Yep, you said I could run them, and I bought them and made a set of wheels up, and I should have used them, but saving 10lbs off the bike and having larger diameter wheels was temping... I made the wrong call, and now my frame is too low to put the 20" wheels on without my pedals hitting... But, whatever, it's still damn good machine.
Today I went from 24t motor sprocket to 19t, and the motor runs a good deal cooler now. Controller runs a bit cooler as well, and the bike comes off corners with more punch.
As it sits, here is the current state of things:
Things that I'm 100% happy with:
Battery.
Frame.
Motor performance and temp (new gearing setup makes the motor run MUCH cooler)
Controller (mega PITA to setup, but feels really damn good at this point.)
Geometry.
Throttle feel and control.
Brake lever feel.
Things I'm marginally/OK with:
Brakes DID fade on me twice now in practice, pads were smoking heap the second time. I'm going to put some racing pads and high temp racing fluid in the system and see how it performs.
Front fork is more flex than I want. I'm going to see if I can run some all-thread through the fork body and put a little clamp load on it.
Rear wheel feels flexy when cornering hard.
Motor position causes foot to bump once in a while when transitioning which pedal is up weaving through corners (but it's a mild complaint).
Things I'm STRONGLY displeased with:
Tires. They slip, they are wearing out in under 10 miles of practicing, they get flats randomly from rolling part way off the bead and pinching the tube. They ROLL CLEAR OFF the bead in hard corners and you crash... NOT COOL.
Rear wheel feels very noticeably flexy, and it's single wall, which may be a big part of the tire falling off the bead issue. I'm going to try to get a new double-wall strong 24" downhill bike rim and re-lace that hub into it tomorrow, and see if the tires stay on the bead that way.
Overall, it feels like a machine that will hopefully hold it's own against the 200cc 4-stroke bikes with million gear transmissions that I'm going up against. I think it's going to be a **** of a good race, and I'm damn excited!