I’ll get some pics when I have time and still have some tidying up to do, but long story short I got my triangle today and completed the build. Finally. 5 months and a week after I started the journey to build a bike, and expected to have it completed by mid July.
After receiving the new upper rear triangle piece I couldn’t believe how god awful the bearings they use are. One of them was literally trash, could feel it clicking a bit as it went around and had quite a bit of resistance. I tried getting them out but was too afraid of damaging the carbon so I just left it for now. I had heard someone comment on the quality of the bearings from Dengfu before but honest couldn’t believe they’d be this bad. Not sure if the bearing itself it truly that shitty or someone damaged them forcing them into the frame; probably a combination of the two. Another good reason to use LC instead of Dengfu, they advertise they use name brand bearings in their frame.
The SRAM transmission setup was interesting trying to follow all the specific steps, but overall was pretty easy and the system is just awesome. I did some small micr adjustments through the app and was blown away by how damn smooth and fast it shifts under any load, quite a change from my old beat up Deore 10-speed
The bike weighed in at about 52.2lbs (23.6kg) with my smaller 728Wh battery. I say about because I couldn’t find a good spot to hang it from where the scale would sit perfectly still so I just held it and got as consistent of a reading as I could get.
Mounting the motor was a little scary, I started hearing some quiet but audible light cracks as I was tightening the motor bolts before getting anywhere near the recommended torque so I stopped and left them tight but not to spec according to the Bafang manual. Those numbers seemed damn high for a carbon piece anyway. We’ll see if the thing falls apart after a week because I damaged it mounting the motor. If so that might be the icing on the cake to find a new hobby after this experience.
My one outstanding issue still is my Dengfu CAN battery doesn’t seem to work at all. Bike just won’t turn on, works perfectly fine with my custom non-CAN one, so I suspect something is up with the CAN stuff. I have the wiring harness with the little CAN battery connector and hooked it up, but something must be wrong. I noticed one of the little wires from the CAN connector to the battery receiver was cut off from the factory and didn’t look right. Someone on Facebook told me the CAN wiring is only 2 connections, but I have my doubts what’s there is right, it’s a 3-pin connector and I don’t know what that wire is doing, but if that came defective as well I’ll have another reason to despise Dengfu. It has truly been an abomination of an experience in terms of quality from them, from the ordering process, to customer service, to the physical product itself. I would never recommend anyone use their stuff based on this experience. I really wish I could have just stuck with an LC frame.
I only had a chance to do a few laps in the driveway in the dark to test it, but it seems like it’s going to be a blast. The motor seems damn powerful just on Trail, I think where I used to run my BBSHD was between Eco and Trail on this, more riding will tell. I would always try and stick just PAS 1/5 on the BBSHD which peaks just under 500w according to the display. I do need to bleed the brakes a bit more and tidy up some cables and then I’ll have some completed pics up hopefully tomorrow.
www.dengfubike.com
