I had 2 motors originally but sourced a 3rd from someone that was sitting unused. I have 2 batteries. The mechanical failure definitely seemed and felt like something just broke. A loud crack and then lots of grinding/scraping.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed then. I think I read systems had gone out to a number of manufacturers - I assumed mostly smaller-scale builders, and for testing and early development rather than for paying customer builds? We’ve seen Starling, Twmpa and a couple of others in the media. I wonder how many are in (at least semi-)regular use and have survived?
Another update …
The Incepi brake fixture arrived. It’s designed for a 19mm dummy axle but I use the 1" axles with 1/2" centre section so the first job was to make a suitable axle using a length of spare aluminium.
I’ve not done a post mount before so I wasn’t sure how it would go. I had a spare post mount as well as a couple of spare ISO mounts if things went really badly. Thankfully everything went smoothly the first time. I had just enough argon in the tank to get it welded - actually ran out going back over the last part of the bottom weld! Alignment is excellent - it doesn’t seem to have moved at all during welding and it’ll get faced during the final build just to be sure.
I was considering not adding a brace between the seat and chainstays but bottled it at the last minute so fabricated a small plate out of 3mm mild steel which got silver soldered in place.
While the silver soldering gear was out, I put a couple of hose guides under the NDS seatstay. Really happy with the clean route of the hose.
I’d decided to copy Starling Cycles by gluing an aluminium shim inside the seat tube so my post is contacting aluminium rather than steel. I’d already reamed the seat tube with a fixed 31.6mm reamer but it was too tight for post + shim so I ordered an adjustable reamer and opened the tube up a little more. I also cleaned up the slot.
A little more cleaning up and it’s ready for paint. If all goes to plan with that, it’ll built and ready to hit the trails some time in February!
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