Well I got her out on the track today. Wow, where to begin.
First off, there were a LOT of people pretty much the entire day asking questions about the bike, and complimenting on how awesome it looks. Several folks mentioned, this is the first E bike i seen in person, so spent of time showing it off. Awesome bike, im proud to show it off, especially the way they built it for me, total quality through and through.
At first I had the power setting down low until I got comfortable with the bike. I am used to riding the Ribelle in a relaxed position, this EGO is hard core race bike, you are hunched over, and my little squat ass is on the balls of my feet not able to touch the ground fully with both planted feed. It came with 200/65 tires on it, so yah it's tall. I found that it didn't take long at all to get used to it, the bike is like it just naturally knew what it needed to do and I wanted to do.
Going around turns was a breeze and it was tight as crap, I found myself sometimes almost turning too tight, basically telling me, ok I can open up the speed on this one a bit, get your crap together Aaron
. By the end of the morning sessions I was taking turns at 60 to 75 mph with this one that I was only doing maybe 50 on the Ribelle, because it just handled them so much better, the suspension squat right in and held beautifully, no wobbldy whoop going around corners, and a very crisp stand back up. in fact coming out of corners, I was accellerating about 40 percent into the turn and really hammering it once i got pointed the direction I wanted to be. The ribelle you better be pretty well already facing where you want to before romping the throttle, this one, it's a smooth takeoff and you better hold on when you do romp it. Speed, after the first round, I was pretty confident so opened up the power band to max, and opened up my regen to max as well. I wish the regen was a little more powerful, I really love it for controlling the bike, especially around corners. IT's a good way to shed speed if you did not get too obnoxious with the throttle.
Jennings has a long loping back turn that you are at a lean angle but it's pretty much a straight run and you can get some speed up, but you BETTER shed it by turn 3 or VERY soon afterwards because while 3 is a loping left, 4 is a son of a bitch right and 5 is right after 4 with a sharp left, if you are coming into 3 hot you are going to jam yourself on 4 and probably end up in the grass. THe bike is deceptive. I was on that back run, tucked over, throttle open, .. enjoying the ride, the wind screaming in my helmet should have been a warning to check my speed. I came up approaching on 3 at about 135, hmm. You don't realize how fast you are putting speed on.
Ive taken it at about 80 before but HARD brake to hit 4 at about 50 ish and about 45 on 5. (Im a novice here so as I get better I am sure my speeds will get better but for now this is about the max of my current comfort zone.) I laid on those brakes HARD or Id be in the grass, and the grass is NOT smooth, it's lumpy as shit and you are not going to just smoothly make your way back on the track most times. Well, when you hammer the brakes hard, the bike does want to stand up, so any lean angle you may have is going away, I hit the brakes harder. (yes rookie mistake, this was totally MY fault) Let me tell you those front brakes are just insane STUPID strong!! That bike shed speed like you would not believe. In fact when I let off the brakes, they were still angry at me and chattering for about a second after, at the end of that stunt. I was slow enough to finally get into the turn so bent it way over. The bike just slapped over on it's side and like nothing I made the turn, pretending like I really wanted to do that all along
This is another problem I have, I tend to do 'street rider' and have my feet out in front of the pedal, when i take a hard turn, it starts dragging the side of my foot on the asphalt, ok dummy, put your foot further back on the peddle and KEEP IT THERE. Two turns later, I am dragging my knee, it scraped the ground.. ok so the bike takes stupid sharp turns. The Ribelle would have been bouncing at this point. (Not to Dis the Ribelle, I am pretty positive that is completely tune outable with some suspension adjustments, but the EGO is just designed for this stuff SO much better out of the box to begin with)
My first run was about 13 miles in the 20 minute period. After that i was averaging 20 to 22 or so miles per 20 minute run, so picked up my game significantly
Battery, the battery held out stupid good, thru ALL that, I was averaging about a percent drop per mile, although at about 40 percent left it really started cascading with the abuse I was hitting it with. I started at 96 percent and ended the morning run at 26 percent battery left with 68 miles travelled on the track.
The plug I was at was rated at 50 amps but the breaker was weak so I could only put about 35 amps into the bike w/o tripping it, so charging was a bit slower than I wanted but I still got back up to 94 percent after lunch break was over and our turn was next on the track. The battery never hit yellow BUT, after a particularly hard run, I immediately recharged, (I was going to let someone else try the bike and wanted a full bat for him) it did curtail my charging from 30 dialed in to only 24 allowed, and did this for about 5 or 6 minutes then walked it right up to the asked for 30 amps. Me thinks core temp was a bit warm so it did that. The sun was burning down on the bike too, and with the black fairings and the battery enclosed in that, I am sure it did not help matters.
I let someone else try the bike and he let me on his ninja, that was a lot of fun too. At the end of our sessions, he drove the EGO back and just said, wow, I thought electric bikes were kind of a joke but THAT thing, is sick. Now I understand what you meant when you said, you can get yourself in trouble with it pretty quick if you are not careful. At one point I was thinking, is this bike giving me everything it is able to do? but after hearing the guy racing crotch rockets saying, this bike is scary, I just said to myself, well I guess it is, it's probably just the adrenaline you don't realize how stupid fast you really are taking off.
At the end of the day, a lot of people checking out the bike and basically loving it. Trust me, I love it too at this point. Well, I take that back, I think I am going to actually hate this bike. It is going to cost me a LOT of money in tires and track days here!!
The bike was very limber, it handled super well, even with a novice on the seat, braking is just obscene on it for those oh shit moments, and the acceleration is passing liter bikes for the short few seconds before you gotta jam brakes for the turn at least
Jennings is a really fun track but it's all turns, most of them left. i wish there was a track close that you could easily get on that you could just pop the thing and open it up. Well there is the new service road / on ramp they just built... yah, I better not
It's a bit top heavy, as we all know, and being in quasi moto mode all hunched over it, is a bit awkward on the walk to the starting line during group change, but and as we all know, once you get it going a few mph, it basically is just finger touch steering at that point.
Next track day is end of March, I totally plan on being there again!
If any of you are around north florida, come on in, let's do the track thing, I got your charge up covered !
Aaron
