Going electric/being seen.

Converting the ICE Adventure trike to electric assist……and everything else that’s going in trike world this month.

Note to readers – before I begin on the technical side of the post I would like to begin by letting everyone know that, as I write, I am 72 hours into a dietary fast and experiencing a bit of ‘phat fingers‘ as I type.

However

As many of you will have gathered, from my recent blog posts and video segments, I have finally succumbed to a long itch and invested in a secondhand ICE Adventure trike and I am in the process of getting used to riding it and setting it for more serious use….here I consider as serious the fact that I intend to use on the road – and roads around here tend to be narrow, steep, twisty and have poor visibility.  For my first few, experimental, rides all I do is pick up the trike’s back end and walk the whole thing 50 yards up the steep lane outside of our place to a place where I can be out of the way while I prepare to ride.  Even then the slope is still quite a steep and low gear ascent and after about half a mile I run out of ‘normal’ slope and get to the first of my training route (cardio) hills.  Just once I walked the bike halfway up that and started on a fast harum-scarum descent of the whole lane in less time than it takes to describe it.

I realized early on that I am either always going to have to do this just to escape this village, it’s in a deep river valley (the Tamar) and all of the routes out involve a hard climb out – or fit the trike with as much electric assist power as I can almost get away with under the current regulations. As I understand them the power regulations for currently unlicenced vehicles such as ‘E’ bikes is that they should retain their pedals, be limited to a 250 Watt motor and not have an electric throttle (and thus become a 3 wheeled electric motorcycle in the eyes of the plod)

At the same time I realized that there was a lot of cycling related stuff that I didn’t own because it’s at least 35 years since I owned and rode a nice touring bike : one of my last experiences of riding that bike was being physically run off the road and my very last memory is of when the bike was stolen and later sold by the village chavs – in this village, the one I live in now, most of the teenage kids are usually too stoned to do something as organized as to steal and sell a bicycle !

So anyway, the first thing I did was to buy a bright yellow jacket to wear when I am out on the road and the second thing was to sort through all of my boat related stuff to find some kind of signal flag that I can use as a visibility flag and, right now, it’s in the form of a French maritime courtesy flag because I couldn’t track down my code flag signal B which seemed much more apposite.**

Of note….the trike came with absolutely no gear whatsoever – it didn’t even come with a pair of pedals so I found a cheap pair of MTB pedals on Amazon and spent some time adding a bungee cord system to help my feet stay on the pedals (the problem is called leg suck….in case you wanted to know.  Also…in the first month of owning the trike I ordered some basic road tools, bought a couple of inner tubes and tyre levers and ordered the first components of the electrical system as they had to come from Utah.

This month, in blog time, we have just been on a short trip to find the ‘Certini store down at Saltash as my partner had promised to buy me a helmet for my birthday and I bought the first accessory I need for higher visibility when on the road….in short a powerful back light.

I should just add that I went into the store and one of the assistants looked very confused when I told him that I was looking for a bright stern light. I should also add that they have a very impressive display of specialist bicycle tools – so many in fact that I was unable to work out which ones I need for disassembling the trike’s front end (chain ,pedals,cranks and bottom bracket)

All of this has to come off to fit the motor unit into the bottom bracket.

Stage one. 

As you have probably gathered by now it is boats and sometimes motorcycles that I work with and it’s far too long since I had any technical expertise with cycles….and the Adventure trike is basically a heavy cycle with an extra wheel . Consequently I spent a lot of time in the first month just watching everything trike related – I knew even then that I would be doing a home conversion to electric assist so one of my early go-to channels was Utah trikes and one of the main video’s I watched several times was them fitting a bafang kit. They have also done some excellent video’ about all aspects of riding and maintaining trikes and I must say that they, and ICE trikes themselves seem to handle my ‘stupid question’ days very well.

Incidentally I fired a couple of questions at the recumbent trike page and they were helpful as well.

Next month is my birthday and one of the things I fancy doing is heading to the ICE workshop and showroom – if there is anything left in the tank after the motor is here then my next purchases will be mirrors and a set of front mudguards. For completion….later on will have to come a rear rack and some of ICE’s clip on seat bags – that’s probably still a long way ahead.

At the end of two full watch-through’s of Utah trikes excellent video I thought I had the main gist of how to fit the bafang motor and battery kit, in fact was all set to go ahead and order the kit when I noticed a couple of things and these are a bit crucial ; the normal motor kit is intended for a conventional two wheeler and not a trike so it doesn’t have a battery carrier and secondly it only starts at the stage after a normal trike’s front end (chain,pedals cranks and bottom bracket) have been taken off. Now, they may be simple things to a cycle mechanic but then Utah trikes keep their own custom parts for fitting the motor and secondly I have never had to take the cranks and bottom bracket off even my old Dawes let alone a trike.  Utah trikes were very kind to look through the bafang parts list and they decided that all I would need would be the torque arm for the motor and a battery carrier…obviously for the battery. I ordered those parts and Utah trikes sorted out the difficulty with their customs people so that side of things is all sat in a box waiting to be used……all that isn’t there are the tools that I need to do the disassembly of the original trike’s front end : that’ll be a second trip to Certini then.

