They've worked better than any other 20" tire I've tried so far, though to be fair they are two of only three new 20" tires I've ever had. All others were used, saved off various bikes and whatnot disassembled for projects.The Toecutter said:
Well, the roads here are "smooth", in that they are usually well-paved...except for the ridges/waves/dips/potholes caused mostly by heat and large vehicle acceleration/braking at or near intersections, driveways, etc.
There are exceptions, most of which I avoid, but some areas like right next to where I work I can't avoid, and tha'ts full of holes and cracks big enough to get some narrow bike wheel stuck in (probably not mine).
If you look thru my Delta Tripper thread there are some descriptions of roads farther south and west of here that are not in great conditions (some are pretty bad).
No, they're not, and if I could find them locally I'd be using Pirelli ML75 or Shinko equivalents, just to reduce flat worries.
FWIW, though, I also have had zero flats on these tires, even without using the tire liners in them. That's saying a lot given the crap that ends up in the roads here off construction trucks, salvagers, and whatnot, which are everywhere all the time, and sometimes quite careless about what spills out of the tailgate. That doesn't even mention the spines and whatnot from seeds and plants around here.
Keep in mind that the extreme loads I have are not common, as I'd rather use the trailer for those--but occasionally something comes up that I must carry home *now* and don't have the time to go get the trailer and come back.
So, most commonly there will be 350-400lbs of total weight on the bike, most of which will be on that rear wheel.
You can also add "reverse wheelie bars" that stick out the front, that would help to prevent a complete flip of the vehicle in the event of a panic stop--but you'll want reasonably large-diameter wheels on them so that they cna't stick in a rough patch in the road during sucha stop, or they end up making it worse like a pole vault jump. And they'd have to stick out a fair distance.
The most important thing especially at higher speeds is absolutely equal braking force on each tire so you don't brake-steer. I'm sure *someone* has already made a system to help brakes on those things auto-adjust during braking, but I don't know what it is or how to do it.
I thought about it a lot when I was going to build an AirTrike, which never happened (no money for the suspension parts and never got the right salvage bits to emulate them), and I never quite figured out a practical way to do it that didn't get so complex I worried my inadequate fab skills and tools would end up making it unreliable.
It could, here, if this bike wasn't so large and obvious that I think many people that'd run me over are afraid of hurting their cars/trucks. :wink:The law in AZ is too restrictive... 20 mph gets you run over in most of the U.S.
But I'd rather have a 20MPH restriction than a power restriction (htere is no power limit here). I need the power to haul things and to accelerate quickly much more than I need the speed.
So I'll take unlimited power vs higher speeds.
Not much--given ebike part weights and the rest of my bike, it's irrelevant to me. :wink:
My spare is presently partly laced to an X5304, so I can't test it. But you might look up Ypedal's old for sale thread about them, it might have that info in there. There may be a link to it in the same thread you found my other post in, but I can't remember if it was before or after that one--probably after, since I didn't go lacing up the motor into that rim till after that tire failed.
Well, that's only around 2500-3000W, IIRC (detailes on tests are in the CB2 thread somewhere). Iv'e had up to 4KW+ but was a larger diameter wheel and I don't remember any details of performance. Working on getting that back with the smaller wheel and see what happens.
I've beaten quite a few cars almost all the way thru the intersection, and though most are not *trying* to beat me, at least a double handful have--usually some "hot rodder" that's got rubber-band tires, custom rims, etc., but probably not much done on the engine itself other than making it loud. Often they rev it up repeatedly while sitting at the light next to me, and I'll often be across the crosswalk on the first side of the intersection before they even get started. Usually they're past me by the time we reach the crosswalk on the other side, but not always. SOmetimes they only pass me after I reach 20MPH and have to stop accelerating (I don't know what the performance curve is beyond that point).
Personally I'd like to get power capable of smoking my tires and causing a wheelie if I really poured it on, though I would almost never use it, it'd be fun to have the accleration capability that would give me.
But on this bike I expect I'd need 5-digit wattage to do that, and I don't know that any motor I already have could take that, or that very much of the current would end up making work and not just heating up the motor.
