Ride1Up CF Racer Gravel Review: Is It The Best Gravel Ebike For The Money?
This beauty is the ride onup CF racer and that stands for carbon fiber this is the gravel version it weighs just 28.6 lb in this comprehensive review I’m going to walk through all the components then we’ll get into some first-person riding footage we will do a range test
And finally some third person riding footage where I’ll talk about the pros and cons talk about other models in this class around the same price point from bigname Brands but before that let’s take a closer look with the new CF racer Ron up is really flexing their muscles proving that they
Can design anything from a moped style electric bike to compete with super 73 to a super affordable bike competing with electric in the folding ebike space and now with a gravel carbon fiber ebike to go against the Mainstay brands that are wellknown and the reason Ry oneup is
Able to do this in all of these different categories is because they offer exceptional value for the price so when you stack up their ebike side by side you’re more than likely going to find their bike spec better now of course they’re also able to achieve this because they’re a direct to Consumer
Company talk a little bit more about that but let’s talk about price the CF racer is priced at an impressive 22 .95 to me it feels like they’re setting the floor of what an affordable gravel ebike should cost an important consideration is sizing it comes in two different
Sizes a 50 cm and a 56 CM we’ll go ahead and throw on the screen all of the dimensions so you can pause and look at to see if one of these bikes will fit you the 50 cm is recommended for Riders from 5’3 all the way up to 5’8 and the
56 for Riders 5’8 up to 6 FO 3 I am 6 ft tall with a 32in inseam and of course I have no problem getting full leg extension but if you’re more particular on your sizing you might want to triple check the dimensions as I mentioned the
Bike weighs just 28.6 lb easy to lift with just one arm it has a 225 lb capacity and it comes in two different colors rainbow gloss and clouded gray I was really torn between the two because they both look like amazing colors let me know in the comment section below
Which one would you have chosen and if you’ve watched this video and found it at all helpful we’d appreciate your support for free by using our link down in the description before you pick up any ride oneup electric bike that really helps us out you can also check out the
Full spec list and updated pricing let’s dive into the components saram rival hydraulic disc brakes paired with cam60 mm rotors and we’re going to see saram arrival components throughout this electric bike what you you should know though is it’s not the Super entry level components from saram it’s a step up and
Of course I talk about more how they function in the firstperson riding footage for tires we have 700x 40c and these are Continental terit trail of course gravel tires and if gravel riding isn’t your thing they also sell a road model keep in mind that these are shraer
Valves instead of prea that front wheel is attached with a through axle and you’ll want to pay special attention to the torque specs of course because this front fork is also carbon we have ride one-ups modern badge in the front excellent Cable Management they disappear right into the stem which yes
Is also carbon along with those handlebars moving up we have wrapped handlebars and the saram brake levers and of course on the right this is a one by and if you’re not familiar with this saram shifting it’s going to be one click for a higher gear or push further
To go down in Gears now obviously there’s no controls up here these are the buttons on each side that allow you to control the pedal assist and so on the left side is going to be pedal cyst down and on the right pedal cyst up and
I just want to show you the reach when you’re on the hoods here so it’s pretty easy for my hand to reach it and of course if you’re lower on the bike you can reach it much easier from what I’m seeing here there’s no way to bring this button any higher in case
You have shorter fingers and the buttons are simply attached with this band that attaches on both sides this is the center mounted display it does tilt up and down power button is going to be on the top nice ride one up branding and a color LCD display in the top is the
Current time front and center current speed right now we have the trip displayed hitting the pedal assist up and down button at the same time will’ll scroll through additional information power from the motor and then you get into this front screen trip odometer average speed max speed then you get
Voltage as well as the current state of the battery currently at 98% and finally riding mode usage motor power average wattage that went into the motor during your trip as well as the Max and finally back to the main display and of course you have pedal assyst up
And down so if I hit the left trigger it’s going to go down to zero walk mode can be engaged by holding pedal assist down if I go up 1 2 3 4 and five and you also have a wattage bar here as well now you can get into some advanced settings
