Skip to main content

E-Bike for your (mental) health

The first time I rode an e-bike was probably about 7-8 years ago.  I thought it was pretty cool, but I'll be honest, at the time I wasn't really grabbed by the idea (it probably didn't help that, at the time, they were more expensive, heavy, and had very limited range).

At some point this year, I started to pay attention to e-bikes.  After watching countless YouTube videos of people doing their own builds, I finally took the leap.  I wanted a bike that was reasonably "stealthy" (could easily be mistaken for a normal bike), powerful enough to be on moped terms, yet still able to be operated like a bicycle.  Originally I intended to buy a conversion kit, and spent about a month researching reviews to figure out which of the many options I should pursue.  The process was suddenly abbreviated when I found a Craigslist ad for an already-converted bike.  It was 48V, 1000W, right in the area I was looking for.

E-Bike purchased from Craigslist.
My trusty old steel frame mountain bike.
Upon getting the bike home, I determined that beyond the motor, controller, and battery, there wasn't much of the bicycle itself that was worth keeping.  The pedals were stripped, the crankset was cheap plastic and wobbled, the disc brakes would not adjust, and some other problems.   Even on the electrical side, the battery management system had had some kind of fire, and there were melted leads, connectors, cheap fuse holders, and other issues.
Cannibalized frame.  Anyone want a Chinese mountain bike?
I had my trusty old bike who I had just decommissioned in favor of a lighter bike (which was to remain conventional).  The Univega Rover 303, known for being very rugged (albeit heavy), steel framed bike.  It was the perfect candidate.  In about 3 hours I had swapped the motor, controller, throttle, rack/battery, etc. over to my bike.  Ran into a few snags, but nothing too bad.  I had to slightly widen the frame at the rear axle, and the throttle wouldn't easily fit with my gear shift.  I then rewired and installed serious connectors, fuses, and made everything safe and reliable.  Presto, the whole thing is now ready to go.

Converted!  The small bag in the center is the controller, and the panniers hold the battery. 

It does 30 MPH, range is somewhere around 40 miles.  Since the build, I have taking daily rides, and getting familiar with it, and ironing out the little details.   Things like getting a kickstand that can support the extra weight, a serious bike lock that stows away, a powerful headlight, better seat, gloves, etc.  These things all matter 10x as much when you are going fast and far.

Most of the trips I have done are between 20-30 miles round trip.  Just exploring the area around Shelburne, Hinesburg, Williston, and thereabouts.  Eventually, I'm planning one long trip out to my folks house, which will be about 50-60 miles round trip (charging required).  I'll try to post some recaps of some trips and what I learn/experience.  All-in-all, e-biking is incredibly fun.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reaper, Linux, and the Behringer X-Air - Complete Studio Solution, Part 1

Introduction and Rationale This is part one of a major effort to document my experiences with recreating my home studio, entirely using Linux.  Without getting into too many of the specifics, a few months ago I decided that I was unhappy with Windows' shenanigans - to the point that I was ready to make a serious attempt to leave it behind.  For most in this situation, the obvious choice is to switch to Mac OS.  With its proven track record, support, and options for multimedia production, it is naturally the first alternative to consider if your goal is to simply use something other than Windows. For me the choice was not so simple. I despise Mac OS and, in general, the goals and philosophies put forth by Apple in an effort to ostensibly provide users with an "easy" working environment.  It does not help that I have also failed to find any aspect of the Mac OS UI intuitive, but I realize that this is a subjective matter. With my IT background and user-control* f...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Alternative Take on AI Doom and Gloom

 I've purposely held my tongue until now on commenting about "AI" (or, more specifically as has come to be known, GAN or Generative Adversarial Networks).  It seems like it is very in-style to complain about how it has made a real mess of things, it is displacing jobs, the product it creates lacks soul, it's going to get smart and kill us all, etc. etc.  But I'm not here to do any of that. Rather I am going to remind everyone of how amazing a phenomenon it is to watch a disruptive technology becoming democratized From the time of its (seeming) introduction to the public at large, around November of 2022, to late 2023, the growth and adoption rate has been nothing short of explosive. It features the fastest adoption rate of any new technology ever, by a broad margin.  To give a reference, the adoption rate for AI image and text generation, real-world uses, in just 12 months is comparable to all of that of the another disruptive technology, the World Wide Web, takin...
Post a Comment
Read more

RANT TIME: Why do replies to a message I sent go to my spam folder?

Despite what one would think/hope, sending a message to a given address does not inherently give Google a high confidence that a reply from this address is expected (and, for example, that it should bypass spam checks). I have confirmed with Google's tech support that there is no way to automatically have this happen. The user can do the following: 1. Add the address to your contacts list in Gmail. 2. Check spam folder for replies, and mark it as "not spam" if something ends up there, which should influence the fate of future replies received. I can also approve an address at the domain level, i.e. if it is a big vendor or similar. I've had to do this with several of our Chinese vendors. I regularly ask engineering and purchasing to give me a list of the supplies we deal with, so I can approve them as a preventative measure. For what it's worth, all of the false positive instances of reply -> spam we have experienced have involved the sender's email server ...
Post a Comment
Read more