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Molicel S18 speed weirdness!


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Hey, folks!

I recently bought an S18 with the upgraded Molicel battery pack from eWheels. This is my second S18, as I had one from batch 2 with no problems, even after a few unplanned dismounts. It’s taken a beating and always been great.

The allure with this new Molicel model is suppose to be a performance bump as far as acceleration and sustained power below 50%. I haven’t noticed much of a difference personally, but that’s fine. My intent was just to have a second S18, and I do.

What I have noticed is that around top speed, close to 30mph, a weird kind of resistance. Like, I’m feeling I have to really put my weight forward to the point that after a while, it hurts my feet and legs. I’m using Darkness Bot for both S18’s and it looks like all my settings are the same. Both are on the same firmware. The new one just feels harder to ride at higher speeds. Any ideas on why this may be? Could the Molicels cause this?

Thanks in advance.

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I don't know why that is but just want to chime in that you're going to have cooler running cells and less voltage sag.

It's possibly the lower voltage sag that boosts the stock tilt-back to really prevent you from going faster.

If the firmware was designed to be used with saggy cells the tiltback would be set very aggressively. Then it becomes really apparent with high current cells.

This is just a theory. I have zero experience with the S18.

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You are likely just feeling a slight tiltback that is there to keep you from going to max speed and hard tiltback too suddenly. I don’t know if there are differences between the wheels or if you just notice it now. 
And you were never going to get any better acceleration with the same wheel size unless you’ve been pushing it to the edge. 

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I'm not the kind of rider that is is about pushing the wheels, even with speed. I'm 42, lol. I'm already taking risks just riding these things. I tend to think Alcatraz's theory is correct. The existing firmware is treating this thing as if it has saggy batteries, so the output on the higher end is exponentially constrained as you come close to the highest peak of the performance curve. 

I'm going to mess with Darkness Bot settings and see if I can optimize. It's a weird phenomenon. 

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10 hours ago, Kommienezuspadt said:

I'm not the kind of rider that is is about pushing the wheels, even with speed.

If so, I very highly recommend staying away from 30mph on an S18 (even with upgraded batteries)! They aren't known for having a large overhead at their max speed. I ride mine at 25mph, sometimes touching 26/27.  Beeps set at 27 and tiltback at 28.

Riding at top speed on an EUC is asking for trouble, because the top speed is, by definition, the faceplant speed.

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2 hours ago, dycus said:

Riding at top speed on an EUC is asking for trouble, because the top speed is, by definition, the faceplant speed.

Good idea in general. But on Inmotion and Kingsong the top speed is limited to quite a bit lower than what they can really do (around 15 km/h). The overhead is already there. But if you hear someone mentioning top speed of a Begode or Veteran, then it usually means the unlimited tested faceplant speed that you should avoid and leave overhead. 

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On 7/5/2022 at 10:32 PM, Kommienezuspadt said:

What I have noticed is that around top speed, close to 30mph, a weird kind of resistance. Like, I’m feeling I have to really put my weight forward to the point that after a while, it hurts my feet and legs. I’m using Darkness Bot for both S18’s and it looks like all my settings are the same. Both are on the same firmware. The new one just feels harder to ride at higher speeds. Any ideas on why this may be? Could the Molicels cause this?

 

Sounds like tiltback. I wouldn't recommend riding the tiltback. Try disabling all speed limits and use Kingsong's native safety margin feature instead (assuming DarknessBot supports it) - which is much more reliable anyway as conditions are always changing. I've had my (non Molicel) S18 up to 35mph on a slight downhill, no issues.

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