EMTB Newbie from Manchester, UK

[Dave S]

Hi,

I'm completely new to EMTB riding although have been riding mountain bikes offroad and commuting for many years, using hardtails to start with then also mainly short to mid travel full suspension bikes mostly for trail riding and XC rather than full-on DH an definitely not freeride or dirtjumping

Have just bought a Giant Trance E+ 2 Pro 2020 as my first EMTB with the view being that I'd get a well specced bike as a long term MTB and not have to be changing components on it although I also still ride my normal hardtail and full sus bikes too

Have only had a couple of rides on the Giant Trance and am well impressed but have spent most time in Eco mode trying to get used to how little assistance I can get away with and it's fine to ride and have also briefly tried the other modes but have to get used to it

Most likely I'll post questions about tuning and in particularly am interested in if anyone has tried the Planet3 rear hub unit on a Giant Trance 2020 because the bike is brilliant but the only thing which is odd is only getting assistance to 15mph when something like 20mph would be more allround support

Enjoying the bike and this forum looks great

 

[Jackware]

If you're happy dismantling your bike, this company makes a unit to remove the speed limit from the Yamaha motor. I've used 3 of the units on 3 bikes and had no problems and the display functions as normal.

E Bike Tuning Yamaha - bikespeed

E-Bike tuning for Yamaha - tune to speeds over 50 km/h. Professional tuning with the bikespeed-RS system.

www.bikespeed.de

 

[Dave S]

If you're happy dismantling your bike, this company makes a unit to remove the speed limit from the Yamaha motor. I've used 3 of the units on 3 bikes and had no problems and the display functions as normal.

E Bike Tuning Yamaha - bikespeed

E-Bike tuning for Yamaha - tune to speeds over 50 km/h. Professional tuning with the bikespeed-RS system.

www.bikespeed.de

Thanks for reply, I had looked at other tuning options such as Volspeed which sounds similar

Although I'd prefer not to pull the motor apart at the moment since the bike is brand new, it wouldn't put me off the idea completely as I do work on and rebuild normal MTBs so as long as there were detailed instructions it would be fine

The thing that I have noticed about most of these wiring loom mods though is that they seem to rely on the bike having a display unit to be able to show when they're switched on or off and my bike doesn't have a display, it just has the Ride Control One control pad on the bars

That's sort of why I was interested in if anyone has used the Planet3 device on their rear hub/rotor as it's just a rotor magnet/sensor mod to fool the motor into thinking the bike is going slower than it is and that extends the pedal assistance

All I'm really bothered about is getting pedal assist to extend to 20mph but anything else is a bonus which would be good
15mph assist which is on the bike now, is fine for offroad but that extra 5mph would be very welcome for on tarmac

I have emailed Planet3 to check which kit is right for my bike as they say it is supposed to be supported by one of their kits but not had a reply so far (although I only emailed them earlier today)

 

[Dave S]

Got a reply from Planet3 now and their kit is compatible with my bike so have ordered one and going to give that a go

It's worth the risk as it should easily allow support up to 20mph and goes beyond that too but 15mph stock support offroad and 20mph Planet3 assist on road is enough to be honest

Will post update if it all works and will follow instructions to the letter to try to make sure it does

 

[Dave S]

As an update to this, I fitted the Planet3 device to my Giant Trance last night and had a test ride on it today and all seems good

There might be a slight effect on very low cadence climbing but that could be down to a low battery and cold conditions so will retest after a full recharge

Apart from that, it does what it says and I only took the bike to about 25mph but assistance was still there
And that's all I need really as even 20mph assistance is enough so it's looking good