When it all goes wrong at once - Day 3

Today something more serious than punctures happened.

Cycling in to work the pedals completely locked up and wouldn't rotate.

The motor seemed to stall too. After turning the power on and off it worked briefly before stalling and locking up again.

After a stop on the pavement near Aldgate I worked out the pedals would only lock up in first or third gear. I could pedal backwards to unlock it. If I stuck to second it was OK. This made some sense as the Sturmey Archer gearbox has direct drive from the sprocket to the wheel in second gear. It doesn't reduce or increase the gearing using the planetary gears when in second. Whatever was locking the wheel up was caused by something having broken in the gearbox. Uh Oh.

Unfortunately though I couldn't use the electric motor to help me get to work as I think when it stalled the motor pulled a huge current and melted the 20A connector to the battery. 

 


 

 

Not wanting to risk shorting out the battery through the now mangled connector and with no tools to fix it I cycled using human effort only it to Hammersmith. 

It weighs nearly 50kg with all the bike seat, rack and battery on so it was slow and tiring.

 


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