This is my second go at getting this First Impressions thing done since the first one, after 45 minutes of typing, went the way of the Dodo when I got logged out.
Anyway, on to my impressions of the 905se City. I had taken the day off to greet my new arrival.
Bikey arrived in a huge and very stout cardboard box. No anorexic cardboard packaging here. This stuff was compressed yet plump giving rise to one of the sturdiest cardboard boxes I’ve ever seen. That was a good start and was the first of many good starts to come.
After cutting the tape that held the lid in place (no folding flaps here, a good honest and sturdy lid) I lifted the lid off to be presented by miles and miles of bubble wrap. It was stuffed down all sides in an effort to stop the bike moving around in the box, it worked. After removing all the BW stuffing I was presented with the sight of a huge clump of BW and it was in this that I knew Bikey (I’m not an imaginative namer) was living. He must have been toasty warm and snug as a bug in a rug. I lifted him out of his box (he’s not very heavy and that surprised me) and put him on the floor.
More BW came off by the shed load until Bikey was revealed in all his partially built glory. The lil’ guy weighed in at about 23kg (from the reading material) whilst Old Bikey (a PowaByke Euro 6 stripped and mounted on a fully suspended frame) weighed in at a hefty 38kg. The difference in riding weight will become apparent later.
I followed the assembly manual to the letter and in the space of 45 minutes Bikey was stood in front of me looking every bit a class act.
Sadly, I was not to get to ride him that day (oh, please, keep it clean, LOL) as the battery required an initial 12 hour charge. I was going to have to wait for the next day.
Well, that looks all pretty good but the only fly in the ointment was that on the front mudguard one of the black plastic support arms was missing on the end of one of the mudguard struts. As it happened, the clearance between the tyre and mudguard is huge so I was able to dispense with the black plastic arm I did have and was able to attach the struts to the front forks directly with no problem at all.
That was pretty much it, no fuss, no muss – as they say. Ah! Yes! There was one other minor problem. The spanner supplied is the wrong size for the front wheel nuts. One end too large, the other too small. Do yourself a favour and use a 14mm spanner to do them up, if you use the supplied 15/13mm you’ll only end up rounding off the nuts and make it harder to remove them if you have to and you won’t get the correct tightness and you would run the risk of skin parting company with knuckles. Been there in the past so I wasn't about to savour the delights of revisiting that experience. I got the proper spanner from the shed.
Hey, that dynamo lamp is great! Impressions so far are very good, I’m way impressed.
Okey dokey, it’s ten to seven and I crawl out of my pit and go do the necessaries in the bathroom before getting dressed and slinging a coffee down me gizzard. I slip the battery into it’s compartment. I press the red button and all the lights come on. Good job I’ve been lurking on the site or I wouldn’t have known what the buttons were for as I had no user manual and the one sent by E-Bikes Direct prior to Bikey’s arrival was incorrect (made no mention of the green button and no mention of the hi-lo box).
Which brings me to one more problem (well, not a problem exactly) during assembly. I noticed two purple wires hanging down from the cable box behind the bottom bracket. Each wire had a connector on the end and they matched each other. Turns out if you connect them together you get pedelec mode only. Leave them disconnected for UK use but stuff them up inside the cable shield at the bottom of the bike.
Anyway. I tested Bikey before taking him out for our ride to work (7.5 miles away) and everything seemed fine, and indeed it was.
So, I’m all decked out in my waterproofs (keeps me warm as they are windproof, too) and I take Bikey out onto the street and mount him ( there just is no clean way of saying that is there? Mount him, sat astride him, thank God it’s a bike we’re talking about, huh)!
The first thing I notice is how light he feels. Everything about him feels light yet strong. I pop him into low and start to pedal. There’s a light assistance from the motor (20% as befits the LO setting) and I wobble up to the crossing. Yep, I said wobble. I wasn’t drunk. I’m not inexperienced. I haven’t just had my training wheels removed. What I was – was startled at what a difference riding a light weight (relatively) bike made to steering. I was over compensating as I was used to the much heavier steering of the PowaByke. Took a while to get used to it, oh, and the handle bars are a good bit wider than normal which also makes things twitchy.
