2024 Begode Falcon - 14", Suspension, 100 V, 900 Wh, 1000 W Motor

[Funky]

22 minutes ago, Ben Kim said:

You’ll 100% want the knobby if you’re used to those tires. 

I won't lie - i kind of want to feel it, to see how it is.

I could get street tire variant (If i would buy Falcon - i will be changing their knobby tire to different anyways.. If it's same tire as A2 knobby.) to see what he hub-bub is all about.

Don't all tubeless M/C tires have hard sidewalls? Their sidewalks are 10x thicker than those flimsy bicycle type tires.. Or are street tires sidewalls EXTRA stiff?

[Seba]

2 hours ago, Ben Kim said:

Oh yes they report live PWM. 

No, they don't. The only advantage over older wheels is that new Begode wheels have a dynamic tiltback setting, that is PWM-based. Mostly as a result of @Freestyler's work on custom firmware. Still, Begode official firmwares, even the latest ones, don't send PWM to the app.

2 hours ago, Ben Kim said:

back when Bill was doing custom firmware (it’s sad to see he left the community) he built this web app for live PWM direct from the wheel. The apps use a calculated PWM. 

EUC World also uses PWM sent by the custom firmware if it detects that custom firmware is loaded to the wheel. Actually, Bill has cooperated closely with me, so EUC World was (and still is) hosting a custom firmware repository, allowing users to load @Freestyler's firmware to their wheels. Of course, if such a firmware exists for such a wheel, as Bill - after a really bad incident - left our community and stopped his work.

[Oliver Gould]

 

[Ben Kim]

27 minutes ago, Seba said:

No, they don't. The only advantage over older wheels is that new Begode wheels have a dynamic tiltback setting, that is PWM-based. Mostly as a result of @Freestyler's work on custom firmware. Still, Begode official firmwares, even the latest ones, don't send PWM to the app.

EUC World also uses PWM sent by the custom firmware if it detects that custom firmware is loaded to the wheel. Actually, Bill has cooperated closely with me, so EUC World was (and still is) hosting a custom firmware repository, allowing users to load @Freestyler's firmware to their wheels. Of course, if such a firmware exists for such a wheel, as Bill - after a really bad incident - left our community and stopped his work.

Ahh, so stock Begode PWM is a calculation, but not the custom firmwares. That was what I was referring to since I used that custom on my old wheels. Pity what happened to bill though. 

[the_deeb]

@Ben Kim could you confirm the outer diameter of the tire?

[Funky]

2 hours ago, the_deeb said:

@Ben Kim could you confirm the outer diameter of the tire?

Should be 40Cm. But i also would like to confirm it.  

[Ben Kim]

Did a range test. 
 

about 20 “fun” miles where you can go at least 20 mph, topped out around 27ish mph. limped home at 8-10 mph for about 4 miles. If you’re full sending this wheel at 28 mph, you’ll get maybe 12-14 miles at that speed. 
 

it gave me the “get the fuck off” tiltback at 74v.  I had to walk a half mile home! 

another observation: I took my dragy out to measure wheel speed to a highly accurate 20hz GPS puck, this wheel is nearly spot-on with a highly accurate GPS device. There was a 0.3 mph variance at 24 mph wheel speed which for all intents and purposes is very accurate. 
 

Given that not all wheel speeds are created equal, if Begode added their standard 9% inflation of speed to this wheel, you’d get plenty of happy people saying “yeah I hit 34 mph”. If you want to feel warm and fuzzy inside, feel free to add +9% speed correction to your app of choice!

Also, the headlight has some adjustability, after adjusting it upwards a bit, it had a reasonably wide throw and did not find myself using my flashlight; not quite V11 levels of light output, but more than acceptable for this wheel’s speeds and Begode standards. 

 

[Chaky]

This would be my "perfect" wheel if only the range was ~60km.

I dont see how would you pick this wheel over S16. 

[Funky]

3 hours ago, Chaky said:

This would be my "perfect" wheel if only the range was ~60km.

I dont see how would you pick this wheel over S16. 

