Levo Gen 2 what mode do you ride in for climbs?

Cavi

Active member
Jun 15, 2020
376
123
California, usa
So this past weekend we went to Lake Tahoe and I got to ride the Levo there for the first time. My wife is still a relative Newbie, so day one we stuck to the Powerline trail, then day 2 we went for the Sierra sidewinder and Corral trail, which were pushing her quite a bit. For day two I drove both my wife and my son to the top then I parked at the bottom and did the 2 mile steep climb on my Levo. I did this on turbo mode and probably went faster than I should have but I burned through 20% of my battery (500watt).
what mode do most of you take these climbs in? I am thinking I probably should have been in Trail mode. Also how much heavier is the 700Watt battery? One more interesting thing from the ride. last week I upgraded multiple things on the bike, one of which was installing a Lyrik, and the shop also installed the Oneup tool kit that goes in the steer tube. Well part way down one of the trails I pulled over to let my son by, and while breaking and pulling offf the trail my wheel turned 90 degrees and the bars remained the same..... I guess the mechanic got flustered with the one up install and did not tighten the bar clamp enough. Lucky for me it happened then and not on a hard breaking for a sharp turn on the sidewinder or on a landing on one of the corral jumps, as that could have been a disaster....... moral of the story , check all your bolts after anyone works on your bike.....
 
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jxj

Member
Jun 28, 2018
83
68
Sierra California
Fantastic. I ride in the Sierra too, nothing flat here so the Levo takes the worst of the steep hot climbs and makes them fun too. When I'm in really tough stuff that I would have to push with an acoustic bike I'm in turbo. For all other "normal" climbs I run in Trail with Blevo Smart Power and Smart Heart Rate on. Blevo then modulates the power in the range I set for my leg power and HR. Example: if my heart rate is going zone 5 it goes up to 65%, lower heart rate lower power. Highly recommend this as it only applies more power when you are really up in power and heart rate, otherwise it backs off and saves lots of battery. It takes a few rides to set the Blevo thresholds where they make sense for you. Of course to use the smart HR you need a chest strap or a HR capable watch that broadcasts to your Blevo device. Or you can just use the Smart Power and it will scale the Levo power to your set thresholds in Blevo.
 

jsharpe

Active member
May 15, 2019
181
185
USA
None of our trails are flat here. Everything I ride has lots of elevation gain many with steep sections and all start above about 9K feet and go up from there. On top of that my legs aren't young anymore which is why I'm on a Levo in the first place. I tried lots of variations, including the BLEvo smart modes but ended up now doing almost all my riding in Trail at 25/100 with a very occasional use of Turbo as a get-out-of-jail-free thing on a few of the steepest (unrideable on a clockwork) sections.

25/100 allows me to ride pretty much all trail/road types while still delivering plenty of battery range. For a while, I would switch back to Eco at 15/50 for the flatter or downhill portions but that didn't seem to add much range. After all, for the downhill sections I'm not pedaling anyway so the difference between 15 and 25 isn't anything. The 25/100 does allow me to use all the power the motor can produce but only if I completely max out my input which I can only do for very short stints. I've considered switching to 30/100 to make it a bit easier to get the full contribution from the motor but 1) I can get there anyway if necessary by a quick/temporary switch to turbo, and 2) I like that it makes me work hard for max benefit.
 

Swissrider

Well-known member
Nov 1, 2018
368
384
Switzerland
I use Turbo most of the time In any hill where I can’t get to the cut out in trail (which is most places in the Alps where I live). I love the feeling of Turbo and the main reason is not to use less effort, I’ll use the same effort as I might in Trail or eco but I’ll get up any hill quicker. I can’t be bothered to grind up hills, especially on tarmac. Logically, using trail will mean a longer ascent and this will use more battery than an ascent in a shorter time. Against this, using turbo, one is working the motor harder and I’m sure using Turbo is going to use more battery but it may not be as great as you think. One day I shall do a big climb in trail, monitoring heart rate and I’ll repeat the climb in Turbo and see how much battery I’ve got left in each case. On one 1000m climb, using identical Bosch equipped bikes, I rode the whole time in Turbo whereas my wife used mainly sport, but she ran out of battery a hundred metres from the top whilst I made it, and she’s a bit lighter than me! Not using turbo can be showing off and some claim to hardly ever use it but it’s a bit like buying a powerful sports career and never putting your foot down!
 

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