bikerpet

Well I'll be very interested to hear your report after test riding. The proof is in the pudding. My take on gears is that the biggest difference is largely around clutch-dump type moves - punch, splat etc. In those situations it makes a really big difference being able to control the maximum bike speed (and the acceleration to a different degree) somewhat independently of the motor rpm (& hence energy). Even at a fairly basic rider level this is very noticeable. But really only once you are riding on clutch not throttle. If you're just riding on throttle it makes far less difference. The motor RPM plays into this significantly. The older EM's have relatively low revving motors which are probably great for riding on throttle alone, but the F-e has a much higher RPM motor that should play to the strengths of riding on clutch much, much better. Which is what you see pretty clearly when it's ridden by some of those gun riders. Chalk & cheese between it and the older bikes. My acid test for how well the clutch/motor/flywheel integrate is a front-on stationary punch (zap). It takes plenty of flywheel inertia, a good clutch and appropriate gearing to get that energy to the ground from stationary.

My experience with electric trials and gearbox or no box is that the box has hands down advantages, but the bike has to be properly configured to make use of the gears. To me it's a no-brainer that trials benefits considerably from gears. If you're comparing trials bikes to: road cars, road bikes, dirt bikes, scooters, aircraft, boats or just about any other machine I'd suggest it's a flawed comparison. Find me any of the above that can provide all of the desirable characteristics of a trials bike & I'll consider accepting that how they implement electric drive is applicable to trials. I wonder if the van driver was taking price into account, in which case most of us would agree, the Factor-e is just stretching the budget too far for the benefits. But that's not to say that it isn't hands down the better bike.

It seems a bit like the death, oops I meant to say evolution, of trials is remaining on the same track as it's been the past 40 years. Machinery getting more and more single purpose specific along with ever relatively higher prices. In what was probably trial's heyday in the '70's trials bikes were relatively cheap (relative to other motorcycles that is) and had seats of sorts. My TY was pretty typical of many, serving dual purpose for trials & farm work. It was the ideal bike for moving stock or inspecting fences etc. Several of my farmer friends had trials bikes for the same reasons. Even my mum used to use it to go around the paddocks. I can't see too many people shelling out AU$20,000 for a farm bike, or on a bit of a whim! While I'm 100% in the "let's go electric, the sooner the better" I get concerned by big step price increases in bikes. Sure, bleeding edge tech always commands a premium until more competition arrives in the market, but it seems pretty rare that the prices fall all the way back to where they were (allowing for inflation). My guess is the price will fall back to something maybe half way between $20k & current ICE prices. That's about double the cost of an equivalent trail bike. The only people who'll be paying that premium are the converted. Trials will need a lot of missionaries. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go back to my TY. I recognise that specialisation is inherent in our sport and it's machinery, & that comes with a cost. But that cost also has a cost in uptake & participation that can drive a savage spiral that we've been seeing for years. Smaller market, higher prices, smaller market ... Potentially electric could compound this because they may not wear out as fast, or the purchase price is high enough to justify rebuilds that weren't really worthwhile on less costly bikes. And then there's battery life to factor (e) in. So what happens to the budget used bike market? The Factor-e is the first (available) e-trials I've thought was getting close enough to ICE performance to be really interesting. But I totally lose interest when I look at the price. I just bought an elderly but 100% airworthy fiberglass glider complete with trailer, oxygen & current top line electronic instruments for less money than a Factor-e! That's crazy.

Can you tell me the sizes of the hex (nuts)? That's what I'm missing. Thanks

I'm planning on replacing the sliding bushes in my forks some time in the not too far distant future and am hoping someone can enlighten me about the Cartridge Assembly Tool 080008000 used to hold the left leg end stroke regulator. What is the working end? It looks like it is just a socket key, but what size? Presumably it should be easily replicated with a suitable allen key on an extension.

FWIW I've had an earlier version of that vest for years. Don't use it often now as I don't seem to crash as much 🙂, but it's excellent. Mine is basically the 7855 with short sleeves. It's certainly warmer than not wearing it (nice in winter) but I can wear it reasonably comfortably even in summer. I prefer the older version as it had small shoulder guards that give me a little more protection against shoulder and maybe clavical injuries. I looked at every MTB vest I could find and the TLD was clearly the best option I could find at the time for our use. It doesn't prevent all painful minor injuries - poky bits can go between the gaps between the pads, voice of experience! But it makes a big difference in many otherwise painful crashes. It makes me much more confident when riding ugly pointy rocky sections. Think about what you'll wear it with. It can be pretty tough to get off if you wear it under your jersey, it sticks to sweaty skin and the stiff pads make it impossible to 'roll' off like regular jerseys. Can be a real struggle without a helper sometimes. Fairly easy to tear the inter-pad material if you pull too hard getting it off. I always wear it over a light jersey. I find light MTB jerseys best as they tend not to be as thick/warm, which is a definite consideration once you add the vest. When it's over a jersey it's no problem to take off at all. I always wanted to find a really thin mesh type singlet to use under it, but never did.