Back to the story: The crossing lights went green and I pedalled off to the other side of the road where the cycleway continued. As I did so I twisted the throttle and was greeted by a hefty kick in the back (well, as hefty as an electric bike can kick as opposed to a 3 litre performance car). Bikey took off and I was pedalling like a loon trying to change gears. In the end I had to look because they were in a different place to my Old Bikey (something else to get used to). Nice gear change by the way. Before I knew it I was off down the road at 16mph. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the excellent Kenda 26 x 1.25” Kshield puncture resistant tyres (hey, the inner tubes even have Slime in them!).
Bikey was off in a world of his own, he whizzed down the road with very little effort from me so I decided to let him take the strain his speed hardly slowed (I don’t put that much effort in unless for short bursts, too much and my knee screams blue bloody murder at me and feels like it’s on fire). I can add about 2-3 mph if I cough-assist- cough the motor. It was brilliant. I shaved over five minutes off my journey time but wow! Was Bikey ever so frisky. With no suspension he takes the slight bumps and treats them like runways. I swear I heard him mutter “Rotate” when a particularly slopey one came up. He does like to take-off on the bumps. It gives the feel of a very lively bike (this is all relative to my Carthorse PowaByke by the way). It can make you feel a little anxious at times and brake squeezing a plenty went on.
Anyway, I got to work and was amazed. I’d passed a work friend on the way in and they said I tore past them and accelerated away (he wasn’t going that fast anyway).
Rightey-ho. On the way home it was very dark and even darker down the A27 cycleway. It was here that I first realised how bright and wide a beam of light the Shimano Xenon headlamp produced when powered from the Shimano Nexus hub dynamo. It was amazing and made me feel a lot happier as I could see further and wider than I could with my bright Cateye headlamp. Another excellent touch. Think I’d have preferred front suspension though as the bike, like any unsuspended bike, is brutal on wrists when travelling over some of the rougher tarmac surfaces.
It was an uneventful ride home. Bikey was in HI mode and was providing a lovely amount of assistance, even more when the throttle was opened up. Oh, the green button, the little green ‘off-road’ button, you can feel the difference when it kicks in. Tried it on the deserted A27 cycleway for a while and it boosts to about 19mph. Turned it off before getting back to the Eastern Road.
Ah, the Eastern Road, nearly always has the wind howling down it in the morning and up it in the evening. Yep, you guessed it, against me. Bikey took it in his stride (with my assistance). 14+mph was not unheard off (Old Bikey would struggle to do 13mph and the weight and the huge tyres would stop me giving any meaningful degree of assistance).
An uneventful ride until I got down to the back of Fratton football ground. There is a road width path and it has two sets of double split gates where they make a sharp chicane. I entered it on the left hand side and pulled a 90 degree right turn, pedalled to make the 90 degree left turn and the motor kicked in (on HI) and nearly shoved me into the wall. I came close to tasting brick. Thank goodness the brakes cut the motor as there is a very slight delay between stopping pedalling and the motor stopping. That’s not the worst of it.... I did the SAME THING at the second set! Duh! OK, so that’s where LO setting comes in really useful.
The thing is, my PowaByke works in a completely different way. If the bike was in pedelec mode it would not start to add power until the throttle was turned BUT it would not allow the throttle to work until it detected a turn or two of the crank. In Power On Demand mode the throttle would not work until the crank had turned a couple of times (then you could stop pedalling and let the motor do the work). The 905se is different. Turn the throttle you have power, turn the crank with the throttle closed and you have power. You don’t have the same level of control and this can catch out the unwary. You would have to switch off if you wanted a slow short hop without power (ie, facing a wall with very little distance to go before a 90 degree turn from a standing start-ish) if you see what I mean.
So, overall, I am extremely impressed. I’m conditioning the battery at the moment and I’m on my second day on a a single charge. Old Bikey would have been coughing up blood at the start of the second day. Bikey is just so darn plain rearing to go. Impressed? You bet yer booty I am!
