After talking about why I choose this particular bike and how I feel about it, here is my more technical review how the bike actually performed.
500 Mile review
This review is based on riding the bike on medium to hard XC trails making round trips both ways. This may not be the intended use of this bike, but it handled itself admirably and ispired mo to ride more and more.
After the initial seat post and stem setup, I followed with suspension pressure(sag) and damping. Both are air springs, so I set pressures with a fork pump. I'm 6'4 and 225 at the moment, and ended up with 195psi back and 130psi front. I set both dampers to their middle positions.
We have a lot of freshly made gravel fire roads which used to become a pain, not so much on this bike. Finally the rear suspension and the larger wheels smooth these out just fine. I realized this was as important to my confidence taking on longer rides as was the electric motor itself. I sit much more comfortable and keen to go further.
On technical climbs, I've found the wide bars really helping me to maneuver the bike precisely while the suspension giving me good traction. Interestingly the bike has zero tendency to lift the front, even on the steepest sections. I pretty much ran out of rear grip sooner than having to start to proper balance and shift forward in the saddle. The rear tyres see to be out of their dept on this bike. Not only on these technical, steep climbs but also on pretty much everywhere they lacked grip whereas the rest of the package was just calling for more speed (both up and down). Also, when climbing, I've found locking the front fork pretty much non important. I have a reasonably good in saddle XC climbing style, and even out of saddle haven't noticed any bobbing.
On technical descents, the bike performed solid at low and moderate speeds. Brakes were a bit noisy at first but got bedded in quickly and give me plenty of sopping power when needed. Coming from and XTR/Avid rim brake setup, I really like the pressure sensitivity of the disc brakes. Again, the rears tyres were by far the weakest point, also in lateral grip. I don't have many banked corners where I live but wouldn't lean on these Rapid Robs much. After bedding in I had to adjust the brake pressure point on both sides (half turn in), because the leavers almost touched the bars, and couldn't place my fingers underneath.
I don't yet have the confidence for really fast descents on loose surfaces, but the fast run I did on a gravel road wasn't too confidence inspiring. Probably the tyres(again) or might be the weight of the rear hub prohibiting fast movement in the back and ultimately loosing grip. Otherwise even on rocky descents, I felt absolutely comfortable with the rear suspension.
The weakest point of the bike became obvious quite quickly. Pretty much on my first rocky descent, I felt a total luck of confidence in the front end. I think the front for, which is a RS XC30 100mm(120mm claimed, doh!) with lockout, is clearly out of place here. It run out of its dept pretty much instantly both in sensitivity and travel. Coming from a reasonable, light spring/oil for its a huge step down. Even on a gravel road it never feels planted. It just doesn't move fast enough when needed, I'd say the compression damping is all wrong. Basically its a paperweight up front :/
After all this, I think its pretty much obvious that the electric drive was doing what it was supposed to, all along
I had a test drive before so knew what I can expect from this system. With my weight and the steep and technical trails I'm riding, this bike is does not get me up anywhere without considerable effort. It helps me a lot make no mistake, but I have to give it a lot, too. Due to the fixed gearing of the hub motor, the maximum torque is simply limited, and the slower you go the less overall wattage it can deliver, unlike mid drive systems, where the final torque is geared by the rear cassette. Overall I did not find this a problem, as it assists me in the way I wanted, and I'm in a lot better shame physically two months in!
I didn't have problems with the torque sensing stuff on technical terrain, going up. As I said I have a smooth, balanced style and managed to pedal thus keep the drive alive pretty much all the time. The only problem I had was that after a while, I got tired and felt the assist coming on and off while I was pedaling seemingly smoothly. This was most likely me being barely able to trip the activation torque, because when I shifted to the small ring up front It worked OK. So its worth to keep in mind that although a different combination of gears can give you the same gearing, the on with the smaller ring up front keeps the torque sensor happy!
There was a dealer specific setup for the motor, where the actual assist level(torque) was at a maximum at all levels. By changing the assist level on the control screen only changed the maximum speed by the motor switches off. This can be changed by level individually, which I requested, and got a much more smooth drive in ECO mode which I use the most.
Overall very happy with the bike. I decided to splash out and update the fork/front wheel and drive train(1x11) in the near future.
Maintenance/problems
I had a look at the fork pressures, and both front and rear holding no problem. I had to tighten the bolts in the frame's suspension a couple of times, as I noticed it loose in different places in series. Probably applying loctite(?) before torque would have been a good practice at the factory... Around 200mile in, the frame started to creak when pushed by hand. It turned out that a spacer was left out at the factory, which caused rubbing on the frame :/ Since I had zero knowledge of full suspension, this was only identified at the 500mile service at the dealer. He's now waiting for a complete bushings/spacer package for the frame.
I had a few occurrences of the Error 13 case. Switch on/OFF solved these. It happened pretty much in the same place after my regular long climb on a flatter spot. Quite puzzled really, probably a nearby high voltage power-line on the mountain is the cause. On of the computers contact pins was stuck/hardly moving which might also contributed via a bad connection. This is also in for a look or replacement.
