EBR made me do it! (new Vado SL 5.0 EQ)

[J.R.]

If I can bring myself to do it, the simplest and lightest solution is just red reflective tape on the back rail of the rack and white reflective tape on the side rails.

These black reflective stickers would be more acceptable esthetically if they really work:

Amazon.com

Wonder how hard the tape or stickers would be remove?

On one of my black bikes I used black Scotchlite reflective tape. During the day it looked black, at night it turned bright white when any light hit it. Here is some yellow:

Amazon.com

 

[Slaphappygamer]

Hey Jeremy, I used reflective tape around the middle bar. I figure some of it may be visible through the holes or at another spot in the pedals while you are pedaling.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

On one of my black bikes I used black Scotchlite reflective tape. During the day it looked black, at night it turned bright white when any light hit it. Here is some yellow:

Amazon.com

Just ordered some black reflective stickers to try. Sounds kinda magical.

 

[Rás Cnoic]

Late to the party but well done Jeremy for taking the plunge! And that yellow- gorgeous and very SoCal! May you have many happy explorations on it. Think your adjustments like smaller chainring are very practical and it looks now very fit for purpose for where you ride. Big fan of lower gearing, makes that 35nm motor feel much more powerful.

On bags etc- yeah it's always tricky. I'm not a trunk bag fan - it's high up and behind me where I can't see it plus can't get anything out of it without dismounting. But the front light off the stem makes it tricky to have any handlebar bag of any size. I finally got a new light with a fork crown fitting - following someone on here who did this and helpfully showed how, forgotten who that was it was a while ago- this enabled me to fit a Klickfix Altura handlebar bag big enough for coats, gloves, camera food etc and with a zipped top pocket for phone keys and snack bars. Plus I have Klickfix fittings on my other bike so can use the bag on either. I'm not advocating you do this on a shiny new bike but maybe in a year or so might be a solution.

 

[Rás Cnoic]

Late to the party but well done Jeremy for taking the plunge! And that yellow- gorgeous and very SoCal! May you have many happy explorations on it. Think your adjustments like smaller chainring are very practical and it looks now very fit for purpose for where you ride. Big fan of lower gearing, makes that 35nm motor feel much more powerful.

On bags etc- yeah it's always tricky. I'm not a trunk bag fan - it's high up and behind me where I can't see it plus can't get anything out of it without dismounting. But the front light off the stem makes it tricky to have any handlebar bag of any size. I finally got a new light with a fork crown fitting - following someone on here who did this and helpfully showed how, forgotten who that was it was a while ago- this enabled me to fit a Klickfix Altura handlebar bag big enough for coats, gloves, camera food etc and with a zipped top pocket for phone keys and snack bars. Plus I have Klickfix fittings on my other bike so can use the bag on either. I'm not advocating you do this on a shiny new bike but maybe in a year or so might be a solution.

Found the thread it was from member Smoke:

Upgraded headlight on Vado SL 4.0

I decided to change out the stem on my Vado SL 4.0 to get my bars incrementally higher and closer to me. So of course I had to get rid of the unique stem that came with the bike, with its computer and light mounts. And its worth saying here that I had already removed the computer mount. So I...

forums.electricbikereview.com

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Late to the party but well done Jeremy for taking the plunge! And that yellow- gorgeous and very SoCal! May you have many happy explorations on it. Think your adjustments like smaller chainring are very practical and it looks now very fit for purpose for where you ride. Big fan of lower gearing, makes that 35nm motor feel much more powerful.

On bags etc- yeah it's always tricky. I'm not a trunk bag fan - it's high up and behind me where I can't see it plus can't get anything out of it without dismounting. But the front light off the stem makes it tricky to have any handlebar bag of any size. I finally got a new light with a fork crown fitting - following someone on here who did this and helpfully showed how, forgotten who that was it was a while ago- this enabled me to fit a Klickfix Altura handlebar bag big enough for coats, gloves, camera food etc and with a zipped top pocket for phone keys and snack bars. Plus I have Klickfix fittings on my other bike so can use the bag on either. I'm not advocating you do this on a shiny new bike but maybe in a year or so might be a solution.

