Decent bike with off-road option

[my.motion]

Hi Team,
Are there any descent bikes in the range of £500-700 with off-road option for private use?
I know wisper do something like this are there any others in this price range?
I can pick a second hand Wisper 905se sport for £700, what is the shelf life of these wispers? Is a two year old wisper better than a new 500-600 bike?

Synergie may have an off road option but worried about its brushed motor technology
thanks

 

[flecc]

This Rush Trek e-bike is within your price range but legal speeds only. It is however a bit faster and much lighter than your Milan and will be a better hill climber:

Rush Trek e-bike

They also make a high speed version which runs easily to about 18 mph, but as ever that does mean it's not so good on steep hills, and it is a bit beyond your price range. You can read about it here:

Rush Trek high speed bike

The second hand Wisper might be sound, but two things to watch out for. First is that the battery at two years old will be near the end of it's life if it's the original, and a new one of the improved and larger capacity type costs a whopping £514. Also some of the two year old ones were continental models sold via ebay from Germany and may not have the high speed mode or be correctly wired for the UK.

The Synergie is a good bike and no need to worry about the brush motor, but it's not very powerful and I'm sure it doesn't have a high speed option of any sort.
.

 

[my.motion]

thanks flecc, top notch advice as always!!!

 

[frank9755]

The second hand Wisper might be sound, but two things to watch out for. First is that the battery at two years old will be near the end of it's life if it's the original, and a new one of the improved and larger capacity type costs a whopping £514. Also some of the two year old ones were continental models sold via ebay from Germany and may not have the high speed mode or be correctly wired for the UK.

Sorry Flecc, of course you are correct about the battery on an early Wisper 905 SE being likely to have deteriorated by now, but I must correct the comments about 905 SEs imported from Germany being different from those which Wisper sold in the UK at the time!

There was some utter nonesense asserted by Doug from Wisper on this forum trying to rubbish these bikes for reasons I was never able to completely fathom, but which appeared to be connected to a dispute he had with the then Wisper agent in Germany, e-wheels.de. Doug was challenged many times by me and others to state exactly what was different about the bikes which came via Germany and was unable to provide a coherent answer. David had previously explained on the forum that Wisper had split their first container of bikes between the UK and Germany hence the German ones were from the same batch and were therefore identical - but clearly if someone asserts something often enough, people start to think there might be some truth in it!

Wisper has continued to improve the bike since then and a 2009 bike will be better than a 2007 one - but regarding the 2007 batch, if it came to the UK via Germany or not, it will still be the same bike!

 

[torrent99]

Sorry Flecc, of course you are correct about the battery on an early Wisper 905 SE being likely to have deteriorated by now, but I must correct the comments about 905 SEs imported from Germany being different from those which Wisper sold in the UK at the time!

The bit about "be correctly wired for the UK" may be correct for some bikes though, as you put the fix in for my Wisper (well your old Wisper) Theoretically there could be one or two uncorrected German Wispers out there.

(But the fix is documented on this forum and is easy to do! And I'm sure David & Norman would help anyone who bought a faulty second hand Wisper through the process.)

Oh, and the battery is still going strong....

 

[flecc]

but I must correct the comments about 905 SEs imported from Germany being different from those which Wisper sold in the UK at the time!

I did follow all that nonsense at the time Frank, but as torrent99 says, I was also aware that the wiring was different from today's and may not have been modified. MyMotion is concerned to get a high speed mode and I think I'm correct in saying an unmodified wiring doesn't give that, hence the advice I gave.

As torrent99 also says, there's plenty of advice in the forum, and I remember member JimmyEngland1000 posting plenty of information and illustrations on the wiring mods. Unfortunately he's left the forum now, but his posts are still available.
.

 

[frank9755]

I don't want to go over it all again but just to reassure MyMotion, and anyone else looking to buy a second hand Wisper, here are the highlights:

The minor wiring fault (one wire from the controller was connected to the wrong plug) affected pedelec mode only. It made the pedelec mode keep cutting out and rendering that mode unuseable, so the bike was essentially throttle-only - ie it worked very much like many other bikes such as Ezee or Powabyke.