While powering the bike up and then holding the pedal syy up and down button for a few seconds there’s not a whole lot in here but it does allow you to change the units backlight Auto sleep set a password so unlikely that you’re going to spend much time in here this is
The graphic package ride one up on the down tube you also have e-gravel on the top tube as well as carbon and the size of the frame there’s bosses all over this bike for many storage options two right here three on the down tube and
Two on the SE tube if you’re looking for a bottle cage why not buy the best one on the market from shop. escape.com there’s also a fender Mount right here as well as rack mounts in the rear this battery is completely integrated into the frame it’s not made to easily remove
Except for maintenance purposes or replacement purposes there are bolts on the outside that’s going to help you remove it though if you need to as well as under underneath the bike right here there is an access point as well there’s RPP cranks not a huge fan of these
Pedals I imagine most of you looking at this bike are going to put on your own pedals so not a huge deal let me know in the comment section below if that’s a correct assumption charger port here with a rubber cover I’ll show off the charger towards the end of the walk
Around does come with a carbon seat post again with the torque spec and the saddle is a Cellar Royale asphalt GF the rear hydraulic disc brake and yes the cable are integrated into the frame both for the brake line as well as the motor
And yes the front brake as well it is a bolt-on rear axle in the rear is a 36v 250 W Motor from buang 42 newm of torque matching the front is the saram Rival derailer does have a clutch which is a nice feature gearing is 11 to 42 teeth
In the rear and a front Pro wheel 42 to front chain ring nice cable integration here as well CF racer on the other side information about the bike on the rear it is a class 3 ebike no throttle we’ll get to all the goodies here in a second
But it’s important to note that this bike ships via Freight that’s to avoid any damage to this nice carbon fiber frame I took a bunch of video so we’ll throw that on the screen it’s very well packaged quite easy to assemble just throw on the front wheel and of course
It comes with a bunch of ACC accessories opening the box first off the manual you’ll want to make sure that you read this if for the only reason of reading the torque specs to make sure you don’t damage your beautiful looking carbon frame there’s also a good amount of
Other helpful information in here as well as well as the full assembly instructions you also get a ride one up beanie in case you live in the North like I do and you actually get a decent amount of stuff here here’s the charger
It is a 2 Amp charger so it will take 3 and 1/2 hours to charge the bike up from dead there’s also some reflectors you will have to install the pedals you get anti-slip agent this is for the seat post maintenance grease for the pedals ride one UPS really nice wrench set and
More importantly is going to be the torque wrench now it’s not the highest quality torque wrench I’ve seen but it does the job I made sure that this bike was perfect as I was setting it up as should you do or take it to a trusted bike mechanic so if you’re not familiar
You’ll want to put on what size you want and then pull down and twist to the torque spec that you need and then as you’re cranking it down you’ll hear a little click that means don’t do it anymore that’s everything you need to know about the components but how does
The bike ride what is the range of that 7 amp hour battery that’s what we’ll check out next in our firstperson riding footage let’s get into the firstperson riding section of this review we’re also going to do a range test but first I’m going to walk through all the pedal assy
Levels as well as with pedal assyst off now I did fully charge it it’s at 100% I cleared the trip information we’re going to get a ton of useful information onto the display which I think is really cool and for good measure I’m also going to
Start straa as well as my Garmin that of course might be helpful for some data around the range test all right so we will start straa all right here we go we’ll see how helpful this is and also the Garmin all right the Garmin is started I’m going to turn pedal assy all
The way off because this is a insanely lightweight electric bike and as such you can pedal this and you can barely tell that there’s any extra weight there at all I’m shifted all the way down let’s shift up to second third maybe fourth fifth feels pretty good easily going 10 miles an
Hour 11 and of course if I shift up a little bit two gears provide a little bit more resistance little more leg power 15 16 mph and I can feel the legs working pretty hard here 17 18 M hour so if you’re an avid cyclist you can definitely pedal this bike with no
Power but if you’re buying this bike you probably are going to use some power so maybe if you want to extend your ride a little bit or you run out of battery you of course have the option of pedaling with no resistance now one of the main things and main
Questions when I asked the Facebook group they wanted me to talk about was the fact that this is a Cadence Sensor which means as long as my legs are spinning the motor is going to kick in the amount of power based off the pedal cyst level and I do have the
Wattage up here so I can get a good idea of how much power that 250 W Motor is giving me so I’m going to come to a complete stop make sure I’m all shifted all the way down which I am and start spinning those legs and I would say in pedis level one
You can barely tell that there’s a motor there at all let’s go into second gear third gear and it’s telling me it’s giving me 41 watts and of course that’s not changing because it’s not a torque sensor it’s just giving me whatever power they have set for pedal sis level
One I could go to fourth gear if I wanted to maybe even fifth gear I am cruising at 11 M hour according to the display here I’m going to shift up once more 12 M hour 13 mph again this is pedaling just nice and easy and of
Course I can put in more effort and go faster 16 M hour but the motor power is going to stay at that 41 Watts okay now let’s go into pedal sis level two second gear third fourth fifth sixth gear 7th and now it’s showing me it’s giving me 100
Watts and we’re cruising at 15 M hour nice and easy on this flat path let’s go into pedal assist level three here we’re in seventh gear now we’re getting 200 Watts I can start to hear the motor a little bit more it’s still pretty quiet given it’s not very
Powerful more of a light wine if you will and I’m able to cruise at 18 mph the water AG is 195 Watts right now all right going about 21 M hour down that hill and of course some extra power 23 24 and these brakes have no problem slowing you down so we were
In eighth gear three more gears to go pelsis level four it’s amazing how little motor little motor power can Propel you on such a lightweight electric bike with not a lot of effort at all we’ll see what the range is of course it says we are using
312 Watts I’m going to shift up to ninth gear think I’m going to want those higher gears for the higher top speed 23 shift up 24 milph showing 304 watts of power all right I’ve saved pedal sis level 5 for more of this pack down sand part of the
Trail and I’m going to shift all the way down let’s just see how fast we can get up to speed here okay here we go pedal assis level five I shift up third fourth fifth sixth sth eighth ninth believe that would be 10th gear so I can continue to have
Resistance uh it’s showing just shy of 400 watts 388 trying to focus on the this Trail yep I just saw 407 Watts bouncing around slightly but not too much I’m going to pop on the cement for our top speed run here just cuz I don’t want to slide out on the
Sand at 28 M hour okay let’s do this top speed right now pedal s level five sold as a class three electric bike so he should be able to get to 28 but how much effort is it going to take we’ll see I am in the highest
Gear and it’s a slower Cadence so I think the bike is geared properly there’s 25 miles hour and I’m pushing on my legs pretty hard down a little bit of a hill 27 M hour flat again looks like around 26 is going to be the top speed next I wanted to talk a
Little bit about the shifting hand positions I got some questions about that if you’ve been watching this you’ve noticed that I’ve had my hand on the hoods so up high I don’t want to be super hunched over cuz the footage is going to look terrible but also this is
Way more comfortable for me to ride maybe if you’re an avid gravel Rider you want to go down low like this I’ve really gotten used to the pedal assyst up and down I didn’t really know how they were going to do it but works well and I have to say these rival
Brakes are plenty sufficient can’t imagine you needing anything more stop me just fine and also the shifter it took a little bit getting used to this is a new type of shifter I don’t ride road bikes very often so it’s going to be one click to
Go into a higher and then you push it more if you will to go into a lower gear so once you have it it’s very intuitive now of course you could ride with your hands up here but the challenge is obviously one the brakes and two you can’t change the pedal cyst
Level that was a question in the face group Facebook group as far as the display center mounted I think works really well kind of out in front here especially you’ll notice I don’t have my cell phone mount cuz it’s not going to work on these more road gravel
Handlebars I would need a different type of mount for that so we’ll trust what’s in the display let’s jump into the range test we already have some miles under us now I despise range tests I’ll get to that in a second when I hop on the bike
But what I’m going to try to do is travel at higher speeds higher pedal assist levels to give you an idea of what kind of range that you can expect and perhaps more so what you can expect on the lower end given that I’m hoping I
