And the bike weighs in at...

With PiScales up and running it was time to finally check out the weight of the small additions to the bike made over the last few months.

• Scott Mountain Bike
• Lunacycle Bafang mid-drive kit 750W
• 52V Lunacycle Panasonic Shark 13.5ah Battery
• DC/DC 60V Stepdown 12V 10A Regulator (Should have gone for 20A)
• 2 x 8V/12V Front LED lights - They are bright :)
• DC (8V-52V) TO 5V 3A 15W Waterproof DC Regulator
• QI 2.0 Fast Charge step up convertor
• QI 3.0 Fast Charge Regulator
• Ram Mount X Grip Ball Phone holder (stem + ubolt)
• 3 Coil 15W Wireless Charger (for Note8)
• 1 Coil Wireless Charger (for S7)
• Small 3x7 segment DC display
• Samsung Gear 360
• Cuboid Bluetooth Speaker
• Wahoo cadence / Speed Sensors
• 8.4V 6xCell 18650 LiIon Battery Pack (backup for lights)
• Planet Bike Men's A.R.S. Anatomic Relief Bicycle Saddle 
• Rear square automatic light
• Rear under-seat auto light / alarm
• Handle bar extended mount bar
• Ergon GP5-L Grip BioKork w/Adjustable Bar
• Suspension seat post
• Sunlite Rear Wire Folding Basket
• Basic Dual action hand pump
• Front frame pack
• Moosetreks Bike Handlebar Stem Bottle Bag
• Chain Guide
• Mud Fender / Mudguards
• Yellow Kevlar OttoLock 
• Magnetic usb charge cables
• Cable Sleeving
• Silicon tape - essential for grip on all mount points
• DC Power switch
• 16 AWG Silicon Wire
• Automotive Dielectric Grease/Silicone Paste/Waterproof Marine Grease
• 3M Scotch-Mount 1/2 x 15' Molding Tape

It was time to find out....

A side effect (aka bug) of PiScales not connecting to a wireless network was that after every measurement the code throws exception and restarts, so it was a quick ... read before reboot...

- in this case the non connection to wifi was great for this otherwise fitbit would have added a few lbs to my weight tracking :)

So weighed myself and then holding the bike... with some simple maths ....

64 lbs / 29 Kg

without battery: 55 lbs / 25 Kg

battery: 9 lbs / 4 Kg

Something's not quite right with my e in ebike (part 2)

Huge push last weekend ... was it time to open up the motor unit ... not yet, but was getting close..

Lots more forum reading ... lots more ... lunacycles have a great knowledge base and forum over at electricbike.com (direct to bbs02 knowledge base).

Spent a couple hrs riding up and down street :) Clearly I'm a bike novice, not used to hearing and correlating issue sound.

Plenty of trial runs with changing gears, changing PAS levels... Managed to get into a consistent mode where I could always make the 'jumping' happen. The gear selection needed to be in the highest gear (8) and a reasonably high PAS level 8/9.

Leaving in gear 7 resulted in plenty of clean runs, but moving into 8 the problem came back.

Tried to make some video's, but I couldn't hold it still enough to see what was happening, just hear..

So what was the issue...

Main fix was aligning derailer gears! Clearly with motor it's more important for them to be perfect. With all the quick release of rear wheel it gear alignment moved enough to cause problem. So gears we're still changing after the auto gear selector had dropped the power and reengage, thus causing chain skip, which I'd not experienced before, this thinking motor skip.

This time, I spent a fair amount of time aligning the gears and also aligning the deraileur hanger - quick view it didn't look out, but it was slightly, so bend it back to true manually. These tutorials from Park Tool and RJ the Bike Guy are very helpful, and with my hanger only slightly out - manual bending with some grips, although tough, worked out enough for me.

Then spending the time aligning all the gears - more helpful park tool videos -  

 

Definitely recommend, going back and forth on the setting multiple time to turn them as best as possible since clearly with the motor it's even more sensitive.

With that complete, definitely the shifting was amazingly cleaner, could feel the gear selector working well and it was back to be a dream ride ... although 8th gear still caused a couple of chain slips during the couple miles of testing.

Lubed all the chain and gear set up, and yippee - all smooth now.

Amazing for me - was a great learning experience - gear alignment is important and recognition of audio chain jumping :) soooo pleased not to have to crack open the motor casing.

Funny thing also happened with support... I'd finally got desperate enough late Friday to raised a support ticket request with lunacycle.com. Support excellent as usual, Scott from Lunacycle got back to me on Saturday with a request to check my derailleur alignment lol - what a star - typical.

All is still not perfect with the throttle as it cuts periodically, usually at speed, so am thinking maybe it's just tripping a limit as once I disengage the throttle and re-engage, all works again ...

I don't throttle much, so will loot at that one another day.

Refactor - bike style

Workstand 

with all the work on the bike, I decided time to invest in a bike stand, starting to like the idea of being able to stand up, not having to worry about balancing the bike or rocking back and forth on the kick stand in order to spin front or read wheels.
That and now realising that I'm gonna have to pull the motor apart - the continual skipping when under torque has got me a little worried that I have some wear on the gears already (even though I think I'm just around the 400mile mark on the odometer).

looked for about 20mins and decied to give the buzzrack eco workstand (http://a.co/i7t1AGb) a try. Was one of the cheapest at $39.90, but I also liked the fact that it didn't have a clamp, just clever hook arrangement with the seat and seat post.

works great, needed to raise the seat in order to give it the leverage space and it doesn't have height adjust or tray for bits, but working great for me so far...

<< need to add piccy>>

Refactored handlebar today...

Another great find - sticky tape :) Silicon self fusing tape (http://a.co/buowzTg). With constant pain of peripherals moving on the handle bars as the rotate / slide round, even fully tight. or in the case of the red extension, even the central grip worked it's way loose and out. So what I needed was some decent tape that would bond and have some decent grip. This stuff is great, different to get used to as it stretches, doesn't stick to much, but boy when it gets with it'self - yep it sticks, holds together and provides a nice slight grip surface to stop those rolling brackets.  It's not cheap @ $10 for 10ft - so gonna look for larger cheaper roll now, but it's certainly worth it so far - will keep eye on it over next couple of months while in use

Moving the brackets to the centre allowed them to be more perpendicular to the handlebar to help static grip. Added some silicon tape on the light also to stop them rolling around hopefully. With the vibrations, last week or two I managed to loose the plastic infil for the left bracket, so took some cut up garden hose, wrapped it and am trying that for the grip/padding.

Something's not quite right with my e in ebike

Technically is it the motor? not actually sure and I suppose, possibility is low, more likely some of the support around it as motors are pretty simple at the end of the day :)

So over the last few days, I've been using the throttle and higher level PAS - instead of the usual 3-5, more like 6-9, which I figure has pushed the power up on the drive. Which correlates with the display showing me close / at 750 at times.

Problem is I'm feeling the pedals jump, initially I thought it was delay gear shifting as the feeling through the pedals is similar, but then it was clear that it was happening even when I'd been static gear selection for a while.

It definitely occurs when the demand/assist is higher, and will occur few times a minute if I just use the throttle.

Thinking a little :) this may well have evolved from creaky cranky

As I have the news in my eyes on my commute, I don't hear any noises, so it may have been there for a while I suppose.

Looks like it's time to have to pull the motor housing apart...

youtube media hunting time and lunacycles forum too....