Very fat tires, a battery, front and rear springs and… a hinge?

Cyrusher offers a wide range of e-bikes, from basic city frames to rugged all-terrain bikes, and the unifying theme is very fat tires. I’ve seen a number of people cruising on extra-fat tires (much fatter than mountain bikes, etc.) and I was intrigued by them. How much did the huge surface area of ​​these tires slow your ride down, and is the traction they provide worth the cost of that performance?

So I was excited to get the chance to try it out to see for myself. It was a folding bike, so I wanted to ride it someday. I’ve never ridden a mountain bike and was interested in riding rough terrain. The XF690 Max seemed to offer an opportunity to scratch many itches at once.

Some of the things I wanted to try weren’t particularly compatible with each other. In terms of points, it is slightly inferior to the sum of its parts.

contains fat

There is an ongoing debate as to whether fat tires might make you ride faster. Narrower tires should have less contact with the road surface and therefore less friction. At the same time, thinner tires transmit more shocks and vibrations to the frame, which can slow you down. Within limits, these two can balance each other out with little if any noticeable effect.

However, that’s all for small differences in tire thickness. When comparing mountain bike tires (even slicks) to road tires, fat tire friction makes a big difference. Extra-fat tires are well over 100 mm wide, almost double the fat tires on many mountain bikes. So you can expect it to make a big difference again. My question was, “How much?”

The answer was “a lot”. Pedaling this bike is mostly fighting the tires, and it definitely felt like the tires were constantly trying to slow us down. It was also a heavy 66 lb (30 kg) bike, which added to the challenge. Even with the electric assist maxed out, it tended to cruise at 25 km/h (15 mph). The bike is legally limited to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h), but I rarely approached that speed.

Again, it wasn’t because the electric assist was subpar. It has a 1,000 watt motor and a battery that never ran out during my travels. It’s a heavy bike with a heavy rider on it with very fat tires in constant contact with the ground.

The benefit you get from this is tremendous comfort and stability. Few bumps that could break a road wheel were recorded, and certainly not to an uncomfortable level. Wet leaves, surfaces that sometimes terrified my life on thin tires, weren’t a problem at all (sadly, I never saw snow to test). but it was never annoying.

on the crease

Beyond the tires, many things about the bike are standard mountain bike stuff. On the crank he has three chainrings and a full rear cassette so there are some very low gears that keep the bike moving even with the assist off. It has front and rear suspension to smooth out the ride, and a set of brakes that seems standard for affordable e-bikes.

But it has a very non-standard feature: it folds. The bike is very sturdy in normal use and the ride offers no hint of anything other than a solid hunk of metal. The only connection between the rear (a sort of top tube/battery housing) hinges back to reveal some of the battery’s electrical connectors. process.

In some ways, this is pretty well thought out. The hinges are positioned so that the bike practically folds almost in half, dramatically reducing its dimensions by one. The Cyrusher is also welded to a metal brace that prevents the front wheel from detaching from the front of the bike and the cranks digging into the dirt.

But otherwise the whole concept doesn’t really work. The bike’s fairly wide handlebars protrude from the compact area occupied by the wheels and frame when folded. And compression is relative. This is a heavy bike that is bulky even when folded and is much more difficult to move around as it cannot be rolled on its wheels. Might fit better on some cars, but he needs two people to lift it in the rear.

So folding felt like a well-implemented categorical error.