Anyway, on to my impressions of the 905se City. I had taken the day off to greet my new arrival.
Bikey arrived in a huge and very stout cardboard box. No anorexic cardboard packaging here. This stuff was compressed yet plump giving rise to one of the sturdiest cardboard boxes I’ve ever seen. That was a good start and was the first of many good starts to come.
After cutting the tape that held the lid in place (no folding flaps here, a good honest and sturdy lid) I lifted the lid off to be presented by miles and miles of bubble wrap. It was stuffed down all sides in an effort to stop the bike moving around in the box, it worked. After removing all the BW stuffing I was presented with the sight of a huge clump of BW and it was in this that I knew Bikey (I’m not an imaginative namer) was living. He must have been toasty warm and snug as a bug in a rug. I lifted him out of his box (he’s not very heavy and that surprised me) and put him on the floor.
More BW came off by the shed load until Bikey was revealed in all his partially built glory. The lil’ guy weighed in at about 23kg (from the reading material) whilst Old Bikey (a PowaByke Euro 6 stripped and mounted on a fully suspended frame) weighed in at a hefty 38kg. The difference in riding weight will become apparent later.
I followed the assembly manual to the letter and in the space of 45 minutes Bikey was stood in front of me looking every bit a class act.
Sadly, I was not to get to ride him that day (oh, please, keep it clean, LOL) as the battery required an initial 12 hour charge. I was going to have to wait for the next day.
Well, that looks all pretty good but the only fly in the ointment was that on the front mudguard one of the black plastic support arms was missing on the end of one of the mudguard struts. As it happened, the clearance between the tyre and mudguard is huge so I was able to dispense with the black plastic arm I did have and was able to attach the struts to the front forks directly with no problem at all.
That was pretty much it, no fuss, no muss – as they say. Ah! Yes! There was one other minor problem. The spanner supplied is the wrong size for the front wheel nuts. One end too large, the other too small. Do yourself a favour and use a 14mm spanner to do them up, if you use the supplied 15/13mm you’ll only end up rounding off the nuts and make it harder to remove them if you have to and you won’t get the correct tightness and you would run the risk of skin parting company with knuckles. Been there in the past so I wasn't about to savour the delights of revisiting that experience. I got the proper spanner from the shed.
Hey, that dynamo lamp is great! Impressions so far are very good, I’m way impressed.
Okey dokey, it’s ten to seven and I crawl out of my pit and go do the necessaries in the bathroom before getting dressed and slinging a coffee down me gizzard. I slip the battery into it’s compartment. I press the red button and all the lights come on. Good job I’ve been lurking on the site or I wouldn’t have known what the buttons were for as I had no user manual and the one sent by E-Bikes Direct prior to Bikey’s arrival was incorrect (made no mention of the green button and no mention of the hi-lo box).
Which brings me to one more problem (well, not a problem exactly) during assembly. I noticed two purple wires hanging down from the cable box behind the bottom bracket. Each wire had a connector on the end and they matched each other. Turns out if you connect them together you get pedelec mode only. Leave them disconnected for UK use but stuff them up inside the cable shield at the bottom of the bike.
Anyway. I tested Bikey before taking him out for our ride to work (7.5 miles away) and everything seemed fine, and indeed it was.
So, I’m all decked out in my waterproofs (keeps me warm as they are windproof, too) and I take Bikey out onto the street and mount him ( there just is no clean way of saying that is there? Mount him, sat astride him, thank God it’s a bike we’re talking about, huh)!
The first thing I notice is how light he feels. Everything about him feels light yet strong. I pop him into low and start to pedal. There’s a light assistance from the motor (20% as befits the LO setting) and I wobble up to the crossing. Yep, I said wobble. I wasn’t drunk. I’m not inexperienced. I haven’t just had my training wheels removed. What I was – was startled at what a difference riding a light weight (relatively) bike made to steering. I was over compensating as I was used to the much heavier steering of the PowaByke. Took a while to get used to it, oh, and the handle bars are a good bit wider than normal which also makes things twitchy.
