BionX Won’t Turn On

September 13, 2011 By 2 Comments

 

Dead BionX

Dead BionX

Update 2:

I just heard from the BionX dealer, Bicycle Center of Seattle, today that BionX will not accept a return from him. I don’t completely understand why not, but it sounded like it might be because they get their BionX kits through another distributor – though they’re still listed on the BionX website as a dealer (BionX had told me just to bring my battery to a dealer, no special caveats mentioned). In any case, I’m pretty confused and very miffed.

I’m trying to figure out where I can go or what I can do to get this repair done now. Problem is now I won’t be able to get back to Seattle for at least a week and a half unless I take time off from work. Add on to that a minimum of a few weeks (my guess) for repair and shipping back and forth from Canada and I’m looking at a month or more without my BionX – which for all of my other riding would be fine, except for the “hill of death” at the end of my work commute.

Out of desperation I just ordered a refurbished battery from NYCeWheels so I can at least keep commuting while I get this sorted out, but my credit card and I are not very happy right now.

Update:

After some helpful emails with both NYCeWheels and BionX, I was able to pin down the problem more definitively to the battery. Fortunately, it sounds like I may be able to get my battery rebuilt for less than the price of a new one. On the downside, BionX requires that returns be handled through a dealer and the closest one is about an hour’s drive away in Seattle. I managed to get up there on Sunday though and the process is rolling. I still don’t know exactly how much it will cost or how long it will take. At this point I just have to wait and see.

Original Post:

Doesn’t my velomobile know that I have better things to do than constantly troubleshoot it? I was feeling very excited about finally having my Team on the road again with everything working smoothly, including my BionX electric assist.

But yesterday when I got the velo out to ride to work, the BionX wouldn’t turn on. I just figured that maybe, however unlikely, the battery had gone dead since the last time I rode it. I agonized for a bit about whether I should still ride it (thinking of the hill of death on my route), but decided to just go for it since I was already geared up for a ride. I thought I might still be able to make it (albeit really slowly) because the Team has a really good gear range. As it turns out, I only made it about a quarter of the way up the hill before I got stuck and had to jump out and push my velomobile the rest of the way up the hill. It’s a pretty terrible place to be stuck during morning rush hour since there is absolutely no shoulder, but fortunately no one ran me over before I could move the velo up onto the sidewalk.

I recharged the battery and the BionX still won’t turn on. Checked all the connections and still nothing. If I hold the power button down the display will come on, but it goes back off as soon as I let the button go. Searching on some forums I found a few people with similar problems, but their solutions generally seemed to be replacing the battery, which I really don’t want to have to do right now. I also checked the NYCeWheels BionX Troubleshooting Guide, but I didn’t like the results of the battery wakeup test – nothing happened (which, again, points to replacing the battery). I also emailed BionX, but have yet to hear anything back. I have no idea why it would just suddenly stop working like this.

So I’m feeling pretty frustrated right now since it doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to ride to work without pushing my Team up the hill, which kind of takes the fun out it. Really hoping that I don’t need to shell out about $1,000 for a new battery when I haven’t even gotten that much use out of my current one.

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Coming Unhinged

June 10, 2010 By 1 Comment

First one and then the other.

A couple weeks ago the front hinge on the lid of my Team failed just about the only way a hinge can – catastrophically. Well, mostly I just wanted to say “catastrophic failure” because it sounds more epic that way.

Anyway, I was opening the lid to get out of the velo and the front end just slid off and landed on the ground. It really was a cringe-inducing sight and I think I shrieked (on the inside). It was like seeing someone with a broken bone when your gut just says “that is not supposed to bend that way”. I was really worried about the torquing that happened to the rear hinge as the lid twisted down to the ground. In turned out a couple different things had happened, the hinge pin had vibrated out and the hinge plate that is sandwiched in the fiberglass of the lid had come loose, probably after the fall. Well, I flanged the pin with a center punch to get it to stay put and epoxied the hinge plate back into the lid after consulting with Ray at bluevelo (still amazing on the support). Things were good as new.

Then yesterday when I was opening the lid it let out a blood-curdling “crack”. Looking closer I saw that the reinforced area around the hinge had started to crack away from the main shell of the lid on the outside where the fiberglass is thinner. It still looked like I could nurse it through until the weekend if I was careful. But climbing out this morning at my office I saw that the hinge plate had actually come loose as well, just like the front hinge had. I grumbled and tried to get out gingerly (not always an easy feat in a velomobile), but I jostled things just enough to knock the lid off the rear hinge. In a stomach-turning, fingernail-bent-backwards moment of déjà vu, I watched the lid thud down to the ground, twisting on the front hinge in a way that is just so wrong.

