Testimonial

The Bionx-Trice combination is fabulous. I did another short ride on Friday of 10 miles with about the same figures as before. Saturday I went for a 28 mile ride and really tried the system out. The first 8 miles I rode in assist setting 2 and was at the same performance as the previous two rides. A mid 16 mph average with a power consumption of around 5.5 wh/mi. I then turned off onto my greenway ride which is very hilly, has lots of sharp right angle curves and one hill in excess of 26%. I normally ride this on the trike at about 10mph avg and the 26%+ hill is a granny gear slog (about 18 gear inches) at 3mph or under.

I pushed the Bionx pretty hard on the hilly, curvy portion in the assist mode 3 position. For the steep hill I just decided to see what would happen and went full bore in assist mode 4. Absolutely amazing. I did the hill at nearly 12mph at about 400-500 watts assist from the motor. And this is a half mile hill at an average of 15% grade with a "bump" in the middle of 26% or more. In the steepest section the CA showed a power output from the Bionx of over one kilowatt! I'm sure it won't do this long before the thermal cut outs shut things down (or it burns up) but for a short hill it was simply amazing. The added benefit was since I climbed it so quickly I (unsing my own power) could go flat out allowing the Bionx to apply the most input power and reached the top before I got into total anerobic deficit. I normally go hard on this hill but about half way, just have to down shift and cruise up the last part at a 3mph slog.

[Editor's note: we recently installed the BionX PL-350 kit on Burt's recumbent trice, a fine machine. I had lots of fun testing the combination before Burt took it home.]