Can travel on higher speeds on this path all right let’s get started all right throughout this range test I’m going to check in at various mile markers right now we’re at 3 miles just with that first person riting footage I’m showing one bar down on the battery and
According to the display here we’re at 76% SOC which stands for for state of charge all right so first why do I despise range tests there are a number of reasons and the biggest thing for me is range depends so much on a lot of variables let’s see how many I can name
And let me know in the comment section which ones I missed so first off terrain I’m on a flat Trail you could be going up hills there’s no Hills in Florida next you have wind speed Rider weight speaking of Rider weight I’m around 145 lbs so take that into
Consideration and then of course how much Pedal Power you’re putting down that of course is going to depend on your capability of a rider so even if I tell you a range you’re going to have to factor in all these variables and I feel like for the
Other electric bikes that I review on the channel they come with a battery that is going to be sufficient for 80 90% of riders because I feel like ebike rides are kind of like car trips I don’t know what the stat is but 90% of car rides
Are within 8 miles or of where you live or something like that and I feel like the same as for bike rides 90% of your rides are going to be within 20 M and almost every single electric bike can do 20 miles so the need for extra range now I know there
Are some edge cases of course people doing crazy Adventures touring on their electric bike but I wanted to do a range test on this bike because it does have a smaller battery and people who are Avid gravel riders or Road Riders really want to know what they can
Expect maybe they need to go in a lower pedal Cy level for majority of their ride to get the range that they want and maybe get more of a workout or maybe they don’t care they just want to go a little bit faster and then when their battery runs out they
Can still pedal this bike let me know if you disagree with me on my thoughts on range test happy to do one here though the weather’s beautiful and this is a bike path that is completely separate to the road all right we’ll check in at maybe around the 5 Mile mark this seemed
As good as any spot to stop although I might regret my choice we’re at 7 mil state of charge is 53% we’re down two bars on the battery meter but let’s keep going I’ve been riding in mostly pedal assist level 4 going 20 23 24 mph I
Would say a moderate effort I’ve been jumping into pedal sis level five a little bit I did start approaching the 27 mph Mark again not putting in terribly too much effort on this flat pavement let’s keep going see what this bike can do and see if we see any
Alligators all right no alligator encounters I was probably going too fast I am down to 28% state of charge which means three out of the five bars on the display which means I think I’m going to start heading back and ride one-ups estimate starting at 15 miles might be very
Accurate I noticed due to the voltage drop that the top speed in pedis level five was right around 24 25 mph pedis level 4 right around 21 22 that’s to be expected now I can tell this is a Cadence Sensor it’s not quite as noticeable in the lower pedal syy levels
Cuz cuz you’re just getting a little bit of power but you can tell you’re not getting Amplified power when you’re putting in more effort and of course if you just slowly pedal you can kind of force ghost pedal you can definitely tell that the motor is working and your
Legs really aren’t doing anything though that’s more of a choice you can shift up and make it as hard as you want so if you want more of a push pedal experience you might want to look for a gravel electric bike with a torque sensor though you’re certainly going to be able
To put in the effort that you want to with the Cadence Sensor it’s just a little bit more of a different experience all right let’s finish out this ride and see what the final ranges all right final range number let me know what you think I got in the comment
Section below one thing I didn’t factor in as I was passing by almost everyone on the local Rails to Trails Trails here in Palm Coast which by the way are incredible is that I was going to have a headwind on the way back so I will admit
I did go into pedal sis level 3 for a little bit and then once I realized I had a little bit more range left I did go back into pedal C Level 4 but I was only traveling at around 16 17 mph again because of the voltage drop so the final
Range number is 17 miles and the Garmin shows 17.29% but I wanted to make sure I still had power so I could turn the bike on and show you all the interesting data we have so 33.6 volts and here is the riding mode usage which I think is super
Interesting pedal assy level 1 8% pedal assy level two 13 pedalist level 3 14% spent a majority of the time in pedal CIS level 4 42% and still a decent amount in pedalist level 5 23% again that included from the start of the first- person riding footage motor power
