Richardab

Thats great to hear. Do you commute offroad right through the year. Thats one thing i havent managed as it just gets too muddy and to be frank riding in the woods in the dark on my own is too spooky! How do you find the hardtail, i was debating using a short travel full suspension bike as a base as i have this feeling on a hardtail i will need to stop pedalling and unweight the bike over bumpy bits which will make the motor stop and start. A full suss you can stay seated and pedal through, but i fitted a suspension seat post and it seemed to do a reasonable job on my test runs and my terrain isnt crazy bumpy. Definately agree with you, its still about pedalling, on my winter commuter ebike i pedal just as hard as i did when i did the shorter unassisted commute, but now i just go twice as far in the same time.

OK this is the second of a pair of bikes i planned to build using the same battery pack. I built the single speed carbon commute bike last summer and its been doing winter commuting duties since September 2018 covering 3350 miles on a 35mile round trip commute. The build was in this thread: https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/carbon-single-speed-commuter.31528/ The sister bike was planned to do summer commuting which i normally do offroad. The winter road commuter had a q100, but i had bought a q128c at the same time, for this build. The base bike is arguably far too nice for an ebike conversion, but i had initially thought that about the winter commuter, but i was glad i stuck to converting a nice bike, as i spend so much time on it, its nice to have good components, and its also great starting with a bike 4-5kg lighter than a cheap equivelant as i have to lug it up and down stairs at the train station for the second half of my commute. I was looking for a secondhand aluminium Cannondale 29er with a lefty fork but i stumbled over a Cannondale FSi carbon at not much more than the aluminium versions. I am a huge fan of lefty forks and light bikes. Conversion has not been too difficult, i really wanted room for a water bottle as i do actually pedal quite hard along with the motor, so spent time getting the 48v 10.4ahr battery mounted forward in the frame, its mounted to the downtube with an additional waterbottle fixing added, and then enclosed in a frame bag to give extra protection from ‘waggling’ and the elements and to tidy cables away. Q128c has 11spd cassette which all but hides the motor. Diy torque arm is made from a piece of stainless steel angle set up to push up on the bottom of the chainstay. Really not into all the jubilee clip torque arm kits available and would not be happy clamping to the carbon frame, my arm just pushes up in an area that is designed to take the disc brake forces. The same method was used on the winter commuters carbon frame and has had no issues. I built the wheels up myself, it was a bit of a challenge finding matching front and back rims that were available in both 36hole for the q128c and 32hole for the lefty hub. PAS is mounted on the drive side of the hollowtech crank, it did require some thought but in the end i found a magnetic disk that was solid so just drilled it out with a tight friction fit to the crank axle spacer. Sensor is a bit bodgy, i cut the bracket around to clamp under the cable guide fitted to the bottom of the bottom bracket. This could well fall off so might need a mark2 version at some point. Intention was to run an eggrider but i am having some issues setting it up so I am also running an LCD3 as well initially. It should look much smarter with just the eggrider. Been for a couple of test rides, part on road/part offroad. Speed seemed not much greater than the q100 in most PAS levels but i can feel quite a bit more in level 5, not sure if the watt settings are the same as my q100 for 1-4 and then 5 is max, thats what it feels like. Bike handling was really nice, could hardly notice the weight and more importantly the weight distribution while off road. Will be doing longer offroad commute next week, about 35miles round trip with approx 50% offroad. Will be interesting to see how battery fares as on road commute of similar distance makes it with about 70% usage. If all goes to plan i have option to extend coming home route by 5miles and do 90% offroad. I used to do this once a week on my regular mtb but it was quite time consuming so hoping to be able to do it most days on the emtb.

Just to follow up on this. I am having a few teething issues with the eggrider control cutting out, so i swapped the KT-LCD3 from my road ebike. Pedalling forward did nothing and pedalling backwards made it go forwards so i swapped the orientation of the sensor and its working fine on the LCD3. Interestingly swapping back to the eggrider is also now working correctly so i don’t know what was going on. Still having issues with the eggrider in other departments so will be running both controls till its sorted. Will post a general build thread abouth the bike later.

The mind boggles!

