How to change turbo mode to be as smooth as ECO

[jsp45]

It's quite the thing isn't it?

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

This is my bike with the new bloom handlebars.

It also has 3D printed parts on the front and rear lights to put a filter on to make them a little bit less bright on the eyes of road users. The front one has a yellow filter on just now and the back one doesn't yet have a filter, but I plan to use filters that will keep them the same colour, but just a little less sharp on the eyes.




View attachment 198993View attachment 198995View attachment 198996View attachment 198997View attachment 198998View attachment 198999View attachment 199000View attachment 199001

OK, anyone who puts that many pix of their bike in a post is already completely hooked. Which puts you in very good company here.

Beautiful, highly capable ebike. Also an amazing piece of electromechanical engineering when you dig into it, as I suspect you will.

Soon you'll be riding it to its full potential and having a ball doing it.

 

[jsp45]

Thanks, yes, I do like it very much. I think it will be a lot of fun once I really get up and running on it.

The hubs are very interesting aren't they?

My next challenge is that it is has started making a high pitched whistling noise every half turn of the wheel. I suppose that is to do with the fact that I had to put the front wheel back on and it's probably rubbing the brake disc or something. I will ask my son. I think he will know what to do. Or at least he will enjoy finding out.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

My next challenge is that it is has started making a high pitched whistling noise every half turn of the wheel.

Bummer. UANs (unidentified abnormal noises) can be very hard to pinpoint.

Every half wheel rotation is an interesting frequency for a UAN. Just in case it's a brake noise, best to reseat that front wheel ASAP. Don't want any abnormal forces on your rotor.

 

[jsp45]

Hi,

I did a couple of experiments. I wondered if I could tell you?

I tried riding my bike with a 1.5L bottle of mineral water in the frame in place of the battery. That was to see what it would be like with the 1.5kg range extender battery instead of the 3.6kg 625wh battery. I do think it is quite a lot better. It's hard to carry the 3.6kg battery out to my bike in the first place, and then with the battery in the bike, it is hard to get the bike out of the bike box and down the side passage to the road. Doing all those things was much easier with a 1.5L bottle of mineral water inserted in place of the battery. When I got to the road, the difference in weight was sufficient that the bike became feasible to ride on the flat as a manual bike without needing the motor, so that was a big difference.

I then put the big battery back on and adjusted the power down from 600w to 490w using the flow app. I'm hoping that that tells me roughly what a reduction in power to 80% would show as I understand that that is what I would get with the range extender battery. It reduced the lurching significantly and when I took the bike to go up the steep hill, the power was noticeably reduced, but still fine. There is only one hill in my town and the rest is all flat, so I think the cost/benefit analysis suggests that having the lighter battery would be worthwhile.

The only tricky thing is that I will need to buy the range extender battery new for £400+ and find a way to sell on the nearly new 625wh battery. The shop can't do a swap because the battery is slightly used. I am planning to ask if they would buy it back for a used price (perhaps reduced by £50) to sell on to someone else. I will see what they say.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Reasonable test, but I'd think twice about selling that main battery. Big hit on resale value, and you may find yourself wanting the range as you get more adventurous on the bike

 

[jsp45]

It does seem to be very hard to sell it on without a massive hit in value. However, if I keep it I have to store it with no intention of ever using it, and all the risks of storing a massive battery. I can't really imagine ever cycling more than 30 miles without being able to stop and charge overnight.

It does seem to be hard to sell them though. But of head scratching going on here.

 

[jsp45]

I wondered if I could tell you about my continuing experiments, and ask a question about the kind of terrain where other people cycle?

I have realised that my bike with the big battery and the max power setting is great on steep hills, and against a headwind. It is also great on wide open roads, where I can chug along at 20mph for ten minutes or more. I wondered if that is the sort of thing that a lot of the riders on this thread are doing? I looked at their names on the left colum and realised that a lot of them are from places very far away from where I am, whose terriain I know nothing about.

