I have now ridden over 1,000 miles on this bike, the vast majority off-road. Since my last update, I replaced the chain at about 900 miles. It was worn out already. Not surprising given the forces it has to take on this bike. I am not easy on it. The places I ride have large elevation changes, steep rocky hills, and loamy sand and gravel. I often gain 2,000ft or more in elevation. Long uphill climbs and then basically coasting back powered by gravity. The fat tires and full suspension are both hard requirements. I use the full suspension travel very often.
I often go multiple rides between battery charges. I keep both batteries on the bike and both used at all times to help extend the battery life. This way the discharge rates are easier on both batteries. I never worry about range at all. My longest hardest ride uses less than 50% of my total battery capacity. The range extender battery weights about 10lbs but on a bike this heavy I don't really notice it. With the motor power the weight is not a big deal. I get about 70 hard off-road miles at about 50% battery consumption. A typical 20 mile off-road ride takes about 2 hours. The batteries will last much longer than I will.
Here is a video of some of the terrain I ride in.
It shows crossing several loamy washes and some of the rocky segments and ends with a fun downhill segment. I have many more videos on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JimRoal
I am becoming a better rider. Some of that is actually due to me getting back into motorcycles. I bought a Husqvarna 701 Enduro last fall. This is the first motorcycle I have owned in over 25 years, and it is the heaviest and most powerful too. Riding this in loamy areas and other off-road challenges has made me a much better and more confident rider on the mountain bike. The ways you control the heavy motorcycle also work on the much lighter mountain bike. My mountain bike weighs 90lbs which is very heavy by mountain bike standards, but a feather compared to the motorcycle which weighs over 350lbs.
I ride electric mountain bikes and a dual sport motorcycle in southern Nevada. Luckily, over 85% of Nevada is public lands, and there is lots of off road riding available for both motorized and non-motorized machines. I wanted to create this blog post to make others aware of some great resources to find all these available trails. While many of these resources claim to have maps for both, coverage of motorized versus non motorized varies quite a bit within each of the apps/websites. Some have free access levels and others support both subscriptions free access levels. I will say that none of these mapping tools has complete coverage. Most are less than half the actual trails in most areas.
Trailforks - This is my go to app for Electric Mountain biking, and any mountain biking. While it also supports motorized off road trails, it is not particularly good at that. For mountain biking, it is great because crowdsourced trails are available. I have found the coverage in my area to be better than any other apps I have found for mountain biking. It supports offline maps for navigation when out of cellular range. Part of Outside+. Here is my Trailforks profile.
GAIA - This is a pretty decent app in general for finding trails. I have used it for both motorcycling and electric mountain biking, but I tend to find other apps a bit better and so it is not my go to app. GAIA is more of a mapping utility and navigation tool than a way to find existing trails. It supports offline maps for navigation when out of cellular range. It is one of the few that support off-road turn-by-turn navigation. Part of Outside+. Here is my Gaia profile.
OnX - There are several variants of OnX. I use the off road version. It seems to be the best in my area for motorcycling. It is a subscription only app and website and has no access without a subscription. It supports offline maps for navigation when out of cellular range.
AllTrails - The AllTrails app and website claim to support all kinds of off road trails and activities. It does but I have found the coverage to be not as good as trail forks for biking or for onX for motorcycling, at least in my area. It supports offline maps for navigation when out of cellular range.
Strava - This is more of a social networking app for bicyclers, but you can look up other people's ride segments and find some routes this way.
Garmin Explore - Garmin explore is an application used with many Garmin products. Garmin has other similar apps to Garmin Explore as well, depending on the product that you are using. It supports offline maps, navigation, and integration with several Garmin products such as InReach satellite messenger.
Google Maps - Google Maps actually has features for navigating off-road too. Well, somewhat anyway. It has biking and walking modes that include trails. While it is not a main feature it can work surprisingly well at times. Often you will need to put it in biking or walking mode and also add some stops along the way to enforce your desired route. Here is an example taking a Jeep trail over Wheeler Pass.