To me the most interesting sentence in there is, New software integrating engine speed drop management That's exactly where I've been trying to go, & is the electronic equivalent of a flywheel. I wonder if they've implemented it as simply "speed drop" or if it's bidirectional (& asymmetric). If it's uni-directional then I predict they'll shortly introduce a bidirectional version. I don't believe we're close to being able to completely replace the flywheel, but this is a really big step forward. In my view it's impossible to build a really good electric trials without direct control of RPM rate of change, up & down. A flywheel does that for ICE bikes, a combination of flywheel & electronics is going to be the optimal solution for e-trials, at least for a while yet and I'm inclined to think possibly long term too. Now I'm starting to get interested in EM.

I'm having to replace the RH Crank main seal (bike was consuming gearbox oil) so while I'm in there I thought about replacing the water pump seals as preventative maintenance. In the end I decided 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'. I'll probably regret that, the bike's got 280 hours without any pump problems but I'm probably pushing a friendship at this stage. I did take the impeller off to take a look and found that it has been rubbing on the housing. It's caused a small amount of galling on the back of the impeller, some flakes of plastic in under there and obvious rubbing wear on the housing. My solution was to put the impeller in the lathe and take about 0.5mm out of the back recess. I checked periodically with bearing blue until I just had full clearance. There was slight rubbing at the perimeter flange too but I solved that by rubbing the impeller on some wet & dry on a flat surface. Previously I could hear the rubbing when I turned the impeller up to my ear. Now that's all gone. Pic after machining. Hopefully this will avoid debris in the coolant, possible damage to the outside seal and potential failure of the impeller. As an aside, just in case anyone comes looking: The Primary Gear Bolt is RH thread with Loctite 243 on it. It took a really solid go at it with heat and a pneumatic impact wrench to get it off. I snapped one hex driver (not a top quality driver). The seal, bush and O Ring all need replacing at the same time. Pretty easy to remove the seal - pull the bush out with a couple of magnets then lever out the seal.

Follow up on this. New CDI, no more trouble. I've stripped the potting out of the old one with the intention of trying to find the failed component. I suspect it could be something cheap and easy to fix like a capacitor. But of course once the bike is running nicely the motivation to spend time locating a solved problem is very low!

Just a follow up. I put a 1.5mm rubber washer cut from insertion rubber sheet between the top triple clamp and the nut. My thinking was the rubber would stop the nut from rotating. It seems to have worked extremely well. I've not had any more trouble at all. Haven't had to touch it in the past 80 hours of riding. A cheap easy fix. I suspect slipping an O Ring in there would do the job too.

I get $18,158. Presumably AU$ for me. 1.5 times the cost of an ICE bike & still need to add in shipping & local taxes. I see a very niche market for this bike unless it is actually better performing than current ICE bikes! I'll be interested to see the final AU distributor's pricing.

Yes. The OEM caliper wore grooves that affected function in just a couple of hundred hours. That can and should be improved. No. Take a moment to look at the picture again and you should see the shim I made is in the front of the caliper where the pads bear on the caliper body. Where I photographed the cleaned up wear grooves as described in the post two above my 'solution' post. (below) I like JB weld, but I'm not at all convinced that it's sufficiently hard, strong and abrasion resistant enough in thin sections to outperform aluminium. Maybe it is, but I'm not sufficiently confident to spend time on it. I think some thin 1/2 hard stainless sheet would be far superior.

If you're referring to the clip in the photo, that's the anti-wear shim I tried to create. Thinner SS required though. The anti-rattle spring sits over the top of the pads. But I've ditched that anyway.

That can certainly be a problem, but I'm careful to keep the required free play, and if in doubt I take the top off to check for that little pulse of return fluid. I did wonder if maybe I had too much fluid in the reservoir so the expanding fluid had nowhere to go, but I backed off the m/c cap screws while it was still hot and holding brakes and it didn't make any difference. Fingers crossed.

I think I have it licked without any work on the m/c. As the video in the post I just made shows, the m/c doesn't have anything much to do with piston retraction so this problem is unlikely to be caused by anything happening at the handlebars. The brakes always went on a treat, no complaints at all - it was just the release that was a problem.