Project Q bike

I've never been fully satisfied with electric bikes.

I'm not going to put names to the following bikes because all e-bikes fall short of what I think they should be, though the informed might work out which they are.

Take one highly thought of one that's underpowered. On one trip up a very long hill commencing at 1 in 5 (20%) with me working hard at 4 mph, gradually increasing to 6 mph as the hill lessened and ending with me exhausted well over ten minutes later as I finished it's 1.3 miles length, I remember thinking that I'd be no more tired walking up there and keeping the £1200 in my pocket.

Then there's the well known bike that only works properly if the rider helps it! That's a crazy reversal of logic if ever there was one.

Yet another has adequate power to potentially do what we expect from electric bikes, but that potential is squandered by inappropriate parts and sheer lack of cycling qualities, efficiency and essential basics.

And what are we supposed to think about the very expensive bike with drive through gear suitability for hills that has to be pedalled away at first until the motor kicks in? When I come out of the supermarket with 10 kilos in bags that, added to my own and the bike weight, means I have to pedal over 100 kilos, how am I to do that up the steep one way hill outside to get the motor going?

Or the bike, not a "parts bin" job, but one designed from the ground up with the only rear sprocket well out of line with the chainwheel?

With every indication that the industry wouldn't reach the demanding standard I wanted before I was too old to cycle, the only answer was to use my own skills and knowledge, but kits were often no better unless illegal, and I was insistent that I wanted to create a legal bike. Not because I'm prudish about the letter of the law, but to prove that it was possible by good design and build to achieve everything that was needed within UK law.

The result is based on one of my own bikes, but drastically changed, and when you first see the Q bike it will disappoint many, especially if they are fashion concious. But fashion has been the curse of the cycle industry for nearly three decades now, making the majority of bikes the most inefficient that's ever been known in the whole history of the bicycle, a curse that's been carried over into electric bikes.

So don't be a victim of fashion and fooled at first glance, the Q bike is an always legal bike that in road use does everything we'd like but never completely get. It's combination of versatility and capability is better than any other UK legal e-bike in the world. (he modestly said )

N.B. For those owners who've previously asked about photos of the internals of the Quando and Torq motor, they are included in the Q bike article.

To see my motivation for the project, the problems involved, how they were overcome, and the all-round abilities of a truly good electric bike, click here. It's a long read.

There's a 13 page PDF download available at the foot of the home page as well.

.

Edited May 16, 200718 yr by flecc

Very interesting article Flecc, and it's nice to see you named your creation after me.

Q

Nigel

congrats flecc

wow nice job as you say with the right gears and others mods made you have shown what other bike companys should be doing to get us as near to perfect. Well done flecc your the MAN:D NIGEL

Hi Flecc,

I'm positive I could hear you banging about in the shed from Cambrideshire!

That is truly an excellent series of modifications and I'm sure eZee would be very interested to see what you have done.

cheers

Russ.

An excellent job Flecc, very well planned & constructed, you must be rightfully pleased with yourself.

You say your creation is not fashionable, I would disagree, surely if the purpose of fashion is to attract admiring attention then I would say your new bike is very fashionable, at least when going uphill.

Also worthy of congratulations are the well written articles which I've read briefly and already learned from, I will digest them fully in due course.

Ian.

Thanks Quicken, Nigel, Russ and Ian, I'm grateful for your positive comments.

Yes, Ian, I'll certainly admit to being very pleased with the result. I knew that I couldn't fail to get a substantial improvement, but it's always impossible to predict the degree of the cumulative effect of efficiency measures. That's even more than I'd hoped for, my aim being that the bike should handle anything up to 20% for an unfit rider. The fact that it can perform well beyond that is the biggest bonus possible, and the range is the icing on the cake.

I'll confess that to my eyes it is fashionable, but knowing the popularity of the MTB style, I doubted that others would share my view.

One thing that has really surprised is that the efficiency has topped the Giant Lafree Twist series, with 12% higher consumption producing a minimum of 42% more performance. I could never have predicted that outcome.

.

flecc

as you possibly know some of what you have done is beyond me, ime intelligent enough to learn but its a slow process now, but i still can understand some of your achievements and i congratulate you on all of them.

it has been a thought in the back of my mind for a while now why doesn't this man build his own bike, it must have been obvious to anybody reading your posts and looking at your work that you could improve on the stock item, and you certainly have.

mike

i'm very impressed flecc

(and I'm also happy for having found a forum of this quality!)

with your permission I'll link your new page in our Italian forum in order to give to all of us the chance of studying your solution

Edited May 16, 200718 yr by Leonardo

Many thanks Mike and Leonardo.

Yes, please do link to your forum by all means Leonardo. From the final page of the Q Bike article there's a link back to my Torq Talk website where any one of your members can contact me if they have a specific query on something.

