owl

I finally managed to get the stuff and most importantly the time to change the chainring. As a side note, while working with the crank puller I also took the other crank off, opened the plastic case (three T20 torx screws) and tightened the three 13mm nuts at the end of the bolts that hold the motor to the frame, and that was the end of a nasty creak I used to get on every stroke. What I didn't have the time for was a proper test drive, so I just drove in circles in the garage with Eco assist. Doing that for a while in different gears, mostly the lowest, produced no errors. I'll keep updating this thread if there's anything worth mentioning about those. For the curious, here are two photos where you'll see the original 15t chainring, the Connex 14t chainring and the old and the new lockring. You'll note that for the smaller chainring you need the new lockring (Bosch part no. 1270016428, but make sure yourself if ordering) so that the chain doesn't touch it.

Regarding Reaction, are you sure you don't want the better parts that Race level offers? The XT 11-42 cassette alone is worth 80€ if you feel like upgrading later, and also the Race's RockShox Recon Silver with air spring (vs Suntour and coil of Pro) is a nice upgrade.

My fully charged 400Wh with Bosch CX usually shows 70 to 80 km range in Eco mode. I don't have a dongle, and I feel that for my riding it is actully useful (regarding range) that the assist ramps down after 25km/h, as on flat roads I usually can pedal a bit faster. Obviously it gets sweaty, but I'm all for that. =) If I'm in a hurry I'll just take the boring ol' car. I consider the bike just as hard/easy to pedal as any other bike with the same weight. The drive doesn't add any resistance that I could detect. YMMV, of course. I enjoy riding it without power. The only thing I'd like is a lower low gear, but I'm on that (and having a thread here about it.)

I contacted Bosch since the dealers I contacted didn't have a direct answer. Bosch in their prompt and surprisingly nice reply (not at all the copy-paste "we're sorry for the inconvenience" reply companies usually send) said that the 14t front sprocket should be ok by default, but ultimately it's up to the manufacturer and whatever parts/configuration they have listed for the CE marking and programmed the drive accordingly. So, I guess we're once again dealing with a situation where if something goes wrong someone just has to be responsible and take the blame, because everything is always someone's fault, and it's always top priority to get to blame someone and because of that companies are trying to protect themselves from legal blulsiht with measures like this. But I don't blame them, I blame the system. And there's my rant of the day. Back to the matter, I ordered a new 14t chainring (Connex) and a new lock ring (by Bosch, I suppose). I'm not sure if I needed the lock ring, but it wasn't that expensive so at least I don't have to order it separately. Once it arrives I'll get it installed and see what happens with the 11-42. I haven't contacted Cube, since unlike Bosch they have never bothered to answer my questions (regarding a different matter) sent through their website, so I don't expect them to help me this time either. If you dig German or can tolerate Google Translated English, here's a massive thread discussing the gear ratios: http://www.pedelecforum.de/forum/index.php?threads/performance-m%C3%B6glichkeiten-f%C3%BCr-andere-%C3%9Cbersetzungen-motorritzel.25050/

Yeah, I thought about that too, but there might be occasions where I wouldn't like to think about too much if I have the assist enabled or not and still use whole range. However, if this is the way it's gonna be, I can live with that - I don't see using 46t (or whatever) on my daily commute which is where I use assist the most as I just want to get from point A to point B. Another good point. From Shimano's words one might interpret that the new cassette doesn't need other mods to drivetrain ("Wide ranging 11-46T cassette compatible with XTR or DEORE XT 1x11 set ups") (edited, I wrote something daft here, twice). I have the medium cage, so that might need an upgrade. We'll see. I'll update here in case I get something done!

I'm looking into having easier unassisted climbing (that's just how I roll, I'm not interested in losing a tiny bit at the fast end nor do I care about tuning the drive to assist faster) with my Performance Line CX equipped bike. The bike now has a 15t chainring/sprocket and XT 11-42 in the rear. I'd like to change the chainring to a 14t and once Shimano's new 11-46 is out put that in, or use something like OneUp's 45t sprocket. I know 15 (or 2.45*15)/42 should be plenty, but I still want more. However, the Bosch drive seems to have parameters "minimum/maximum gear ratio" according to a diagnostics report (I don't have one of my own at the moment), and from what I understood from reading a german forum with Google Translate it seemed that some people have been getting annoying errors after messing with the gears, and they've attributed that to these gear ratio parameters. Have any of you guys bumped into this or have experience in such a mod? Are the dealers supposed to be able to change the parameters?