Google Earth - Google Earth has some great tools for searching the Earth for all kinds of detail. It also includes some great measurement tools that will show you the elevation profile. Another great feature is tilting the map to see a perspective from ground level or anywhere in between. You can also import GPS data from Garmin Connect and other trip trackers. The satellite imagery is good enough to spot many trails that may not yet be mapped.
RideWithGPS - created as a bicycle route planner it is generally a pretty good route planner.
Local and national government sites
Each local area likely has its own resources for specific parks and places where there are trails. things like the U. S Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management cover many parks across the United States. Below are just a few that I use around Southern Nevada.
Backcountry Discovery Routes (BDR). Back country discovery routes are specific routes that have been created by the BDR community. They connect multiple trails together to make a long route, generally through part of or an entire state.
Once you find places to ride on the map, the next thing you wonder is how challenging and fun will it be. I generally search the trail name in YouTube where many people have posted some great videos of their rides/drives so you can actually ride the trail before you get there. I contribute many ride segments on my YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@jimroal .
I enjoy mountain biking off-road and often in areas with no cellular. Sometimes I ride in areas with many established trails that cross each other and navigation would help. I looked into bike navigation but they have small screens, are costly, and many of the features are redundant with my Garmin fenix 6x Pro Solar watch. I also never trade in my old smartphones so I have several fairly recent ones laying around. I decided to use my old Motorola Z4 smartphone as a biking navigation using. First I needed a real robust mount. I started on Amazon and found this one.
It grabs all 4 corners and locks in place.
I cleared and reset the phone, removing all unnecessary apps to minimize battery consumption. I also put it in airplane mode, and keep WiFi and Bluetooth off to save power. The Moto Z4 I am using also supports MotoMod batteries, of which I have a few. I am using the 2200mAh unit primarily and I can hot swap in others if it gets low on the trail (which is unlikely). I could also connect the phone to the USB port in the bike display to keep it charged if I wanted. I removed the SIM card as well so it would not search for cellular even out of airplane mode. Then I installed Google Maps, Trailforks, Garmin Explore, and GAIA maps. All of these offer offline maps of bike trails. There are many others too. So far I found GAIA to be the best for bike navigation as it can ever store satellite maps offline.
Here is how I organized the home screen.
Here is what GAIA maps looks like.
Here is a video showing the use of this riding some trails.
This first ride was on a pretty easy trail. I have yet to test it on harsher rides but so far it seems solid. I am of course by no means the first person to do this. I wanted to use an old phone, and not my current phone, just in case that mount breaks or I crash the bike. Also, I didn't want to drain the battery on the phone I use normally since I want to be able to make calls, or message through my Garmin satellite messenger in case of trouble.
I now have over 350 miles on this bike, most of that off-road. This bike has been great for my riding style. I have the optional range extender battery which allows me to ride about 75 miles off-road on a charge. My riding includes many long hills and loamy conditions that burn through power too.
I have had some creaking noises which sound like they are coming from the handlebar area and possible the motor area. I checked and rechecked everything and all is tight.
When I bought this bike they offered several upgrades. One of which was a $300 Wren hub upgrade. I passed on it thinking why would I need that? Well, I found out why. I was up at Little Red Rock on a loamy hill. I hit the throttle and heard a snap and then the cassette just spun, no longer driving the wheel.
Luckily I was up hill so I was able to coast down to a main road and get picked up. I got home and took the hub apart and sure enough the ratchet teeth had sheared the ends off.
Now I decided to get the upgraded hub.
If you have an electric mountain bike with a high torque motor like this Bafang Ultra M620, best to also get a hub that can support it.
This bike is heavy but I used to ride dirt bikes back in the day so I don't mind the weight. The bike alone (no batteries) is 72lbs according to Biktrix. The main battery weighs 10.3lbs and the range extender weighs 7.6lbs. Total weight is about 90lbs.
Here is a video that shows the use of the throttle for some steeper or loamier bits in the beginning of the video. Watch for my left thumb applying motor power (throttle). Starting around the 5 minute mark, I begin the downhill portion that shows the suspension soaking up the terrain at around 20mph.
This next video shows a steep but short hill when I use the throttle to climb at about 25s in.
I enjoy real off-road mountain bike riding in places where full suspension is a must and fat tires are needed to get through the soft loam. Much of my riding includes long steep hills, some in loamy terrain. I often ride Jeep trails as well as dedicated bike trails.
I started with a very inexpensive mountain bike with full suspension and 2-1/4" wire tires. The narrow tires would sink in to the gravel and sand I often encounter. Even on hard pack trails, the long steep climbs were exhausting. I realized I needed a fat tire bike with full suspension. Once you get that, you have a heavy bike so I decided to go electric as well (which of course add even more weight).
I have been riding my Rurui XT10 rear hub drive electric mountain bike over a year and over 1,100 miles. In that time I failed 2 controllers due to overloading them on long steep hills. Since the motor must handle the wide speed range with no transmission, it is very poorly suited to low speed riding. On PAS 1 it would go about 12mph where assist would then taper off. Below about 10mph the motor was just turning too slow and was very inefficient. Electric motors may produce high torque at low speeds but they cannot sustain that very long. The long steep hills were too much for the hub drive system. The hub drive I have in this bike is geared which helps but it was not enough of a gear ratio for the riding I was doing. Freewheeling the bike would reach 39mph top motor speed. I never needed to motor to 39mph. 25mph would have been much more applicable to my riding. A hub drive with much high gear ratio could really help.
However, the other issue is how and when power is applied. The Rurui had what is called a "cadence" sensor which measures the crank speed. In reality it seemed to only measure if there was crank speed or not. If you were pedaling, it applied power assist based on your PAS level selected. It makes for a strange riding experience since the motor power applied is independent of your pedaling force. There is also a delay in reading pedaling speed (cadence) and applying power. If you wanted to ride slow through some technical bits, you really had to cut the motor power. I would often do this by just pulling a brake lever far enough to cut the motor. There are now hub-drive bikes that use torque sensors.
I think hub drives are a decent approach for road bikes or at least when riding on well developed hard trails with gentle slopes.
I analyzed many approaches to augmenting the Rurui to better suit my riding. I could add a front hub drive and I have seen some bike like that on the market. However many of the downsides would still exist, now with the added weight of another motor and a whole bunch of added complexity.
I could add a mid-drive. This would give the benefit of mid-drive but also keep the hub drive. It could more than double my power. I could switch between as needed or use both. Again, weight and complexity were concerns. Another big concern was how low the add-on mid drive systems hang. I already had problems smashing my pedals on rocks I did not want to smash a motor.
It was time to just upgrade the bike. I needed a powerful mid-drive bike with more speeds to handle tougher off-road situations. I needed to be able to crawl along at lower speeds through the technical stuff. I needed to be able to climb much steeper and longer off-road hills. I needed better suspension to keep the pedals out of the rocks. I needed a drive system that would work better at low speeds and higher loads for long periods. I wanted less un-spring mass on the bike for improved suspension performance. After many months of research, I decided on the Biktrix Juggernaut Ultra FS Pro 3.
The differenced was stark and immediate. The very first thing I noticed was the power delivery. It is pretty much immediate assist when you start pedaling. I can start off up a fairly steep hill with no problem. It is like having bionic legs. Since it is sensing the pedaling force to apply power, the response of very controlled and natural. Here are some video clips from my first off-road ride on the bike.
I have ridden this route before on the Rurui several times. I normally have to get off and push the bike up the steep parts. Not on the Biktrix. I did push through a few very steep technical bits but that was not because the bike could not climb it. This ride was a breeze on the Biktrix.
