Darfon 720Wh battery performance on heckler

[paulbarbu]

I have a sc heckler with darfon 720Wh (E4C0G) bought new beginning of the year... from start i was not that impressed with the Shimano ep8/darfon combo on this compared to other ebikes.. i have around 95kg with gear... with my bike will climb around 1000m vertical and use around 65%... on default trail settings ...on a turbo levo with 700w battery will drain 50% on trail as well for the same climb.
I have dropped the Assist settings to 120% on trail and also dropped max torque to 63 from default 85..with these settings I was able to do around 1600 1700m vertical per battery in the summer.

Now am at 3600km and 96 charging cycles on the battery ... and on the same settings I can barely make 1200 1300m vertical... yes it is a bit colder (10 deg vs summer heat) but still i feel the battery has degraded quite alot. I used to do 1100 1200 with my old 540wh battery on my last commencal on trail default settings.


I have friends with brose/bosch bikes and 700w batteries and on same tours they are still 30% 40% more compared to me when I'm drained.

What is your experience with darfon batteries?

I love the bike, but man ... battery /motor performance seem to be way behind

 

[Jamie78]

I have the Heckler. New In February. I've noticed a drop in battery life as well. On one of my regular routes, I started to use twice the amount of battery on the climb, compared to earlier in the summer. I have 100rs and approx 1400km on the bike. It is currently in the shop awaiting a new motor and possibly a new battery. It went into the shop with an e201 error. They said they are going to replace the motor and then see if the battery was also causing issues. I hope they end up replacing the battery as well. I've noticed that there are people looking for another darfon battery on the Heckle user forum on FB.

I'm considering selling this bike and going to a Vala sometime next year, but are Bosch systems any better?

Pretty disappointed. Seems to me that these motor and battery systems should be way more robust.

 

[paulbarbu]

I have the Heckler. New In February. I've noticed a drop in battery life as well. On one of my regular routes, I started to use twice the amount of battery on the climb, compared to earlier in the summer. I have 100rs and approx 1400km on the bike. It is currently in the shop awaiting a new motor and possibly a new battery. It went into the shop with an e201 error. They said they are going to replace the motor and then see if the battery was also causing issues. I hope they end up replacing the battery as well. I've noticed that there are people looking for another darfon battery on the Heckle user forum on FB.

I'm considering selling this bike and going to a Vala sometime next year, but are Bosch systems any better?

Pretty disappointed. Seems to me that these motor and battery systems should be way more robust.

That's a bummer .. hopefully you'll get a replacement on the battery as well ..

Regarding bosch a couple of buddies that I ride with have bosch on mondrakers (700ish wh batteries) and if we start on full charge i am usually the one with the least amount of battery left at the end ... One buddy was 120kgs at the beginning of the season on mondraker level at the time was a couple percents in front of me on the same tracks both on full charge ... now at the end of the season he is around 100kg and usually is way above 30% once I go under 10%.
So in my experience the shimano/darfon combo seem to be the worst. ... I've met /asked a couple of guys with bullits on their motor/battery performance and did not notice that big of a drop over 1-2 years of riding, those come with shimano batteries 630wh.
Also alot more have turbo levos and those seem to be on top in terms of motor/battery performance ... a buddy of mine that I ride often with has a turbo levo, we bought the bikes new at the same time , he-s 20kg lighter and from 3000+ km ridden he has like 100 of those on other than turbo , and still manages to have way more battery on the same rides, the guy looks like he's on a walk in the park and I am sweating like crazy on lowered torque /assist. .. I like the heckler more than the levo on technical /rougher stuff otherwise would have switched to levo myself.

 

[Ushtang]

Reduced battery life was the first symptom before the Darfon battery started shutting off on me. It wasn't that the batter ran out of charge though. It would just shut off, my Heckler would not turn on. But then I'd plug the battery into the charger and the battery would show full charge and would work again.

Ended getting the battery replaced under warranty. It's been about 7months so far and no issues.