De-restricted Vs Restricted E Bike Comparison | Road, Downhill Run & Trail Loop

de-restricting your e-mountain bike by removing the speed limiter is a hot topic that's for sure some people love it some people hate it so today we decided to come to the trails to see how much difference it really makes de-restricted versus a restricted bike is it worth the hassle and the effort time to find out [Music] here in the uk it is illegal to ride a de-restricted e-bike anywhere aside from private land with the owner's permission and we have just that here today at the 417 bike park in gloucester uk they've given us permission to ride this de-restricted e-bike to perform this test on today's agenda is a variety of trails we have a downhill run a trail loop and a road sprints and on each of those stages we'll be looking at your average speed maximum speed time taking and battery consumption via mission control now here at enbn based in the uk we believe that you should not be de-restricting your e-bike for use on public land for many reasons first up you can avoid any warranty you have on your bike meaning if that motor packs up you're not going to get any help from the manufacturer second it's going to enhance wear on all those components particularly on your drivetrain thirdly if you get involved in an accident on a de-restricted e-bike on the road for example countries like france actually have massive fines 30 000 euros if you get caught with a de-restricted e-bike and get involved in an accident and can land you in prison for a year as well and lastly you can't ride your e-bike from your front door legally as you can with a restricted e-bike is it worth the hassle [Applause] of course a key reason that riders worldwide and us here on enbn do not de-restrict our e-mountain bikes is to protect off-road trail access that has been fought over for decades many mountain bike brands such as bosch also did not allow this for the same reason and for the fact that most of the e-mountain bikes we ride was simply not designed for this purpose so there is that safety aspect too so why do people de-restrict their e-bikes well here in the uk and europe e-mountain bikes have a 25 kilometers per hour speed limit north america has a slightly higher limiter of 32 kilometers per hour the limiter is where the motor assist cuts out and leaves you to pedal under your own steam now some riders find this frustrating especially on flatter sections of trail or when on the road or tackling some downhill sections now if you're constantly exceeding your speed limiter i have a couple of little tips for you first up think about what power mode you're riding in say for instance you're out riding in trail mostly and you'll find yourself constantly bouncing off that limiter maybe switch it down to eco so that way you're not getting as much assist but you're having to raise your efforts to make that speed and secondly think about where you're riding if you're riding quite open fast trails then yes you will probably be above that limiter so try switching it up make it a bit steeper a bit more technical and a little bit more involved that way you're still going to get a great workout but you're going to keep that speed down and within that e-bike's limit range how a bike performs above 25 kilometers per hour will vary from brand to brand for example the earlier bosch generation 3 motor is a very different motor to the generation 4 above the speed limiter the generation 4 motor allows you to easily pedal above and beyond that restricted speed most motors on the market today such as specialized ohm motor and the levo sl can be read and switched off or above the limiter with pretty much zero drag in the system meaning it's very easy to exceed the speed limiter with very little effort so with all the bad points set aside about d restriction i'm really curious to find out today how much faster this d-restricted e-bike is going to be against the restricted version will it use more battery or will it be way faster now the bike i'm using for today's test is my specialized turbo levo it's exactly the same bike for each test all i've got is a de-restriction device that clips on and off the speed sensor so first up let's go down and do a road sprint test to see which bike wins [Music] right so here we are a flat road sprint test about 100 meters of flat tarmac i'm going to be engaged in turbo mode for this one got my garmin on to record maximum speed and average speed usain bolt eat your heart out let's go [Music] [Applause] ah all right d restricted maximum speed 28.85 mile an hour so nearly 29 average speed of 19.52 miles per hour that's the d restricted let's see how the restricted bike gets on let's see how much difference this is going to make ah right restricted let's have a look at the times so interestingly pretty close uh on a restricted bike maximum speed was 27.68 miles per hour an average of 18.26 miles per hour it's pretty close to being restricted there on the flat road but let's head up onto the hill see how much difference it's actually going to make when you take these bikes to an off-road situation where they're meant to be ridden so how do these de-restriction devices actually work well they're fairly simple all they do is trick the bike software into thinking that the bike is going slower than it actually is lots of different options here you have wired in dongles you have boxes that can clip over the speed sensor or mechanical devices that fit on the disc brake rotor lots of different options and a lot of people think that these tuning devices actually make the bike more powerful that is definitely not true all they're going to do is remove that speed limiter meaning the motor will assist you a hundred percent of your ride and not cut out at the limit speed [Music] right now just cycling to the top of the trails here at 417 it's given me a little bit of time to think about the results from that road test that we did the sprint test obviously the de-restricted bike just pipped the restricted bike there and i think that comes down to the gearing on the bike obviously you can only go as fast as the gearing allows you to go on your bike if you're topping out that chainring with a d restricted bike compared to a restricted one you're not going to be able to go any faster whatsoever and also the distance of that test is fairly relative too obviously that was a short section of tarmac compared to say if we did that ride over 10 miles or so the d restricted bike will have an even bigger advantage due to that higher average speed but it's not about riding roads on e-mountain bikes is it it's about getting off-road so i think we hit this red downhill run here at 417 and see what difference the restricted bike makes against a restricted bike when we take it to an off-road situation let's go [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right a couple of times when i did after pedal i was really working quite hard above the limiter it's quite a big double out in the field that means you've got to keep a lot of speed for but i didn't feel like i had enough speed to actually pop it properly so i had to roll that one so i lost a bit of speed there but aside from that it felt pretty good so time wise two minutes 30 with an average speed of 14.8 mile an hour and then max speed was 26.38 miles an hour so interesting let's put it up against a d restricted bike got the box on head back up to the top of the hill and see how we go from there right we're back at the top after that restricted run i've got the d restriction box up to see if it's going to make much difference when i attack this downhill run once more now there's a few times i was over that limiter and was working a little bit hard so i'm wondering if that de-restriction device is going to make that speed up so we're looking at max speed average speed and the time taken let's get it done [Music] oh oh it's a harsh rhino it's pretty windy as well definitely a big headwind but i think that de-restricted bike actually makes a difference i was able to jump the bigger double that i couldn't on the restricted bike and time-wise two minutes 23 seconds with an average speed uh 15.34 mile an hour and a maximum of 28.07 miles per hour so the difference between restricted and de-restricted was seven seconds but on a track of two minutes 30-ish that could be the difference you know a couple of bad line choices or casing a jump or wrong line for a rock garden or blowing out a couple of corners of course it all comes down to that the only real benefit of the de-restricted piece that i felt was maybe just putting a few extra cranks in before the big double especially with a headwind it was pretty hard going um as i said i couldn't jump that on the restricted bike so that was the only advantage there the rest of it was just good line choices and maybe it's because it's my second run as well possibly i don't know all comes into it [Music] right so we've done the road sprint test we've done the downhill run it is time to mock up a cross-country style loop so we're going to time a descent and an ascent climbing back to the top all as one loop and we're going to look at average speed maximum speed and of course the amount of battery that we're using for this ride because i think the range is going to be affected with that d restricted bike so that's going to be an interesting one so kicking it off with the d restricted bike now we've got 54 battery left in the tank from all these other exercises we've done today so we're gonna do a loop to the top and to the bottom of the blue run see how much range we've got and how long it took us and of course max and average speeds too right so as you mentioned earlier on on the downhill run i think i may have got a quicker time because i knew the track a little bit better maybe for my second run on the d restricted bike so we're going to switch things up for this one first run is going to be de-restricted to the top and to the bottom of the blue run right ready so there it go right see you in a bit [Music] so [Music] oh right now that was super hard work doing that on the d-restricted bike climbing up and coming straight back down that trail now on the climb up the d-restricted bike didn't have much of an advantage because i wasn't exceeding that 16 mile per hour limiter and even on