Mercane and rough roads

So, I thought I'd take a quick nip up the driveway to test my GoPro mount:

which seemed to work, so I then went over to my friends place and tested it on their "driveway"

so, I hope you enjoyed a bit of Australian countryside too and a final still from the day

mercane handle bar mount

For those who are interested in what's inside the mercane handlebar attachement I thought I'd provide this insight. Particularly any "concerns" that "my handlebars are getting floppy", this should make it clear that they're actually quite sturdy.

So with the covers off we see this central solid aluminum bar, which is machined to hold the bars and then the spring loaded rings:

the rings which you have to pull back to allow the bars to drop (there are springs force them towards the middle) are quite thick and extend in to cover the area of the bar left and right of my red lines. The bar ends are tapered to mean that the rings are held in firmly and vibrations makes them firmer.

The bar is pretty solid:

and the bar ends (that you hold) insert where the red arrows are and the whole thing is machined very nicely and is probably totally able to take your entire weight (but I wouldn't trust that plastic box to support that.

Here I'm pulling the ring back to show you the size of the part which goes into that middle bar ... quite hefty really.

And, for anyone interested to see the "control board" ...

... which shows just how simple it is.

Personally I'm quite happy that they've saved dollars on this and put that into better actual engineering of wheels, frame and suspension.

Remember: all this stuff costs and any increase in production is amplified in the process of getting it to you and the price you pay.

up the mountain on the mercane

I decided to take the mercane all the way from the bottom of the range up to Queen Mary falls (again) and this time video the descent (last time the card filled up ... fcuk)

This is the basic plot of the altitude and speeds recorded by my GPS on my phone

So I climbed nearly 300 meters over more or less 4km, where the GPS shows that on the way up it just sat on about 22kmh no matter what, and then hooted back down under gravity peaking at 44kmh (it might have peaked higher if I didn't touch the brakes, but I've had enough bone breaks already). The GPS shows that the downhill had some steeper bits which showed up as speed peaks but the uphill barely registered because the motor is within its power to deliver.

When I got there I checked the motors and battery by hand it it was barely warm to the touch, so I didn't bother with the thermal camera. I believe this clarifies how well designed the system is from the engineering side.

I hope you enjoy my trip back down

I did ;-)