Commuter bike for 6’1 14 stone man

[Northmale]

Budget £1500 new via cycle to work. £800 cash second hand

My wife bought me a secondhand Eplus Commute for Christmas with a mind to commuting to work via train and bike.

I can’t see the point in that as the train is so expensive and love riding bikes but hate arriving at work sweaty as there are no showers.

Having just done a test drive on the route to work the motor barely kicked in as I was constantly over 15mph as 95% of the route is flat and follows a river. The final 5% is stop start hills in a city.

I want a bike I can derestrict when
I’m in the countryside as the lone rider on ex colliery wagonways, then switch to legal as I hit the suburbs.

Decent on hills would help but I’m fit and can do a lot of the work.
Throttle not essential.
I have zero sense of style so looks not important at all.

 

[Northmale]

It would be horrific, but speed limits on shared use areas and a higher speed limit on cycle paths combined with insurance and some form of registration is the future.

we all know it’s coming, the government just keeps kicking the van down the road regarding e-scooters and sooner rather than later a full overhaul of U.K. law will be required if we want to get local emissions down and hit clean air targets.
There will always be idiots but most people just want to be able to do a 15-20 mile commute in under an hour, so we aren’t talking insane speed levels and high risk, we are talking about slight risk increase for collective benefit.

The way things are was once revolutionary. Cars once had a man walking in front waving a flag. Change is possible.

 

[Az.]

It would be horrific, but speed limits on shared use areas and a higher speed limit on cycle paths combined with insurance and some form of registration is the future.

It looks like direction is quite an opposite. They test 20mph speed limit in Wales now.

There will always be idiots but most people just want to be able to do a 15-20 mile commute in under an hour, so we aren’t talking insane speed levels and high risk, we are talking about slight risk increase for collective benefit.

You already have what you want - L1e-B. 45km/h is ideal speed limit to blend in traffic IMO. You just need to put big boy pants on and accept some responsibility (registration number, driving license, insurance etc).

 

[Peter.Bridge]

https://www.cyclingelectric.com/news/german-state-trialling-relaxed-speed-pedelec-regs

 

[Northmale]

It looks like direction is quite an opposite. They test 20mph speed limit in Wales now.



You already have what you want - L1e-B. 45km/h is ideal speed limit to blend in traffic IMO. You just need to put big boy pants on and accept some responsibility (registration number, driving license, insurance etc).

I already have all of those for a car and a motorbike. It’s not about responsibility, it’s about flexibility. I live 100m from a river. My route to work is 14 miles via a combination of wagonways, dedicated cycle paths and a 1 mile section of city shared use pathway.

The route to work via road is 2.5 miles directly up a very steep hill and then 15 miles.

The flexibility (as per the original post) would be to have a taxed and insured vehicle that could ride on the deserted wagonways at 25mph before dropping to 15mph once I hit the city.

Or flexibility would be to use a taxed and insured moped registered speed pedelec on the deserted wagonways before switching to road at the city.

Whilst we are having this discussion loads of untaxed and uninsured lunatics are riding at insane speeds on e-bikes and scooters. They’ll still do that after a rule change and therein lies the problem with regulation. It punishes the considerate and has no effect on the lunatics.

 

[Az.]

I think Cyclebuddy gave you the best advice. Just change your mentality. Sit back, relax and travel at 25km/h to work to arrive sweat free and pedal as hard as you want on your way home. Is that a compromise good enough for you?
You sound like a responsible person, so the choice is yours. Comply or join lunatics out there.

The answer to your question is you can't have legal e-bike that would assist you above 25km/h.

 

[Northmale]

Nah, I’ll comply and lobby for change whilst relaxing.

WriteToThem

WriteToThem is a website which provides an easy way to contact MPs, councillors and other elected representatives.

www.writetothem.com

 

[Az.]

Good luck with that.
While writing you can mention Az from Pedelecs is asking for more cycling paths as what we have now is pathetic and way behind other European countries.
Skol!

 

[Nealh]

There is already another legal class of a pedelec and that is the S or speed pedelec, issue is users don't like the extra cost and other definitions of using the bike. Like licencing and fitting a number plate , insurance third party, full face m/c helmet.
One can ride at 25 /30mph + ( this I know as I acheived 34mph on a bosh drive Kalkhoff) , the issue with extra speed is the effort = sweat , so the opposite of arriving at work not being so. For sweatless or less sweaty commute one needs to don the lycra or lighter clothing , use a hub motor and stick to 17mph . Make use of the 17a power or so and partly ghost pedal in high assist, a mid drive isn't condusive for sweatless commute.
Mixing high speed on shared paths is a no no , the risks are too high and at high speeds one should defo be on the road.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

From the article
"
in the Flanders region of Belgium where a pioneering project has classified the s-pedelec as a ‘Moped class P’, which meant that traffic regulations bent to enable them access to cycle paths.

