Ok guys, its time we had some hard evidence exactly what these levels of assist exactly mean. I know we can not compare the different systems as they assist in different way but we can compare assist levels to some level. A bit simplistic but say a level of assist of 30% should be the same as 30% assist on another system.
Ok the only electrical assist i have is the bionx system, for people who do not know about this system i will explain. The bionx system is a very natural system in that for example you could be mashing away at a low cadence and doing 10 mph but drop a few gears to increase your cadence and the system will assist up to 15mph. It must be programed to emulate real cycling cadence levels which is perfect for me so this makes this comparison pretty accurate. So what are the assist levels, there are 4 levels boosting your pedal power by 25%, 50%, 100%, or 200%.
So the two test bikes are my Trek FX+ and my Koga worldtraveller.
Firstly the Koga weighs in at a mighty 21.4Kg with the rohloff 14 speed hub.
This weighs in at 19.3KG but with the panniers etc it must be close to 22 Kg.
The koga but mine with hub and panniers close to 23Kg and 26" wheels.
So the idea is to do a 7 mile circuit, extremely hilly, one hill requires you to come out of 5th gear in the car so pretty tough 7 miles. So what i am going to do is cycle it with the koga(done today) Cycle with level 1,2,3 and 4 and compare the heart rate and that way we will see what effect these bikes have. So here is the koga run.
KOGA Run
Will try and improve this picture quality, anyway the next graphs tomorrow, but i should point out i lost 5 minutes of data as my Koga has a ANT+ machine on it which interfered with the polar signal. Will do it again soon, but tomorrow will do the electric bike in two modes.
Ok the only electrical assist i have is the bionx system, for people who do not know about this system i will explain. The bionx system is a very natural system in that for example you could be mashing away at a low cadence and doing 10 mph but drop a few gears to increase your cadence and the system will assist up to 15mph. It must be programed to emulate real cycling cadence levels which is perfect for me so this makes this comparison pretty accurate. So what are the assist levels, there are 4 levels boosting your pedal power by 25%, 50%, 100%, or 200%.
So the two test bikes are my Trek FX+ and my Koga worldtraveller.
Firstly the Koga weighs in at a mighty 21.4Kg with the rohloff 14 speed hub.
This weighs in at 19.3KG but with the panniers etc it must be close to 22 Kg.
The koga but mine with hub and panniers close to 23Kg and 26" wheels.
So the idea is to do a 7 mile circuit, extremely hilly, one hill requires you to come out of 5th gear in the car so pretty tough 7 miles. So what i am going to do is cycle it with the koga(done today) Cycle with level 1,2,3 and 4 and compare the heart rate and that way we will see what effect these bikes have. So here is the koga run.
KOGA Run
Will try and improve this picture quality, anyway the next graphs tomorrow, but i should point out i lost 5 minutes of data as my Koga has a ANT+ machine on it which interfered with the polar signal. Will do it again soon, but tomorrow will do the electric bike in two modes.
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