Cycling UK Forum

Not knowing the location it's difficult to comment, but am tempted to ask you what would have happened if the peds had been cyclists on the blind bend coming towards you?
Glad there were no major injuries at least

Yesterday's ride in the Brendon valley - a heron sitting in the road

https://youtu.be/WvJSCqrGskE

I watched it fly around for some half a minute or so, unhelpfully out of camera.
Also chased a flock of sheep & lambs down the road, although that is fairly routine.

I fitted bike carriers onto the roof bars of my Astra (also 2016!) - the hidden pop-up brackets on the car made a very secure fixing for the bars.

I needed to carry 4 bikes so was happier with roof bars rather than hanging them off the back.

Don't know about the Astra but some hatchbacks can't use the usual rear carriers, or impose quite severe weight restrictions.

Our current car has a towball mounted 2 bike carrier which I prefer, though there are pros and cons to all systems - YMMV

Gangzoom wrote: It's also one of few eBikes that look half pleasing to eye, rather than a bodge DIY job where someone has just stuck a battery to the down tube, like the similar priced Giant offering!

It is unarguably pleasing to the eye, as well it might be considering the cost.

By way of comparison, I 'DIY bodge' converted 4 of our bikes (all better than the Boardman) for a total sum less than £2k with batteries of around double the capacity (min 450Wh). You pays your money I guess

Gangzoom wrote:I own an EV so I know how to look after the battery - the pack on my bike has yet to be charged to 100% nor discharged below 20%, and kept in doors overnight.

My (admittedly limited) understanding is that you should fully charge the battery at least occasionally to re-balance the cell groups.
Not charging to 100% is good advice for cellphones, but maybe for not e-batts

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to give better advice

Weight is probably the only criticism I would accept as half-reasonable - though I should point out that my MTB pre-electrification was already heavier than the current crop of (road) e-bikes.

You can of course remove the battery to leave just ~1.5kg of excess weight, as I have had to just once to get over a locked farm gate.
I also removed the rack bag and it was still a struggle, MTBs are not light.

I'm sure no malice intended
I was taken with the fixed gearing in his signature line - 49" really??
Love to watch that descending the hills around here

roubaixtuesday wrote:Just turn up on day one with one, then either clip it to your rack or 'lose' it.

It'll be fine

I tend to agree - it's probably just a tick-box requirement for the organisers to satisfy their insurers arbitrary tick-box requirement.

I doubt anyone cares or can be bothered with policing it.

Might be an issue perhaps in the unlikely event of an accident?

Rocky (needs a wash)

Hi Nathan and welcome!

Does your wife have an MTB already? - if so then consider a conversion kit which will be far less expensive.

I have converted 3 of our bikes using kits from a Chinese supplier (though shipped from the EU so no hassle with import duties) and can thoroughly recommed them. There is Whoosh bikes in the UK who seem to have a good reputation and will supply more or less the same kit at slightly higher prices.

Phil Fouracre wrote:Interesting differences! We’ve been amazed at the lack of vehicles on every ride locally!

Yes, today I took the A road I'd normally bypass for 5 miles, cyclists beat vehicles 4-3
Even got a couple of friendly waves from white van men, might have been amused by the large kangaroo on my jersey though.

Ditto - for the ~8 miles along the A39 from the Porlock Toll road to Lynmouth I was passed by, in order:
1. Farmer's pickup
2. Exmoor Park ranger Land Rover
3. Another pickup
All that came towards me was a Devon Police traffic patrol who then turned round and passed me following the second pickup - enforcing the 'essential travel' rules maybe?
OK that road is hardly a motorway for most of the year anyway, but this being Easter week it is very very quiet - as is everywhere else down here

I've had a Garmin Oregon 450 for many years and a Legend for years before that so am firmly in the Garmin camp.
Won't lie to you, there is a steep learning curve, but it is probably just as steep for the other supliers too.

Once over that then the unit does what I need - follow a pre-determined track or route, route planning on-the-fly (needs care!!) and logging ride details. It also links my HR monitor (& cadence sensor if I had one) and saves that data with the ride.

I found their latest effort at a PC interface (Basecamp) the work of Satan so am still using the veritable Mapsource, though that might just be familiarity. I can load it with freebie Open Source mapping (velomap, OpenMTB etc.) as well as my old collection of Garmin maps.
(Tip - don't bother with the OS series maps, they are not vector maps so do not scale well - IMHO they look unreadable at any scale)

I believe the general consensus for Garmins is if you want a bike computer with some mapping, go to the Edge series.
If better mapping is needed then the Oregon/Dakota..... etc. is preferable.
I did have an Edge Touring Plus once and was profoundly grateful when it died - it was not replaced.

Garmins are certainly not short of idiosyncrasies but you do learn to live with them (eventually)

ETA: Battery life is less of an issue now with USB charge packs, but the simplicity of replaceable AA batteries in the Oregon & ilk was my concern back in the days of long Audax rides.

HTH

https://ebike-mtb.com/en/france-bans-il ... tb-tuning/

My car has start/stop which I am happy to leave on to do its job.
It does however not turn the engine off under various conditions such as low battery, engine too hot or cold etc.
Clearly Ford need to be made aware of the strength of feeling on the subject and amend their firmware urgently.

Agree with all the above.

To summarise my limited experience with hub motors:
Swytch bike (FWD 250W 40Nm) and Yose (FWD 250W 30Nm) - neither cope with >20% gradients but this is mainly due to wheelspin/loss of traction
Yose (RWD 350W 35Nm) easily copes with 25+% gradients on a heavy MTB.

Mid-drive units probably cope better with hills as by using the correct gear they allow the motor to spin faster, hub motor spin at the wheel speed and for hill struggles that isn't an optimum operating speed (I think)