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I hit the track again today,  been fairly often here and doing a 3 day'er since this will be the last for the season here at Jennings, they close until about september for the heat. 

Today was a private day, the guy rents out the track and lets 15 of us in on it, it's an open track, we come and go as we please.
Basic rules are
1. BE CIVIL to each other, it's a track day not thunderdome
2. Have a goal, work on something, you want to work on better times on turn 1 work it, etc  even if your goal is just to have fun, have fun.
3. MIND your track time, don't overdo it, don't get hazy brain and end up in the grass because you ran for 40 minutes straight.

So I put the EGO to max power level to play.  Yah, I need to be careful.  Im working on my suspension, getting everything tweaked in and running the bike since I am getting quite a bit better with it,with all the riding Ive been doing.  My lap times are occasionally in the 1.30's now and my speeds are up in the 130's too occasionally on the back end.

Well, it turns out that most the people there, are no strangers to a track, and pretty much every one of them have not seen an electric bike before, so unknown to me, until about lunch, I had quite an audience and a 'following'.  Pretty much everyone there had something to say about how the bike performed, and given I am nowhere near being able to really put on a show with my limited experience.. that's majorly impressive for the bike!

About 120 ish MPH the front end was getting jittery, it was bouncing around a bit and I didn't like that so I talked to him, saying, what could this be,rebound or what?  Well immediately the guy who was following me (that I didn't know was following) says, there's nothing wrong with your suspension, it's the stupid torque that thing puts out.  I was trying to pass you, you held your own pretty good into the corners, so I said, ok Ill catch him on the straight away and pass him,  YOU started putting the throttle to the thing about halfway thru the turn and by the time you were straight you stomped on it,  I was full throttle, I could not keep up, the torque on that thing is just crazy, I seen your front end, you are starting to lift it when you romp the throttle, it's not the shocks bouncing, it's the front end getting light and coming up.

I did not believe it at first, I was like, dude, I was doing 116, I don't think that was a wheelie, and he said,yah and your bike wanted to go from 116 to 166 in a few seconds! you left me behind like I was on a mini bike, you are lifting your front end, I seen it Im telling you.

So now I get to work on throttle control, or more specifically, my riding position,  I need to try to keep hunched forward more and not sit up as much to try to keep the weight forward to keep the front end down if I want to hammer the throttle in straight aways.  It is fun though, I mean, it's pretty much twist and hold on, literally, hold on, the bike IS taking off!

Laying down on the bike, and sitting up, your perspective on the track changes SIGNIFICANTLY !!  You don't see nearly as much stuff laying down as sitting up,  you BETTER know that track if you are going to assume race position or you may find yourself running off real fast when a corner comes up that you misjudged because you were on an even plane of eyesight with it and misjudged how close it was.  I find that more and more I am running on muscle memory, and oddly, when I am pre occupied and running muscle mem thru the areas I am familiar with, I tend to do better laps when I am not actively focusing on them.  Cursing at the latest bug to explode on my visor is a good example of being pre occupied.  I swear these miserable huge locusts have a radar on them,  my nickname should be the Bug Magnet.

Another thing I find is that wow, it's a long reach from the seat to the handlebars of the EGO.  Then again it IS pretty much purely a racing bike, the goal it to get streamlined, not necessarily comfy.

I also finally put tank grips on the bike and wow what a world of difference they made, holy cow.  The head is big and slippery on that bike, I was finding myself sliding around a bit, and the legs were not really holding to steer as they should so I was using more arm / handlebar to do the job, and that was wearing me out, and of course putting input into the handlebars,  not always a good thing.  The bike steers much better now that I took  a few sessions to basically re learn how to DO it properly, and take the weight off my arms and more into the legs to maneuver.   With this I am finding the bike is VERY V E R Y, receptive to the slightest leg inputs to lean into a turn and really hold a line.  For the most part, I really don't need to swing my ass off the seat hugely and can just kind of lean or slip a butt cheek off and wham, im over and deep into the turn.  For as much as the bike weighs, it's pretty amazing on how little input you really need to get her to swing right over and do what you need.  Still though, wrasslin a 600 pound bike will wear your ass OUT at the end of the day !!

Im also liking the 190 / 55 tires on it too, over the 200 / 65s that were originally on it.  Slicks, ok I can see the big fatties maybe but dot's the smaller ones give me a much better turn radius.  Plus I am getting several days out of the tires instead of just a few.  My last set lasted 4 days on the connie attack 2's before I burnt them up finally.

Well dammit, now that I am finally getting sort of good, and really learning how to make the bike perform the season will be over for some months.  Well, this will give me some time to get the trailer fully put together and decked out so I can then travel wherever I need to with the bike.  Taledega, Carolina Motorsports, etc,  Here I come !

Aaron

you  need help with your ingrish there buddy.

everybody is somebody's slave.
go fix me a sammich

can someone ban that cunt muffin already?

Aaron

Ive always gotten parts right away when I ordered them.  Maybe a month wait on a brake level but I strongly believe the Dealer  was an idiot and had it the entire time, just didn't open the box and actually read the contents on it.

Ive ordered from the place in texas,  the new england place and from my dealer and the parts have come in pretty fast.
The center stand thing, not sure what is up with that, but the other stuff, always got what was needed.

Fork seals?  isn't another company the manu of the fork?  why not go directly to them?  Just like you'd goto okin for shock parts, or brembo for brake parts, unless you like markup from 3rd party?

Maybe they just don't like you ::shrug::

Aaron

Ribelle and EGO are pretty much the same power train,ego is tweaked a bit higher.  I have a racing ego, tweaked even higher, MUCH higher, I have done back to back to back to back sessions on the track, 20 minutes or so each, come in, charge up at 35 amps (the most a 50 amp feed will let me do) right back out, and never hit yellow with it.  hitting speeds 135 occasionally 140 on the track.  Maybe if it was 98 degrees out it'd see it, as I DO see yellow sometimes on my Ribelle when Ive been romping it hard on the highway, but were talking being stupid, triple digits for 5 or 6 minutes straight.

The charging is nice because you can use simple house current from 115 ac, 240 ac, or the fast charge CCS1 to charge it so you have plenty of ways To charge it, you really won't be stranded anywhere, just may take a bit to charge on 115volts.

What do you want it for. It's a fun bike but, what is your use intent for it.

It IS a bit heavy overall, and top heavy  so lower speeds, like under 6 mph you CAN get into trouble very fast if you say, take a fairly sharp turn or tap the front brake.  once you are going faster than this, she handles very well. 

If I am doing 40 - 50 mph or so,  some 35  mph rural,  some 55 - 60 mph light highway mix, I can get about 200 miles per charge.  If I am doing 75 to 80 on the highway, I can get around 100 miles per charge,  (trust me, you want to take a bit of a rest after 100 miles)  if Im doing faster, it runs down quicker.  WOT will eat a battery in about 30 miles.

The upright seating position is a lot  nicer than the aggressiveness of the EGO for casual riding.

Aaron

If you want to analyze in detail your batteries, ZeroSpy (Android application) can be helpful. It records the parameters of your bike every second. And you can further make graphs in order to analyze the records.
Here is an example with my FXS 2016 (with two 3.3 kWh amovible packs).
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2qwb24m5nykw2qvnrjkwx/ZeroSpy_modele_analyse.des.donnees.xlsx?rlkey=8or6htwb51w8mqc51jzuq7glo&dl=0
I make a correlation between the balance and the battery current.
You can compare your data to mine.

Ribelle RS+. Weight is approx the same as the SS9. Felt *much* heavier than my SR/F+Charge tank - mostly because the weight is much higher up. Although I did find that made it handle a little better than the Zero... the SR/F feels very stable with its low COG but this of course has the side effect of needing to lean it far further to get it to turn at the same rate.

Cas

No news, but just saying, my bike's been updated with all the latest FW and it hasn't been sorted yet. I think we may need to pressure Zero into doing something about this. It has rendered the charge tank pretty useless.

Cas

I hear it is almost impossible to get parts from Energica these days. One guy I know has been waiting for more than a year for his Rebelle Fork seals. Still has not heard anything.


And many of us are still waiting for an Experia centerstand since we first got our bikes.


What is the problem with getting Enegica parts these days?


Is it just a USA problem or is it the same in Europe?




-Don-  Auburn, CA