Davall

Ok thanks. Fingers crossed for some improvement after further use then, a point others have made too, though I really can't see it softening up by much. Time will tell.

Clever....I really like that!

DP, presumably you're referring here to the finger adjuster on the top of the left hand fork leg, rather than any adjustment using a tool? i.e. the thing which is marked PRELOAD and with a +/- indication? If so, most of us seem to ride with this in its fully softest setting (but which is still way too firm for my liking). Or have you found some other adjustment separate from that?

I guess as a lecturer, people paying attention must come as something of a novelty to you...

In post #26 of this thread, you told us how you "take great care not to get hurt, nor to hurt any other creature". It must sting a bit when you shoot 'em though...

Thanks James and NRG - much obliged.

Interesting. The return spring on mine seems quite vicious the way it snaps the cable back when I depress the blue lever. If I adjust it any looser though, I cannot achieve the lock-out position with the pink lever, so I think the cable must be set correctly. May I ask from which supplier you obtained your mirror and its bar end please? It's the kind of thing I'm looking for too and looks quite neat.

Indeed I did just that on Friday. They state the preload range from one extreme to the other is only 10% and agree that the ProConnect S fork is considerably firmer than a mountain bike fork. They are putting this to RST who make the item, to see whether they produce anything softer and more compliant in 700C size, preferably with a better range of adjustment. Failing that, they advise that I might wish to purchase an air fork instead. In the meantime, I see it as important to caution others who may be considering the purchase of one of these bikes to be aware of the shortcomings in its fork and make certain it suits them. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test ride an "S" before purchase because there wasn't one available.

Lemmy, I don't like to trust a single rear lamp, because it could blow without you realising it, so I like to supplement it with a second standalone unit. I recently bought a backup pair of LED lamps, for front and rear, including batteries, for around a fiver for the pair from Tesco. On these LED units, the batteries seem to last well, they are straightforward to fit and inexpensive, so this might be a possible solution for you. You can even get wind-up LED bike lamps now, where you don't ever need batteries, but I don't care much for the idea myself. I like to have some warning when the power starts to fade, which a battery should give but I'm not sure a wind-up power source would. PS. The front light of my Tesco pair was GREEN! Is this a new standard is anyone aware, or just a foul up in the factory? I've fitted it to one of my mountain bikes which I rarely use at night, but am concerned about a possible tug from the old bill!

Thanks for the Slime advice above. Puncture patched (actually punctures - a sharp flint removed from the tyre had holed the tube in not one but two adjacent places.... and yes I found that out the hard way... ) Second hole fixed and back on the road again. Dynamic Position - thanks for your response. Your forks sound like mine, the difference being to me that 1 to 4mm is almost imperceptible in terms of fork movement and makes it barely worth installing, given its considerable additional weight penalty. To me a fork ought to move more like 1 to 4cm under body movement, not 1 to 4mm. That has been my complaint and is what I dislike about this poor fork. A cobblestone street on a bike with a good fork should not shake you to bits, not in my opinion at least. You have reinforced my own findings. JamesC - thanks for your reply too. Yes, they are much firmer than a typical mountain bike fork.... and all the worse for it. The purpose of lockout is to stop the fork bounce when riding uphill. The rest of the time, the fork should damp out vibration and offer a good, softish ride. These don't. On this ProConnect S fork there is never any need to engage lockout, because the fork is very nearly that firm to begin with! I might decide to change mine in due course but cannot afford to do so at the moment while still recovering from the swingeing purchase price of the bike (and why should I have to?). Such a disappointment on an otherwise very nice machine.

1122 - thank you.

Yes please. Punctured today after just 28 miles since new. Even if I can find a pump with Woods adaptor in my garage, it will probably have gone rotten, having last been used over 20 years ago! .

This bike is trying me! Thanks Hugh, good to hear from you. That confirms my suspicion that it's just a poor quality fork on the Pro Connect S. Let's just say that clocking the "made in China" label on my fork came as no surprise. Lugging all that extra weight around for next to no gain. For me it lets the whole bike down and is unforgivable on such an expensive machine.... remembering that a brand new 125cc Honda motorcycle would have cost less! Nothing particularly wrong with Woods valves in my view, but yes, I did have a chuckle when I saw them too! Not sure I've seen any Woods inner tubes for sale in a long while though, so we might have to move to Presta or Schrader for convenience at some stage. Speaking of which, I got my first puncture today, rear wheel, at a total odometer mileage of..... just 28 miles So much for the top drawer, handmade, puncture resistant Continental Topcontact tyres. I'm seriously beginning to wish I'd gone with plan A now and bought the Alien Gents II and saved £1600.... What are people's thoughts on Green Slime please? Does it affect the ride quality or the feel of the bike? Does it work or is it hype? Is there a better product? Advantages/disadvantages? I've been cycling all my life but never used this type of product before, so would value your opinions, thanks.