Thanks! Your encouragement and shared experiences had a lot to do with the final result here — both on the SL itself and on the lowered gearing. The 40t was my first guess based on experience with my hub-drive on local hills, and it's working out perfectly.

Have only had to resort to TURBO for climbing once so far, on a known 16% grade. Thought of you and your Dartmoor hills. Still don't understand how the SL climbs so well, but keeping my cadence in the motor's sweet spot is surely part of the answer. And that wouldn't have been possible for me with the stock 44t up front.

Definitely thinking about moving the headlight, as a good handlebar bag like yours would solve all my storage problems. The SL would look a lot cleaner without the frame bag.

 

[Rás Cnoic]

Thanks! Your encouragement and shared experiences had a lot to do with the final result here — both on the SL itself and on the lowered gearing. The 40t was my first guess based on experience with my hub-drive on local hills, and it's working out perfectly.

Have only had to resort to TURBO for climbing once so far, on a known 16% grade. Thought of you and your Dartmoor hills. Still don't understand how the SL climbs so well, but keeping my cadence in the motor's sweet spot is surely part of the answer. And that wouldn't have been possible for me with the stock 44t up front.

Definitely thinking about moving the headlight, as a good handlebar bag like yours would solve all my storage problems. The SL would look a lot cleaner without the frame bag.

My thoughts on it & definitely a layman's view as I'm not very techie at all, is that having enough gears to keep up a quicker cadence means much less pressure on the motor. The whine I'd hear on steep gradients having run out of gears so I was grinding slowly, showed the motor was at its limit. With my 36x46 gearing, now the reverse is true, motor zips along and I feel the extra support I'm getting. But yes it feels like magic!

 

[Stefan Mikes]

As @mschwett has explained for several times, the climbing ability primarily depends on the input power with the gearing playing a secondary role. You need a very specific power delivered to be able to climb a given incline at a specific speed. Now, the proper gearing is necessary to be able to pedal at a proper cadence at that speed.

In case the total power input into the chainring is too low, the bike speed will fall below any controllable figure (which could be assumed to be 5 mph or 8 km/h) disregarding the gearing ratio. On the other hand, the proper cadence is necessary for a mid-motor to operate at high efficiency and torque provided. I do agree with @Rás Cnoic Specialized mid-motors are happy to operate at the cadence of 80-90 rpm and provide their maximum boost then.

Regarding the climbing ability of Vado SL under my very weak legs, I did two experiments yesterday. One was climbing unpowered against a 4% flyover/overpass with the motor off. I needed the 32-51T gearing to climb at 7-8 km/h! (Unfortunately, my e-bike system was also off, so I could not check the leg power-meter; will do that experiment the next time).
According to http://bikecalculator.com/ I could probably input 130 W in the cranks there.

The second one was climbing a 10% grade incline on cobblestones. I definitely needed SL Turbo and some low gear (but that was not the lowest one). If I input 130 W in SL Turbo (1.8x boost) then the motor would respond with 234 W of mechanical assistance, the total power input were 364 W, and that would let me climb at 9.4 km/h, which feels very probable. Of course, now I could calculate the gear I rode in using Bikecalc.com (another service). My max cadence was 115 rpm.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

An oft-repeated argument for mid-drive motors is that they "take advantage" of the bike's gears. How this actually happens is seldom stated, but the usual implication is that the gears are somehow amplifying the motor torque delivered to the rear wheel.

Problem is, this can only happen when the selected gear's an underdrive (cassette cog larger than chainring). In fact, most ebikes are sold with no underdrive gears or a 1:1 at best, mid-drives included. (I look at a lot of ebike specs with gearing in mind. The Vado SL and Creo 2 are notable exceptions.)

