Great project, kwlf 
Aerodynamics must play a big part because on a mountain bike my absolute max speed recorded is 26mph. Admittedly I don’t have the best gearing, with just one gear on the front. So road bikers fly past me on all the flat bits… 50mph is unbelievable, however! Can you do 50 on a flat road?
It looks like you have enough “bulk” there to stash away a nice 3 phase motor, a controller, and a battery The e-bike scene is exploding, leading to bike shops being generally uninterested in selling you something unless they can take 5k off you…
Biking is great. The challenge, I find, is doing it safely while riding somewhere interesting, and not too difficult. In “lockdown year” I’ve been doing a 1hr mountain bike ride almost every day. Quiet tarmac (too many cyclists killed by stupid car drivers around here especially the A281, e.g. overtaking a cyclist on top of a blind hill and then seeing a car coming the other way, they choose to kill the cyclist rather than a head-on collision with another car) and some nice tracks on which the main threats are stupid horse riders (riding an untrained horse on a track barely wide enough for a horse) and “typical” dog owners (taking untrained dogs for a crap walk, off a lead). Very enjoyable except on a Sunday Good for fitness, keeping weight down, and maintaining a hot choc entitlement at 2x per day
I think the C5 was typical of everything Clive did: cheap cheap and cheap as possible, and to hell if it only just works, because if it is cheap enough, most people won’t bother sending it back. I’ve been following his “commercial adventures” since 1969 when I helped a school friend build one of his radio kits. Of course we never got it working. He could have used a 3 phase brushless motor but he chose to use a crappy washing machine motor, possibly because he got a washing machine manufacturer to build the C5. Of course he didn’t have a decent battery back then. However I think he had the last laugh
kwlf wrote:
a lot of drivers will pass cyclists closer than they should so if there is enough room to pass a cyclist but not enough room to pass a cyclist safely, the cyclist should move further out into the road to block it.
I imagine “her majesty” hasn’t done a lot of cycling recently, as she’s never stuck me as suicidal.
I think it’s more like a law of nature. When you are driving a car, cyclists irritates the hell out of you. When you are riding a bike, the cars irritates the hell out of you. It’s like cat and dogs. In theory a peaceful coexistence is possible, in practice that is very hard to achieve.
Peter wrote:
He could have used a 3 phase brushless motor but he chose to use a crappy washing machine motor, possibly because he got a washing machine manufacturer to build the C5.
Actually – he didn’t! Washing machine motors are AC “squirrel cage” motors, but the C5 was a purely DC machine. They actually used a DC lorry cooling fan motor design. The whole “washing machine” motor rumour was just because Hoover built the motors. The C5’s body was apparently the largest injection moulded plastic piece in the world when it was made.
Silvaire wrote:
I imagine “her majesty” hasn’t done a lot of cycling recently, as she’s never stuck me as suicidal.
I doubt she’s done much driving either, but that’s no reason to let Prince Phillip work on the next version of the highway code. Whoever came up with it, it is sound advice.
I have changed my Dutch gearing to cope with the 20%ish hill I have to climb to get home, so I pedal out in the upper 20s as well. 50mph was down a reasonable hill. Could have gone faster but sanity prevailed. The world sprint record for a faired bicycle currently stands just a whisker off 90mph at Battle Mountain (low air pressure; slight favourable slope) so it can be done. I’m afraid Mountain bikes are the exception to the rule about rolling resistance being inconsequential, but if you’re not racing anyone it doesn’t matter. I suspect the roadies would pass me too.
Personally I quite enjoy city cycling – speeds are relatively low and sight-lines somewhere like London or Newcastle tend to be quite good. Contrast that with an idyllic country lane, perhaps a B road – people don’t go all that much slower than they do on an A-road and the situational awareness of both parties tends to be much poorer. In practical terms, a bike tends to be more useful in a city as everything is closer together and the distances more manageable.
Some of my nicest rides have been cross country overnight in the Summer months – very little traffic about, and you can watch the sun rise before pitching your tent.
You need very good lights on a bike – both ends. Flashing ones, preferably.
Agreed 100%. I put on a Busch and Meuller E-Bike light on the front, and on the rear there are two B&M lights, one powered from the main battery and the other independently. My reasoning is that you will notice if the front light goes out; with the rear light it’s harder. By law, at least one light has to be steady but I believe the other can flash.
Speaking generally, bicycle lights are unreliable to the point of criminality. B&M are pretty good but I have spent hundreds of pounds on lights from other good brands in the past, only to have them fail on me.
I’ve not had much trouble with bike lights – I have a ‘Beemer’ front light with a separate battery pack, which I’ve ridden with for the last 12000km. The only fault it has is insufficient strain relief on the cable coming out of the battery pack, which was something I could repair (the connectors are standard barrel-style connectors). The main issue I have with the headlight is that the beam pattern is too wide, meaning I have to turn it quite a long way to the nearside whenever there’s someone coming the other way (fortunately, the mount swivels enabling me to “dip” the headlight by turning it). Most of my commute is on unlit roads so I need a pretty strong headlight with a good battery. Unfortunately I don’t think this light is made any more – it’s a pretty robust thing, in a proper metal case with good cooling so the LEDs don’t overheat.
The Magicshine tail light also had the same problem with strain relief on its cable, unfortunately it went right at the housing (which can’t be opened, and can’t be fixed) so I replaced that with a self-contained rear light (which is charged using micro USB) which has so far done around 5000km without any faults.
63 years ago I cycled 50+ miles to a gliding club, and then back at the end of the day.
I gave up cycling 2 miles to work ~25 years ago when I decided it had become to dangerous.
Beyond the 30 mph limit the cycle is much slower than any vehicle.
Any low and slow vehicle is even more dangerous, as it will sometimes not be visible in time.
Beautiful project.
I would love to see something like this in vac. carbon and kevlar composite as well. It would be incredible how light it could be made.