Average 176 watts and Max 441 that’s undoubtedly in pedalist level 5 trip showing 17.7 miles which is slightly higher than the Garmin we’ll be sure to compare that to straa average speed is 17.2 mph max speed 27.2 and you can see the battery just hates me it’s not even at Red it’s just
Flashing at this point we did make it to just under 19 Mi but check this out state of charge is 0% and if you try to turn the pedal cyst up just kicks you back down to zero I hope you enjoyed the range test if you did give this video a
Like I certainly had fun really getting a feel for this bike speaking of that let’s get into some third-person riding footage I’ll give you my concluding thoughts on the ride oneup CF racer do a Google search for gravel electric bikes and you’ll find a handful of options
From well-known Brands all the way down to around $2,200 for aona hey that’s not bad but more on that in a second and it goes up from there canadale has the Neo SL2 for around $3600 you’ll even find ride one Up’s affordable gravel Roadster V2 capable in
Its own right but not what I’ll call the gravel bike enthusiasts gravel ebike now add carbon to your search and the prices only go up from there I think you get my point here at 22.95 the CF racer is unmatched by anything on the market today that’s indisputable that K I
Mentioned the RO HD has mechanical disc brakes entry level Shimano Claris components and weighs in at 442 lb though yes it does have a larger 418w battery the Neo SL2 is a better comparison has a nice Mal x35 Plus Motor still a Cadence Sensor though Shimano
Grx 400 components but weighs in at 32 lb with these two gravel ebikes and other bring up the biggest consideration in my opinion with the CF racer and that’s sizing the RO HD is offered in six yes six different sizes and the canondale four different sizes so if
You’ll fit on one of the sizes of the CF racer either 50 or 56 CM you’re good to go but if you don’t unfortunately it’s just not an option and you’re out of luck now of course keeping things simple like only offering two sizes is what
Helped ride one up achieve such a low price on this electric gravel bike as does the fact that they are a direct to Consumer ebike company and you should factor in that you’ll have to assemble it yourself making sure you understand the importance of using the included
Torque wrench or just take it to a local bike mechanic to get everything dialed in other benefits of the CF racer include what I thought was a very impressive display with lots of great information the Rival components from SRAM felt great from the derailer the double tap shifter which I’ll add was
Easy to adjust to and the hydraulic disc brakes provided a sure stop the buffing motor with the Cadence Sensor still allowed for human power in all pedal cyst levels you just don’t feel the modulation control like you would with a torque sensor though to be honest on a
250 W Motor it may be hard to feel that anyway tubless ready Wheels would have been icing on the cake here but wheels are something that can be upgraded down the line the 36v 7 a hour battery may seem small but I don’t doubt Avid gravel
Riders will be able to eek out the stated 40 m of range in lower pedal assist levels plus an externally mountable 7 amp hour secondary battery is an option for $290 for those that need the extra range and it should go without saying that this 28.6 lb ebike is a breeze to Pedal
With no assist at all riding the CF racer was a ton of fun as I tested the capability of a gravel ebike and I even got in over my head on some single track I think I’ll stick with my mountain bike for that but it’s nice to have the
Versatility of jumping on pavement over to some well gravel Trails if this review helped you decide that this wellspect an even better priced carbon fiber I still find that hard to believe gravel ebike is your next ride show us some love and use our link down in the description before you make your
Purchase it’s free and is a direct way to support our efforts this very much felt like a premium ride one that doesn’t require you to sell your car or maybe even any other bikes you own in order to purchase and not that I didn’t already believe ride one up offered
Great products but pulling off a solid gravel ebike feels like a big win but that’s just what I think let me know your take in the comment section below thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next one
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00:00 Introduction
00:44 Why Did Ride1Up Make The CF Racer?
01:24 Price, Sizes, Colors, and Specs
02:47 Brakes, Tires, and Fork
03:38 Carbon Handlebars, Drop Levers, and Controls
04:33 CF Racer Display Overview and Walkthrough
05:50 Frame Design and Battery Specs
06:33 Pedals, Seat post, and Seat
07:08 Motor and Drivetrain
07:41 Shipping, Assembly, and Accessories Box
09:22 CF Racer No Power Riding
11:54 CF Racer PAS Riding
16:25 Top Speed Run!
19:14 Range Test
26:47 How Does the CF Racer Compare to The Competition?
