Tomm Williams
Active Member
- Location
- Northern California
Today did a bit of experimenting with what difference (if any) can be detected concerning force required to turn the cranks motor in vs motor out. As with everything I’m doing here, I don’t have an engineer degree or a lab so I’m just doing what seems logical.
I did all testing with the bike in the same gear on the cassette. I didn’t concern myself with which gear that might be as I just wanted to see if there would be a difference. For note it was approximately in the middle of the cassette.
The first thing I did was find a weight that seemed to be the minimum needed to move the crank from the 3oclock position to the 6 with the motor removed. This just happened to be a single Race Face Chester pedal suspended from a thin cable around the pedal. I did this several times and the results seemed consistent enough to my eye. I then
replaced the motor and tried this again and could not get the same results until I added 5 US quarters to the pedal.
This would indicate there is indeed additional drag from the motor when installed but I think even Fazua admits this. I also ran this test with the motor turned on but switched to no power assist . This did not seem to be any different than the motor being in place switched off.
My initial experience with this a couple weeks ago led me to believe that the motor caused considerable drag (when off) but I believe what was actually happening was I was experiencing more power assist than I realized. It just happened to be very subtle making turning the motor off seem like significant drag was occurring.
I did finally after much frustration successfully get the phone app to work and even the PC program was not as straightforward as it could have been but….. I’m there now. I’ve customized my power profile to what they say is designed for longer sustained rides so hoping to put this to the test soon.
My wife had a MUCH easier time accomplishing all of this on her Specialized E Bike and she enjoys telling me so 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I did all testing with the bike in the same gear on the cassette. I didn’t concern myself with which gear that might be as I just wanted to see if there would be a difference. For note it was approximately in the middle of the cassette.
The first thing I did was find a weight that seemed to be the minimum needed to move the crank from the 3oclock position to the 6 with the motor removed. This just happened to be a single Race Face Chester pedal suspended from a thin cable around the pedal. I did this several times and the results seemed consistent enough to my eye. I then
replaced the motor and tried this again and could not get the same results until I added 5 US quarters to the pedal.
This would indicate there is indeed additional drag from the motor when installed but I think even Fazua admits this. I also ran this test with the motor turned on but switched to no power assist . This did not seem to be any different than the motor being in place switched off.
My initial experience with this a couple weeks ago led me to believe that the motor caused considerable drag (when off) but I believe what was actually happening was I was experiencing more power assist than I realized. It just happened to be very subtle making turning the motor off seem like significant drag was occurring.
I did finally after much frustration successfully get the phone app to work and even the PC program was not as straightforward as it could have been but….. I’m there now. I’ve customized my power profile to what they say is designed for longer sustained rides so hoping to put this to the test soon.
My wife had a MUCH easier time accomplishing all of this on her Specialized E Bike and she enjoys telling me so 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