Most of my cycling is done in small narrow roads, with a lot of junctions. There are cars parked on both sides of the road, even right up to the junctions. The road space between the parked cars is wide enough for one car to pass, but narrow enough that I have to pull in to let a car pass. There is a constant stream of stop-start, 90 degree direction change, and gradient change from "slightly uphill" to "slightly downhill". To the casual observer, both of these gradients are "completely flat road".

This is the sort of road I am on:

The thing I am finding is that when the road is slightly downhill I need to turn the motor off and go to gear 1. If the motor is on then it pushes too hard downhill. If the motor is off, the bike is too heavy to pedal in anything other than a really low gear.

Then if I go to the next little road, and the road is slightly uphill, then I need to turn the motor on because at this slow speed, I have no momentum to carry me and it is all down to the pedalling. Once I am going slightly uphill, I really need the motor in turbo mode to help with the weight of the bike. Once the motor is on, I need to go to gear 5 to even out the lurching of the powerful motor.

So I am constantly switching from [turbo + gear 5] to [motor off + gear 1].

I think also at this slow speed, with the constant stopping and starting and constant changes of slope and direction, the weight of the battery stops being an advantage in providing momentum (as it does on a fast open road) and can be a bit of a liability. The extra weight just makes it harder for the bike to get moving from a standing start, and I can't find out how to set up the controls of the motor to enable it to start moving from a standing start without the lurching in response to the cadence of the pedals. The only way to do it seems to be this constant switching from [turbo + gear 5] to [motor off + gear 1].

I'm keeping experimenting to see if I can find a way to make the big battery work. If not, I think I can probably sell the big battery for enough money to cover the cost of the small range extender battery. The big battery is £850 new and the range extender is £460 from my local shop. So I think the depreciation on the big battery would be okay.

I can't find a way to buy the range extender second hand.

Thanks if you managed to read all that. It's a complicated business and I'm grateful for any thoughts on how to get it right.

 

[jsp45]

I just tried turning the power of the battery down to 80% again and I think it does make a difference. It also helps if I keep walk assistance on all the time when I am walking.

Out on the road, the bike seems to feel much more at home if I ride it as though it was a small car. With a manual bike I always feel like a fast pedestrian, whereas this bike definitely handles like a small car. I think my next trick need to be to learn how to drive the ebike as though it is a fast pedestrian. I need to be able to make the ebike behave like a manual bike for when I try to ride with my son on his manual bike. Fiddly!

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

I wondered if I could tell you about my continuing experiments, and ask a question about the kind of terrain where other people cycle?

I have realised that my bike with the big battery and the max power setting is great on steep hills, and against a headwind. It is also great on wide open roads, where I can chug along at 20mph for ten minutes or more. I wondered if that is the sort of thing that a lot of the riders on this thread are doing? I looked at their names on the left colum and realised that a lot of them are from places very far away from where I am, whose terriain I know nothing about.

This map and ride profile are pretty typical of my terrain in coastal Southern California. Rolling coast highway, hilly inland with 5-8% grades common and a few reaching 15-20%.

Most of my cycling is done in small narrow roads, with a lot of junctions. There are cars parked on both sides of the road, even right up to the junctions. The road space between the parked cars is wide enough for one car to pass, but narrow enough that I have to pull in to let a car pass. There is a constant stream of stop-start, 90 degree direction change, and gradient change from "slightly uphill" to "slightly downhill". To the casual observer, both of these gradients are "completely flat road".

Cyclists call these "false flats". Typically under 2% gradient, which means that the gravitational resistance or assistance is under 2% of gross weight.

They can definitely take a toll over miles on end but shouldn't over a few blocks.

This is the sort of road I am on:

View attachment 199157

Streets like that are pretty rare where I ride, even in the towns, and I avoid them whenever possible out of fear of someone opening a car door into my path.

Best to stay well clear of door zones and slow down on full alert when you can't. Nothing roomier to ride nearby?