The mid-drive system takes advantage of the narrower pedal cadence speeds versus wheel speeds. The motor is geared to apply much more torque since it does not have to deal with very high pedal speeds. It takes advantage of the bike gears to support a wide range of bike speeds.
As with everything, there are of course some trade-offs. When shifting gears motor power is interrupted to protect the gears from damage. As with a non-electric bike, when shifting you should reduce pedal force until the sift is complete. This of course does interrupt power delivery for a second. Another trade-off is that this total power from pedaling plus the motor power now goes through your chain and gears. This will be very hard on them. Even if I have to change the chain, chainring, and cassette every year it will be totally worth it.
If you enjoy real off-road riding, the mid drive with many speeds (11 in my case) and wide speed changes (42t-11t) is the way to go. Hub drive could be fine in flatter and hard-packed terrain where you plan to be at speeds greater than 10mph at all times.
I bought this bake based on my experiences with prior bikes given where I like to ride. I go off-road much more than on pavement. I put 1,200 miles on my Rurui XT10 and learned many things about the pros and cons of hub drive electric mountain bikes. I realized that for my riding I needed a powerful mid-drive bike so after shopping around, I bough this.
The power delivery from this bike is much better suited to my riding. It uses both crank torque and cadence sensors to determine how much motor power to add. This is a much more controlled and natural way to add assist power. It also takes advantage of all the gears, 11 on this bike, to provide high torque and a wide speed range. The mid-drive is also all suspended weight which gives better suspension dynamics in rough terrain.
It arrived in a box very similar to my Rurui bike did.
Like the Rurui, I had it assembled in about 30 minutes. Pretty easy.
I took a couple short rides around the neighborhood and adjusted it to get everything working well and the best ergonomic feel.
My first off-road ride was out to a trail I had been building, less than 8 mile round trip. Later that same day, I took it for a 23 mile loop which included paved bike path, long steep hills, loamy washes, rocky hard-pack, and everything else the desert has. I had ridden most of this route before on the Rurui so this was a great ride to contrast them. This bike is so much better suited to off-road riding. With 11 speeds and the mid-drive, it can climb any hill with ease. I shot a YouTube video with some clips from that ride.
I don't even have the range extended battery installed yet but so far the battery life is fantastic. Surely this is at least partly due to the mid-drive motor being in a much more efficient operating range, especially in the off-road situations that require high power such as steep hills and loamy terrain. The hub drive was just turning too slow and to close to stall where it become very inefficient and is hard on the controller too. The mid-drive has a much narrower operating speed since it is based on crank speed and takes advantage of the gears to handle a wide wheel speed range.
The Biktrix has a better suspension too. It has air suspension front and rear. The front rake has more angle which makes the wheelbase a bit longer, making the bike more stable at higher speeds. This also angles the wheel more when turning.
I have now put over 1,100 miles on my Rurui XT10 and I have learned much about what I needed for where I ride. I chose the Biktrix bike because:
Bafang M620 ultra mid-drive is the best motor for serious off-road with steep hills and loamy terrain that I ride in.
52V batteries are more efficient and powerful with the M620 motor than the typical 48V.
11 speed cassette with 11-42 gears supports a wide range of riding conditions, including steep hills and loamy terrain. The bigger rear gears will work much better in the technical or real steep riding. It is a proper cassette too, instead of the screw-on freewheel than has limits.
Fat-tire and full suspension for serious off-road riding.
It has an optional add-on battery for extra capacity when needed but easily removed to reduce weight when not needed. Main battery alone is 126% capacity of the Rurui. With the additional battery I will have 220% capacity of the Rurui. I have only run the Rurui out of power one time so while this will be nice it is likely more than I will generally need. This will give the option of longer, steeper rides at higher speeds.
Air shock and forks.
Inverted fork has less un-sprung mass and is more rigid.
The next best option I found in this price range was the Eunorau Specter S. It was less expensive than the Biktrix. It has the same motor and 11-speed cassette. It used 48V instead of 52V and lacked the air suspension. Besides, it is hard to pronounce the name.
The Rurui was great for street riding and off-road in less steep areas. The rear hub drive did not provide enough low speed power for climbing for where I like to ride. It did great at speeds from 11mph and up but for lower speed technical stuff, or long steep hills it did not work well.
I also looked into more aggressive off-road bikes that were closer to electric dirt bikes. Here are some examples.
CAB Motorworks. They make bikes from 750W all the way to over 20kW. These are based on motocross bikes more than bicycles. They had some very appealing features such as proper motocross suspension, wheels, and tires and regenerative braking. I also like the moto seat option. However, these would not be welcome anywhere but off-road. They would not pass as a bicycle to most people. They are also much heavier that most ebikes and are single speed (pedal). The one I was most interested in was the Falcon.
UltraTRX. They make a range of off-road ebikes that include bike that are based on the higher end of ebikes all the way to motocross bikes. The Cheetah looked the most interesting to me.
I ordered the Biktrix but it has not shipped yet. Once I get it and take it for a few rides, I will post about it here on this blog.
My Rurui XT10 Electric Mountain Bike hit 1,000 miles today. That took just over a year. My first ride was December 11th, 2021 and today is December 30th, 2022. I have had some great rides on this thing. I made several upgrades along the way to make it better suited for heavy duty off-road riding. I still get tons of exercise since it is a very heavy bike with fat tires and full suspension and I ride up long steep loamy hills mostly. I pedal the whole time. A typical 2.5 hour 20 mile off-road ride burns around 1,300 calories and I can really feel it. The big difference with the electric assist is the speed, especially up the hills and in soft terrain. I mostly use power assist level (PAS) 1. I would guess it is in PAS 1 about 70% of the time I am riding with assist. PAS 2 probably accounts for another 20%. I don't use assist going downhill of course, which can be almost half of a typical ride.
After my upgrades, this bike works well for my riding. I am on my 3rd controller now. They can't handle the power and fail. Both were replaced by Rurui though and the latest one claims to be rated for 18A instead of 17A. So far, so good. If it fails again, I will be getting a higher power rated controller. Other than that, it has been a good bike overall. I also had to replace the rear tire and rear brake pads because I wore them out. I bought this bike for $1,599 and I would say I got good value for the money. That is quite inexpensive for a full-suspension 750W fat-tire electric mountain bike. I have been looking casually at other bike like it since I bought this but have not really found a more compelling one in this price range, or even for more than tipple this price. I have also considered building my own but decided I would be far better off just upgrading components on this one.
I enjoy mountain biking, especially off-road mountain biking. Over the years I have found some handy websites for mountain biking.
First of all I use a Garmin smartwatch to track my rides. I had a Vivoactive 3 first, then upgraded to a fenix 6X Pro Solar. I use Garmin Connect and Garmin Explore website the most since they have the most detail for a Garmin user. Since my rides take me outside of cellular coverage, I also have a Garmin InReach Messenger to track and stay connected. Garmin has done a fantastic job with these devices.
Here are some other website I discovered and use:
Strava. This is a social biking website. It sync's with Garmin well so my rides tracked with Garmin Connect also post to Strava.
Trailforks. This site is a place to find and share routes.
PinBike. This includes classified ads for bike stuff.
I ride mostly off road which includes steep hills, loamy sand and gravel, and technical trails. The original gearing on this bike seemed more pavement focused and the gear ratios were too tight, and too geared for high speeds for me. The original gearing had a 52 tooth chainring up front and a 28-24-22-20-18-16-14 freewheel. First gear was far too high for steep hills and technical stuff.
Changing the chainring was simple. I bought a 44 tooth chainring. I swapped that out and it immediately helped but I did of course loose top speed.
