maandag 20 oktober 2014

Custom e-trike ICE Sprint RS

Bafang central/mid motor,  HP Velotechnik streamer, Ortlieb Office bags for comfy commuting, foldable for travel.

maandag 13 oktober 2014

Urban and long distance commuting.

An Airnimal Rhino, custom built up with our favourite Bafang motor and Rohloff geared hub....
We milled out the bottle battery to fit in behind the head tube.
Good road tires made a big difference at 35 km/h.
It's a small bike but I did some test riding. It gets closer to the definition of light urban mobility: electric (and fast!), enormous suspension on top of room for good balloon tires, and still light and nimble to ride and fold. Looks cool too IMHO.
The orange WAW219 in the background has the same transmission setup (Bafang + Rohloff), but for exactly the opposite use: long distance, year round ecommuting (80 km roundtrip).
Some features:
4 season WAW canopy with magnetic latches and acoustic felt lining (= excellent ambience with a decent bluetooth stereo like the Bose Soundlink)
3 x 1W LED daylight running lights
6W high beam with capped light cone
1W rear light + 3W brake light
5W turn signals
Bafang bracket motor programmable for velomobile use
Foldaway Lcd display and controls
400 Wh li-ion battery
Rohloff 14 sp geared rear hub
Marathon plus tires
Price: same as a set of alloy wheels on an equivalent fossil car... I know, we're mad.
More about this ultimate commuting  monster later on.

dinsdag 7 oktober 2014

Flevo Alleweder




This was my very first velomobile back in 2002. And it has been a first velomobile for many a happy cyclist ever since. Not all FAWs were created equal, and this was a particularly good one.
I bought it from a Dutch retired electrical engineer who stripped her back completely to the last rivet, and reassembled her carefully. After spending his first year of retirement restoring his FAW, he rode about an hour in it, found it too slow and scary all the same, and sold it.
The Alleweders wandered notoriously in corners. One of my first cycle engineering feats was improving roadability by swapping the single rear suspension arm for a good two-sided fork. The rear suspension was further stiffened by adding a second suspension unit on the other side. This improved roadholding tremendously.
I enlarged the cockpit as well by folding back the rear bulkhead. A Rohloff was added when I got knee pain, this resolved the knee problem but it reduced my cruising speed under the psychological threshold of 40 km/h. A few years ago we had a déjà-vu experience as she belonged to a Brussels' architect, who upgraded and bought my WAW.
For the current owner we installed a new Rohloff, a Bafang bracket motor and a comfortable ICE mesh seat. Surely this must be the world's most luxurious Alleweder now.


In this picture: custom Rohloff shifter, brushed aluminium LCD display for pedelec-operated bracket motor, ICE mesh seat, removable lithium-ion battery.