The thing I am finding is that when the road is slightly downhill I need to turn the motor off and go to gear 1. If the motor is on then it pushes too hard downhill. If the motor is off, the bike is too heavy to pedal in anything other than a really low gear.

Then if I go to the next little road, and the road is slightly uphill, then I need to turn the motor on because at this slow speed, I have no momentum to carry me and it is all down to the pedalling. Once I am going slightly uphill, I really need the motor in turbo mode to help with the weight of the bike. Once the motor is on, I need to go to gear 5 to even out the lurching of the powerful motor.

So I am constantly switching from [turbo + gear 5] to [motor off + gear 1].

Something's off here. Unless you're extemely weak, you shouldn't need big swings in assist level and gear on a string of false flats. I'd expect to ride the whole thing in one assist level and one or two adjacent gears without all that fuss.

Has the dealer ridden your bike to confirm that your assist is working properly? I think a thorough test is in order.

I think also at this slow speed, with the constant stopping and starting and constant changes of slope and direction, the weight of the battery stops being an advantage in providing momentum (as it does on a fast open road) and can be a bit of a liability. The extra weight just makes it harder for the bike to get moving from a standing start, and I can't find out how to set up the controls of the motor to enable it to start moving from a standing start without the lurching in response to the cadence of the pedals. The only way to do it seems to be this constant switching from [turbo + gear 5] to [motor off + gear 1].

No question, the greater the gross weight, the harder it is to accelerate, brake, and deviate from a straight path. This reduced responsiveness would your best argument for weight reduction in your flattish terrain.

Saving 2 kg on the battery will save you what, 2-3% on gross weight? Effort-wise, wouldn't expect that to be even noticeable on a false flat.

 

[jsp45]

That's amazing to know that that is where you live. I used to go on trips for work to San Diego and I used to fly over that area in a propeller aeroplane from the airport in Los Angeles. It's lovely to know that that is where you are. I can imagine that you must have some amazing views and nice wide roads and steep hills to cycle on there.

Nearly all the roads here are quite cramped. It's a very cycling city (Cambridge, UK), so everyone is super-aware about not dooring cyclists. It is quite tight for space though. There's really no alternative to cycling for the routes that I need to go. I have bought the bike because I do need to do some long open-road routes, but to get to those long roads, I need to work my way through all the narrow ones first.

I tried the bike again today and I worked out that this is what I'm doing:

slight uphill = turbo + gear 5
slight downhill = motor off + gear 5
Starting from stationary = motor off and gear 1, rising rapidly to gear 5 again +/- turbo depending on slope.

This is a faff because in my commute I need to stop-start a lot and change gradient a lot for about the first 5 minutes. Maybe I will just get used to doing it after a while.

I'm really glad I got the bike with the clickey gears rather than the smooth gear shift, because I seem to be changing gears a huge amount. I didn't think I would need to use the gears on an electric bike at all.

I see what you mean about the weight being only small, but it definitely feels like a lot more relative to the total weight. When I take the battery off and ride the bike as a manual, it feels much much lighter. I really feel like I am carrying a paving slab on the bike when I have the battery. My kitchen scales say that it is 3.8kg. I know that the bike is about 25kg and I am 63kg, so it doesn't make sense that an extra 4kg makes so much difference, but it really does. I think the battery is 4.3% of the total weight. If I switched to a 1.5kg battery it would be 1.7% of the total weight.

I don't think that I am extremely pathetic physically, but I might be. I think it might be that my sense of balance is very acute.

The other thing that is a little odd is the walk assist. I have to walk through a car park and get the bike up a 45 degree slope at the side of some stairs. Sometimes the walk assist helps, but today it just didn't do anything. Sometimes it kicks in hard and nearly drags me off my feet. I haven't worked out what that is about yet. It seems to like to produce a burst of speed sometimes, but with no way to predict when it is going to happen. Changing gear has no effect.

I'm not sure there is anything wrong with my bike, because I test drove three others before I bought it and they were all the same.