.

Bravissimo flecc!!

I'm stealing from Leonardo's words, but bravissimo flecc! Or, in more modern parlance, respecc flecc! (hehehe! - been saving that one ).

Really impressive, and as you said before, its what it does & the way it does it that counts, and by adding the "legpower" gearing to the bike plus all the other mods added together the Q is not only highly practical & flexible for transport with or without loads on almost any gradient, but aesthetically there is a harmony of rider, bike & terrain working together which must, as you say, keep the smiles coming all the time - plus a choice of gears, speeds and load-carrying methods too!

I've wondered what the Quando plus gears would be capable of, and you've shown what, and then some! What a result on the range too, I've been impressed at the good efficiency of the Torq motor at a medium throttle setting, but in the Quando's wheels the motor must be fully at home and even more efficient :-) add the cumulative effect of all your mods and the Q is some bike I must say - more efficient than the Twist indeed!

I also get a bit lost in the engineering involved (you're not alone mike :-)) though I sort of understand the main ways you've improved the efficiency. Now the first question I'm very curious about the ease of pedalling to higher speeds and how that has been achieved: what would you say are the main factors? the efficiency of your large chain & cog wheels, or motor tuning, or that the motor is in 20" wheels (which I would have thought should make it harder to pedal to higher speed, compared to larger diameter, or have I got that completely wrong?!) or a combination of all the above?! Or something else entirely! The changes you've made, when added together, seem to have improved efficiency beyond simply adding gears, would you agree?

I must say I'm not surprised your other bikes are languishing in the garage ;-).

Congratulations on your new Q and the fun I'm sure you're having (long may it last!), and most of all for showing just how good a well-designed and implemented electric bike can perform. Let's hope that the Q bike inspires more of the same

Edited May 16, 200718 yr by coops

i'm already Qeuing

What a load of rubbish Flecc, you expect us to believe all these words and pictures ???

All I can say is God Bless You.... You are showing the way to designers and manufacturers, It just shows the knowledgeable analytical practical and innovative approach that is required to to push boundaries forward. I hope some body sits up and takes notice. I have !!

Congratulation for your labours.

Richard

Thanks very much for your generous responses Stuart and Richard, greatly appreciated.

On the efficiency of pedalling Stuart, the motor isn't involved other than it's accurate internal alignments not adding any unnecessary drag.

The elements are in two parts, first the general "rider-regardless" improvements which on this bike will enable any rider to realise almost all of it's abilities. Then there's the added rider matching, which adds an additional performance dimension. The two are together in the following and you'll recognise them in each where both exist.

1) The way in which the derailleur ratios match the bike's requirements, and also the fact that my abilities are matched in as well. You'll appreciate that top competition riders have their bikes for the Tour de France and the like individually made for them. We should ideally have the same. Choosing the ratios is part science, part black art, a bit like that in any field of racing.

2) The difference between the Kenda 2.125" tyres and the expensive but vastly superior Schwalbe Marathon Plus 1.75" ones. That improvement in rolling resistance is also enhanced by the thinwall latex low loss innertubes, in comparison with the thick rubber Kenda jobs. Accurately chosen tyre pressures also contribute here.

3) The vital element of the rider to bike geometry, which you will have noted I've carefully matched. We all have limited powers, whether Lance Armstrong or a pensioner, and the vital thing is that not a scrap of energy is wasted through body to bike mismatching. For that to be fully realised, it's necessary to feel totally at home with every aspect of the bike, both the physical elements directly bearing on the pedalling, and with every feature and function. The slightest element of being ill at ease affects performance, the psychosomatic factor.

4) Finally there's the additional matching of the physiological elements for the rider, the crank length to cadence preference matching for example.

Plus the parts efficiencies I've already specified in the main article of course, sprocket sizes etc.

Edited May 16, 200718 yr by flecc

Interesting Stuff Flecc,

Would I be correct to Sum up as:

comfortable, well designed base bike + correctly optimised motor + good range of gears = Very efficient long range electric bike?

You put my 'more amps plus more volts' philosophy to shame

I'd put it a bit differently Baboonking. Taking the elements you've mentioned:

The comfortable bit in terms of the choice of rear motor has been kept from the original, but the other comfort features like the heavily padded saddle and spring seatpost have been scrapped of put out of action because they are inefficient and definitely undesirable. So comfort is a bad start point.

Well designed base bike ONLY applied to the motor and some of it's associated parts and the full size wheelbase basic frame, otherwise the detailing was terrible from a bicycle efficiency point of view.

Apart from my ensuring the best build, the motor was already perfectly optimised for legal e-bike use.

