For the last few months here, it's pretty much rained constantly. There's lots of flooding .. it's WET ! On top of that, it's been windy too, so there's lots of trees down.
A lot of the decent downhill tracks are either blocked or washed out or are just torrents of water so you can't see where you're going anyway.
When I got the Kenevo, knowing Specialized has a bit of a reputation for poor wet weather reliability, I thought I'd try and keep it to mainly dry weather use. With the desire to still go and ride, even if I can't ride my normal trails, that's gone out of the window with it being endless rain and amazingly .. though I'm not sure how .. it still works and hasn't let me down.
Obviously, electrics and water don't go together. Most brands seem to have some problems mentioned at some point on here with water issues. Theoretically, the bikes are rain and splash proof and are sealed to some degree, so it's interesting to know who pushes theirs to what extent and what problems they have, or if they don't have problems ?
I think we've all become terrified of our bikes stopping working if a drop of dew should flick up and touch the bike, but maybe we're being overly paranoid ? Yes, unsealed Spesh TCU's are a design fault and need taping, and the battery/motor cable on the 2.1 brose Spesh bikes have moisture problems, but only when the cable splits on the bend.
My last 400k have been either in heavy rain, torrential rain, mud, puddles and at times, not far off snorkelling ..
Yesterday's ride, a quick 30k loop .. I tried to stick to where I thought it would be safer/drier ?! With all the storms the night before, plenty of places were still submerged ..
This is normally a pleasant lane .. yesterday I was battling to not get washed away sideways on the bend.
The towpath ... uhmmm .. I actually had to abort in the end on this section for various reasons, the depth continued to increase a few hundred meters up, rapidly unfortunately, so I got a lot more submerged than intended (knee depth for a few seconds as I leapt off and lifted bike and headed back on foot out of the deep bit). With the edges well underwater, you couldn't gauge upcoming depth, and more worryingly where the canal was, where the ditch was and where the tow path was ..
So most of the ride was like this ... or worse.
Did the last 10k uphill in turbo to get the motor/battery as warm as possible.
Washed and leaf blew the bike. Tipped it every way for drainage, left it another half hour then put it on charge till full (to heat the battery and hopefully steam out any moisture ?) The Rosenberger connection was full of water when I disconnected to charge, so had to blow and dry that out and the plug housing was full of water - Not quite sure how it was still working ..
Then brought it in the house overnight to dry everything as much as possible ..
Fortunately ... still all working properly today !
A lot of the decent downhill tracks are either blocked or washed out or are just torrents of water so you can't see where you're going anyway.
When I got the Kenevo, knowing Specialized has a bit of a reputation for poor wet weather reliability, I thought I'd try and keep it to mainly dry weather use. With the desire to still go and ride, even if I can't ride my normal trails, that's gone out of the window with it being endless rain and amazingly .. though I'm not sure how .. it still works and hasn't let me down.
Obviously, electrics and water don't go together. Most brands seem to have some problems mentioned at some point on here with water issues. Theoretically, the bikes are rain and splash proof and are sealed to some degree, so it's interesting to know who pushes theirs to what extent and what problems they have, or if they don't have problems ?
I think we've all become terrified of our bikes stopping working if a drop of dew should flick up and touch the bike, but maybe we're being overly paranoid ? Yes, unsealed Spesh TCU's are a design fault and need taping, and the battery/motor cable on the 2.1 brose Spesh bikes have moisture problems, but only when the cable splits on the bend.
My last 400k have been either in heavy rain, torrential rain, mud, puddles and at times, not far off snorkelling ..
Yesterday's ride, a quick 30k loop .. I tried to stick to where I thought it would be safer/drier ?! With all the storms the night before, plenty of places were still submerged ..
This is normally a pleasant lane .. yesterday I was battling to not get washed away sideways on the bend.
The towpath ... uhmmm .. I actually had to abort in the end on this section for various reasons, the depth continued to increase a few hundred meters up, rapidly unfortunately, so I got a lot more submerged than intended (knee depth for a few seconds as I leapt off and lifted bike and headed back on foot out of the deep bit). With the edges well underwater, you couldn't gauge upcoming depth, and more worryingly where the canal was, where the ditch was and where the tow path was ..
So most of the ride was like this ... or worse.
Did the last 10k uphill in turbo to get the motor/battery as warm as possible.
Washed and leaf blew the bike. Tipped it every way for drainage, left it another half hour then put it on charge till full (to heat the battery and hopefully steam out any moisture ?) The Rosenberger connection was full of water when I disconnected to charge, so had to blow and dry that out and the plug housing was full of water - Not quite sure how it was still working ..
Then brought it in the house overnight to dry everything as much as possible ..
Fortunately ... still all working properly today !