There may have possibly been some underlying damage from when I rolled the velomobile a while back, but I’m not sure. I think that the fiberglass around the rear hinge probably got damaged during the fall from the front hinge. Now I’m just hoping that I didn’t do similar damage to the front area that will cause further failure. So far it looks as though the epoxy job is holding up.

On my way home the lid actually bounced back off the hinge plate when I hit a bump, so it’s definitely not staying on the road right now. I think I should be able to get it patched up tonight though.

The lid has actually always concerned me a little because it can be pretty flexy and I worried about it putting strain on the hinges. After seeing a number of velos at the LCVMG with gas springs on their lids, I’m thinking this might not be a bad idea to help stabilize the lid a little more.

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Bad Luck with Lights

March 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A little while after I got my Team from bluevelo the stock headlight, a BLT Firewire 4.0, stopped working (I also had some problems with the tail light). Fortunately, bluevelo got new lights sent off to me very quickly, but the situation got me thinking that I should have a secondary light as a backup. Also, although the 4-watt LED Firewire is pretty bright, I wanted something more powerful and with a strobe option for the dark and rainy winters here in Washington when visibility is really bad. So at the same time I picked up a Magicshine 900 from GeoManGear to fit the bill. The Magicshine has worked great since I got it installed back in January, but then this past week the battery charger just stopped working. The LED on the charger lights green when the battery is connected to it or when it’s plugged in, but will no longer change to red, which indicates that it’s charging. Just to be sure, I left the battery plugged in this way for several hours, but the charge did not improve.

I contacted GeoManGear to see if they had any ideas on troubleshooting or how to replace the charger and/or battery (I didn’t see any spares on their website). I also ended up digging around a little on some forums and found other people with the same issue. It turns out that apparently the charger is prone to burning itself out. Most of the forum people recommended buying a better third-party charger as that seemed to be the only part with major faults. A little while later though I heard back from GeoManGear and they offered to send me a replacement charger. That’s great. I just hope that the new one lasts a little longer.

In the meantime, I’m back to riding with just the stock headlight.

Update: I just discovered that later in the same month that I ordered my Magicshine light Mountain Bike Review (mtbr.com) did a nice review of it. You can see the review here.

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One Step Closer to Security

March 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Over the last few days I’ve worked on getting a lock installed on my Team. I did originally intend to do this a long time ago, but then decided to just trust people. I actually kind of liked the idea that if I wasn’t around and somebody was curious about “what the heck that funny yellow thing is”, and if they were intrepid enough, they could open the hatch and see what it was all about.

Today as I rode home with a wet butt though (see previous post for how this relates to locking my velomobile), I questioned the wisdom of that original thought process.

In any case, now I can lock the hatch while I’m away. In addition to the alarm system on the BionX, this will also add another layer of deterrence should anyone ever be so inhumanly spiteful to try to steal the velomobile itself. Still, the cockpit isn’t entirely secure if someone wanted to go fishing through the head hole, so I’ve also started work on a locking cover that would help with the rain leakage problem as well.

As a side note, Ray from bluevelo actually just contacted me recently after seeing my post about the rain leaks. He said that they may prototype a solid parking cover that would be more water-resistant. If they get something workable, I may be able to test it out for them. With any luck, there’ll be a locking version too.

I’d normally provide more information about the modifications that I’m doing, but in this case it’s going to have to be confidential as a matter of velomobile security. However, here’s a (paranoid-ly distant) photo of my shiny new lock:

New lock on the hatch of the velomobile

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Velomobile Burglarized!

March 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Today my faith in humankind was dashed. My velomobile was burglarized.

I knew that I was taking a risk leaving anything in the velomobile, but I also have a (perhaps naive) faith that most of the people of Olympia are generally good and decent.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been using my rain jacket as a cover for my seat while the velo is parked at work to keep it dry if it rains. Today turned out to be sunny and warm, but I had the rain jacket on the seat out of habit (you just never know in Western Washington). I’m not sure if someone actually opened the velomobile or just reached through the hole (only the roof was slightly out of place), but of all things, they took my rain jacket. I guess it was about the only thing of value in there (all of $20) – my helmet is caked in sweat, the battery for my headlight wouldn’t do much good for anything else, and stealing the sprayskirt or roof would just plain be weird and mean.

I’m not too upset about the rain jacket being gone since it was a pretty cheap one (except that now my seat will get wet when it rains). I am upset that someone would steal at all from something so joyful as a velomobile. It also leaves me feeling kind of violated. When I first bought the Team I thought about a number of mechanisms I could use to secure the canopy, but eventually abandoned the idea (see naive faith, above). I may have to revisit some of those thoughts and do some more surgery on the Team, but it makes me sad that I should.

