Have i made a mistake with my choice of Vitus???

[Scottybelfast2020]

Hello everyone, new person here, wish I'd have know this place existed before I pulled the trigger on my order last week. Sorry for what seems like a long post.
So basically I ordered an E-Escarpe Vrs ( the orange one) last week in the sale from Wiggle, it was a toss up between this and the E-Sommet Vrs in the Miami vice finish. Even though I'd wanted an emtb for a while, I must admit I sort of rushed my decision as the money off offer was running out and it was a bit of a bargain.
Both were the same price and I compared specs and was happy they were pretty similar apart from the obvious wheel size difference. This i where my afterthought has come in, as I'm waiting for my order to come as you do drooling and looking over every detail again, I missed the point of the E-Escarpe being a plus size wheel at the back (idiot I know), I read the description as 29 front 27.5 rear (the mullet bike) and liked the thought of this as this is what my first choice of a Canyon were doing and I also wanted a 29er for my next bike so this was the closest thing. Now I've read in more detail and seen the rear wheel is a 32mm rim with 2.8 tyre, I'd have much preferred at least the same width rim as the front 30mm, so I have more tyre choice In the future. I'm always going to be stuck with this size tyre at the back due to the wider rim, hence it's always going to be restricted to a plus bike.
Am I being daft? as part of me sees the possibility of owning a bike that might have two elements to it that may be obsolete in a year or two, the mullet bike and plus size wheel as you don't see many 27.5+ bike around like a couple of years ago. Part of me wishes I'd have gone with the E-Sommet.
Any thoughts on my thoughts

Cheers Lee

I actually spoke to a guy on the trails last week that had the Vitus e ecsarpe and loved it , he had a e sommet before the escarpe and had done 3500 mile on on the sommet before changing,he told me said that he preferred the escarpe, said it was more playful and a better do it all bike.

 

[R120]

Gary, what is an elite world champion? I won sea otter for 60 plus e-bike race in Monterey....I don't think that qualifies ? but just wondering.

It means you spend too much time on here! The categories are automatically generated once you hit certain amounts of post/likes/reactions or something like that

 

[R120]

I would like to try an E-Escarpe with a 27.5 wheel and 150mm fork up front

 

[Gary]

Gary, what is an elite world champion? I won sea otter for 60 plus e-bike race in Monterey....I don't think that qualifies ? but just wondering.

Enjoy your glory. but you probably don't want to hear my thoughts on the validity of Ebike racing. But as long as you enjoyed yourself that's all that matters.
E Forum splaff world champ isn't much to brag about either mind.

 

[Cyclopath1000]

Gary, the podium at sea otter for age wasn't the same as winning the Enduro four stage race ...dah! I always joke about it. Peeps spend their whole life hoping.to podium and work at racing ... Geez I didn't even walk the course having spent most of the day hanging with my son who lives nearby at various spots including the beer garden. But dude I love the shirt and I love the lithium ion Bosch drill. Oh and the big gold bling thing .

 

[Cyclopath1000]

I usually don't ride with this on.

 

[LAWHITEY]

I actually spoke to a guy on the trails last week that had the Vitus e ecsarpe and loved it , he had a e sommet before the escarpe and had done 3500 mile on on the sommet before changing,he told me said that he preferred the escarpe, said it was more playful and a better do it all bike.

Great news for me then, cheers can't wait now seems like months ago i ordered it.

 

[Cyclopath1000]

Just looked at the build and you are going to love it.. great value and it has a lbs attached to the transaction!!

 

[LAWHITEY]

Just looked at the build and you are going to love it.. great value and it has a lbs attached to the transaction!!

whats's LBS ?? assume not local bike shop??

 

[LAWHITEY]

Well it's come yesterday, had a fettle with it last night setting it up and off out for a ride tonight, BUT i have a question i've downloaded the shimano app done a firmware update (the motor had an update) and gone into customise settings just to have a nosy as i watched the EMBN video of how to set it up and a bit confused with the settings, it has
Dynamic
Boost = High
Trail = Low
Eco = High

Explorer
Boost = Medium
Trail = Medium
Eco = High

Then i have the Customise option, doesn't it need to be
Boost = High
Trail = Medium
Eco= Low
??????????????????????? Or shall i just leave it how it is and see what i think, what does it come set as in factory settings??

STOP WAIT A MINUTE, just had a read up and realise the factory setting is the Dynamic, what do you guys run? just normal or do you customise??

