Electric Recumbent Adventure Continues – BionicOldGuy

I have finally gotten my recumbent back on the road in electric-assist mode. This turned out to be quite an odyssey. I pursued two parallel approaches. First I tried to fix the wheel with broken spokes It turns out you can get custom spoke lengths online so I got replacements in 228 mm. Then I swapped out the five broken spokes with new ones, and tried to tighten them by feel so they matched their neighbors.The wheel appeared pretty true so I took it for a ride to try it out. It was badly out of round, meaning there was a very noticeable up and down motion of the front wheel. So I took the wheel into my local bike shop. They were unable to fix it because they found there was a permanent bend to the rim causing a flat spot. Remember that I had first discovered 5 broken spokes at once. Whatever I did, like hit a really bad pothole, that popped the 5 spokes must have also bent the rim.

So that wheel must be rebuilt. This is not something they do at my local shop so I’m nosing around for a custom wheel builder. Alternatively I could just get an inexpensive truing stand and a new rim, and rebuild the wheel myself. This doesn’t look too difficult for the standard “two-cross” method based on what I’ve read and seen in videos.

Fortunately, there was the parallel path. Last November, the makers of my ebike kit, Swytchbike had a great sale on their kits. I wanted to get some spare batteries, and it turned out that with the sale a replacement kit was no more expensive than just getting the batteries, so I ordered one. When it arrived a few months later I put its batteries into service but set the kit aside. I finally got around to trying fitting it on my recumbent when I had the broken spoke problem. Unfortunately the wheel did not quite fit in the dropout slots on the bike. I contacted customer service, and they told me I was outside there return window (that’s what happens when you wait two months before actually trying a product). But fortunately I could just file the wheel so it fits in the dropouts (for which they had a brief video). This turned out to be quite a workout. I think my right arm is bigger than my left after the filing. It was very satisfying when it finally fit.

The new wheel worked like a champ plugged into my existing controller. The only adjustment was setting the wheel size on the controller to 20″ instead of 26″. I took the bike for a test ride and it was delightful.

This matches the configuration of my previous recumbent, the 26-20 Bacchetta Giro. I had forgotten how comfortable that was. So this is my ride for the foreseeable future, though I’ll consider to pursue getting the 26″ motor wheel rebuilt.