Cargo Bikes

could be worse

Will be looking to sell our R&M Packster 70.
The other half is just not getting on with it, so looking at 3 wheels or trailers.
New battery, with little use, total mileage on the bike is 500ish over the past year.
Looking for £6k.

I am not small, Mini_com is her father's daughter also and my GSD is about 50kg with all accessories, so about 200kg all in on a Bosch Cargoline 85Nm bad boy with a 500wh battery. Before adding the Speedbox 3.0 I could get 4 school runs in (3 miles each way up and over Streatham Common) so about 24 miles with half of it 30kg lighter (minus mini_com on half of the journeys). Since adding the Speedbox and twatting about in Turbo at 20mph+ all the time I can get 3 runs in without range anxiety. I could maybe do 4 on a warm day but I'd want a second battery (cough @amey cough).

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266799421146?

Huge bargain for somebody. Id get it if I didnt already have a mini

The enviolo system is very draggy, so you lose some power to that. The automatic system is better than their normal shifter cos it's a push/pull gear changer and the shifter is shit. I haven't got one personally but a few colleagues do and it does it's job pretty well by their accounts.

Bought a trek Fetch 4 reclining seat for my Bullitt but it doesn’t seem to want to recline… anyone had any experience with these?

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Latch at the front under the seat maybe?

cc/ @cake

Yeah there’s a latch but it seems like it’s maybe stuck or something

Wow, almost too good to be true

Looks like I’m joining the team. I’ve been gifted one of these. Ive just got to arrange picking it up, then fixing it. It’s had a life.

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Not flashy, but solid bikes. One of our customers has one and it is solid af. He is a gardener and regularly carries shit loads of compost around on the front. He says that the handling is sweet even with 100kg in the front.

Refreshingly simple.

Thanks. Having witnessed my wife performing some savage cross-chaining, the idea of a hub gear that requires no user input is a good one. Seems most people's issues with Envolio is the shifter and a little drag is probably not a deal breaker.

Spotted this when looking at mid drives.

Or this

Seems most people's issues with Envolio is the shifter and a little drag

If only… what bike / type of e assist and how hilly an area will it be used on?

Tern HSD S8i is what I'm looking at. Nothing more than about 5% most days, 10 miles 5 days/week with 1x15kg+ toddler and <80kg adult.

Prob be alright tbh

I stuck a bafang on my surly big fat dummy. In terms of installation it was a piece of piss. Main challenge was mounting the battery but I think the internal triangle of the BFD is smaller than then that of the regular Big Dummy, so I expect you probably won’t have the same issue. I didn’t bother with the gear change or brake sensors, as the need for both is dependent on whether or not you have the sense to stop pedalling when you’re braking / changing gear.

In terms of overall range, not sure what I’d get out of it. I’m Sheffield based, so it mostly does short trips on high power up sharp hills. I do plan to take it out into the Peaks for a fully loaded luxury camp out one evening, reckon it would easily make it there and back again if I resisted kept the power low and relied mostly on pedal power.

whether or not you have the sense to stop pedalling when you’re braking / changing gear

I never get this!

I often pedal when braking, particularly when doing low speed maneuvers, through the brakes at a low speed / easy gear. You have more control that way.

if you have a derailleur you always pedal (lightly) while shifting ?

Even with the Rohloff I wouldn’t stop pedalling really just shift in the parts of the turn where there would be less pedal power.

But this was with bosch that has a torque sensor. So maybe not really possible in the same way without.

Yeah I also often pedal when braking on all my other bikes, but this is a different use case. I stop pedalling, the motor turns off. It has the exact same effect as the brake sensor would. So I can faff around with getting the brake sensors installed (including purchasing an extension cable for the rear brake due to the length of the bike) or I can just not pedal when I’m using the brakes.

Similarly, you do need to pedal to change gears, but you don’t want the torque of the motor running through the cassette and freehub while you’re doing that. Laying off the pedals for a moment will turn the motor off, and then when you pedal again the gear change will take place before the motor kicks in. Again, same impact as the gear sensor, but you don’t have to faff about with installing it. From what I read online the gear sensor isn’t really up to scratch anyway, and people recommend backing off the pedals anyway.

Just in case anyone is thinking of selling or sees one for sale 2nd hand I'm in the market for a Tern Storm box mini for my HSD

Almost everything from Adventure, Ridgeback and Genesis is catalogue bike or just nothing special.

The hub motors are the suntour ones? They are pretty good, probably the most torque, or at least feels like it with low loads of any hub motor I've tried (carrera/halfords brands use them aswell).

Some of the ridgeback et al brands use the Italian "sport drive" mid drive, which is pretty good, on par with the average Brose units that you see on equivalent European local branded catalogue bikes.

Brose aren't all good though, their biggest baddest '100nm' or 110nm (?) cargo performance top daddy motor launched in about 2022 is very quiet compared to almost all other mid drives due to the belt arrangement. But does not have 100nm+ of torque, no way. Tested back to back with my now old shimano e8000 and newer e6100, Bosch cargo on a nice hill with bags of aggregate.

The e8000 certainly has the most mid range kick and then allows you to rev out to over 100 rpm with stable assistance, 120 rpm its basically zero. E6100 is OK but kinda flat feeling. Bosch activ line is less, performance is similar to e6100 and just feels flat on a cargo. CX Cargo line has probably the most actual torque down low, so would suit folk who grind and start off in the wrong gear, but if your a keen rider and cadence is up above 85 rpm it gives much less at the top end, pretty quiet though and reliable enough, had a few failures but always within the first month of use, if they get past that point they are all still out there doing their thing haven't come back!

Enviolo system is a good idea but the shifter tends to destroy cables very quickly. They aren't hard to adjust correctly but I think from factory (UA) they are left a bit loose so the cables can get some air time as the shifter is turned = seems to fray the cables at the heads really quickly, like within 2 months of family use quickly.

Latest HDD ultra X cargo beefy boy version of the Enviolo is hopefully more rugged than previous versions, though if you are a mechanically sympathetic person and use the full range without just leaving it in one spot the whole time you will not encounter as many problems. Its partly due to most bikes that have the Enviolo hub fitted are family use or courier use and get blasted. Latest version is hopefully the ideal though, always going to be saggy and mushy feeling.

I worked briefly with a guy who was making a different version of an infinite IGH, cool idea, very cool design, but only moderately efficient in the mid range like many others, as you get outwards from direct drive the efficiency was basically unsuitable for manual bike use, mid drive or hybrid hub direct drive would have been ideal, but still lossy. From an engineering perspective though would have certainly been harder wearing than Enviolo's hubs, but more expensive than a Rohloff, hence never made it to market.

Good to know cheers.