I got an electric pedal assist bike at Xmas. Now that I am allowed to rest my cast on the ground (<5% weight) I reckon I can rest my cast on a pedal and use my good leg to do all the pedalling with electric boost for hills and tiredness.

Because I can’t risk putting my bad leg down at all, I will be only riding on the roads.

The bike is second hand but still has the sticky out bits on the tyres so it is believable the guy I bought it from only used it for a month and did about 100 miles.

Anyone got/used one before? I am wondering about the range and what happens when the battery drains. Does it suddenly stop or will it gradually reduce giving me time to start heading home?

I live near the top of a hill so the last bit of most rides is up hill and I don’t fancy getting stranded with a flat battery having to hop the bike home.

Experiences, advice and comments welcome

nick, what did you get.

when the battery runs out, you can ride em like a normal bike, obviously a very heavy one
most have a power guide thing on the controller showing power left.
as the battery drains the lights go out.

My father had one and when he died I stripped it and rebuilt it on a girly frame for my wife. Dad was pretty ill and also had a chronic back and wife has dodgy his and struggled with the hill to and from work without hurting. It really helped them both get out more than they could have otherwise.

It’s pretty good- dad’s one had 3 modes where it matches your input which with different percentages of power. It will also limit leave you to your own devices when you get to a certain speed (16mph maybe). If you can’t anything input any power, neither will it so you still have to do some work. When the battery is low it goes onto emergency low assistance.

Enjoy!

Ton – cant remember the name but nothing I had heard of. It is still the one shown omn the company website so is relatively recent. £650 new.

Has a twist throttle/pedal assist/combination of both. Electric boost limited to 15.5mph

Test run I did got the red, yellow green indicator on the handlebars down to red after about 30 minutes of pure electric ( no pedalling) but when I pressed the indicator on the battery it showed 3 out of 5 lights.

Not sure which to trust.

Any issues riding in the wet?

on the 2 i have had, they have both been just pedal assist, with 3 settings.
on the lowest assist setting i got about 25 to 30 miles.
offroad, or in hills this halves.

by the sound of it, i would not be going to far, if you got red after 30 mins.
mine were both great in the wet, no problems, but were both high end models.
i still have a touring version of one, the haibike trekking model.
good for 30/40 miles on assist.

It’s a bit like saying “I just got a bike – is it any good?” – there’s as much variation in electric bikes, from cheap Chinese stuff to really high quality ones, as there is in conventional bikes.

If yours was £650 new, that puts it firmly in the cheap Chinese category – not to say it’s bad, just that weight and reliability might not be all you hope for.

Battery meters come in two main types. There’s the simple one which measures voltage – as the voltage drops, the meter goes down. Problem is that the meter also goes down when you go up a hill, and the final voltage drop when the battery is empty happens very quickly.

The better kind uses an amp shunt – it basically counts amps in and out of the battery, so is a lot more accurate, but more expensive. It can also get out of calibration – it can lose count of how many amps have gone in and out – so sometimes needs a few cycles to get back to showing the right value.

Nick, you wanna buy mine?
comes with 2 batteries, only got 118km on it.
with both batteries it is good for 60+ miles.

Definitely a cheap Chinese job and damned heavy. I reckon the battery meter on the bars is the first type bBen describes.

6 miles approx on the test run. All electric with no pedalling. On road but including hills such as 1 mile up Hill Lane which isn’t too steep but in continuous.

Wondering how much extra I can expect when pedalling. Once up to speed I am thinking most power will be from my left leg with just a bit from the battery. I hope to get 15-20 but a bit worried about getting a few miles from home and running out.

I guess it will be trial and error. I might used the phone to track how far I have been for the first few rides.

BC has it in one.

Also if it hasn’t been used for s while you can expect a small improvement.t in battery performance from cycling the battery through a few uses.

I’ve seen a few come in my shop, and most were of the Chinese cheap eBay variety, however the electric side if them (although crude) have never given problems, the rest if the bikes are often not very well thought through. Most common fault is crap spoke tension leading to wheel failure and bad shifting due to.bad chainline because of poor / no design.