Hmm.. People have said that Falcon with it's 900Wh battery has more range than S16. Going mid speed per each wheel speed standards. (Falcon sips battery, S16 chugs it's.)

Also it has more torque.  vs S16 which could not go up hill. (Falcon had smooth street tire vs S16 has knobby.) At least that guy on that 1hr27min video said that.

Edited June 19 by Funky

[Funky]

7 hours ago, Ben Kim said:

Did a range test. 
 

about 20 “fun” miles where you can go at least 20 mph, topped out around 27ish mph. limped home at 8-10 mph for about 4 miles. If you’re full sending this wheel at 28 mph, you’ll get maybe 12-14 miles at that speed. 
 

it gave me the “get the fuck off” tiltback at 74v.  I had to walk a half mile home! 

another observation: I took my dragy out to measure wheel speed to a highly accurate 20hz GPS puck, this wheel is nearly spot-on with a highly accurate GPS device. There was a 0.3 mph variance at 24 mph wheel speed which for all intents and purposes is very accurate. 
 

Given that not all wheel speeds are created equal, if Begode added their standard 9% inflation of speed to this wheel, you’d get plenty of happy people saying “yeah I hit 34 mph”. If you want to feel warm and fuzzy inside, feel free to add +9% speed correction to your app of choice!

Also, the headlight has some adjustability, after adjusting it upwards a bit, it had a reasonably wide throw and did not find myself using my flashlight; not quite V11 levels of light output, but more than acceptable for this wheel’s speeds and Begode standards. 

 

Quick question - was that range done on level ground or some hills also? Many stops and accelerations, or going at one steady speed mostly?

Also have you ridden RS19 or KS16X or KS18XL - how is the torque on Falcon compared to any of those wheels? (If you have ridden and remember the "feeling")

 

I normally commute around 18-22mph speed and daily need ~3 miles for round trip. Meaning battery would be around ~35% at Friday.  So once per week charging would be good. (I charge my 18xl once every second weekend. Once rode even 3 weeks without charging, but at 3rd Friday battery was at 35%.. Was testing, which weekend i should charge the wheel..) 

[Bigkidneys]

Sounding more and more like the Falcon is just an A2 with suspension.  I was considering getting one as I love my wife's A2 and take it to work to play around with during lunch.  The A2 gets squirrely above 20mph so I had a feeling the Falcon would as well.  I'll happily stay with the A2 but would love for a company to come out with a fairing system for the A2 as if I had some good jump pads, it would make it even better.  I've tried a few slip on ones with velcro that were absolute shit.

[Ronin]

21 hours ago, Cam said:

Sounds to me like he just overpowered it, AFAIK Begode firmwares still dont report PWM (correct me if I'm wrong), so any number an app gives is just an estimation, even when "calibrated".

(Or was the issue that he didn't hear / there wasn't a beep / TB? If you overpower it fast enough it won't have time for that.. or it could be a bug, of course)

Watch my video, I give all the details. 

Edited June 19 by Ronin Ryder

[OhPardonMe]

My buddy got one of these with the street tire on recommendation from ewheels. Absolutely hates it due to the gyro effect. Why is it that manufacturers still choose tires with gyro effect in 2024? Why is tire testing not a criteria before sending a wheel out? Do some people actually prefer the gyro?

My Nikola was the WORST when I got it due to the stock tire gyro effect. Never felt comfortable on it, like it was always trying to steer me into a curb or trace a crack in the road. Then I changed to some random tire I found on Amazon for $30 and it was absolutely night and day. The wheel no longer had a mind of its own. Felt super comfortable to ride. IDK how anyone could prefer the gyro. 

Edited June 19 by OhPardonMe

[Ronin]

3 minutes ago, OhPardonMe said:

My buddy got one of these with the street tire on recommendation from ewheels. Absolutely hates it due to the gyro effect. Why is it that manufacturers still choose tires with gyro effect in 2024? Why is tire testing not a criteria before sending a wheel out? Do some people actually prefer the gyro?

My Nikola was the WORST when I got it due to the stock tire gyro effect. Never felt comfortable on it. Then I changed to some random tire I found on Amazon for $30 and it was absolutely night and day. The wheel no longer had a mind of its own. Felt super comfortable to ride. IDK how anyone could prefer the gyro. 

