your pedalling. In a small casing at the base of the left crank are a few nylon plastic kogwheels. On my swizzbee one of them was basicly a bit loose in the casing, which resulted in the lack of engine support. After a few experiments, this was magically solved.
Some weeks ago, I managed to hit a bird and the poor animal had internal bleeding, so basicly I had to kill it in order to stop the suffering. This is a disadvantage in my eyes, as birds often aren`t prepared for cyclist going
22 mph, which was my speed at that time. So this is something to watch out for.
Now the good news, it is fun! It`s like being a young kid again, playing around on the street. Meanwhile with heavy wind keeping you back, you`ll still manage to speed up to 10 to 15 mph. Not the fastest way to go, but who wants to go fast? I personally believe in a saying "if you live fast, you die young" and besides, I enjoy looking around.
As for the speedminded readers, I managed to speed up to 36 miles an hour on one occassion, sadly I was reaching a turn so I had to use the brakes. However it is really unusual to reach such speeds on a normal boring flat road.
@Simon
Nice to meet you! And I was wondering what the specs for your batteries are, I reckon your swizzbee is configured with at least one LG LiPo 10 Ah battery, however 20 Ah (2 battery units) is optional, just curious, as I am considering the upgrade.
The NiCd battery lasts at about 16 (10 miles) km in my case, though when fighting a tough wind expect 10 km. I use it to pedal between my home and our weekend business which is a 10 km distance, when I reach the store, I simply connect the cycle to the mains (that`s where the built in charger comes in handy!).
I also made some minor changes to the cycle, different handlebars, I fitted Ergon handle bars on it, with little barends, actually looks kind of kinky
And I also removed the terrible saddle and replaced it with a ISM ADAMO ROAD saddle. I have to say, these changes were worth it!
If anyone wants to know more about the cycle, feel free to let me know!
Simon