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Raindrops Keep Falling in My Team

February 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been finding that the Team isn’t quite water tight.

When I park it out in the rain all day while I’m at work I have the roof on and the spray skirt on and zipped closed, but when I come out the velomobile has started to fill up like a bathtub. The bottom of the cockpit area has two nice self-contained troughs beside the seat that don’t let the water go anywhere once it starts coming in. The first time this happened I had a bunch of my stuff down there and it was a little distressing. Crying’s not for me though, so I took my drill and put drain holes in the bottom. It still gets wet, but at least I don’t get inches of standing water anymore.

The problem seems to stem from the design of the spray skirt-shell interface. The spray skirt fastens to the inside edge of the head hole by velcro. This presents a couple issues in itself, mainly that velcro doesn’t do much to repel or exclude water and the the fact that the spray skirt attaches on the inside means that any water landing on or running to the edge will just drain right down into the velomobile. This is unfortunate. A design where the skirt stretched over the outside of a lip (like on a kayak) would be much better as any water would then drain to the outside. Another issue is that the spray skirt itself isn’t a very good fit for the hole. This results in small gaps at the front and back that potentially let even more water in. The amount of water coming in at any given moment is really pretty minor, but when the velomobile is just sitting there in pouring rain for nine hours it starts to add up.

I’m not sure that there’s any real fix that I could do on my end without gaining some serious fiberglassing skills. I’d almost like to see an over-the-lip spray skirt for riding and then have a separate, solid cover for parking that would be easier to make water tight. Such a spray skirt style might also help with those invigorating rivulets of cold water that run down my neck when I brake and the little pools of water come running forward.

For now I’m stuck just covering my seat with my rainjacket during the day so that I at least don’t have to ride home on a wet seat. I’m sure at some point I’ll try fashioning a more water tight cover of my own – maybe a swatch of neoprene with snaps drilled into the body… but I’m kind of hoping that the dry(ish) weather we’ve been having lately will mostly stick around for the rest of spring.

P.S. – Sorry if I got a terrible song stuck in your head

P.P.S – Sorry if you’re a huge B.J. Thomas fan and I just offended you.

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First Roll!

October 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

What’s the first thing I do now that I’ve got the Team back on the road after a long convalescence? I roll it on my way home from work! I’ve been starting to test the limits of the velomobile and myself as the opportunity arises and today I decided to push the envelope of high speed cornering.

I was heading down the road at about 25 mph the last time that I looked at the speedo. I did coast and even brake a little coming into the turn, so I’m guessing I was doing slightly under 20 when I hit the corner. I started to go up on two wheels, so I leaned in and straightened out a little more. I got back down on all three wheels, but was then tracking to overshoot the corner – still going way too fast. It was a bit of a conundrum without much time to react – I could either run straight off the road at high speed or try to hold the corner and risk rolling.

I decided I didn’t really want to go off-roading in the velo just yet, so I tried to at least keep it on the pavement. As I bit back into the turn I went back up onto two wheels and then just kind of kept going. At a certain point I realized that there really wasn’t anything I could do (besides take corners easier in the future). Fortunately, there was a bit of a bank/curb covered in grass, which took some of the blow and kept me from going completely horizontal.

The Team came out of the excitement a bit dirty, but really none the worse for wear. I thought I heard a small crack, but the shell is of a thickness to be flexy but sturdy. Nothing appears to be broken, bent, or out of shape. The wheel cover got displaced and full of dirt, but nothing serious. As for myself, I was impressed by how well I was protected. I bumped my shoulder pretty well, but that was it. Certainly a lot less eventful than going over on my bike (though I could have made the corner on my road bike).

My fiance of course was not very amused. She had actually been reprimanding me as I pedaled off this morning for forgetting my helmet ;) She didn’t appreciate the fact that I didn’t even hit my head.

I kind of wish I had a velo-cam for moments like this, but here are a couple photos at least – showing the Team looking pretty indifferent (after brushing all the dirt off) and the curb looking a little beat up.

Team unscathed after rolling

Team unscathed after rolling

Velomobile-plowed curb

Velomobile-plowed curb

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Really Back

October 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Between a busy schedule (work, grad school, wedding planning, etc) and mysterious bolt disappearances, it has taken me a bit longer than I’d hoped to get, and keep, the velomobile back on the road.

The Team languished for about a week without a chainring while I waited for some free time on the weekend to get it installed. Once that was done, I took the velo down to the Olympia farmer’s market to meet a gentleman who had some questions. When I got home I found that four bolts from the Schlumpf had other, more liberated plans for themselves and had worked loose, apparently falling out the foot holes. It was kind of baffling that all four could come unscrewed in one trip. I was almost on the edge of desponding that the velomobile would just stubbornly sit in the garage forever and was frustrated that I didn’t even have a single bolt left to find replacements.

