dsergison

So my 9 yr old son is on his 3rd trials bike. He's had an Oset, and Sherco Kid 50 and now a GG 50 boy. He actually had the 50 Boy since he was 6 and I have lately customized it a bit so that he can trail ride it for much longer periods of time. I made a toe shift linkage and I put a PW50 seat on it. We trail ride for 3 day weekends and he needs a place to sit. the PW50 seat required only a couple scraps of 12 gage steel to attach using a few pan head screws to the stock locations. the shift linkage involves unscrewing teh thumb knob and sprocket cover and making a simple lever and mounting plate to activate the shift shaft.

can your 3 yr old ride a bicycle? with out training wheels? if not let him ride a kick scooter for a week or several.. it will teach him counter steer and balance necessary to master a 2 wheel anything, without the frustration and fear. (kick scooter= two wheels, handlebars and foot platform. the new ones with the tiny wheels are less desirable. when he can coast a distance then he's ready for a bike.) this I found was a much better way to teach my son than training wheels on a bike. the scooter taught him what the trainers could not. the trainers are a crutch and they will tend to ride around leaning on one wheel for a loooong time, and not understand what they need to do to balance. by the time mine was 4.5 he could ride real singletrack mountian bike trails with either pedal bike or the oset. off camber, little logs, mud, etc..

check the battery connections all the way back to the power electronics. particularly the fuse holder at the battery. they can look Ok and not really be very good. the blades may look good but the wire crimp may be loose. if any of these are just poor you may still get voltage and all the little lights work, but will not provide enough current to power the motor. In my experience it's typically an all or nothing failure. if there is enough contact for some power it would likely weld it's self a "fair" connection. a really bad contact wont flow enough amps to do anything besides make the power electronics "whine". if your oset runs, just sorta slow, I'd suspect batteries that are either worn out of useful life (or just not charged). the Leds on the twist grip don't seem very useful. they can show all three and still the batteries suck.

tying a string to the throttle string is certainly cheesy. but hey, to each his own. I did modify mine. IT was extremely easy. I'll elaborate: #1 figure out how much dead band you want to eliminate. I suggest making some little marks on the grip where the throttle begins to respond. Note: you can't practically remove ALL of the dead band, you need some. #2 take out little Philips screw holding on metal cover. this metal cover is the travel stop and runs in a slot on your throttle tube. drill/tap a 4-40 hole in the grip tube for a 4-40 set screw. just long enough to give a new end stop for the metal tab to hit. not so long that it rubs the handlebar. if you under do it, drill a new hole. if you over do it, drill a new hole, or grind a little off the metal tab. I also packed a bit of epoxy behind the screw when I was done. It is a Hall type. you cant move either part nearly as easily as you can just put in a new end stop. the magnet sits in a molded pocket. the sensor does too.

tying string is a bit cheesy. you can change the travel by puting a tiny screw or a slug of epoxy etc... in the twist grip in the correct location to reduce the dead band. it does require a bit of care. and it does require you leave a TINY bit of dead band or the bike never shuts off. -and should you manage to mess it all up really good, there is a particularly weird "feature"..... if the grip comes off, or rotates to far either way, the bike goes to medium/full throttle automatically. so I'd say this is for the mechanically inclined individuals.

well.... much has transpired since I originally started this thread. I bought a Sherco Kid 50cc trials bike. it scares my son who just turned 4. I figured since he rides bicycles w/out trainers for about 5 miles he could handle it..... no, it's to much. He cant squeeze the brakes hard enough or modulate the throttle well enough to ride it. duh... I may have jumped the gun there. I think I'm going to sell it. Yesterday I bought a used 09 Oset 16/24. and a set of brand new 14ah batteries. the disk brakes he can operate. and I think he will be able to handle the more linear power fine by this summer. and it's so nice and quiet. I hope that when he outgrows it electric will have matured a bit more and he can get a bigger electric. or at least a real trials bike with higher quality components and a clutch. The Oset is bone stock. I did go through it fixing and adjusting little things, seems in decent order. it certainly doesn't need more power yet. so I think in the mean time I will concentrate on improving stuff like the cheap forks. And Firefly the battery company went out of business.... I was really hoping to try some of those out

hello, I've read about Ian experimenting with nicer Kelly controls... and Li-xxx battery packs. I work at Caterpillar in powertrain engineering. I work in the same industrial park as firefly energy. http://www.fireflyenergy.com/index.php?opt...ge&Itemid=1 if you haven't heard about them, and I'm guessing you haven't... they make a structurally different (but chemically same) lead acid battery. they can be fully discharged (to zero) without damage... last 4x more cycles than anything, etc..... the problem is, they currently only sell "group 31" size batteries for on-highway trucks. anyway, getting them to offer a motorcycle sized battery is likely years off.... but perhaps it's possible. or, I could pay $500 for a group 31, cut it up and make about 5 smaller amp hour packs? eeek! anyway... food for thought. next order of tinkering is brushless motors and speed controls. anybody try that yet? brushless technology is ~%80 efficient vs brushed ~%50 so, you would get quite a bit more runtime.