The good range of gears doesn't of itself ensure efficiency, the ratios, component choice and matching are as important. A bike can have a correct range of gears but still perform below par because of wrong ratios, or low efficiency and/or mismatched parts for a particular application like megarange for example.

It's the sum of this attention to small details that makes the difference between the good products of experienced cycle manufacturers and the assemblers of poor bike parts thrown together for the discount market.

A lot can be discerned from looking at top race bikes. You'll never see a padded saddle, or a sprung seatpost, or any form of suspension, or for that matter a disc brake.

Those soft elements are missing because they are rider energy absorbers. The disc brake would just be extra weight because the rim is already the largest disc brake possible, so it's best to use what's there.

.

It looks great Flecc - I don't pretend to understand the finer technical detail but I am (as ever) in awe of the depth of your knowledge and its practical application. We are lucky to have you, for both your patient responses to our endless questions here and for your contributions to wider world of e-biking.

We are not worthy...

Nice one, fatmog :-)

Thanks very much for your generous responses

I think the plaudits are well-deserved & well-earned

Thanks for the rapid & full reply to my query. I hesitate to continue this line of enquiry, for fear that the Q bike is becoming the mysterious "X bike": "how does it achieve these feats of endurance?!" but curiosity is getting the better of me...

So would I be right in saying that the lion's share of the Q bike's speed "gains" without the motor on (apart from the new gears, obviously) are due to its customisation to your body-frame and riding style, allowing (for you) improved "pedalability" & hence more efficient conversion of your legpower to speed? Since you are a strong cyclist, that could account for quite a high speed gain, no?

Given what's been said about the relatively increased drag of a hub motor at higher speed, I'm quite happily surprised you can do 24mph without motor assist!! All I can say is, unless for some reason there is less drag from the same motor in a 20" wheel than a 28" wheel (and as I said before, logically I would have expected more, not less? - due to faster rotation of the hub relative to a 28" wheel) you must be able to give it some welly to achieve that sort of speed!

I wouldn't say I'm a fit cyclist, nor have I really tried to pedal a Torq to high speed, and my frame size (6ft near enough) may suit a Torq a bit better than yours, but like you I also start to struggle beyond 13mph: and that's for a bike with similar weight & the same motor as the Q bike, but 28" wheels and minimal rider customisation.

So you can see why I'm surprised, and I'd like to understand the factors that assist your efficiency on the Q bike better (note the careful wording - because I'm aware now that it's you and the bike together, not just about the bike now, is it ).

Stuart.

I recognise that motor.

Hello Flecc

Still haven't got through all the article yet but looking at the pictures that motor looks awfully similar to my hub motor kit. I also cut the thread for the band brake off but haven't yet rebuilt the wheel with an offset as you have so my rear brakes don't work very well, though the cheap pads and v-brakes may have something to do with that.

When I bought my motor kit my intention was to use it on my high quality Marin MTB but I hit problems with the width of the motor and the gears etc but my idea was to electrify a bike which had very high quality components and frame rather than make do with a cheap and poor quality one which I have ended up doing. This has detracted from my enjoyment of the kit (though I do get a lot of use out of it). I think you have hit the nail on the head in improving the non-electric parts of the bike and thus indirectly improving the performance of the whole.

Hmm, if the motor is the same as mine then that's good news as all I have to do is get a 36V battery + charger and I'll have a Torq kit. I reckon my controller will take it as the MOSFETs are rated at 60V and 42A (at 100 degrees C) so it could be a cheap(ish) upgrade.

However, taking on board your article, perhaps it'd be better to improve the efficiency of the bike before ramping up the power. Particularly since at speeds over 20mph most of the power is wasted fighting wind resistance. There is certainly room for improvement on my setup so your article has given me lots to think about.

Many thanks

Paul

No, most of it is the bike Stuart, the rider optimisation is the lesser part by far.

The mechanical differences between a good bike and a bad bike are often very small. Because our power is so small, slight losses in efficiency can have quite a severe effect. In terms of sustained power at my older age, keeping the output at 200 watts for a while is quite tough, so it doesn't take much of a mechanical inefficiency to knock a small hole in that.

There's a good comparison here with the Gossamer Albatross, the pedal powered plane that flew the Channel. The rider's power and the craft's efficiency were just enough for it to happen, but the minutest loss of the craft's efficiency would have brought it straight down. In other words, the difference between success and total failure was miniscule.

I'm not a very powerful rider, but up to just over three years ago I was able to ride an unassisted but quite efficient bike up to 24 mph with an effort, but I couldn't keep it there, dropping back to 19/20 mph. Equally I could get the Twist up to 23 mph in a burst as it's quite efficient, again dropping back to 19/20 mph, and I can still ride the Twist at 19 or so mph for a three quarter mile flat stretch on Kent Gate Way. That now also applies to the Q bike, both the 24 mph burst speed and the sustained speed.