Without modification, all available gears on an ebike are typically overdrives (cog smaller than chainring). And overdrives reduce the motor torque delivered to the drive wheel. No way around this without an internally geared hub.

As @mschwett taught me, the entity actually "taking advantage" of the gears on a mid-drive is the rider trying to keep cadence in the motor's sweet spot for efficiency and torque.

And I'd wager (1) that most mid-drive riders don't know that that's their job, and (2) that few watch their cadence or even know their motor's optimal cadence range.

Specialized University put out a video urging their riders to keep cadence above 70 rpm, but I wonder how many ever see it? I just stumbled on it by accident.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

What you are saying Jeremy is absolutely correct.

True MTBs actually can be underdrive and take the gear advantage. Meet an 18 gear-inch gearing!

Specialized University put out a video urging their riders to keep cadence above 70 rpm, but I wonder how many ever see it? I just stumbled on it by accident.

Not sure whether your Mastermind TCU can do it but the Mastermind TCD changes its colour to green when you are in the proper cadence range!

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Not sure whether your Mastermind TCU can do it but the Mastermind TCD changes its colour to green when you are in the proper cadence range!

Hmmm, will have to look for that.

Shame that my purchasing LBS said nothing about any of this. Nor do I recall seeing anything in the printed owners manual. Will check the supplied DVD manual.

 

[Chargeride]

The cadence limit is a big problem for my Haibike, I often need to pedal faster but it just hits a wall.
The bbshd with throttle just kills it, I can spin the cranks as fast as I can and if the incline pulls the throttle speed down Im there to help it back up.

But you know, borderline motorbike an all.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Hmmm, will have to look for that.

Shame that my purchasing LBS said nothing about any of this. Nor do I recall seeing anything in the printed owners manual. Will check the supplied DVD manual.

Jeremy, the TCD is the big display found on the full power Turbo e-bikes. I do not think the little TCU display has it. All I wanted to say was Specialized has recognised the need of drawing attention of some riders to the importance of cadence.

One of Specialized materials reads "Cadence is the King (or Queen)"

 

[BlackHand]

The cadence limit is a big problem for my Haibike, I often need to pedal faster but it just hits a wall

That was what held me back from the recent deals on the Yamaha Wabash RT here in the US. Most of the available data shows a pretty quick tail off in power above 90 rpm for the older S series motors.

The newer X series keep getting increasingly higher rpm assist, but probably well past their peak efficiency.

 

[fatshark]

Late to the party but well done Jeremy for taking the plunge! And that yellow- gorgeous and very SoCal! May you have many happy explorations on it. Think your adjustments like smaller chainring are very practical and it looks now very fit for purpose for where you ride. Big fan of lower gearing, makes that 35nm motor feel much more powerful.

On bags etc- yeah it's always tricky. I'm not a trunk bag fan - it's high up and behind me where I can't see it plus can't get anything out of it without dismounting. But the front light off the stem makes it tricky to have any handlebar bag of any size. I finally got a new light with a fork crown fitting - following someone on here who did this and helpfully showed how, forgotten who that was it was a while ago- this enabled me to fit a Klickfix Altura handlebar bag big enough for coats, gloves, camera food etc and with a zipped top pocket for phone keys and snack bars. Plus I have Klickfix fittings on my other bike so can use the bag on either. I'm not advocating you do this on a shiny new bike but maybe in a year or so might be a solution.

Very late to the party ... I've been away.

Another bag option is one that attaches to the handlebars. You can lower the front light using a widely-available GoPro extension bracket. I posted about this 18 months ago, and it's worked flawlessly ever since. The handlebar bag - linked in that post - is big enough for a rainjacket, or some tools and tubes, or (and most usually in my case) a slim battery to charge my rubbish phone, a small camera and/or binoculars and some snacks.

The rear rack is rarely used, though I've got a couple of Velcro straps to secure a jacket there if needed. It just holds the mudguard in place.

I've the same yellow bike as @Jeremy McCreary and am convinced it's the best colour they do .