Ahh just googled king meter...that is the disk I used, but I didn't use the sensor that came with it because the connectors weren't right. Can this be corrected on the Kuntung controller using the LCD3

I am pretty sure the sensor is exactly the same as the one I have on the q100. But the magnetic disk is different model to fit round the holowtech crank. Is the magnetic disk the thing that is dual or single? Am I doing any harm at the moment?

Building my second ebike with a Q128c motor. My first Q100c when I pedal forward I go forward, pedal back does nothing, but the Q128c pedal forward goes forward AND pedal backward goes forward, is this normal for Q128 or have I done something wrong. They both have the same Kuntung controller and the same battery. the q100 has a KT-LCD3 control and the q128 has an eggrider. Certainly no settings in teh eggrider to change this, but I don't recall anything in the LCD3 either so I don't think its the control. The crank sensor has the arrows spinning in the right direction, although the actual sensor points the different way to my q100, but I think I tried it both ways round and it did the same. Any thoughts out there?

I hung the battery from the top of the bars. I used a pair of these either side of the stem facing downwards. https://www.amazon.co.uk/DSstyles-Adapter-Aluminium-Handlebar-Mountain/dp/B01HG4FB24/ref=asc_df_B01HG4FB24/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310164787656&hvpos=1o4&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16258548690820539320&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006715&hvtargid=pla-348350537230&psc=1 The bag does have a few holes cut in it for the mounts and might leak a tiny bit in heavy rain but the battery is within its own enclosure anyway so the bag is more as a second defense and to tidy the wires and make it stealthy! The frame mount is a much easier way to do it and my 29er build has the battery inside a frame bag again to give some additional weather protection and tidy it all away. See pic, not finished yet though.

I think a rack battery would be even further out back but lower so maybe marginally better. Riding in the saddle wasnt really a problem but as you know with singlespeed you sometimes need to honk it out of the saddle and that was really odd feeling. It was also a nightmare to lift as it was so tail heavy. I would say with the SS ebike the gearing is critical, initially i was running 39/15 but i couldnt keep up with the motor and used the battery up quickly. Changed to 44/15 and its much much better, i am helping most of the time, but its hard to pull away till the motor gets going and some bigger hills are better if i honk a bit and keep my rpm and the motors in the best range, both requiring being out of the saddle. A frame mount would be the obvious solution (and thats what i am doing on my 29er conversion) but i wanted this commuter to be stealthy so the bar bag is a good compromise.

I did it to my single speed commuter. Heres the thread. https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/carbon-single-speed-commuter.31528/#post-445022 2800miles since September last year

I did this one earlier this year. Seems great, but I did fit torque arms and was careful with fitting it. http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/carbon-single-speed-commuter.31528/#post-444038

Ahh that makes sense the heavier bike gets to terminal velocity quicker. And seeing as not many of us ride at terminal velocity! The heavier bike will be quicker at any point up to it Everydays a schoolday, cheers

Isn’t it basic schoolboy physics. Feather and rock fall at same rate in a vacuum, implying their weight has nothing to do with how fast they fall in air, its all air resistance. So two identical bikes but different weight would get to the same max speed. If it was the lovely wisper roady it would be quicker as it is much more aero than most other bikes. I can definately see how the wolverine would sell, think of its 15mph assistance as a hill helper, the rest of the time you are riding a relatively light bike beyond the assistance level. Its not like its much heavier than a typical bike and its extra weight would only really be a penalty on hills when the assitance would be kicking in. Beautiful looking bike

I think they can hear it when you are going by at 20mph, just because we can't hear it because of the wind noise doesn't mean they can't. I just couldn't help thinking what I would have been thinking had I heard me whizz by with that racket! Tis true the bone conduction phones are not great if you are an audiophile, but I have found them perfectly adequate for music, and although not terribly loud, loud enough, any louder and I think they would distract me from hearing traffic etc (and at least only I am subjected to my poor music taste!)

I tried a waterbottle speaker once, by the time I had it loud enough to hear over the wind noise, it was embarrassingly loud when slowing down for a junction etc, I felt like some sort of chav with a booming car stereo. The quality was also awful at that level. I have since bought some Aftershokz Trekz headphones. They transmit the sound into your head through bone conduction leaving your ears free to hear whats around.