Electric Conversion - part 2

Christmas afternoon is a nice time to relax at home this year, so I have been pottering with the electric conversion.

First step, detach the steering linkage on the old wheel:

Then remove the head-stem nuts so that the old wheel can come out:

The linkage arm was sort of hanging about, and I was concerned that this might put stress on the rear end of the linkage, so I put the bike "up on blocks":

Then it was time to take the front wheel out.  The weight of the bike is being supported by the stand and rear-wheel.

Here is my super-helper as I set about transferring the mud-guard from the old wheel to the new one:

The easy part was removing the mud-guard from the old wheel:

More challenging was getting it attached to the new wheel, because the disc-brake mount is right in the way of where the mud-guard supporting arms go:

This really wasn't going to work at all:

You can see in the profile view here how the brake mount (on the right) is right in the way between the mud-guard support arm at the top, and the bracket it needs to be bolted to lower down:

After some creative rearrangement of the mud-guard, I managed to make it work:

It now passes very close, but just clears one of the bolts of the brake mounting:

Now that the disc-brake and electric wheel are on the front, the next step was to replace the brake-lever.  Here it is after removing the old one, and before threading everything back on.  I apparently forgot to take a picture with it all back on.

The next challenge is replacing the rear carrier rack with the one that contains the electronics.  This has some rather fascinating fitting problems of its own which I will get to in another post.

Electric conversion - part 1

Around the middle of the year when I started riding about 120km/week, I realised that it probably made sense to get an electric assist for the bakfiets.

I spoke to the guys at DutchCargoBike.com.au where I bought the bakfiets from about ordering a genuine Azor/bakfiets.nl e-bike kit so that the end result would be the same as if I had bought it electric from the factory.

That was back in July, fast forward now to December, and the kit has arrived in the post just in time for the Christmas holidays to get it all installed and working.

Everything arrived in this nice big box.  There was some problems with the courier, which is why the box is looking a bit battered.

Fortunately the contents are all okay:

I wanted a comprehensive kit, and that it is.  Not only is the motor there, but it is part of a complete new front wheel.  There is also a complete hydraulic front disc-brake (to help stop a speedy fully loaded 1/4 tonne bakfiets combination), new front-fork with the disc-brake fittings, all the little screws and washers and things, the crank-sensors that make this a pedel-elec rather than throttle kit, a new rear pack that looks very solidly built, and into which the battery pack fits.  The battery pack itself has the rear-light built in.  There is also the electronic controller, and display for the handle bars and all the other bits to fit it together.

The only thing that I can't find is the mains power adapter.  I do vaguely recall discussing something about it, and that maybe it would be a separate item, but that was a long time ago. I have left a message with Dutch Cargo Bike to remind me what the story is there, or find out if it was left out by mistake.

I'll aim to write a series of posts as I go about building it all up over the coming weeks.  The next post will likely be about the front-wheel assembly and installation, since I have already made some head-way on that.

Riding is faster than driving in Adelaide, too.

Cars often give the false impression of being faster than riding, because their maximum speed is higher.

However, this hides the slow and stationary time spent in a car which can often be avoided on a bike.
Cycling cultures like in Holland and Denmark realise this, and it contributes to the number of people who cycle to work.

However, I think it is fair to say that in Australia, and in Adelaide in particular, we tend to think that you need more congested traffic for bikes to beat cars.  However, my experience in the past ten years is that this is no longer the case in peak hour, and hasn't been for a decade or so.

But until today, that was only a hunch, with no evidence to back it up.

Today, the Royal Automobile Association (the RAA) released the results of a small-scale experiment they conducted where they found that for three of four routes into the city, that bicycle was the fastest way to get there.  You can read a little about it here.  If someone finds a link to the original RAA report, let me know and I will link to it.

What makes this a particularly interesting development is that the RAA seems to be broadening its base from only motorists to include other forms of transport. Just recently they announced that people driving mobility scooters, or "gophers" as we call them in South Australia, would now be covered for breakdowns, primarily flat batteries and tyres, if they hold normal RAA coverage.

They have also called on the government to spend more on cycling infrastructure, and generally encouraging people to ride their bikes.  This makes sense, since it helps traffic flow better if there are fewer cars on the road, and the RAA is all about helping people get where they want with as little hassle and wasted time as possible.  It just happens that historically the car was arguably the best way to do that.

It would be encouraging to see the RAA extend their coverage again to cover flat tyres on bicycles, and supporting people on electric bikes, which are really just gophers with fewer and larger wheels.

The RAA are very well respected in South Australia, and if they continue to promote cycling as a viable, it might just help to redefine the car/bicycle dialogue in South Australia that has been so unnecessarily adversarial recently.

This morning on our street we saw a .... kangaroo?

This morning on the way to work we were very surprised to see a kangaroo sitting beside the bike path at the end of our street.  We had heard from some people earlier in the week that a 'roo was hopping around Marion somewhere, but were both happy and surprised to see it ourselves.

Just another one of those little additions to our lives that comes from riding instead of driving.

For those wondering, our local council is organising one of the fauna rescue groups to come and pick him up and take him (or her) somewhere safe away from cars and traffic.

A little piece of Holland

There is a Dutch couple who live on Daws Road near us who for many years have brightened up the street scape by filling their yard with miniature replicas of the buildings from their home town.

I have ridden past hundreds of times, but today we weren't in a rush, and they were out enjoying the sunshine, so we dropped in, and took some pictures.  They are super friendly and happy to show others their work if you happen to be dropping past.

Caleb is proudly showing off his cake pop machine we bought for the princly sum of $7.20 as a reward for having a blood test.

Our bakfiets feeling strangely at home, if a little larger than life.

The updated bakfiets weather cover

A few weeks ago we got a new weather cover for our bakfiets from the guys at Dutch Cargo Bike.  The old one was too low for our daughter to fit under comfortably with a helmet.  

This isn't surprising, since in the Netherlands you don't have to wear a helmet, saving 5cm - 10cm of height requirement for the cover by the time you factor the extra height of the helmet at the outside edge.

The new cover seems to be designed with helmets in mind, and our daughter can comfortable fit in with her helmet on:

The other really nice thing about the new cover is that it has zip-open windows on both sides.  The kids like being able to have fresh air if it isn't raining too hard.  Also, the windows are big enough that you can fairly easily lift kids and luggage in and out through them, without having to remove the weather cover from the bike.



The only negative compared to the old model is that the back cover (seen rolled up in these images) doesn't seal as well as the old one.  This means that if you leave your bike parked in the rain when it is windy, you will end up with water getting in, unless you have the presence of mind to part the bike facing into the wind.

Despite this small issue, the new cover is miles better than the old one, especially if your kids are over 4 years of age.

Ride-on suitcase

As readers of this blog will be aware, I use our bakfiets to avoid airport parking costs.  I have also fantasised about making some sort of ride-on suitcase so that I could avoid the inconvenience at the other end.  The best I had previously seen was the Samsonite scooter cabin bag which I was introduced to by seeing a Lufthansa pilot in Frankfurt airport scoot his merry way -- tie flapping in his self-generated breeze -- in the seemingly endless underground passage between the terminals.  But then today, I discovered that someone in China has create that I had only thought about: the ride-on suitcase.  Top speed 20km/h.  Range 60km.

Here is the BBC piece about it: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27749176