Search results

  1. mschwett

    Can 36v be better than 48?

    almost all ebike motors are geared tho, so the relationship between the motor speed and the wheel speed is whatever the motor manufacturer wants it to be. at a lower voltage you could just gear it down less and up the current for more torque at the lower speed. i am not really sure what the pros...
  2. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    yeah, that's going to take seriously GRINDING up a hill at 100/100 in a very low gear. be careful, that's the kind of riding that causes people to hurt themselves or have a body <-> pavement interaction.
  3. mschwett

    Specialize needs to tandardize the batteries and chargers within the same company.

    Why? Because engineering and physics. The SL bikes use 48V batteries, quite small ones (not sure what the C rating is). Most of the other non-SL bikes use 36v batteries, larger ones that are presumably more parallel to support higher current. The new Levo 4 is 60v to support the very high power...
  4. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    the older specialized chart does confirm very high efficiency at high rpm. it also suggests that the efficiency should be higher at lower rpm, but maybe the new motor sacrificed that a bit, or maybe a longer steady state test would show lower electrical draw?
  5. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    cool my guess is, however, that the system is not 84% efficient at 100rpm. more likely it’s just not outputting quite the full 315/320 watts of mechanical power when the electrical draw is only 377w. i think specialized would be crowing about it a lot more if so :) it’s very interesting that...
  6. mschwett

    Anybody tried Clik tire valves?

    i’ve very much enjoyed inflating with the cliks. it’s so much factor and more satisfying! on both my road bikes. air loss is very minimal between rides but i also refreshed the sealant when i installed the cliks. both tubeless of course on my commuter, somehow the process of screwing in the...
  7. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    an interesting note in a review of the new firmware for the full power levo, perhaps explaining why 0/100 on microtune is not really 0.
  8. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    i think the varied efficiency of the motor (let's call it 70-80%) and the inability to measure this property directly make it difficult to base any predictions or observations on mechanical motor power...
  9. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    ok, i have no idea how i achieved that u shaped result! what the heck! going back to the data, if you consider support factor as the inverse - rider power / motor power, it's actually linear. a very simple first degree equation can go from ease and rider power to motor power - motorPower =...
  10. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    so, if we believe these electrical power values are fairly typical and repeatable, AND we believe specialized's mechanical power chart... we can combine the two and get a chart of efficiency : it's lower than we might have estimated until we get to 850rpm. mech power values based on the...
  11. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    from the "03 - Turbo Vado SL 2" page at https://support.specialized.com/kb/sp_en-us/content/ECV3-6142/03-Turbo-Vado-SL-2-Turbo-SL-System#MotorTuneEasePower essentially we have 13 different values of required rider power for full motor support at 80rpm with varying ease xx/100. you could argue...
  12. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    here's what i think is happening. when specialized changed to "ease" from "assist" they changed one very significant thing - the rider/motor power ratio for any given "ease." i strongly believe the relationship was linear on the SL 1 motors with the mission control system and associated era...
  13. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    i also have to say … realizing how much more powerful this bike is than my creo was, i’m kind of wondering if the ideal replacement for my commuter would actually be a vado SL2 4, with the drivetrain replaced by an electronically shifted rohloff and veer belt kit! a fairly light 320w mid-drive...
  14. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    i think testing a fairly powerful bike like the SL2 with a range of E from 40 to 100 will likely bump up against the edge cases of speed and rider power without a little gravity thrown in the mix. a steady hill is a consistent known load unlike the mystical vagaries of aero drag at > 20mph...
  15. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    I’ll believe that when I see it documented on a long-ish steady state effort - preferably a shallow climb - at similar cadences across a few different E And Pr. nothing in my experience with the SL1 suggested it was ever as far off from the simple model as that would be. it would also...
  16. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    according to the 40/100 chart you posted, the average Pm/Pr between 50 and 200 watts Pr is 1.5. 1.2x after efficiency. not too far off from "2.7x you x 40%" which would be 1.08x how many samples do you have for the 40/100 where cadence > 60 and power > 50 and < 200 or so? ideally there's 5 min...
  17. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    ok, this starts to explain things. toss all the values where Pr is < 50 or > 200, they’re likely not steady state values in this sample set and there is enough delay in the motor starting and stopping that the values on the edges of transitions are just noise. i’m betting it’s much closer to...
  18. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    nice the 1.6x is a bit higher than you’d expect 40% ease to deliver on an SL2, and it’s quite linear. “2.7x you” at 100% ought to be more like 1.1x you at 40%, but you’re seeing 1.6x. if the numbers are electrical, that’s really 1.3 and not so far off.
  19. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    remind me again if we know definitively whether these values are electrical input to the motor or (estimated) mechanical output?
  20. mschwett

    Turbo Vado 2 4.0 or 5.0 or 6.0?

    it’s interesting, and seems to suggest that the assist factor changes for a given ease when the max support changes. i never observed that in quite a lot of rides on my SL1, they were two very clearly separate parameters. specialized’s range calculators of the time also used pretty simple logic...
Back