Agreed flecc. A good fork should offer adequate damping across its adjustable range from soft to firm. Indeed. The suppliers read and participate in this forum. I can't tell them anything that they won't already have seen here, and I deduce that they already know how firm and unyielding the ProConnect S forks are. I will take flecc's advice and see if they free up any with use. Any comments from the other ProConnect S owners on this board? The preload adjustment makes only the tiniest difference from one extreme to the other on mine. Even the softest setting needs a considerable downforce on the handlebars to get the stanchions to move -- do you find the same? If so, then that is the standard, if not then mine might indeed be faulty.

Thanks chaps. I suspect Flecc is right, maybe a few miles might loosen it up a little. I don't particularly subscribe to the thinking on high speed instability with softer forks though. I've flown down some Alpine hills at prolonged high speeds on my much softer Rock-Shox fork with no concerns at all. With the ProConnect S's promising set-up offering adjustable preload plus variabe degree of lock-out, it ought to be possible to set the fork up exactly as I want, dialling in anything from soft to firm, but as it stands, the range is from hard & unyielding to rock solid -- quite disappointing at the price. Time will tell.

I believe this is the theory of risk homeostasis, that we all live to a certain level of risk with which we're comfortable. Don a helmet, feel slightly safer and consequently ride with slightly less care (according to the theory at least). Perhaps a sub-conscious reaction? I wouldn't know. Personally I've never worn a cycling helmet, but wouldn't be particularly averse if I felt it was a definite advantage. I have read of a study somewhere, though, that found motorists tend to drive that bit closer to cyclists wearing a helmet. The thinking is that the cyclist would be okay if they were knocked off, whereas a non-helmeted cyclist looks more vulnerable so needs a wider berth. Assuming these things happen at a sub-conscious level, that and the whole risk homeostasis thing is enough for me not to wear one.

After 20 years out of it, I've re-joined the fold! Things have now moved on. Having seen the questionable colour scheme of the 2010 Tasman, a drab looking brown/bronze affair, I just couldn’t proceed. An expensive bike will deserve some TLC and I just couldn’t bring myself to love one in that colour. I'm not generally fussed about such things and almost any other colour than horse dung would have been fine.... So I changed my mind, decided to push the boat out for what I really wanted in an electric bike, and am now the proud owner of a…. …Pro Connect S instead. And what a machine. So far it’s done almost everything I wanted from an electric bike, romping up all the local hills with just gentle to moderate pedalling and the first battery charge has lasted a creditable 23 miles from full to dead. Lugging a 17st rider around the Chiltern Hills, that’s an impressive range. The range and hill climbing are indeed a revelation after my 1987 e-bike and I thank the contributors on this forum once again for sharing their knowledge and offering valuable advice to help guide my purchase. The bike’s preparation wasn’t quite as good as it could have been and apart from having to screw down the valve seats to the rims, I've had to adjust the remote fork lock-out cable so that lock-out can actually be achieved (the cable's ferrule hadn't been properly seated when adjusted at the pre-delivery inspection) and adjust the front brake shoes so one wasn’t going to rub into the tyre bead as it wore down. Minor matters for someone with basic knowledge of bike maintenance, easily resolved, and, to a degree, I could even overlook the bottle cage lug which has previously been overtightened and stripped the thread on the downtube (any ideas for repair please anyone?). No, the real disappointing aspect on this bike is that Chinese made front fork. It’s rubbish. Even on the softest preload settting, it doesn’t absorb any road bumps and is shamed by the Rock Shox and Cannondale Headshock on my two mountain bikes. That’s quite poor and unexpected on a £2,195 bike. I was looking for a soft and compliant fork to counteract the harsh ride of an aluminium frame, but this isn’t it. It feels no different whether the fork is locked out or on its softest setting -- it's that unyielding! Can anyone recommend a replacement that would fit? When I recover from the bike’s initial outlay, I might have to treat myself. Other than that though, the bike should hopefully bring much pleasure and looks set to fulfil my main objective which was to get more exercise/lose weight in as enjoyable and tolerable a way as possible.