The current problem is that I don’t think they have sent everything that I asked for although I can’t find my original sales invoice and quote : anyway I have pinged them with a message and it’s only the motor torque arm that is missing. Today, as I write, I also messaged the guys down in Falmouth to find out which tools I need so that I don’t go and buy the wrong ones.

Fitness call.

The very obvious feature about my first few rides in the lanes above the village is that I don’t have enough pedal grunt to get the heavy trike (and considerably heavy rider) up the steep hill outside our house or two of the other hills which would be my usual route out of the village to go for a country ride in Kernow.  The other routes out, the routes out via the main road (A370) would involve the long and hard climb out of the village in either direction (the village sits in the bottom of a steep river valley)….locally known as ‘heart attack hill’. 

It is true that I have been slack about regular exercise this last few years, my excuse is that I was working physically on building a boat and then for at least 6 weeks of the year I am also doing heavy gardening. My final excuse (I can find a few more if you ask) is that I have one knee replacement and that I was very poorly with a viral chest infection this winter. The eventual outcome of that is that I had a squeeky end expiratory wheeze even when I walked up any of the hills : it has cleared up now which is just as well as my new exercise regime plan is to walk those hills once or twice a day – as of today I am on walk 47 out of 100 intended before I up my game.

Pedaling the trike does feel very different to a conventional bike -even now I feel that I am using different muscles and also that I need to train those muscles and also not to try a heavy leg press like move to grind my way up the hill. My best mate in NZ, who is a keen racing rider, advises me to not grind hard but to spin faster and I neither have the power or the gears to achieve that.

Whatever….I am in my mid to late 60’s, unfit and very overweight so I am on a bit of a mission to get my weight down and my fitness up. As I alluded to earlier my basic plan before doing anything else is 100 walks of at least an hour and then in time, it will be early in March, I will keep the walks but add in something a bit harder……..don’t know what.

Being seen.(and heard)

Directly linked to my lack of fitness and that my daily habit is to walk around a network of steep,narrow and twisty lanes is that I have a regular problem with hearing the electric and hybrid cars when they are on battery.  Mainly it is because they have come up silently behind me and I haven’t been aware of them because I have slight hearing loss but even worse is when one of the more aggressive and entitled seeming drivers zooms up behind me and only then angrily blasts on the horn – in that event I am already walking at the road edge, have no more room to move away and my only choice is to indicate that I also an a road user by applying the signal digicus impudicus– otherwise known as the middle finger.

On the trike I note that I am often seen and treated as a curiosity, some trikers say that this is because the driver assumes some disability on the part of the rider. Just near me we have what we would have once called a ‘special needs’ home and school so maybe local drivers assume that is where I am from ; whatever, on my rides so far I have met both blank curiosity and/or an odd courtesy which I often don’t get as a pedestrian. The opposite side of the coin is that the trike is obviously quiet and can be moving very fast on the downhill sections so I feel that the machine needs both sound output and something in the way of increased visibility. So far I have done the obvious thing which is to wear a bright yellow jacket and I have just bought a very bright tail light.

IN the time now I have fitted the camera monopod that I improvised fitting to film the second of the video series and fitted the rear light to that in such a way as it is a bit higher. While I was improvising I also found an unused kitbag from my pile of unused kit and attached that as the gear bag to carry the new essentials.

I would like a simple bell, which is less alarming than any horn and then a powered horn to deal with the more aggressive and less aware drivers…..both are on my shopping list (not the unaware drivers I note)

Stage 2 – disassembly

This post, being the first one that I have consciously written in a new manner I should first explain how and why it is in a slightly different form. The main difference at my end is that I created the post over several weeks and wrote up a section as I did it,rather than doing the whole job and then trying to recall what I did several weeks earlier : there will also be more references to blog time or ‘now’ in that that is something that is happening in the now of writing time.

I also made a conscious decision that this kind of post is better as a written blog post rather than video so although I might film the job I am less likely to make a video just of this project but include the film clips in a more watch-worthy piece in the future,

In blog time now for example I have just stripped the trike down, ready for it to go in the back of the car and be taken to the local Certini store to let them see the front end and for them to decide and sell me the tools I need for disassembling the front end – notably to get the cranks off and the bottom bracket bearing out. I cast around as best I could for advice, even going so far as doing an ICE contact form complete with the frame number and a photograph of the business end. As it is even ICE themselves weren’t sure which components had been used and therefore which tools I would need, in fact they agreed with my plan of letting one of the tech-mechs at the store see it in the flesh as it were and then hopefully sell me the bits I need.

The other part of now is that yesterday (in blog time) my exercise plan for the beginning of the week was to make walk number 51 a long one – from the village all the way through to the nearby town. It’s only 5 miles by the most direct route but most of the first half comprises of a knee jarring descent followed by a couple of miles of hard uphill slog. Anyway, because I left the house early and just happened to only have 5 minutes to wait for a bus home I was finished with exercise for the day so I did a bit of work on the trike (fitting the mast and light) and then because it was a surprisingly nice day I decided to go out on a ride but this time ride my village escape route by walking the trike up the worst bits and then having the enormous fun of riding freewheel down the long and steep hill into the village. At one time a car tried to edge past me on the downhill and then realized that he either couldn’t or shouldn’t try and exceed the speed limit by that much……it was hilariously good fun.

**Maritime signal flag B – I am taking on, carrying or discharging dangerous cargo