The connector is too big for the nut to go over and the nut is too big for the tool to go over. I had the motor apart to see of there was an easy way to remove the wiring but no, it is all soldered in. I did not want to hack the wiring up so I needed a better way. I finally decided to get a larger fitting to replace the nut and slot it so the nut can be installed without having to go over the electrical connector. Having a slotted nut is not great as it is much weaker this way so I found an item made for something different and modified it for my needs. Here is what I used: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07T18ZKH1?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details.
Not ideal as stainless is softer than I wanted, and it needed significant modification to work for what I needed here. I had to drill out the unthreaded end, reduce its diameter a bit (grinding), and slot it to fit over the wire. Having a slot in a nut like this weakens it substantially but this is far thicker and longer than the nut it had. Just to make it stronger, I bought a 7/8" shaft collar from Tractor Supply that goes over the special slotted nut to clamp it down which both locks it to the axle and eliminates the weakness caused by the slot. I also had to grind flats on the new nut so I could tighten it on the axle. The result, crude as it is, looks like this.
I was able to get plenty of torque on it, similar to the original nut. The collar then locks it in place and strengthens the nut. Now I can easily remove these to swap out freewheels. Here is what the gear ratio comparison looks like, Opt1 being the new gearing.
Torque in this chart is just the ratio from original, 1st gear having 144% of original 1st gear torque for instance. The speeds are derived from my "typical" pedaling cadence (estimated). The lower 3 gears give more torque and less speed than original. The upper 3 gears give higher speeds than the original. This give a much wider ratio between the low and high gears.
My first ride with this new setup was much better at climbing hills. In the more difficult stuff, I could power through in first gear now where I could not before. At times I started having traction problems now where I would spin the real wheel. I ordered a more aggressive rear tire as mine was worn and had a damaged sidewall as well. After searching through all the options, I ended up with a Zol Montagna (available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFMHLHJ).
I have been on many rides since these modifications and the bike is much better suited to my off-road focused riding now. Since this freewheel has wider ratios, it still works great for higher speeds on pavement too (actually can go a bit faster than before). I have considered other mods like switching to a cassette style rear gear, going to a 9-speed, etc., but for now I am pretty happy with it. I use that low first gear quite often off-road when climbing hills or in real loamy conditions and it makes a world of difference. In super tight situations I can ride it in 1st without motor power and it is so much more useful than before.
A few things have changed since my last update. The issue where the motor would cut out intermittently got worse. I contacted Rurui support and after many emails, photos, and videos, and tests, they sent me a new display and controller.
After I replaced these 2 items, and fixed some damaged motor wires, the bike performs far better. The controller appears to be a later version. I immediately noticed a big power gain especially in PAS 1. It used to top out at about 11mph in PAS 1 and not it is more like 13.5mph. The biggest difference is the power everywhere, and that it sustains that power even on long hills. I have now taken it on about 5 rides, including long hills in loamy terrain, steep hills, and some paved trails with long climbs. It performs so much better now. It no longer surges or cuts out like it had done since I bought it.
Upgrades since my last post
I replaced the 52 tooth chainring with a 44 tooth. This give me better low speed performance for off-road. It translates to about 18% more torque (and lower speed) from my pedaling. Of course this is a trade-off with top speed which is also reduced 18% but I ride mostly off-road and don't need the higher speeds. Now with the improved motor performance, and this addition climbing torque, I can climb hills I never could before.
I also bought a wider range freewheel but you can't replace it without removing the motor wiring. The axle nut is too large for the freewheel or freewheel tool to go over and the nut threads are too small for the motor connector to go through. It appears I will need to unsolder the wires from the motor, or cut and modify the wiring so I can take this apart.
I heave searched the net for a solution but what I found so far have been mostly people hacking the harness apart and band-aiding it back. Yuk.
I had to replace the rear brake pads from all the long hill descents I make on a regular basis. Here is where regenerative braking would really help. Just riding the brakes down long hills is hard on them.
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