Back to the story: The crossing lights went green and I pedalled off to the other side of the road where the cycleway continued. As I did so I twisted the throttle and was greeted by a hefty kick in the back (well, as hefty as an electric bike can kick as opposed to a 3 litre performance car). Bikey took off and I was pedalling like a loon trying to change gears. In the end I had to look because they were in a different place to my Old Bikey (something else to get used to). Nice gear change by the way. Before I knew it I was off down the road at 16mph. I’m sure this has a lot to do with the excellent Kenda 26 x 1.25” Kshield puncture resistant tyres (hey, the inner tubes even have Slime in them!).
Bikey was off in a world of his own, he whizzed down the road with very little effort from me so I decided to let him take the strain his speed hardly slowed (I don’t put that much effort in unless for short bursts, too much and my knee screams blue bloody murder at me and feels like it’s on fire). I can add about 2-3 mph if I cough-assist- cough the motor. It was brilliant. I shaved over five minutes off my journey time but wow! Was Bikey ever so frisky. With no suspension he takes the slight bumps and treats them like runways. I swear I heard him mutter “Rotate” when a particularly slopey one came up. He does like to take-off on the bumps. It gives the feel of a very lively bike (this is all relative to my Carthorse PowaByke by the way). It can make you feel a little anxious at times and brake squeezing a plenty went on.
Anyway, I got to work and was amazed. I’d passed a work friend on the way in and they said I tore past them and accelerated away (he wasn’t going that fast anyway).
Rightey-ho. On the way home it was very dark and even darker down the A27 cycleway. It was here that I first realised how bright and wide a beam of light the Shimano Xenon headlamp produced when powered from the Shimano Nexus hub dynamo. It was amazing and made me feel a lot happier as I could see further and wider than I could with my bright Cateye headlamp. Another excellent touch. Think I’d have preferred front suspension though as the bike, like any unsuspended bike, is brutal on wrists when travelling over some of the rougher tarmac surfaces.
It was an uneventful ride home. Bikey was in HI mode and was providing a lovely amount of assistance, even more when the throttle was opened up. Oh, the green button, the little green ‘off-road’ button, you can feel the difference when it kicks in. Tried it on the deserted A27 cycleway for a while and it boosts to about 19mph. Turned it off before getting back to the Eastern Road.
Ah, the Eastern Road, nearly always has the wind howling down it in the morning and up it in the evening. Yep, you guessed it, against me. Bikey took it in his stride (with my assistance). 14+mph was not unheard off (Old Bikey would struggle to do 13mph and the weight and the huge tyres would stop me giving any meaningful degree of assistance).
An uneventful ride until I got down to the back of Fratton football ground. There is a road width path and it has two sets of double split gates where they make a sharp chicane. I entered it on the left hand side and pulled a 90 degree right turn, pedalled to make the 90 degree left turn and the motor kicked in (on HI) and nearly shoved me into the wall. I came close to tasting brick. Thank goodness the brakes cut the motor as there is a very slight delay between stopping pedalling and the motor stopping. That’s not the worst of it.... I did the SAME THING at the second set! Duh! OK, so that’s where LO setting comes in really useful.
The thing is, my PowaByke works in a completely different way. If the bike was in pedelec mode it would not start to add power until the throttle was turned BUT it would not allow the throttle to work until it detected a turn or two of the crank. In Power On Demand mode the throttle would not work until the crank had turned a couple of times (then you could stop pedalling and let the motor do the work). The 905se is different. Turn the throttle you have power, turn the crank with the throttle closed and you have power. You don’t have the same level of control and this can catch out the unwary. You would have to switch off if you wanted a slow short hop without power (ie, facing a wall with very little distance to go before a 90 degree turn from a standing start-ish) if you see what I mean.
So, overall, I am extremely impressed. I’m conditioning the battery at the moment and I’m on my second day on a a single charge. Old Bikey would have been coughing up blood at the start of the second day. Bikey is just so darn plain rearing to go. Impressed? You bet yer booty I am!
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