I personally liked the street tire a lot. Tire preference is a personal matter and it's impossible to satisfy everyone. 

Edited June 19 by Ronin Ryder

[Ben Kim]

54 minutes ago, Bigkidneys said:

Sounding more and more like the Falcon is just an A2 with suspension.  I was considering getting one as I love my wife's A2 and take it to work to play around with during lunch.  The A2 gets squirrely above 20mph so I had a feeling the Falcon would as well.  I'll happily stay with the A2 but would love for a company to come out with a fairing system for the A2 as if I had some good jump pads, it would make it even better.  I've tried a few slip on ones with velcro that were absolute shit.

Stay tuned, I have an idea to add fairings for less than $20. 

[Ben Kim]

54 minutes ago, Bigkidneys said:

Sounding more and more like the Falcon is just an A2 with suspension.  I was considering getting one as I love my wife's A2 and take it to work to play around with during lunch.  The A2 gets squirrely above 20mph so I had a feeling the Falcon would as well.  I'll happily stay with the A2 but would love for a company to come out with a fairing system for the A2 as if I had some good jump pads, it would make it even better.  I've tried a few slip on ones with velcro that were absolute shit.

Squirrely? I never experienced these wobbles people talk about. Was averaging a pretty good pace over 25 mph and never once did I wobble, either front or back. Even purposely hit deep manhole covers and potholes to see how it did, felt perfectly fine at that speed. Not sure how I’d feel about it at 35 mph though. 

[Bigkidneys]

10 minutes ago, Ben Kim said:

Squirrely? I never experienced these wobbles people talk about. Was averaging a pretty good pace over 25 mph and never once did I wobble, either front or back. Even purposely hit deep manhole covers and potholes to see how it did, felt perfectly fine at that speed. Not sure how I’d feel about it at 35 mph though. 

I will say I am nowhere near experienced as you (I have maybe 1200miles between 3 wheels) so it could have been inexperience.  

[Ronin]

On 6/19/2024 at 11:19 AM, Cam said:

I saw it and didn’t understand what you ment. It seemed to me you blamed a supposed software bug for the cutout based on the fact that the PWM wasn’t showing 100% when it cut. I do not think this is an indication of a bug because the PWM is not the real one, but just an estimation, and even if your app PWM is calibrated using the freespin speed it will not match in all situations. To me it looks like you just overpowered it. You’re a big guy and you where doing 31Mph on a 2P EUC. Occams razor and all that. The PWM mismatch is normal and i doubt it indicated a bug.

(thank you for the video otherwise, nice review)

If you do a freespin and adjust in app the pwm at 100%, which means wheel cuts out and is overpowered at 100%, You expect the wheel app to report a pwm metric based on the power it uses. I cutout when it reported 82%, not 100%. I thought I had headroom and was planning to go up to 84-86%pwm, which is in line with the many speed runs I did in the past (I've done around 60-70 speed runs pwm monitored across multiple wheels) . I then did a freespin and it cutout at 100%. So there was a discrepancy when it comes to reporting available power. Weight has nothing to do with this test. A heavy rider would see a higher pwm vs a lighter rider at equivalent speed. I also said in the video that begode acknowledged that power issue, they got my feedback, checked, came back acknowledging and releasing a fw update. I won't post the chats because it's private. I hesitated a lot before reporting this cutout in the video because I knew it's a topic not well understood by some riders and I would receive explainers/blames from riders who wouldnt understand what happened . In reality when this happened I triple checked everything and discussed it with experienced riders before reporting. I concluded that it would have been dishonest to not mention it. However I also don't want people to focus on this cutout only but rather on the wheel and it's positives. My test was just a tester check. I just wanted to see what would be the top speed of this wheel at around 84-86% pwm (not 100%). Again i cut out because i hit the top speed. which is 31mph, I hit it because i was misguided by the pwm reporting that was inconsistent due to a fw bug, even though it was adjusted. I don't really care if a spec says top speed =30mph, its a good indicator, but i know riders who can hit 47mph on a Nikola rated at 38mph. I use the pwm to tell me what is up about a wheel speed. Thats all im saying. This will be the last time i explain how pwm works and what happened because its a long explainer and it's already the 4-5th time im doing this across multiple platforms (youtube, reddit, here). If people keep going at it they are free to believe whatever theory they feel correct. My videos reflect my personal opinion and riders are free to agree or disagree. While i thought the metrics and explainers provided in the video would speak for themselves, seeing those exchanges, I realize I probably didn't do a great job at explaining what happened. The Falcon is a great wheel and perfect for its use case (bike lane chill rides with a small form factor).

