Yakking Lessons & e-Bike / p-Bike

Taking a mate of mine kayaking today, but we're doing it in small steps, as he's never been on a kayak before and has a fear of sharks.

Firstly we're doing a watersports lake in South Cerney today, where he has a rather swish static caravan that he recently purchased and we occasionally use.

Once he's mastered going round what equates to a goldfish bowl (and I will find enormously uninteresting), I will progress him, in a week or so, to the River Avon at Bradford on Avon, including a weir or two. Might get him as far as Bath, sharks permitting.

Finally I'll take him to Lee Bay in August for a finishing session on the sea, along with a bit of sea bass and mackerel fishing. Might even catch a shark. I could use my mate as bait.

Remember I had a problem with the p-bike (as I now call the 80cc petrol bike), in that I had a spare handgrip with an electrical cable coming from it and couldn't fathom out its use? Well, Hay has a habit of tidying my stuff away when I'm absent from my workspace for any length of time, and she inadvertently put the electric throttle from the e-bike in the p-bike's box of bits. Can't really blame her - one box of bits looks the same as any other to her. 

I say she did it, but there is an outside chance I did it, but that chance is very small knowing my prodigious memory....

All bits are now affixed to the e-bike and all that's required is connecting up the cables to the controller. 

The electronics is an absolute rat's nest of wires, with connections from the controller to just about everything. I'm going to have to get miles of that spiral plastic stuff to cover them.

The controller comes with a nifty pouch, which I can easily fix to the rear pannier I attached to the bike.

I do have a small problem, in that the e-bike kit comes with brake levers containing kill-switches that cut power to the motor when braking. However, one of my brakes is hydraulic, whereas the kill-switch levers are for cable brakes only. 

Theoretically this shouldn't matter, providing I remember to kill the throttle when braking, which is standard on a motorcycle anyway and comes naturally. I may just fit the one kill-switch brake lever on the cable brake, which is the front brake (although I usually use the rear brake only so as to prevent going base over apex). It will be trial and error. If necessary, I may have to convert the hydo brake to cable, which isn't a big job, but requires a new calliper.

I am a tad worried that the weight of both the e-bike and the p-bike may exceed the 60kg max load of the bike carrier on the van (or was it 30kg?). I'll have to weigh them both to see if the bike carrier requires an upgrade. I can always remove the battery pack from the e-bike when mounting it on the bike carrier, as that's the really meaty part of the whole caboodle.