One of the nicer things about the BES3 Bosch system is its flexibility. A manufacturer can design an e-bike with *design* as the priority, like this bike. The Pinarello Nytro is another one. Clean lines. Minimal options. Pick your assist and just ride. If you want to switch assist modes with the terrain, like an e-MTB, add a remote. The manufacturer has no idea what you plan to do with the bike once you purchase it. Catalyzt is a fiddler. He wants to dial in performance in multiple domains at any moment on his rides. Good for him. He needs a remote. Other guys may just want to ride at a single assist level and let their legs and the gearing adapt to the terrain. They don't need a remote.
On my BES2 bike, I switch modes maybe twice per ride. On my race bike, I added Di2 sprint shifters, because, I was sprinting a lot. The average rider would have no use for them at all.
Drive unit control is just another thing to consider when choosing an e-bike.
A
"fiddler"?! First of all, I'm a violinist! Secondly...
Kidding! I mighty argue thqt this has to do more with the kind of terrain I ride than my own proclivities-- there is a reason I don't see a lot eBikers in the hills, and I think it's because it's just too much going on for most people: Many short, steep hills, blind curves, traffic from fast-moving & silent electric vehicles, stop signs, hidden trails, etc. If you don't know these hills really well, you're not going to have any fun at all here. I'm not sure that "Auto" or any set-it-and-forget-it setting would work here-- and I wish the low gear had a few extra teeth for some of the crazier hills, though this bike can do all of them, and easily, at the right PAS and cadence.
But I am a fiddler in one respect: I shut the motor off a lot, sometimes for short distances. It was very interesting riding to C Street Bikes through the Cahuenga Pass, which is another way of saying,
don't do this if you don't have to. It's not fun. You aren't actually riding on the freeway, but you are riding on access roads right next to it. On the downhill stretches, a lot of 35 MPH for me with cars passing at 55 or 60 and not much in the way of a shoulder. (If I'd known the road surface, I might have gone faster.)
Curiously, the uphill stretches, that seem steep in a car, are actually quite gentle! I did most of them in ECO, with a few short stretches of TOUR. I use TOUR a lot more in my own neighborhood.
My range riding back from this bike shop was 10% better than usual despite similar elevation. I think part of that was the more gentle grades, but part of it was being able to shut off the motor more frequently. The uphill grade on the ride back was so gentle I left the motor off for a lot of it.
I think it looks like a pretty good placement regardless. Yes Stefan, Bosch uses a rigid hinged split ring with a screw to tighten. A 22mm with a 3mm gap is probably a better fit than trying to shim down a much bigger ring in that area.
I did something similar on my bike, its just a lot more complicated because the controller on the BES2 bikes is wired and a lot bulkier.
This is the correct answer to Stefan's question! But yes, I've dealt with the problem of hinged rings that don't quite fit, or with rubber shims that dry up, vulcanize, and loosen over time-- having an aftermarket light that fits great for 8 months, and then starts slipping.
But there's another part of the story I did not tell: The 31.8mm version of the remote is harder to find than the 22.2. They are
both very hard to find, in fact, but to get the 31.8mm, I would have had to order it from Italy or somewhere else in Europe. Tariffs to Italy are on hold until 7/7, so I could have ordered the 31.8mm, or I could have ordered the 22.2 for about $10-$20 less domestically.
In this situation, I thought, "You know, I really don't know how to mount this, it will probably involve removing tape, and Catalyzt hates taping bars, doesn't know this new rubber tape or how it's sealed, and wants to support local LBS." The other issue was, I wanted to take the bike in and have them check the derailleur, make sure that I had done the micro-adjustment correctly, because it required six clicks. I told the LBS, "Look, we'll try it, if it doesn't work, I insist on paying you for your time." But I think Jason knew the gap was only 3mm-- he wasn't pushy at all, he just explained that we actually had options with the 31.8, he did have the part in stock, and I was welcome to swing by and see if it worked.
We tried a few positions; this did involve me going back into the shop area-- did we want it angled left or right, a little further up or down? That was interesting, too -- I really had to have my hands on the bars with the remote held in various test positions to see what would work.
I am happy to report that when Jason checked the derailleur, he said I'd dialed it in perfectly. I thought I was hearing some chain noise, and was psyching myself out by tightening and loosening it a turn or two every few rides until last weekend. In fact, I think I went from 5 clicks to 6, which felt right, then tried 7 clicks this weekend, which felt wrong, and dialed it back to 6. I think the noise I heard was just because the motor is a little louder than the E5000.
