Reid Tracker 2 eFatty

[Smaug]

From a recent ride on the local MTB trails. It was cool (40 °F) muddy and drizzling that day. I was glad to have a big contact patch with lots of knobby lugs digging in, as some trails were off-camber, leaning toward the river.

Airing-down from 20 psi to 8 psi for trails. The bike shop owner said some guys go down to 4 psi; that would be REALLY hard to pedal, it's so soft. 8 psi seemed soft enough to me.

Let's start out with a short, easy trail. Bike's still pretty clean...

I have to admit that a 70+ lb. bike is not ideal when it's time to lift it over fallen trees.

Having gotten my confidence up on the easy trails, it was time to ramp things up.

Here's what it looked like after I got done with one tough climb. Trees down everywhere, but it must've happened awhile ago, as none of them were across the trail.

 

[MikeDuf]

Not very good. Doesn’t hold a candle to my Aventon or Yamaha.

As a matter of fact, something’s wrong with either the controller or torque sensor. More on that later.

Hey thanks for pointing out the aventon reviews. I was liking the reviews up until the point when one fellow said that once you get to around 23 to 24 mph you have to work very hard to get to 28 because of the gear ratios. I'm going to test ride one tomorrow and see if that's accurate. My gazelle I'm probably in 8th gear and hitting maximum 28 with two more years to go, so if I were going downhill I could really get that thing moving of course with no assist. You mentioned you have a level two is that true about the gear ratios and having to work hard to get it to 28 mph? Thanks in advance

 

[Smaug]

The torque sensor not reacting the way I'd like seems to be related to battery voltage drop caused by cold. As the voltage gets lower, it doesn't want to assist sometimes.

I'm not sure what I'll do about this, if anything. When the bike has been sitting outside in the winter all day and the battery's half depleted, I sometimes ride 80% of the way home without assistance. I'm starting to think there are good torque sensors and cheap ones, where the one on this bike is a cheap one and the one on my Aventon is a good one.

 

[Annieolnie]

I've been looking at reptile heaters that run off a usb port, very low wattage. You could put one under a neoprene battery wrap and see if it helps on a ride. If your battery has a usb port then it can take care of itself.

 

[Smaug]

That's a good idea, but there's no USB output on my bike.

It doesn't seem like low wattage would be enough for a reptile heater? (it is WARM in reptile terrariums that I've seen) No?

What kind of reptiles do you keep, out of curiosity?

 

[Annieolnie]

I don't have any reptiles. I was just considering it as a very low wattage way of keeping the battery warm, when it is extremely cold outside. I thought the KD51c display had a usb port on it somewhere, but maybe it's only certain models. The heaters are only 4 or 5 watts but I know how warm my phone can get at times, so I thought it might be warm enough to help to increase range.

 

[MikeDuf]

I'll chime in, if you want to keep your battery warm you can use a motorcycle tire warmer. It's basically a strip of material with heating elements in it that you would wrap around your motorcycle tire prior to erase and make them nice and soft and sticky. But they can you be used for heating a lot of different things. I think they even make heating blankets for cars in Alaska and the Sub-Zero climate. Just my two cents here

 

[m@Robertson]

8 psi is probably in the ballpark of as low as you can go on a 4.0 tire. As you go bigger, you can go lower. I was surprised to find recently that my 5.05 Vee 2XL tires were quite firm at 3.0 psi. For the 4.4-4.8 tire, 4 psi is I think the very bottom and even then its a lot softer.

 

[MikeDuf]

Hi thanks for asking about the wildfires yes I'm out of that area being by the coast.

And yes there are quite a bit of fat tire bikes in the area. I kind of have my eyes on the aventon,Aventure model because it has the bigger motor. How do you like your Reid bike? How is the range in real world riding along with the top speed?
Thank you

 

[Smaug]

I couldn't answer re. range. I haven't tracked it at top speed, which is only 20 mph on this one.

I also rarely go above PAS1, which only gives 250 W.

I FEEL like I'm getting about 60 miles on a charge, but nearly half of that is un-powered and it's cold as can be here too. Variable tire pressure too; I go down to 5 psi on the trails, which hurts range.

 

[Smaug]

I deleted some off-topic posts, including some of my own. No offense, I just would like to keep this as a review thread.

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Update: I've got over 200 miles on it now. It's doing well. The pedal assist is a little janky, but nothing major. Sometimes I'm motoring along on assist at 18 mph, nothing's changing, and the assist cuts out and I get down to 12 mph or so, then it comes on again. I think the firmware is not optimized or the torque sensor is not sensitive enough.

@m@Robertson, I found that 8 psi is nowhere near the minimum tire pressure for 26x4", at least off-road. I've been down as low as 4 psi and can still go lower. This is on snowy trails with lumpy, frozen footprints and sometimes in a few inches of fresh snow. When I got on pavement for a stint, steering was very heavy and it was noticeably a lot more work; I could only maintain 8 mph unpowered. It was nice to have the huge contact patch though!

Adding some pix from such a trail/snow ride:

Multi-use path, heading toward the state park. Maybe 1/2" deep snow with some frozen footprints from a previous snow. I had 15 psi for this leg, and it was a bumpy ride:

A plowed-but-unsalted road in the park. 5 psi was perfect for this.

Here's what the trails looked like in the park. 2-3" deep powder snow in places, smashed down in places:

The beach was too rough for ANY sort of seated riding, so I stopped here. This is from the SE corner of Lake Michigan:

Ride stats: