Greenspeed Back On the Road

the social trike riders ride I was training for a few weeks out from Christmas was rained out, but I'd turned up and did it solo anyway. then I got so much grit in the stock, mechanical disk brakes it tore the pads up. Now, I've been riding mechanical disks since 2017 and then TRP HyRd cable pulled master cylinder hydraulics after my first winter gacked up the rear brake cable. Master cylinder disks are a good compromise on a road bike where hydraulic dis road group would cost more than the bike, and my invention, Dryline, helped beat winter cable blues. On a recumbent trike that cost me 4 grand before I added the Bafang mid drive, how can Greenspeed (Terra Trike) justify $1 OEM mechanicals, when a pair of Meroca M4 front hydraulics only cost me $80 retail?!

so today, I fitted them, finally got a breather from Christmas, caring for a friend recouperating from heavy surgery and being my youngest's live production manager for her DJ career. (Check out RJay on the grams, she spins a sick set!) Then I took the beast out for a shopping run to score some basic staples. The supermarket is an undulation or two away so I got to test them coasting, motoring like a train and a few hard stops. These things have so much modulation already! I need to do a cheeky 50k to run them in yet, yet the pull the beast up so smotthly and quickly! Meroca, not Shimano, not SRAM. $80/pair, not $1, not $350! probably $20 in bulk to a builder buyer at the factory door, and Terra Trike can't put a half decent brake on a thousands of dollars ride?

Anyway, Can heartily recommend Meroca products, my old touring bike, "Buster", has a Meroca suspension stem that really ironed out the bumps with surprisingly no backlash on what's essentially an undamped, sprung pantograph. I've had a few sturdy Meroca ABS plastic bottle cages that are only a few more grams than typical flimsy roady cages. I'm rating their gear up there with MicroSHIFT group, another Chinese manufacturer that doesn't get enough cred for clean, simple, non-techo-shitified cycle parts. My GT20 Greenspeed was upgraded from Microshift R8 to Microshift Advent (9 speed) as an optional upgrade by Trisled, my local Greenspeed dealer, and that stuff has been even better behaved and up for saying now worries to fistsful of gears at a grab, even better than Buster's old R9 MicroSHIFT, which was my favourite group until now.

If there's a downside to the M4 brakes, it was easily overcome, figuring how to mount the magnetic brake switches for the Bafang e-assist. I didn't have small enough nylon zip ties to ensure the magnets stay stuck to the brake levers and the adhesive tape doesn't get a lot of surface to mount the magnets. I've fixed this temporarily with wire twist ties until I can get a sub 3mm guage zip tie. I never feel the sticky Bafang provide with the aftermarket switches is quite up to the job and there's a fairly limited contact patch on most MTB brake levers. (Had to actually drill the levers on "Buster's" R9 brake levers and stick the hall switch under the rubber hoods, when I electrified that old stalwart.

All problems aside, as they were down to the usual retrofit problems with any aftermarket gear, these brakes get 4 out of 5 stars. Still don't much rate the Bafang mid drive. In the middle of a bike is a good place for a heavy motor, but out the front of a recumbent trike, the motor gets lifted twice as far when the front wheels hit bumps as it would on a bike and this doubles the momentum of the impact, making for a harsh ride. The angles and dangles of a rear cassette hub motor (like a Bafang G120) is kind of where the vertical motion over bumps with a trike are the least. I suspect that'll be the first major component change, a G120 in a new back wheel, and recycle the e-driive electronics from Buster to run it. The mid drive probably better suits my bakfiets cargo bike.

The 1995 Sedona build is going to forever and always be an "acoustic" bike.