After a couple trips to the hardware store I found the right size replacement bolts, got them in (this time with some thread-locking compound), and closed everything back up – hopefully the last time for a while.

Looks like I was just in time because velomobile weather is arriving: rain almost every day and temperatures dropping into the 50′s over the next week.

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Olympian Front Page

September 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Two bits of exciting news today. First I was featured on the front page of our local newspaper, The Olympian – see the article. Then I received my new chainring from Schlumpf – more speed!

It was kind of strange to be on the front page. Odd as it may sound coming from a guy who rides around in a blazing yellow torpedo, I’m not someone who’s very comfortable with a lot of attention. Still, it was kind of amusing and my friends and coworkers got a good laugh out of the ever-colorful Olympian comments. People’s impressions of me ranged from “True American Hero” to “Twinkie Filling”. I’m not sure I’m either one of those. I mostly just like riding my bike, going fast, and treading lightly where I can. One thing that I do hope will come out of the extra publicity though is that more people will become aware of their transportation options – maybe even get some more velomobiles in Olympia.

I was almost more excited about getting the chainring. After having gotten the old one off (involving significant effort, lots of grease, and some blood), I found that the Schlumpf chainring was a custom job and couldn’t be replaced with a standard chainring. I could either order another custom chainring directly from Schlumpf, or order a custom spider that would allow me to attach standard chainrings (though I’m not sure if this will fit in the tight quarters of the velomobile shell). After contacting Schlumpf I found out that they had recently started carrying up to 42 tooth chainrings (up from 38 previously). My current chainring is a 32T and it leaves me spinning out around 22-25 mph. I consulted Sheldon Brown’s Gear Calculator and figured that the 42T would bump up my top speed a respectable amount without totally destroying my hill-climbing ability. So for better or worse, that’s the route I went. Either way it meant getting the part in from Switzerland. I had to (somewhat grudgingly) throw everything back together to do the interview with The Olympian, so now I have to find the time to take it all back apart again and install the new chainring. At least now that I know how everything fits together (and the order that parts need to come off/go on) it should go a bit quicker.

Finally, I just heard about a ride in the Capital Bicycling Club‘s latest newsletter for climate change awareness. Sounds like fun. Check out the Events page for more details.

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On the Road Again!

September 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I got the swing arm back from Cory at the Bike Stand/Olympic Outfitters. He did a remarkable job getting the axle dropout bent back into shape and welding on a reinforcement that looks nearly indestructible. With some amount of effort I got everything back together over the weekend. Doing maintenance on a velomobile definitely made me appreciate the simple accessibility of working on a bike. It seemed like half the time I either was contorting myself to reach an almost inaccessible bolt or connector or working by feel alone. Once everything is together and working though, it’s much more enjoyable.

Here are the before and after shots:

Axle dropout bent by BionX

Axle dropout bent by BionX

Axle dropout repaired and reinforced

Axle dropout repaired and reinforced

When I was putting the wheel back on I noticed that in all the banging around that happened when the dropout was bent out of shape the axle must have gotten rotated within the BionX hub motor also. This changed the orientation of the notch (visible in the photo at left) that controls the power sensor. Basically, if the axle isn’t properly aligned the BionX won’t sense your pedaling power and thus cannot provide proportional assist. Although brute force got it out of alignment, I’m going to wait until I receive the proper tool to make the adjustment. I put an order in with Electric Cyclery in California for the special BionX tool for pulling the blocker loose. In the meantime I’ll just have to pedal a little harder.

We had friends visiting from out of state and are just starting to get settled from a rather spontaneous move (into a beautiful 3-bedroom house), so today was the first time I’ve been back out riding. Unfortunately, it didn’t start out so well when I was almost hit by a car that cut in front of me across the bike lane and then stopped in the middle of the road. The brake lever in the TEAM is not particularly suited to panic stops – being a very short “T” in the middle of the handlebar, partially blocked by the BionX control unit. On my way home from work I was squeezed out of the lane by a guy talking on his cell phone who never seemed to notice me. Kind of a frustrating way to get back into the saddle. Normally my commute is on very bike-friendly and low-traffic roads, but construction has that route closed for the next month and a half. The only other ways of getting to my office involve elaborate detours, busy roads, and hairy intersections with only intermittent bike lanes or wide shoulders. I might have to resort to my regular bike (which can be walked past the construction site) until the road reopens.

Our friend Charlie shared this great video with me while he was visiting, which is just about the best thing I’ve ever seen. So here you go.

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