Throttle mode was not affected in any way and, as it is only by using the throttle that you can get to derestricted speeds, this function would not be affected even in a bike that had not been fixed. My bike gave high speed from day 1.

The fault was, of course, common to bikes from Wisper's first container regardless of whether they made a detour via Germany or not. However, selectively witholding infomation on how to recognise it and fix it was one of Doug's strategies in the war on customers that he was persuing at the time (along with others such as the £80 replacement spoke!).

When David returned from a trip to the Far East, all the nonsense stopped overnight and, as far as I've seen, Wisper has been extremely customer-friendly ever since.

I am sure that the batteries on early Wispers are not as good as those fitted now however, they did not suffer problems to the same extent as some other manufacturers. I think the large capacity probably helped, meaning less stress. So, Steve, extremely pleased to hear that one is still going strong. It must now be about 2 years since it was manufactured, which is a long time in Lithium battery years!

Given that good battery life, excellent customer service and the fact that even a bike with un-fixed wiring works perfectly well as a throttle bike, I'd see no reason to have more concerns about buying an early Wisper 905 SE than any other second hand e-bike.

 

[flecc]

I am sure that the batteries on early Wispers are not as good as those fitted now however, they did not suffer problems to the same extent as some other manufacturers. I think the large capacity probably helped, meaning less stress. So, Steve, extremely pleased to hear that one is still going strong. It must now be about 2 years since it was manufactured, which is a long time in Lithium battery years!

Sorry Frank, but I must also now return to this, because although I definitely know you don't mean to mislead, it has that potential.

As you rightly say, two years is a long time in lithium batteries, and it's a li-ion manganese battery which like all of it's type deteriorates with age. In addition getting 500 charges is as much as can be expected and most get less, so on those grounds alone the battery on a two year old bike will be at the tail end of it's life if not already finished.

Another very important point is that a little over a year ago Wisper changed their battery supplier from Lishen to Advanced since some of the Lishen batteries weren't performing well.

Therefore a £700 two year old Wisper 905se Sport which is likely to need a new battery quite soon or possibly very soon will really cost at present prices £1214. Since a brand new one would only cost £1309 for the 2008 model or £1449 for the latest 2009 model, each much improved over one from two years ago with many detail improvements and having the latest compound cathode battery plus a new one year warranty, the £700 bike is not a good buy. A brand new bike with all it's improvements and a years warranty is easily worth the extra £95 or £235 those options give.

That is why this was my chief objection to the second hand model for MyMotion, and I wouldn't alter that advice at all. I'm sorry that Wisper owners who might wish to sell won't like this advice, but it's still good advice. It's not just a problem with Wispers of course, today's battery prices have this effect on nearly all brands at a couple of years old.
.

 

[frank9755]

I don't disagree with that - always wise when pricing any second hand e-bike to add in the cost of getting a new battery.

 

[Wisper Bikes]

Old Wispers never die they simply lose some buzz

Good day guys

Of course it is true that the older batteries are not as good or sophisticated as the new however we do have customers now in their fourth year with the the original battery.

The whole German bike debacle was a long time ago now, they were wired differently to the UK bikes at the request of our German dealer, there were a few other minor problems with the German bikes that were not common on the UK models. In-fact we offered the buy all the German bikes back from our dealer so we could put them right before they went out onto the market. But this was not to happen. However as you all know we undertook to solve any problems with these bikes and after some internal re-thinking in most cases any work was done free of charge.

We are now on good terms with Frank in Germany and hope to be supplying him again in the near future.

As a point of interest the old batteries had a six month but the new ones have a 24 month warranty.

Don't forget the 905eco with the 36V 8A battery is available for £999.00.

All the best David

 

[frank9755]

there were a few other minor problems with the German bikes that were not common on the UK models.

What were those problems, David?

 

[Bigbee]

They kept laying towels on pool side loungers early in the morning

 

[Wisper Bikes]

The Germans

Yes and they had a very nasty habit of winning all the F1 Grand Prix for a while too.

Hi Frank

Most had;

The throttle only capability removed.
The brakes on the wrong way for the UK market.
Different tyres that were more prone to problems.
Brakes that were not as good as they could be.