Yes, I know. I have a little rule which says never spend hundreds of pounds buying something which isn't working properly -- I'm funny like that.

Purely coincidental, I assure you! Taken from my first electric bike, a Davall Electra, purchased in 1987. The Davall Gears company of Welham Green who sold me it are still going strong, though I don't think they sold bikes for long. It was just a sideline to their main business. Their expertise was in producing the motor/gearbox - a heavy lump which bolted to the front fork and drove a short chain to the front wheel which was fitted with a sprocket.

Can't see how it could be the rear derailleur myself, given that the chain was falling off the front chainring having driven all the way around the largest rear cog, but never mind -- it wasn't my bike, it was one I went to look at with a view to purchase. It was nearly new, but this put me right off. Thanks for the advice though, which I presume would extend to a second owner buying privately?

Mike, I see nothing wrong with your calculation either, and I think there are two aspects to this. I suspect part of the problem is in the interpretation of the 'average bike ride' which leads to the figure of 300 calories per hour sometimes quoted. The kind of average bike ride being envisaged probably wouldn't be on a windless day on a perfectly flat road, but would likely involve a light breeze and some undulations. Once you start climbing any sort of hill, the energy consumption shoots up. If we model the hour bike ride as something like 45 minutes of it spent cycling up gentle 5% slopes at 10kph and 15 minutes rolling back down at 30kph, that gives the same average of 15kph. With a light breeze of 6kph and the 'average' less than ideal tyres/surface (coeff. of resistance set at 0.01), the calculator now gives 165 watts for the hour rather than the original model's 36. That equates to 142 additional calories required, rather than 31. But these figures would be true of a 100% efficient machine, which a human isn't of course. For the average Joe to supply 165 watts at the pedals, he would most probably be burning up an awful lot more internally. Much is given off as excess heat from the body, as all we cyclists know only too well! The average human is perhaps only 25% mechanically efficient, if that? It's then easier to see how 31 calories on an ideal flat road with a 100% efficient machine might translate into ten times that on an undulating road powered by a human engine. We know that 31 calories would be nowhere near enough, because a 70kg man burns up 60 calories per hour when simply sleeping -- something I'm about to put to the test incidentally.....

That wasn't lost on me! EDIT: cross-posted with flecc. Yes, I suspect you might be right, but I've done a fair bit of research now and satisfied myself that the quality of the frames, motor and workmanship is high and owners never seem to have much in the way of problems. I've hardly seen any reference anywhere to things going wrong with these bikes. Sadly the same doesn't seem to be true of the Ezee/Wispers that I've read about. My own experience of the brand new Wisper 905 I tested on Sunday was absolutely superb in parts and a bit dire in others. With the one year old Agattu I tested alongside it on the other hand, everything still worked perfectly.

Flecc, your rough & ready calculation of power as force (i.e. weight) x vertical component of velocity is a good approximation at the low cycling speeds concerned. If you haven't already seen it, I recently came across this calculator which you might also find of interest. It takes into account wind resistance and friction (which really only become significant at higher speeds, as you'll know). It's very interesting to plug in different values to see the effect on the power required under different circumstances. Cycling: Steady State Power Equation

Decision made! Thanks flecc, and thanks to all for your valuable advice. Today I have taken the plunge and ordered a Kalkhoff Tasman. The appeal of the hydraulic brakes and stronger wheels over the Agattu was quite compelling. Lloyd will swap the ugly and tricky-to-remove chainguard for the Agattu version for me (unless anyone can suggest a good reason to leave it be?) In the end I couldn't resist the appeal of German/Japanese engineering quality over something sourced from China, so decided a Kalkhoff it had to be. For anyone interested, Lloyd at 50cycles tells me the 2010 Kalkhoffs will offer an assistance ratio in 'high' mode of 1 to 1.5, rather than the 1 to 1.3 of most of the current range. I reckon that's worth waiting for, so I won't be getting my new bike for a month, sadly....

I've been riding and adjusting derailleur gears for decades. With no front mech on this bike, I'm not sure that leaves much scope for chain adjustment at the front chainring. By the time the chain is leaving the rear cog, it has travelled right around that cog and should already be in alignment. I'm not sure the rear mech adjustment/bent derailleur could have any influence at that point. Surely its purpose is to align the chain as it rides onto the rear cogs, not as it's leaving them? But you could be right. Perhaps one of the gurus will be along to shed some light.