The Electric Bike Thingie

[webfarmer]

Got a call early yesterday afternoon that my new electric bike was ready for pickup at Volde-Mart.  Actually they were very nice about it all.  The fellow (an "assembler") who worked on it noted that he couldn't adjust the shifters because the battery pack wasn't on it.  I think that's probably not the case but it didn't matter as the 7-speed shifter seems to be working fine without adjustment. 

They did adjust the brakes which was the main thing I wanted done and they did that just fine.  Once I made it to the parking lot I could hop on and zip right over to my parked car in regular bike mode.   The other nice thing about it is that it's a short bike and fits very nicely in my Volvo wagon.

So with a charged up pack at home, I slid the battery onto the rails of the bike rack and used a key to secure it to the rack.   (Nothing worse than someone walking away with your battery, I suppose.)   No "ignition switch" key setup however.  If they can get your cable and lock off the bike, they can zip away on it.

Still haven't quite figured out the two modes of operation.  One uses the motion of the pedals to turn the system on and provide the extra boost.  The other doesn't require any pedal action.  Just crank the motorcycle-like control and off you go.  Time to read the friendly manual again (which isn't the greatest because it includes several types of Currie Tech products and not just that particular model).

Ended up making a short run to the local mall and back.  Cheap Chinese food and a small grocery store run.  I was a bit disturbed by the battery readings as it seemed to imply that it was already pretty low after not all that much use.  Supposedly it has a 13 mile or so range.  I'm getting since I'm a bigger guy, it might be more like 10.   I'd be happy with 8.   It didn't take very long for the charger to read "green" again so that was encouraging.

Another slight disappointment was that I found that the battery pack was wired like fuel tanks in a truck.  Instead of being linked together and drawing them down as a set, you burn down one and then the other.  If the range isn't up to snuff with a big guy on it, I may need that extra battery pack.  I hope not though.

I was warned in an on-line post not to trust the idiot light-style charge level indicators on this unit so I suppose I'll just have to find out what it can do by experience.  It seems to work nice enough just in bicycle mode and now that I have the stem and seat moved to more appropriate levels (all the way up), that should work nicely too.  Still needs fenders, extra lighting and a basket of some sort to make it a working vehicle.

After getting the groceries I had my first "What is that?" discussions with a young fellow coming out of the Rolling Wok restaurant.  He was impressed by the price and performance.  I got a call from a friend who is running for the local public power board checking to see if I'd be at her fundraiser (I will) this weekend.  I mentioned that I'd probably be riding my electric bike over to her place and she looked forward to checking it out and getting a photo with her on it for her renewables-friendly campaign.

The local quest for world electric vehicle domination has started.

Comments

[quotamour.livejournal.com]

Sounds awesome!

I hope you have a great weekend, Dennis! =)

[webfarmer.livejournal.com]

Hey! I hear that electric vehicles work especially well in areas of warm weather. ;)

It should be a very interesting weekend. I hope you recover okay from your week which sounded like a bit of a grind.