Only small problems really, the wiring was the big problem.

All the best David

 

[Wooky]

This Rush Trek e-bike is within your price range but legal speeds only. It is however a bit faster and much lighter than your Milan and will be a better hill climber:

Rush Trek e-bike

They also make a high speed version which runs easily to about 18 mph, but as ever that does mean it's not so good on steep hills, and it is a bit beyond your price range. You can read about it here:

Rush Trek high speed bike

.

I'm finding the 'Standard' Trek gives me 17-18mph on throttle only on the flat, me being 100Kg plus panniers etc, it flies when my 8 Stone missus is on it! (as does my Alien, grrr!)

I think Simon said that the High Speed trek, which has a different Motor and controller gets to 22mph on the flat in his tests, but of course with the penalty of not being a hill climber, always the trade off I guess.

Terry

 

[flecc]

Thanks Terry, that's good to know, the website doesn't give any indication of those figures, probably not wanting to publish illegal speeds.
.

 

[Wooky]

This is what Simon had to say From the Voyager thread

This being the High Speed Prototype (This was written about six months ago, I think they've refined it somewhat further since)

20.03 MILE ROUND TRIP ON RUSH “ROAD” PROTOTYPE

The sun was shining today ( I know its novel), but a 12mph south westerly was blowing, I thought this might be as good a day as any we are going to get in January for a ride out, and test our new baby. A standard bike myself and Darren have been marketing since November, but now we have christened the “Road”, and have altered with substitution of parts to achieve higher speeds, hopefully without a great cost to range. So I charged up the “Road” bikes battery and a spare in case I was caught out, which I strapped to the rear rack.

I took a route which would mainly take me down single track roads out to a village about 8.5 miles out . I set the saddle to full height as I have a 33” inside leg and I like to get my leg something like straight on the downward pedal thrust, this does have its drawback, in that you are up there like a sail or you are reaching right down for the bars. To achieve a happy compromise I had fitted a head stem lifter and put rings in to give about 2” of lift at the grips.

I switched on and pressed the pedal, which nearly immediately brought a nice growl from the motor, and we (bike and me) started to thrust forward combined with steady pedalling and gear changes until we were in top gear. Motor noise was now imperceptible, and a glance down at the speedo showed we were bowling along at 18+ mph, so I steadied the pressure on the pedals and the bike settled down to cruise at this speed. I soon noticed the bike would surge if pressure was not steady throughout the rotation, the sensor thinking I wanted more power, but if I pedalled consistently and steadily, we continued progress outward bound at 18mph , some into wind (around 15%) at about 16mph, and my destination was reached in a very enjoyable just under half hour.

I turned around for the return journey with still full five lights on the battery power indicator on the bars. On coming home I found I was facing the wind more often, perhaps 25% of the time full into wind, but I still managed a steady 15-16mph, I could tell this was really using some power, and the battery indicator on the bars had dropped one light of the five. I did take the odd break and let the bike take me on the throttle, and although I could reach 22mph where the wind was off me, 16 mph seemed a reasonable rate on around at half throttle. I took a detour to another quiet road village to extend journey and finally arrived back in my village with over 20 miles clocked and three lights still showing on battery bar indicator when stationary, and one light of three showing on battery itself. The bike was still willing and would give a good surge still from throttle when asked even at 16mph. Judging from this ride and one before, I feel 25 mile range in favourable conditions is not unreasonable, and given the average speeds attained quite outstanding carrying a 6kg spare battery, (11.5 stone me). And far more reasonable personal transport than the bikes the EU laws allow as a “cycle” than at present.

<snip>

NOTE: I don’t recommend any body should exhaust these batteries fully, far better to use top half of batteries capacity, for long battery life and keep topped up.

Bike: Prototype RUSH “ROAD” bike - Voyager
Battery: Phylion Lith-Ion, 36 V 10 A
Motor: Bafang 250 watt rear hub geared.
Average speed: 16 mph approx
Top Speed: 25 mph
Range: Probably 25 miles.

 

[flecc]

It sounds very much in the mould of the original eZee Torq 1, a very high speed under power but the steep hill capability suffering badly in consequence, though fast with pedal assistance on moderate slopes
.