 

[Zimmerframe]

whats's LBS ?? assume not local bike shop??

For once, something bike related does name sense .. it is Local Bike Shop ... or I hope it is or I've read a lot of threads wrong ...

For your settings .. It's really upto you .. For setting those I prefer stunlocker as you have more range.

I always found eco too high by default so used stunlocker to set it to 20%? I think .. Might have been less.

Trail, doesn't really matter what you set it to as it's automatically dynamic and changes itself as you ride anyway. What you set it to only determines it's starting point.

Boost .. I went though months on Medium ... then changed to High just for the fun of it, so it's there when you just want to climb fast and hard at the same time.

The higher your set things, the quicker you'll use your battery .. though it's not always as straight forward as that. I find on when I use boost I ride harder and faster so cover more ground quicker, so sometimes you don't loose as much range as you'd expect.

Trail's normally pretty good for saving battery and having power when you need it, towards the end of my Shimano time, they'd kept on improving the algorithm and I pretty much just left it in trail all the time.

 

[Cyclopath1000]

I took the advice of the commencal guy who suggested never to update the firmware and leave it at factory settings. I didn't download an app. To date it works fine.. yes that's a retro approach.

 

[LAWHITEY]

For once, something bike related does name sense .. it is Local Bike Shop ... or I hope it is or I've read a lot of threads wrong ...

I only asked that because they referred to LBS for the transaction, i didn't buy it from an LBS so there was my confusion? thanks for the rest of the insight regrading the settings.

 

[R120]

I have boost in low, Trail in mid, and Eco in high, but TBH I cant rmeber the last time I rode in any mode other than trail.

 

[R120]

One thing I do think, is that the off the shelf Shimano modes on the ETUBE App are pretty much spot on - if you dont know/understand the metrics you ar changing on some of the 3rd party apps you can end up making the modes a bit of a dogs dinner. Also I would never put up the max power of the motor on one of those apps, there's s reason Shimano set it at what it is so that it doesn't overheat etc, fair few people screwed their motors doing that

 

[Cyclopath1000]

R120: totally agree...it's hard to generalize but whereas Japanese manufacturing makes some of the best mechanicals their ability to translate that advantage into easy to use software can lag....badly. I rarely use the boost mode other to occasionally demonstrate just how insane the power becomes...ya know climbing up a steep single track that if u read it wrong it's kinda bad, at 4 times the speed of a non motorized Enduro bike. Sure it's "fun" but so totally wrong,.especially in USA where you really aren't all.that welcome to use an e bike. The greatest thing about an e-bike is the ability to ride a bit further distance wise even on a day that you are dog tired from a long ride the day before. I think the scene is quite different in Europe but I haven't been there yet... My buddy and I had planned on some kind of eu trip, renting a van and bikes , doing uk or Switzerland etc but covid 19 threw quite a bit of distance on that plan.. I usually alternate e bike and regular non motorized riding ( ripmo AF and pivot trail 429) , which is reality in USA because there are numerous spots where if I e bike I don't really advertise I'm using it.
It's real real dumb to fly up peeps asses on an e-bike on single track littered with exposure, cacti , boulders etc etc.
It's really hard to descend serious gnar in for example the southwest USA faster than what say my ripmo can do with way way less weight slamming into my.hands.
As a training tool alternating e bike and regular seems to yield, for myself, the greatest boost in skills and endurance...you tend to have a peak momentary power greater on a regular bike on the super steeps vs the longer .4-.8 millimolar serum lactate level with a prolonged e bike climb. Put the two together and in my estimation it's ideal.
My last thing in this divergence from a simple question of whether this guy should get what seems like a great e8000 steps.build is that it took me a while to realize an e-bike feels better with carbon bars, some kind of super padded grips , and a pair of gloves with a whole lot of padding. My lbs turned me onto revgrips, which sure are pricey but really make a difference. An 50 plus.pound e bike transfers a whole lot of energy to your hands on serious descents. I usually describe it as akin to driving my Ford f250 quad cab down single track. So far the rev grips feel the best.

 

[LAWHITEY]

Well thought i'd post my initial thoughts after my first out ride last night, NO i haven't made a mistake, i love the bike, couple of things need tweaking like the seat post could probably do with dropping half inch and change the stack on the stem and mess about with the damping on the suspension settings but for apart from that blown away by the performance.

I was a bit hesitant after i ordered it as i had never ridden an ebike before so really didn't know what to expect, but it far outdid my expectations, although i do feel a bit guilty putting it in boost mode, but i suppose that's what its there for.