In another example, the Torq as an unpowered bike has nowhere near the same bike only efficiency as the Q bike. It's main energy loss is the standard tyres that are still fitted, there's a further loss from it's high profile, and more due to it's derailleur, which is over-high geared for manual only use because it's matched to the motor's over-gearing. It's larger wheel could only be more efficient if suitably tyred and at a size equalised pressure, but even then, it would still be slower on acceleration due the higher energy needed to accelerate the rim/spoke mass that's at an 8" greater radius. Now add to that the lesser element of the rider not being matched to those features, plus the effect of the rider energy drain due to the front wheel gyroscopic forces and the motor wheel's unsprung weight bounce and you can see the scale of it's total shortfall. But it's also clear that most of it is the bike, not the rider matching that's the cause of then lower performance.

The same applies in the opposite direction, that of efficiency gains, most is the bike, only a smaller part is the rider matching.

.

I presume it's called a Q bike because of "Q cars" which are supposed to look ordinary but are fitted with powerful motors and running gear to have higher performance.

There were also "Q ships" in WWII which looked like ordinary freighters but instead were heavily armed to knock out German subs.

Of course it may just be because you just got tired scrapping the letters off the frame of your donor bike the Quando.

Mike

Thanks FatMog, but you are all most definitely worthy. I'm a great believer in open source and shared knowledge, since I believe that in principle all knowledge belongs to all people, simply because the content of the knowledge has always existed and cannot be owned by anyone. Now I bet that causes some head scratching.

.

Hi Paul

There were some similar motors around, but yours sounds different. Mine didn't have a band brake thread, just a plain steel drum.

Yes, definitely address the bike efficiency first.

For example, lash your motor into a club rider's slim tyred efficient bike and it will really motor. Add your power and it will take off even better yet.

Then switch it into a knobbly tyred full suspension mountain bike and you'll wonder what went wrong with the motor. Now pedal that and wonder where your strength went.

That's an extreme example, but there are degrees of that with every bike that's less than fully efficient.

Edited May 17, 200718 yr by flecc

I presume it's called a Q bike because of "Q cars" which are supposed to look ordinary but are fitted with powerful motors and running gear to have higher performance.

 

There were also "Q ships" in WWII which looked like ordinary freighters but instead were heavily armed to knock out German subs.

 

Of course it may just be because you just got tired scrapping the letters off the frame of your donor bike the Quando.

 

Mike

I posted it on the introduction Mike, you must have got tired of reading. Here it is:

"Why Q Bike? Well, it's derived from the Quando, and like the police Q cars, it's capable of much more than it seems to be at first sight."

.

clearer now

Thanks again for your answers flecc, thats much clearer now. I think my brain must have gone into info overload: I completely forgot about the wheel rotation energy thing :o kind of begs the question, what's the pro's/cons of larger diameter wheels in general (apart from the obvious one with hub motors of less geared reduction required), especially with wider tyres? But that's a whole other thread I think .

I remember when I got round to changing the knobblies on my MTB to semi-slicks: wow! the difference was amazing! It just felt like a different bike altogether! Swapping the Torq tyres for marathon plus would make a difference I'm sure, though probably not as big as knobblies to slicks . Do you really notice the difference of the Q bike's marathon pluses over the standard kendas then? (I can feel my fingers itching to switch some more tyres now ).

One thought occurs: that effect of larger diameter wheels taking more energy to accelerate them would make them inherently unsuitable for "bursts" of speed (by the time you've got a bit of speed up, you've got no energy left!) hence constant sustained speed/power is more the order of the day, and I guess thats one reason why the Torq is classed as a commuting bike.

A bit off-topic, but that could be another tip for economy of power use on the Torq: accelerating more slowly & smoothly could save some energy & help extend your range:-).

Stuart.

Hi Paul

 

There were some similar motors around, but yours sounds different. Mine didn't have a band brake thread, just a plain steel drum.

 

Yes, definitely address the bike efficiency first.

 

For example, lash your motor into a club rider's slim tyred efficient bike and it will really motor. Add your power and it will take off even better yet.

 

Then switch it into a knobbly tyred full suspension mountain bike and you'll wonder what went wrong with the motor. Now pedal that and wonder where your strength went.

 

That's an extreme example, but there are degrees of that with every bike that's less than fully efficient.

I'll post some pics of my motor and will try to work out the gear reduction etc. I suppose most geared motors look similar inside as there aren't many different ways to design a motor.

Yes, the first thing I did was to put slicks on the bike and as you say the difference is astounding, probably the best and cheapest improvement you can make to an electric bike.

Paul