Bionic Tandem Part 3

Coast to Coast with a little assistance.

Having received our pedelec controller back from Andreas Schroeer and established that the regenerative braking was working we were ready for our 5-day coast to coast trip on the Way of the Roses.

Bionic Tandem Part 2

Our First Big Ride with the Heinzmann Pedelec Kit

The Black Mountains, photo thanks to the welldigger blog

Having got the ‘Direct Power’ kit working apart from the regenerative braking, and the installation more or less tidied it up, it was time for a proper test.

Bionic Tandem Part 1

Adding electric power to our Hase Pino. For a few years we’ve been saying we would do it one day and this year feels like the right time.

Here’s one that Hase did earlier, ours is pretty well identical with the hub motor at the front and battery+controller in a special luggage rack, click on the image for a blow-up

Platinum Blonde Nomads – Packing the Pino

The Hase Pino is a big bike. It’s slightly shorter than a conventional tandem but it’s more awkward in some ways as it has unusual wide handlebars that wrap around the wide front seat. However it does split in two for transport and I was confident that we could transport it by air as others have done in the past but it wasn’t clear how to pack it.

Pino by Train

Our Hase Pino Tandem has done a lot of miles by car in Britain, France and India, thanks to the neat way it splits in two to fit into quite small cars. It has flown to India and back (details coming soon) but until last week it has not been on a train.

Platinum Blonde Nomads – How to fly?

Knowing that it was theoretically possible to take the Pino to India by air, and having plenty of experience of flying with my Brompton folding bike did not make it any easier to confront the reality of getting 26kg of very big bicycle, plus everything we would need for a month, to and from a small town in Kerala.

With this team on our side what could go wrong?

Somewhere online for Pinonauts

I thought it was time for the Hase Pino to have an English language discussion group

so I’ve set this one up.

As the Pino is a particularly sociable bicycle, and Pinonauts rarely meet in real life, a place to share experiences, pleasures and knowledge online seems to be a good idea.  Maybe it will even encourage us to get together from time to time.

PinoTalk

Visit this group

Pino sorted – Wrists not suffering any more

The new setup with riserbars, ergon grips and a standard Rohloff shifter at the end of the bar.

I had a difficult time with my wrists and hands on our 7-day tour of Argyllshire as reported earlier. My wrists ached and after three days I suffered from pins and needles in my hands.

This all seemed to be down to the rather unusual handlebar setup on the Pino which gives little chance to vary your grip, badly angled hand grips which force my wrists into an over-extended position and a less upright riding position than I have on other bikes which puts more weight on my wrists. Plus the rather basic hand grips cannot be replaced with more ergonomic ones because they rotate with the gear shift.

Pino – my suffering wrists

The Hase Pino has a lot of good features and is superbly comfortable for the recumbent stoker but it is bad for my wrists. After riding for 7 days last week I was suffering from a lot of aching and had buzzing pins and needles in my hands for several days afterwards. I spent a lot of time on the road trying to come up with a hand position that relieved the pain.

Pino – the little things

David Rossi contacted me with some questions about the way the Rohloff gears are fitted on the Pino, he has seen examples of good and bad installations, the good one being from Thorn bikes who specialise in Rohloff so you’d expect them to do it properly. Here’s the Pino: