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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.
MCamb-
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.
Eejit
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.