Something odd

I saw something odd on the way home yesterday. It didn't really blow my mind like the first time I saw this, but having observed this odd behaviour for the second time, I felt compelled to comment.

So what is this totally odd behaviour? Are you ready? I saw someone reading a book while riding their bike. This one was a school girl on her way home on a bike path, but the first one I saw was someone riding on an on-road cycle lane during peak hour traffic. In both cases they were weaving all over the place, much, much worse than someone talking on the phone while driving.

For those of you wondering what the latest developments are since my last post, here they are:

I have done a total of 340 km so far across the last 4 weeks. Between public holidays and driving in once a week, I have only ridden in 2 or 3 times a week. This week coming up will be my first full week since I got the bike on the road. The only problem is that I don't think that the rear free wheel will handle it.

It has been making clicking and clunking noises that have been getting worse and worse. I finally got to talk to the guy at the bike shop about it and he basically said that all free wheels do it and the cheaper ones do it the most. The problem is that because it has to ride stationary while the wheel turns that it isn't always perfectly square with the wheel depending on its relative position when it starts turning. I guess the one that ships with the motor is super-cheap and therefore crap.

The next problem is that in mountain bikes the screw-on free wheels, of which mine is the type, are the cheap ones. The better, more expensive ones slide on, so I don't even have an option of going to a more expensive free wheel. I'm sure I could find one better than this one, but the hassle will be finding one the same width as the 5 speed one I have now. I do have an alternative though....

Have I mentioned how little I change gears? In fact in my last 3 or 4 trips I haven't changed gears once. It just isn't necessary. Even on the biggest hill I don't feel compelled to change. The main time I would need the gears would be during some sort of malfunction or flat battery. But we don't include pedals on our cars in case we run out of petrol, so I think I should opt for optimal conditions during commuting and risk hard work in the case of malfunctions. This means I can go for a single gear on the back. Doing this means I can get a high-end rear free wheel which screws on. Why? Because they are made for high end BMX bikes and have the same fitting. Even a cheap one of these is only $10, so if I spend $40 I still think this is cheap.

This has an added side benefit of reducing the amount of space taken up on that side of the drop-out, which will mean I will have to put some spacers on the other side and this means that the rear wheel will be more centred again.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Driving in

I was forced to drive in today by force beyond my control. It really made me appreciate riding in. The aggravation and frustration of being in queues of traffic really pissed me off today. The drive in was particularly bad. There must have been an accident somewhere and the arterial routes were clogged as were the off-shoots with people trying to bypass the jam. Tomorrow's ride will be blissful.

Stupid Mind

Well, despite the fact that I didn't feel up to in this morning I made it in record time.

Average Speed: 32.6
Time: 32:59
Distance: 18 km

The Crunch

Today is the first day my mind is playing tricks on me, coming up with excuses not to ride. We'll see what happens in 1 hour...

Car Problems

The idea today was to drop the car in for a wheel alignment and ride from there to work and back to pick up the car. No need to take the charger, or so I thought. I got a call from Peter at the Car Care Centre to say that the engine mounts needed replacement and that the parts wouldn't be available today. So a ride all the way home was in order.

The ride home panned out like this:
Distance: 18 km
Average speed: 29.1 kph
Time: 36:40

The battery cut out about 200 metres from home. So I guess I have worked out the assisted range now. The ride in from Fyshwick was 7.7 km so my assisted range is around 26 km.

First Commute

I rode into work for the first time today. All went well, but my stats are a bit skewed because I stopped for coffee with a mate about 2 km from work, but here are the stats from the first leg:

Distance: 14.885 km
Average Speed: 31.9 kph
Time: 28 minutes even

I was pretty happy with this since I am on target for a regular commute in the sub 35 minute range. On the way home I took it a bit easier and stopped to pump up my tyres to their maximum pressure on the way home, so it took 39 minutes. The ride left me with four observations:
1: I wont be going back to cycling without assistance in a hurry
2: I need a bigger front gear since I am maxing out my cadence on downhills and am unable to go much faster than 43 kph without really sprinting.
3: The brake levers that came with this kit are really crap. I REALLY like the fact that they cut the power as soon as you put them on, but the plastic body is quite cheaply made and there is way too much play in them and it makes them difficult to adjust right.
4: The charger is really heavy and lugging it to and from work is not sustainable.

Anyway, tomorrow's commute will be a short one since I have to drop my car in for a wheel alignment and ride in the 8 km from there. At least I wont have to take the charger in.

I Suck

Took the bike in to work today. Ostensibly to do a few more tests at lunch time, but in reality I just wanted to show it off to the guys at work. They were suitably impressed. As it turns out I managed to leave my bike helmet at home, so I decided not to go out at lunch time. Instead I left work early and did the test around the same track as the previous test. Bringing me to the reason why the subject of this post is called: "I Suck".

