I made a few adjustments to the ebike today. It was fully charged when I arrived. I took it for the first ride. I did not want to go out onto the farm and test it on the hills since I planned to hunt this afternoon. I just drove it around camp where it is flat. I got familiar with it and things went pretty well. I had to download the display manual to get it out of metric mode. That worked out fine.
When I was ready to hunt, I slung my crossbow over my back and headed out on the bike. This was the first try on hills. I went down the first hill and almost came to a stop at the bottom. I tried to throttle up the hill and it wouldn't go on its own. It was even worse than the lower powered ebikes I tried at demo day. It didn't take me long to figure out what was wrong. It was in high gear. Now these are not my steepest hills, but once I put it in low gear, I had plenty of power to go up as slow as I wanted.
I may have been able to save a few hundred dollars by going with a 750 watt rather than a 1,000 watt motor, but I haven't tried our steepest hill yet. I'm glad I got the more powerful motor.
One of the things I learned in theory during Demo day, and saw in practice today, was how important a mid-drive motor is rather than a hub-drive. Even with the 1,000 watt motor, I could not get up even a small hill in high gear. Hub drives don't turn the chain. Instead, they turn the rear hub directly. This means they bypass the gears. For normal pedal assist this may not matter much. I don't know. But for throttle only, it is a big deal. Mid drives turn the chain which engages the gears. Today I found out how much that matters. With the hills I tried it on today, I could not come close to making it up the hill in high gear and it laughed at the hill in low gear.
If you want to use throttle only on hills, get a mid-mount motor.
The other lesson I learned today is that while slinging my crossbow over my back works, It is far from ideal. The bike has a rear rack and the front has a plate that is tapped for M6.1 bolts for a basket. I'm thinking of using those to build a gun rack for it.
Thanks,
Jack