I will keep trying. Thank you for listening.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

That's amazing to know that that is where you live. I used to go on trips for work to San Diego and I used to fly over that area in a propeller aeroplane from the airport in Los Angeles. It's lovely to know that that is where you are. I can imagine that you must have some amazing views and nice wide roads and steep hills to cycle on there.

Grateful every day to live in a place with so many fun and beautiful rides right from my door year round — and lots of good bike infrastructure to do it on. Drivers here are generally not mindful about dooring cyclists, but they're otherwise pretty good around bikes.

I tried the bike again today and I worked out that this is what I'm doing:

slight uphill = turbo + gear 5
slight downhill = motor off + gear 5
Starting from stationary = motor off and gear 1, rising rapidly to gear 5 again +/- turbo depending on slope.

This is a faff because in my commute I need to stop-start a lot and change gradient a lot for about the first 5 minutes. Maybe I will just get used to doing it after a while.

Q1. What's your speed and cadence through all of this?

Q2. What changes when you try it at the next assist level down in gear 3?

I'm really glad I got the bike with the clickey gears rather than the smooth gear shift, because I seem to be changing gears a huge amount. I didn't think I would need to use the gears on an electric bike at all.

A lot of people think that, and on a cadence-sensing hub-drive that you can just throttle around or ghost-pedal without any real effort, it's largely true — providing you're willing to ride it that way.

But you're on a torque-sensing (or perhaps even more sophisticated) mid-drive with no throttle. In addition to keeping your legs happy, you also need the gears to keep your motor happy. At too low a cadence — say under 60-70 rpm — motor efficiency drops off, and high assist levels no longer translate into high rear wheel power.

 

[jsp45]

Q1) I think my speed during this would be an absolute max of 9mph. I go at 16mph on the open road, but there isn't time or space to exceed 9mph in the small roads. The absolute legal speed limit on these roads is 20mph, and I often am reduced to driving at 10mph, because there just isn't space to speed up.

I have a feeling that my cadence is about 40rpm. I just imagined my legs pedalling and counted against my watch timer, and I think that's about right. I will check on the flow app tomorrow when it is light and I can turn the bike on.

I have tried to go faster, but I can't. It just feels really really wrong. I think it's because I've got the sort of legs that are strong but slow generally. I never have been able to run really, but I have always been great at digging ponds and doing heavy stuff like that. I think it's something to do with muscle type.

Q2) My motor options are Eco, Tour, Sport and Turbo. If I am on the up-hill flat road in sport at gear 3, the bike doesn't provide enough support to make up for the weight of the battery. The motor lurches with the turns of the pedal. If I go up to turbo, then there is enough support to propel the bike, and in gear 5, the lurching from the pedals is gone. I suppose if I am pedalling really slowly and pushing really hard, that does make sense, now I think about it.

The shop man said that I would ruin the motor if I pedalled slowly in turbo. He says almost everybody does that, and he has to fix the motors a lot. I didn't think that I could pedal any faster, so he said I must buy a bosch motor rather than a shimano motor. He says it's easier to get bosch parts. That's why a bought this bike, so I could ruin the motor with a clear conscience. (sorry) The man is okay with fixing it a lot. I can't fix my legs nearly so easily.

I am now riding with the power turned down from 600 to 475. I tried that to simulate the effect of the smaller battery and it was good. When I turned up to 600 it was bad again, so today I turned down to 475. That was today and it was good again.

Thank you very much for thinking about all this. I am learning a lot.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Q1) I think my speed during this would be an absolute max of 9mph. I go at 16mph on the open road, but there isn't time or space to exceed 9mph in the small roads. The absolute legal speed limit on these roads is 20mph, and I often am reduced to driving at 10mph, because there just isn't space to speed up.

So fairly low speed and a lot of stop and go in congested areas, and up to 20 mph on open road. And you want help starting out — presumably to get up to balancing speed as quickly as possible. Correct?