How much do you think a human is worth in terms of power? Well I guess a good way to measure this would be in terms of average speed over a given distance, which is exactly what I did. It was the same 3.8 km circuit, a little less windy than Saturday and starting with a little more charge. So how much is a human worth? Or should I be asking how much am I worth? Or should I be asking if I am human? Perhaps a question for another post. 15 kph? 10 kph? Try 5.1 kph. Here are the results:

Test 2: Motor vs. Human? + Motor
Distance: 3.8 km flat-ish loop
Motor only average speed: 28.2 kph (8 minutes 5 seconds)
Motor + Human in top gear pedalling flat-out average speed: 33.3 kph (6 minutes 50)

Hence why I suck, a measly 5.1 kph difference is all I am worth.

Charger

The charger appears to be behaving itself now. I forgot to check it before I went to bed and forgot to check it before going out for breakfast this morning, but just checked it now and the correct LED sequence was showing for a fully charged battery and the battery voltage reads 46.5V.

Full throttle, no assist test

I have just got back from my first proper test ride. This test was meant to work out what the bike is capable of without the rider pedalling and to go full throttle the whole way around. I believe the unassisted range would be greater if you keep your speed down.

I rode a 3.8 km circuit which is best described as flat-ish. There is one steep hill that is right after a sharp turn, so essentially is a standing start. Only about 20 m long though.

Here are the stats:

Starting battery voltage: unknown. On full charge it was 41.5V, but I did ride the bike around for about 10 minutes last night.

Overall conditions: Slightly breezy. 23 degrees Celsius.

Distance before the battery cut out the first time: 13.6 km, then I had to pedal assist to get it up that steep bit and got another kilometre out of it without pedalling and had to pedal the last 400m to home, but I still didn't raise a sweat and the motor did keep giving me some help almost all the way home.

Total trip distance: 16.9km, which is about the same distance between home and work, proving that on a full charge I can do the whole ride without pedalling if I chose to.

Average trip speed: 24.9 km/h

Max speed: 40.1 km/h

Cruising speed on the flat, slight head wind: 27 km/h first lap, 25-26 second lap, 24 third lap.

Battery voltage end of trip: 34.1V

All-in-all I was pretty happy with it. Next test I will do the same again, but with a proper full charge and I will test the starting voltage. My thoughts are that I will take the charger to work and go home on a full charge.

Woodwork part 2

Why was my last post called woodwork? Well some people are comfortable working with wood, and some are better with metal. My medium is wood. You could say it was because my paternal grandfather was a boat builder, or maybe it's because my Dad was always working with wood, maybe it is because I did woodwork in high school instead of metalwork. Maybe it's because in year 7 when we did both woodwork and metalwork that Mr Howard used to hit me in the back of the head with his knuckle. An act that was forever known as being Mr Howarded.

So I needed to make a proper bracket for the battery since it was clearly too heavy to be held on with cable ties. I have friends who can weld and would make a nice metal bracket for me, but that would involve waiting. Bugger that.

My idea was to get some wood that was the same width as the battery bracket that came with the battery, but thick enough to make the battery lock clear the bike rack so I could mount it properly in the centre. There is an integral metal plate in my luggage carrier at the front that I could use a tek screw to attach the wood to, but only bars at the back. So I decided to put a piece of wood underneath the luggage rack at right angles to the main mounting piece and screw through into it. I was worried that friction alone wouldn't be enough to stop the rear mount from sliding from side-to-side, so I filed some channels into the top of the bottom piece of wood to anchor it in place and prevent it from sliding.

Here are some pictures of the finished bracket. The black metal bracket on top is the one that came with the battery:

The two outside bars you can see on the second picture are the ones that the channels in the wood line up with. This is why it isn't very square.

Here is a photo of the completed bike with the battery attached:

Woodwork

So in between my last two posts what happened? Well I rang Paul and asked him about changers and he had some "over bar shifters" that he thought would do the trick. Rod from EV-Power thought I could achieve some sort of spacing that would allow the under bar shifter to work. I told Paul that I would drop it in for him to look at on Tuesday because he had wanted to see it done.

I had called the wife to find out how the country trip went and the conversation went a little like this:

Me: "Hello"
Jo: "I'm driving" (annoyed tone)
In the background two year-old is screaming
Me: "What is that?"
Jo: "Hugh screaming"
Me: "What's wrong with him?"
Jo (over screaming): "Look, I'm driving. I'll talk to you later" (even more annoyed tone)

So I figured that she would be in need for some cheering up when I got home so I bought chocolates and flowers on the way home. In the end she was in a perfectly normal mood when I got home (bless her), but I am sure she appreciated the offerings anyway. Hugh has just been over-tired and pissed off about still being strapped into his seat. So off to have a bath she goes and what am I left to do, well go work on the bike of course!

So I go and have another look and figure that I may as well finish up the cabling, which I did. I probably used WAY too many cable ties, but I would prefer neatness and wasted cable ties than trying to save 10c here or there.

Now Jo is out of the bath and it is past time I started on dinner, which I mention to Jo that I am making a huge sacrifice to go and start on dinner now that my bike is in a rideable state. She say go ride it! So I do, which brings me up to my last post.

More later, I have an idea for a temporary bracket for the battery which I will share with you. Here is a photo of the completed bike, sans battery: