Hello

In August 2008 I bought an electric bike.
I'd been cyclng to work for years but I was beginning to get a bit fed up with the ride home after a long day (It's not far but it is quite hilly.) so I thought I'd give an electric bike a try.

And it's brilliant - a bit like having a benevolent friend gently pushing me along. And I don't have to pay tax or insurance and I can legally use cycle lanes.
So I've set up this website to encourage others who may think that cycling around Leeds is too much like hard work to give electric biking a try. I know it won't save the world but hey - it may help a bit. The site is to be strictly not-for-profit, but I thought if any suppliers or manufacturers wanted to advertise I could ask them for a donation to a carbon offset charity.

The Story So Far

I use the bike almost every day, travelling between 5 and eight miles. I usually charge the battery every other day.
Generally I am very happy with its performance. I bought the cheapest bike I could find - £269.00 - with the idea that if I don't like it I haven't lost much, if I do like it I can get a better one later.
The main difference between my bike and more expensive ones is that mine has a heavy lead acid battery and expensive ones have more sophisticated, much lighter batteries (See Lance's Page )
Also, mine only has one gear, which is fine for going up hill but a higher gear would be nice on the flat and when descending.
On the other hand, the bike did come with mud guards, rear view mirrors, a rear carrier, a front basket, a stand, front and back lights and a horn - all things that are often optional extras on much more expensive bikes.
The biggest complaint I have is the front brake, which tends to wear out quite quickly. I guess that is because I live at the top of a hill with a busy main road junction at the bottom. The rear brake is a drum, so I have now developed a techinque of slowing myself down as much as possible just using this and only applying the front brake moments before death beneath a speeding lorry. It's a good way to wake up in the early morning.

Attempted Theft and Mindless Vandalism

In November someone tried to break the padlock and steal the bike from where I work in the centre of Leeds.
Thwarted by the strength of the lock, they ripped off the mirrors and the front light/horn/batter level indicator assembly and broke them on the floor.
Upsetting of course, but not as bad as I first feared. The mirrors had never been much use. I taped up the bare wires and put ordinary dry cell bike lights on. I can live without a battery meter. So, overall, the bike now has a street wise, chopped down appearance, which I rather like.

Reliability

Reliability has been neither good nor bad.
I got a puncture in the rear tyre, which was more of an issue than I had imagined because of the electrical connections.
I did manage to remove the rear wheel and replace the inner tube without disconnecting everything, but it was a tricky and time consuming procedure.

About a month ago, just before I got home, the motor cut out, cut back in, then cut out again - this time not to come back on.
When I got around to fixing it, after wasting several hours trying to diagnose the problem with an AVO meter that turned out to be faulty, I eventually isolated the problem to the control box.
I rang the man I had bought it from and, bless him, he put a new control box in the post the next day (No charge).
I fitted this and it worked fine. I feel that there is an issue here though. While certainly no expert, I can follow very basic electric circuits, otherwise I would have had to put the bike in the back of the car and cart it many miles back to where I bought it. While electric bikes are still fairly rare I suspect many owners might be in that position and it may be worth considering buying as locally as possible rather than going entirely by price.

Two weeks ago I noticed a smell of very hot plastic when I brought the battery in for re-charging. I thought I would check it out when I had a bit of time at the weekend but the next day the motor failed on my way to work.
When I came to examine it, I found that the connection from the external fuse had melted. The assembly was not repairable so rather nervously I simply by-passed the fuse. There is a back up internal fuse, so hopefully the thing won't explode beneath me - watch this space

Fame at Last

I hardly ever use the wire basket, so it occured to me that it would be nice to have a potted plant in there, but what sort of potted plant? So, I wrote to the Radio 4 show Gardeners Question Time, and they were good enough to take my query just seriously enough to answer. The suggestion I went with was for a heather, which really seems to be thriving.

To hear the letter being read out on the radio

Click Here

I have a slight problem with this nonsense in that I wish to encourage the greater use of electric bikes and not make them seem in some way eccentric - so I would like to say here and now that a garden on your bike is in no way essential.

If you have any ideas, comments or suggestions please email me at

All the best

Grant Ragsdale

To go to a page about my personal opinions and experiences Click Here

To go Lance's page Click Here