 

[mschwett]

An oft-repeated argument for mid-drive motors is that they "take advantage" of the bike's gears. How this actually happens is seldom stated, but the usual implication is that the gears are somehow amplifying the motor torque delivered to the rear wheel.

Problem is, this can only happen when the selected gear's an underdrive (cassette cog larger than chainring). In fact, most ebikes are sold with no underdrive gears or a 1:1 at best, mid-drives included. (I look at a lot of ebike specs with gearing in mind. The Vado SL and Creo 2 are notable exceptions.)

Without modification, all available gears on an ebike are typically overdrives (cog smaller than chainring). And overdrives reduce the motor torque delivered to the drive wheel. No way around this without an internally geared hub.

As @mschwett taught me, the entity actually "taking advantage" of the gears on a mid-drive is the rider trying to keep cadence in the motor's sweet spot for efficiency and torque.

And I'd wager (1) that most mid-drive riders don't know that that's their job, and (2) that few watch their cadence or even know their motor's optimal cadence range.

Specialized University put out a video urging their riders to keep cadence above 70 rpm, but I wonder how many ever see it? I just stumbled on it by accident.

despite the lack of a meaningful underdrive in general (MTB excepted) the fact that the motor doesn’t ever have to spin so fast (since as you note it’s generally overdriven by 2-4 times!) means the internal gearing can be designed differently, in essence more underdriven, reducing a very very high internal speed down to a narrow range, say up to 90rpm. the hub drive needs to be able to produce torque up to 350 RPM or more (28mph on a 700x32 tire.) both of these situations can be designed for with the right choices in the motor, controller, battery, etc…but it’s a lot easier to make a lightweight mid drive than hub drive. If motor weight isn’t much of a factor, it’s probably a lot easier. but who wants a 10lb weight spinning at the center of their wheel

 

[PedalUma]

I just build my first Vado SL (super light) '23 today out of box. What a pleasure to work on such a lovely bike! 1) Make sure that the routing is totally clean at the handlebar (HB). Check that noting is crossed or weird. That is easy to make messy by the way it is packed with a twist with the headlight hanging off. It needs to be assembled, then the routing fixed. 2) Get grippy pedals, so you can pull back and up. It loves high cadence without clodhopper pounding down. 3) Go tubeless ASAP. This will reduce rotational mass for a more responsive feel on launches, changes, and stops. It will also prevent most flats.

 

[Chargeride]

You just have to learn some real quick, smooth shifting.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

I just build my first Vado SL (super light) '23 today out of box. What a pleasure to work on such a lovely bike! 1) Make sure that the routing is totally clean at the handlebar (HB). Check that noting is crossed or weird. That is easy to make messy by the way it is packed with a twist with the headlight hanging off. It needs to be assembled, then the routing fixed. 2) Get grippy pedals, so you can pull back and up. It loves high cadence without clodhopper pounding down. 3) Go tubeless ASAP. This will reduce rotational mass for a more responsive feel on launches, changes, and stops. It will also prevent most flats.

Agree. The LBS seems to have done a good job with 1), and 2) and 3) have been worth every penny. The motor and I like the same cadence, and it's so responsive — a dream to ride.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Very late to the party ... I've been away.

Another bag option is one that attaches to the handlebars. You can lower the front light using a widely-available GoPro extension bracket. I posted about this 18 months ago, and it's worked flawlessly ever since. The handlebar bag - linked in that post - is big enough for a rainjacket, or some tools and tubes, or (and most usually in my case) a slim battery to charge my rubbish phone, a small camera and/or binoculars and some snacks.

The rear rack is rarely used, though I've got a couple of Velcro straps to secure a jacket there if needed. It just holds the mudguard in place.

I've the same yellow bike as @Jeremy McCreary and am convinced it's the best colour they do .

Thanks! Getting lots of compliments on the color, and it's my fave, too.

Well done on lowering the headlight for a handlebar bag! That's now at the top of the to-do list. Do you recall which Go Pro mount?