I have a feeling that my cadence is about 40rpm. I just imagined my legs pedalling and counted against my watch timer, and I think that's about right. I will check on the flow app tomorrow when it is light and I can turn the bike on.

Not familiar with Bosch motors, but guessing that yours is well below max efficiency at 40 rpm cadence. That could contribute to your need for TURBO assist on slight grades.

Q2) My motor options are Eco, Tour, Sport and Turbo. If I am on the up-hill flat road in sport at gear 3, the bike doesn't provide enough support to make up for the weight of the battery. The motor lurches with the turns of the pedal. If I go up to turbo, then there is enough support to propel the bike, and in gear 5, the lurching from the pedals is gone. I suppose if I am pedalling really slowly and pushing really hard, that does make sense, now I think about it.

I'll have to think about that.

I am npow riding with the power turned down from 600 to 475. I tried that to simulate the effect of the smaller battery and it was good. When I turned up to 600 it was bad again, so today I turned down to 475. That was today and it was good again.

No idea what that power setting (600 vs. 475) actually controls. What's it called?

Also seems unlikely that the lower Watt-hour capacity of the range extender (RE) would by itself reduce the max electrical power it can deliver to your motor in W at any given moment — at least not in a major way. Have never heard a Specialized owner complain of less avaliable motor power when running on RE alone. Less range than the main, yes, but not less motor power.

 

[stompandgo]

With any of the lower torque Bosch smart system drive units, Sport provides well over 200% assistance. That's a lot. I think the issue here is that you don't have a lot of leg power and you're riding a heavy e-bike. Cutting weight by eliminating the main battery doesn't make sense to me. You should be looking at a lighter e-bike. To reduce the lurching you're feeling, adjust the dynamics through flow. You are using so much drive unit power, some lurching is unavoidable.

 

[jsp45]

@Jeremy,

> So fairly low speed and a lot of stop and go in congested areas, and up to 20 mph on open road. And you want help starting out — presumably to get up to balancing speed as quickly as possible. Correct?

yes this is right. Tbh I think I am nearly sorted. I just need to change gear and mode a lot until I get to a more open road.

@stompandgo, yes I think you're right, the bike is heavy and my legs are not strong enough to push it. It's fine on the open road. It's just difficult with lots of stop-start riding at very low speeds because of the inertia of the very heavy bike. I thought the motor would deal with that for me, but it seems to be fiddly.

I don't think I can switch bike though. I have just bought it and it is past the return date. The gazelle seemed to be the only bike with the good upright riding position that I like, so I bought one. I didn't have a lot of time to look at lots of bikes and just needed to buy one and get on with it.

Currently I have acceleration reduced to -5, power reduced to 475m support at 0, I think. In gear 5 the lurch is basically gone in turbo and I can ride quite long distances now.

I do still wonder about the smaller battery, because at low speeds the bike is transformed by reducing the battery weight. I need to go and test it really, but I just can't get to the shop at the moment.

Sorry, I feel as though I am rehashing the same story over and over here. I ought to just stop talking and go and try the other battery really, but I can't do that for a few days.

Thank you for trying to help.

 

[LeonD]

My ebike has a Bosch Performance Line Sprint motor which I believe is similar to the SX motor. The Sprint is VERY dependent on cadence. The ideal range is 80 -100 rpm. Maybe it starts kicking in around 60 - 70 rpm but I usually select a gear that puts me in the 80 - 100 rpm range. Maybe try riding with a higher cadence than 40 rpm if you can?

Not sure if all Bosch motors are the same. Or if different companies configure the same motor to operate differently. I'm just offering up my experience. For the record, I'm riding a Canyon Grizl ONfly.

 

[jsp45]

Thanks for saying about that. I can't ride at a faster cadence but the motor does kick in at a slow cadence. It kicks in as soon as I turn the pedals.

 

[stompandgo]

The Bosch Performance Line Sprint, like it's BES2 predecessor the Performance Line Speed, are biased towards cadence.

 

[jsp45]

Does that just mean that the faster you pedal, the faster the motor pushes?