Thanks for watching!

Edited June 21 by Ronin Ryder

[Ronin]

1 hour ago, Ben Kim said:

Squirrely? I never experienced these wobbles people talk about. Was averaging a pretty good pace over 25 mph and never once did I wobble, either front or back. Even purposely hit deep manhole covers and potholes to see how it did, felt perfectly fine at that speed. Not sure how I’d feel about it at 35 mph though. 

I didnt get wobbles as well. The occasional one that is not disturbing at all worst case scenario...

[WheelGoodTime]

2 hours ago, OhPardonMe said:

My buddy got one of these with the street tire on recommendation from ewheels. Absolutely hates it due to the gyro effect. Why is it that manufacturers still choose tires with gyro effect in 2024? Why is tire testing not a criteria before sending a wheel out? Do some people actually prefer the gyro?

My Nikola was the WORST when I got it due to the stock tire gyro effect. Never felt comfortable on it, like it was always trying to steer me into a curb or trace a crack in the road. Then I changed to some random tire I found on Amazon for $30 and it was absolutely night and day. The wheel no longer had a mind of its own. Felt super comfortable to ride. IDK how anyone could prefer the gyro. 

i love a stong gyro effect. nothing feels safer than when the wheel wants to stay upright at high speed 🙂 tires/eucs that lack gyro effect feel dangerously tippy on the corners ar 30+ mph.

[InMoOnGoWa75012]

2 hours ago, Ronin Ryder said:

I don't really care if a spec says top speed =30mph, its a good indicator, but i know riders who can hit 47mph on a Nikola rated at 38mph.

We all need the return of "the house of the Begode" 

--> House of the Falcon REQUESTED 

 

 

[RetroThruster]

Here is mine, don't have a lot of miles on it yet, stock pads are just wrong, they're okay for braking but that's it, I'm used to the knobby on my A2 and have no issues with it, I'll ride primarily on grass and dirt with this wheel.  Suspension feels good at my 210lbs, no sense of bottoming out but I'm no jumper, I'll increase the rebound/compression dampening but it's really not bad where it is stock, I don't think I'll need to do a spring swap (it did come with a different set, I'm assuming stiffer).  As you'd expect, it feels a lot like the A2  but with high pedals and suspension, that's a good thing to me.  Check your bolts on the front handle, 3 on each side, all 6 of mine were loose.

 

[Ben Kim]

5 hours ago, Ronin Ryder said:

I didnt get wobbles as well. The occasional one that is not disturbing at all worst case scenario...

@Marty Backemade it sound like it’s really bad though, I felt it was perfectly fine, no real surprises on my range test just keep the speed below 28 mph til they figure out what’s going on 

[onewheelkoregro]

2 hours ago, Ben Kim said:

@Marty Backemade it sound like it’s really bad though, I felt it was perfectly fine, no real surprises on my range test just keep the speed below 28 mph til they figure out what’s going on 

Only time I ever got wobbles was while I was learning. It probably was just an issue of how he had his weight over an unfamiliar wheel that caused the wobbles. I don't think any company releases "wobbly" wheels

[Funky]

I also had wobbles only while learning and if i had my tire pressure over 28psi. Wheel wanted to go left/right like having mind of it's own..

After 2-3 months i never had any wobbles and now i can ride any PSI i want without that feeling that wheel wants to go left/right as having it's own mind. (Only wheel gets more "twitchy" 30psi vs 40psi..)

Also at start wheel wanted to follow any small indent in road, cracks, brick walkway lines, etc..

(Is that the gyro effect???? That people are talking about?)