Using this test pool, researchers were able to determine that speed pedelec users were averaging speeds comfortably below the maximum, suggesting that the higher speeds are often not deployed, with users instead adapting to their environment. Notably, the quality and width of cycle paths in most of Europe do tend to outshine that found in the UK, theoretically making higher speeds more comfortable for all users."

 

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i have a bosch bike with a dongle for the last ten years at 120rpm it can hit 40mph tho you pay the price in the range.

bbshd drops me like standing still with the throttle and max amps

 

[guerney]

Cycle paths are nearly all horribly surfaced, I avoid them. Smoother and overall faster journeys using roads.

With a cadence sensing BBS01B mid-drive and the controller set to 18A, on a bike with 20" wheels and a (formerly very overweight) light rider, it's no sweat for me getting to work - that's specifically why my bike bike is set up the way it is. Turn the pedals a bit on a low gear, and away it zooms to 25km/h with very little effort, zipping up through the gears without crunches thanks to the gear sensor (which works great on my bike, but not on many others). Before restriction, about 21mph/33.7kmh was easy to attain, that was my usual speed, loved easily getting to the higher speeds too, and that was with the controller limit set to 15A. I haven't tried derestricting with the controller set to 18A, but there's enough power for me to increase chainwheel size from 52T to a 58T possibly, for higher speeds... and that's precisely what I would have done when I was young and more foolish.

 

[guerney]

Though it's a faff, if someone set the max speed to 15.5 mph with a KT controller and saved the setting, then set it to any other max speed and rode the bike without saving the setting, it will use the new setting until switched off, then revert to the old one. With the settings protected with a password, nobody else would be able to see or change the settings except the guy, who put the password in. Some bikes have LCD settings protected by passwords or other secret codes that the owner isn't given, so it's normal for the owner not to know the password.

Good idea. Annoying that the throttle (when that was attached) did work without the password, but pedal assistance doesn't on a BBS01B until you enter the code (I've just tried it).

 

[Northmale]

This debate would make a lot more sense if all cars sold in the U.K. were limited to 70mph max and there were campaigns to have cars fitted with sensors to limit the max speed according to the local speed limit.

Just popping to the shops in a vehicle that can do 110mph that I didn’t need to derestrict and that I qualified to drive by driving slowly and doing a couple of manoeuvres 30+ years ago and insure by ticking some boxes that allow anyone to bend their honesty to the limit to reduce their premium.

Silly country.

 

[soundwave]

but what if they limited all cars to 20mph and it is not if it is when that happens computer says slow

 

[Northmale]

The technology exists for a complete overhaul of the U.K. transport network to curb car ownership and single occupancy commutes and move towards low carbon shared vehicle use or single rider evehicles.

we don’t have the grid infrastructure to move to mass electric car use and it isn’t as if we arrived to this point through visionary transport policy. For those of us away from London and the SE, particularly those away from cities, public transport is not a reliable option and we are being given the stick to move away from car use in city centres before any carrot towards cleaner alternatives.

What a great community this place is though. Reminds me of the early days of the internet be social media had people shouting at each other.

 

[guerney]

What a great community this place is though. Reminds me of the early days of the internet be social media had people shouting at each other.

You should take a look at the Brexit thread.

https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/brexit-for-once-some-facts.24369/

 

[sjpt]

Yes but for cycle paths rather than roads.

I'd certainly strongly resist the use of mopeds or speed pedelecs assisted to 25mph on cycle paths.

 

[Northmale]

You should take a look at the Brexit thread.

https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/brexit-for-once-some-facts.24369/

Occasionally I forget that just over half the voting population had the wool pulled over their eyes by a bunch of self serving whoppers. What a time to be alive.

 

[saneagle]

Occasionally I forget that just over half the voting population had the wool pulled over their eyes by a bunch of self serving whoppers. What a time to be alive.

Some fall for it again and again - covid, climate change, war in Ukraine, war in Palestine, US elections, immigration, and more to come shortly.

 

[Peter.Bridge]

For Sale - Whyte Hybrid, Yose 350w, 36v 13ah £400 ono

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? Possibly have to charge at work if using higher speeds