I live in the Portland metro area and the lions share of bicycles you see here are drop handlebar ones. As a 35 year veteran of mtb'ing I have never been attracted to road riding but as much as the PDX is touted as a bike town, by that they mean road bikes, as the trail network scene is lacking or requires a car ride to the trailhead.
I live outside of town a little ways in a more country environment. Still no trails but miles of gravel roads and 2 lane pavé. I have been trying different methods of motor assist bicycles since 2000, both gas and electric, and with what I know I decided to try a what they call a "gravel bike" out to see if it would work for my needs.
I considered a BBHSD but I have always been intrigued with the two wheel drive aspect of using a front hub motor so I went that way instead. Not wanting to spend a whole lot on it and not having a suitable bike I ended up with a Bikes Direct Motobecane MotoStrava aluminum frame/carbon fork that came with WTB TCS wheels, an 8 spd./3 ring drivetrain and mech disc brakes for $600 delivered. I got a 9c motor kit (1000w legal here in the OR) from ebikes.ca to match my 52v Em3EV 12.5ah battery and all in was around $1600.
Took most of a day to get it all fit and finished. The bad thing with hub motors is that they are made for 10mm dropouts and most bikes, including the one I got, have 9mm dropouts. It is possible to file the axle flats down to fit but it takes some time to do it right. Another issue was the shoulder where the rotor mounts on the hub is about 2mm to fat which puts it too far outboard and it turned out to be a problem getting the stock caliper in position where it didn't rub and in fact I never did get it to work right so I rode it for like 225 miles before I figured out a solution. I ended up with an Avid BB7 caliper that I still had to perform surgery on to make work but at least it does now.
After getting the motor on there and the controller and battery set and the wires all tucked and tied away I came to the throttle, which I prefer over PAS. I had a thumb throttle sent with the kit and road bars are a different diameter so I couldn't mount it on them I knew right away. It was a really hot day so I went and hopped in the river about 5 minutes from my house and floated around for a bit thinking about it and came up with what I thought might be a workable solution. A trip to town for $3 worth of parts (two screw on bar end plugs, a washer and a piece of handlebar of the suitable dimension) and with a little fiddling and some zip ties got the desired effect. As seen in the enclosed pic, it looks a bit kloojie but works surprisingly well and I have grown to like it. Could probably clean up the concept a lot with the aid of some CAD and a 3D printer but those options are beyond my scope at this time.
My first ride was in to the city to my son's house which is 22 miles away. I did a full throttle run and made it there in 44 minutes @ an average speed of 26mph. Whoa. It takes me longer than that in my car sometimes. I recharged and took it easier on the way back against a pretty stiff headwind most of the way that had developed and only averaged 23mph. So I was pleased with those results but still didn't like riding on the pavé all that much. So I started poking around using what is around me and found out that the bike goes on gravel really well. I should say at this time that it came with 40c WTB Nanoraptors but I switched to the 45c Riddlers for a bit more cushion and have been riding them in the low 30's psi ever since. The frame and fork (more on that in a moment) will even fit them with fenders! The gravel led to cow trails which I was very surprised that the bike took to them like a duck to water. Granted I am not going real fast but going none the less.
The one thing that wasn't working was that I was running out of effective gear ratio at around 28mph. I installed a Schlumpf High Speed drive that I have had in stock awaiting the right time and it upped that considerably so now I have a 28" to 148" gear range which is working very well and simplifies the shifting without having to use a front derailleur. Only 16 spds. but with the power of the motor and using a throttle you can start off in the highest gear and get it spinning in pretty short order. But to save watts I usually get in a lower gear before stopping to facilitate the next start.
Shortly after getting things sorted I took a 3 week vacation that ended up with a trip on my single speed up and over a 12,700' pass. Being a sea level dweller I was expecting to really suck wind doing it but the 150 miles that I put in on the e bike at altitude prior to the event was a great tune up and I found that I was able to be more efficient on my pedal bike as I was more in tune with where my limits were and able to back down before I got there. I have always maintained that the best thing about e bikes is that you can get to the edge of a sweat and stay there and this was proven once again. An old friend calls it "Speed Training". Works for me!
I am really happy with the Cycle Analyst also. It tells you everything you need to know and with a little simple math on the fly you can tailor your ride easily to go as far as you want and come home with a pretty much used up battery. As fast as the bike will go on the open road, even against a stiff headwind, it still demands that you go slower on gravel and single track so most of my rides are combo's of all those and I manage to average 20 wh/mi easily. Sometimes I will go 5 or so miles on trail which knocks my average speed down per ride but I don't care because I am going where I want to be. Wh/mi is a much more practical equation to me and the one I use to gauge the performance of a ride. BTW I pedal actively 98% of the time to achieve this, I am in to the exercise I get as well as the fact that I sold my KTM and this is giving me the trill of speed that I miss from that along with it!
Oh, and about that Carbon Fork. I am sure that most of you are thinking WTF you shouldn't do that but all I had to do after fitting the axle to the drops was to file off the lawyer lips so that the washers would sit flat and install a Grin torque arm. After 525 miles it shows no sign of stress related to the motor even though I have pushed it to its 1136w limit many times, especially on some super steep loose double track climbs which due to the 2 wheel drive this bike excels at. I am going to replace it because I picked up a rock in my spokes on an old mining track downhill in the Alvord Desert on my trip that made a dent in the fork leg and stopped me pretty quick!
So yes I would have to say that Drop Bar bikes are possible and in fact probably most desirable for those that do mostly any road type riding. The ones coming from the big players are all PAS which as I said doesn't work for me. Reason is that I prefer to be able to dictate my cadence and effort and feed motor input in to it rather than having it controlled by the system. Also I can shift into any gear under full power or in cruise control mode at any time if I need to or just stop pedaling in some of the rougher sections and still maintain good forward momentum. Works better from a standstill also and if I have to get off on a hill I can just blip the throttle and the bike comes along nicely. YMMV but don't think that throttles are the devil just because the industry is painting them to be.