I can't believe how effortless it got me up some steep hills (main reason i bought it). I know some said they have never changed the settings but the eco and trail modes felt exactly the same to me so i'm going to have a go at changing the settings for them for to low, medium and high.

I did a quick ride before tea and managed 11 mile in 50 minutes with 1500ft of climbing and only used one bar of battery, don't know if that's good or not, i'm no athlete or physical specimen, i suppose some of you could and do go further in that time but i wasn't going hell for leather. That seems pretty good to me on the battery side, by my math that's about 50 miles & 7500ft on one charge give or take. One part of my ride is an old roman road i ride up hill and that took me 9 minutes and normally it's about 25-30 minutes on my normal bike so seeing this gave me buzz that this ebike mallarcy is brilliant.

Apart from going tubeless there isn't anything i'd want to change, the build quality is brilliant apart from maybe the head set, that seems to be made of just plastic but i'm sure there is more to it that.

I'll be posting some of pictures of it on my next ride on the Vitus forum, if anyone gives a cheers

 

[Cyclopath1000]

Well the one bar used for 1500 feet is sort of true but I bet when u put it in the charger it was on three solid bars and one blinking one ...if u r using an oem Shimano charger vs a propriatary aftermarket version. The best I ever got was 4000 vert feet and 25 miles of serious single track at elevations of 0- 2000 feet in Mendocino redwoods at My 175 lb weight. Definately go tubeless even if the only reason is to avoid snake bite flats , ride at at least 24 psi, if and when your hands get sore reread my above post.

 

[R120]

Good times! Bare in mind that the battery doesn't discharge in a linear rate in terms of each bar going out at a set rate - you tend to find it bars one and two go out slower than the next 3

 

[LAWHITEY]

Well the one bar used for 1500 feet is sort of true but I bet when u put it in the charger it was on three solid bars and one blinking one ...if u r using an oem Shimano charger vs a propriatary aftermarket version. The best I ever got was 4000 vert feet and 25 miles of serious single track at elevations of 0- 2000 feet in Mendocino redwoods at My 175 lb weight. Definately go tubeless even if the only reason is to avoid snake bite flats , ride at at least 24 psi, if and when your hands get sore reread my above post.

Ah cheers for the advice, my hands did hurt a bit but i'm putting that down to the stack on the stem (which i'm going to change) and the position of the grips need rotating a bit as they have two different textures. If i still struggle i'll try some other grips but really don't want to swap anything out until they have worn out and need replacing.

 

[LAWHITEY]

Good times! Bare in mind that the battery doesn't discharge in a linear rate in terms of each bar going out at a set rate - you tend to find it bars one and two go out slower than the next 3

Ah ok makes sense that it's like other batteries.

 

[Cyclopath1000]

Lawhitey...I admire your frugal thoughts and that's exactly what I did for quite a while ...until I realized the actual damage I did to my index metacarpal phalageal joints bilaterally ( I am a physician). Having made the mistake once I just acquired a new ripmo AF and paid a bit more for a switch to a carbon bar and ordered revgrips for that bike too. You aren't supposed to be "sore" except your legs when u finish a ride unless u managed to eject yourself onto a rock.

 

[R120]

Theres way more to a compliant bar than what its made of, the design itself plays as much of a part. From my experience simple things like rise, sweep, and bar roll can make a massive difference to hand pain, or lack of it. Mind you I have been lucky to never really get it in 30 years of riding.

These bars get rave reviews as the ultimate solution for those who suffer badly from hand pain, they have a pretty big following in the motorcross world too.

FasstMTB, home of Flexx MTB Handlebars, for a better day riding.

 

[Cyclopath1000]

I love a new mousetrap. The faast bars look super. The idea of raising your bars for a more upright stance is exactly the right direction for ageing bodies. And the newer geometries of the last five or so years already plays into that. Shorter seat and chain stays plus slacker head tube has solved the issues with the front wheel coming off the ground for most climbing. My bikes are all set up so that I'm extremely upright if I choose to be these fast bars really look great and I would definitely try them if I was going to do it today for my e-bike I went for the rentals which could be argued to be stiff with the rev grips and that seems to be extremely satisfying and they are mid-rise rentals. Even if I went with the faaaast bars I would still do the revgrips.

 

[R120]

SQ Labs also worth checking out for some innovative shapes to bars in the aim of improved ergonomics