the way down there's not much pedaling involved it's quite a flowy kind of trail so it's more about hitting the right lines and braking there's a couple of points maybe that the de-restricted bike where i pedaled um did come in and pushed me along a little bit further but battery-wise we used eight percent so we're down to 46 percent here times uh eight minutes 14 seconds uh an average speed of 10.84 mile an hour and a maximum of 22 miles an hour so let's see how this restricted bike goes now downhill and up the hill 46 battery left in the tank let's see how much it uses this time let's go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] super hard where i got one [Music] so again we were under the uh speed limit of the whole way up the climb and obviously above it on the way down so often to work a bit harder and especially when you get halfway on the hill there's a tremendous headwind coming straight into you so if you are above that elementary it becomes incredibly hard work a couple of jumps i messed up on i couldn't get the speed because i just couldn't get the speed into the bike whereas on the d restricted bike i could but however time seven minutes 57 seconds average speed of 11.53 miles per hour and a maximum of 23.54 right let's check in on mission control to see how much battery we used on the restricted bike which uh compared to the d restricted was eight percent and on this he has used six percent so two percent different and i think that little bit of extra energy that we use coming out of the car park above that limiter and on that road section was probably where that two percent has gone but interesting to see imagine that over a big ride the difference that the restricted can make where you've got a motor engaged for 100 of the ride rather than in and out of it when you're using that speed limiter obviously above that speed you're under your own steam so you're not using any battery whatsoever whereas a d-restricted bike that motor is going 100 of your ride no matter what speed you're going so interesting stuff well a big day out here at 417 bike park it's been a great day out we've been battling the winds as you can see with a wind sock behind me and i've been up and down this hill all day performing these tests so let's do a little recap of the restricted versus restricted bike first up we did that road sprint test and yes the d restricted bike just picked the restricted bike to the post but i didn't see how that really comes into it because if riding tarmac at high speed is your thing then you should be on a road bike not an e-mountain bike and then we did the downhill run and again the d-restricted bike was a few seconds faster but i put that down to possibly that uh being the second run that i did on that bike rather than the first run that i did on the restricted bike i knew the track a little bit better could find my flow and that definitely does come into it when hitting those fresh trails so maybe not as much as an advantage as the figures actually say for that test and then lastly we did the cross country loop now this was a definite eye opener for me i thought the d-restricted bike was gonna be a lot faster but we took the d-restricted bike up the hill for the first run this time and recorded a good time which i felt pretty happy with and then i hit it on the restricted bike and the restricted bike was actually a lot faster and again was this due to track knowledge or was it i simply flowed down there better um a lot of things come into it really and of course the restricted bike usually used a lot less power than the d restricted bike we're talking two percent difference now if you times that by 10 say you're on a bigger ride that's 20 percent more battery usage so some big figures to think about so de-restriction is the biggest advantage as you think well i don't think so personally i think you know off-road riding on an e-bike the speed limiter definitely does give you enough speed as we prove today so you're losing out on a lot of things you think about you're losing out on your warranty you're losing out where you can ride your bike it enhance wear on components lots of bad things for maybe not a lot of gain definite food for thought but let us know down in the comments what you think about the restriction is it good is it bad why do you de-restrict your bike or why don't you get involved in the comments give us a thumbs up if you've enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe to us here on enbn and we shall see you soon cheers

Channel: Electric Mountain Bike Network

Views: 300,449

Keywords: derestricted, restricted, speed limit, limiter, emtb limiter, derestricted ebike, should you desrestrict, how fast ebike, downhill, trail loop, compared, challenge, ebike challenge, how to derestrict ebike, EMBN, Electric Mountain Bike Network, emtb, e bike, e-bike, e mtb, electric bike, electric mountain bike, mountain bike, electronic bike, e-bikes, e-mtb, e bicycle, skills, tech, bike skills, mountain bike skills, bike riding, cycling, emvn, chris smith, н, 4262, э, т, ц, Ӌ, ꔠ, ꔁ, བ, ௯, के, ᐶ, ଐ

Id: XpNyFnHBDNk

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021