My experiences with unstable wheels, the misconceptions around them, and the hacks I use: Just to clarify something, any wheel could shut down; heck, the Hovertrax by Solowheel had glitches so even that brand isnt safe. But more often than not the wheel is working and the rider exceed the wheels capabilities. With an incorrect understanding of the problem, people assume the wheel shut down and this is not the case. Although, even experienced riders can often have difficulty determining if the wheel was the culprit in the crash with certain models and certian situations. I have ridden 3 RW 12 and each had different problems. 1st I purchased one from John Niem and it really annoyed me as it seemed really unstable. John is nice to his wheels and this one had only a few hours of ride time. Sometimes I could drop down a curb but most of the time not. Plus it got really weird at top speed on full battery (the pedals started tilting DOWN! as Jason McNeil described about the Ninebot One). Also I felt the overall top speed was very lacking for what I had heard of RW. Then on day 2 I was doing limit testing (a dozen flights of stairs worth of super steep hill climbing) and it just died. This is a wheel shut down. It did not turn back on as I fried something inside :( . I took it to a local wheel shop and got it fixed. They said the replaced a chip on the circut board and also the motor. They said the motor had a jittler. During the 2 weeks my wheel was getting repaired, I got to use a RW 12 that the shop owned. This wheel immediately felt different. It was the same model but it was louder, faster, and LESS stable. It could more easily/safely maintain peak speeds but every time I went over a 3+cm drop, the wheel would shut down. LIke really bad shut down. Like so bad you had to find an outlet and plug it in to get it to turn on bad. This is caused by a BMS safety cut-out. This cut-out also happens on hills when the battery is low. Now a few months ago I found this nifty wheel hack with the Legway design (which would also have the same BMS safety cut-out issue); You push the wheel along the ground which causes it to generate electricity and charge the battery which is enough current to get the BMS to reset. This is most likely hell for your electronics but it beats walking to the nearest outlet (which could be a very very very long walk). Note that when you do this you should be ready to hold a raging Rockwheel as you will not keep it on the ground the whole time. Think of this as pull starting a chainsaw. You have to push the wheel as fast as you can which is an arcing motion of your arms and body. Even actively avoiding drops, I had to push start my wheel a good 2 dozen times over the two weeks I was using the loaner wheel. So I go back to the shop and get my repaired RW. I notice its quieter (although still loud for a wheel), more stable, and as fast as the loaner wheel. Then I try dropping down a curb, success! No cut-out. I push it at top speed for a few km and quite stable. Then I try a 1.5M drop, no problem (although it might kill the gearbox if you do it a few times). I now achieve peak speeds up to 30km/h if the battery is topped off. This is an amazing feeling of high power to weight ratio. There is a technique that I use to achieve high speed without going over the wheel abilities and I call it toe tapping. This is where you shift your weight to your toes for a fraction of a second and back to see how the wheel responds. If its soggy (you toes fall a ways or it feels easy to push down), you are near the limit. If you instead accelerate and the pedals push back hard, you have more motor potential available. This technique is especially useful for testing new or unstable wheels. But still, RW is definitely not all there as a design. Issues: - Noisy and vibrates through your feet - Extremely hard riding mode, nice for performance stuff but uncomfortable for longer rides and generally not as pleasurable. - Unstable when doing tight turns or spins. The gryos get saturated and can trip the side to side tilt sensor. - dangerously exposed area between the motor and rim where you could get your fingers amputated or mutilated - very wide between your legs, feels like riding a horse - extremely painful leg contact height and angle even after added foam - be ready for hurting ankles, mine have calluses and still hurt from time to time - Slow charging time - inefficient motor, the noise comes from a poorly tuned gearbox. This causes a significant loss of energy and you will consume more Wh per km By far the biggest thing that bothers me is that I have had in effect 3 different RWs and all were the same but yet the quality grade of the components was radically different. John Niem also had a RW 12 gearbox failure and I hear of RW quality issues from many people. Even if RW can be stable the production standards are so inconsistent that you will never know if you get a good one.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 01:43:59 +0000