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The gear advantage of a mid-drive rocks but I was quite surprised that I chewed through a rear cassette in under a year / about 1k miles -- a 250W motor + heavy
by dgacmu 2y ago
The gear advantage of a mid-drive rocks but I was quite surprised that I chewed through a rear cassette in under a year / about 1k miles -- a 250W motor + heavy cargo bike + kid passenger + a large and pretty strong rider exert an awful lot of force. And with the assist, I almost never use the larger cogs, so all the wear gets concentrated. (This compares to many, many thousand miles on my road bike.)
Still love the thing, though.
- wyre 2y agoI have a friend in your same scenario. I’ve never thought to ask how quickly he goes through cassettes on that bike.
- dgacmu 2y agoI think the follow-on post above about making sure to be better about maintaining the chain is part of it. I'm a little lazy with my road bike chain because I mostly only ride it in good weather, and I carried the same attitude to the e-bike, which gets a lot more stress per mile and I'm more likely to ride in rain. I'm not hot waxing it, though it's tempting, but I do wipe it down and apply T-9 much more regularly now. We'll see -- I'm 400 miles into the new chain and cassette...
- germinalphrase 2y agoWould an internally geared hub solve for this type of wear?
- analog31 2y agoIGH's are not all that rugged. Most have a published requirement for a minimum ratio between the chainring and cog, that translates into an approximate torque limit. I love my old Sturmey Archer AW hubs, but I'm not sure I'd recommend one for the aforementioned use case.
- wffurr 2y agoShimano E5000 is an IGH rated for e bikes.
- hagbard_c 2y agoSeeing how as I regularly managed to break the drive cross in my 3-speed SA hub just by pushing the thing real hard under pedal power alone - this is 40 years ago - I don't think they're particularly strong. I fixed my bike by myself so all this cost me was a new drive cross but still, it shouldn't break in the first place.
- fragmede 2y agoI think material science minute might have advanced over 4 decades.
- hagbard_c 2y agoThe cross is made of a fairly hard type of steel. They knew how to make that 40 years ago so I don't think there is any noticeable difference. If anything I suspect the older gear hubs were built stronger than the current ones.
- xcskier56 2y agoMaintain your chain! I chewed through a nice cassette on my mtb quickly by not watching my chain and replacing it when worn. A worn chain will dramatically increase cassette wear. I only replaced it yearly and should have probably done twice per year. Since then, I switched to hot waxing my chains and have now gone a year with the same chain reading as almost new. (Actually use 2 chains but both are barely worn) There’s a great site called zero friction cycling that details all of this. The key that they opened my eyes to was looking at the total cost of riding including the cassette.
- mvdtnz 2y agoWhy would that surprise you? A semi serious mountain biker will go through a cassette on an analog bike in 2 years. You're driving the thing with a huge motor, cargo and an entire extra human. Your expectations must have been unrealistically high.
- dgacmu 2y agoThe difference between a mid-drive (in which all of the force goes through the rear cassette) and a rear hub drive (in which only the pedal force goes through the rear cassette) is large. Also, most people online report over 2k miles on a cassette. Pittsburgh's hills and more force are apparently good for some extra wear. (Also, a 250W motor is fairly small by e-bike standards. They generally start at 250 and go up from there; 750W is not uncommon.)
- adrianN 2y agoI manage to ruin chain and cassette in under a year on my acoustic bike. The trick is to ride fast in all weather and never clean the chain.
- InSteady 2y agoCongratulations, your brief comment has managed to trigger me in 3 different ways.