I was given permission to post this review from the face book, Storm Owners Group
This is Jim on his first ride,
OK, my daughter and I finished the bike tonight and I took it out for a test ride while she paced me with her scooter shouting "Yay! We built a bike!"
After we looped back down the street we live on and I dropped her off with my wife, I took it out around the block and tried some hills and longer stretches.
Full disclosure: I am significantly above the max weight (250 lbs) for the bike. I was not expecting high-end performance.
Overall impression: Wow! Lots of fun! There is good power and speed; I could get up and down gradual hills with ease. I really liked the power assist the best, though. I was *flying* when I pedaled and ran the motor at the same time (even up small hills), and I felt like the gearing was good for a wide band of power assist speeds. Also, overloading the bike as I was, I liked that I could pedal up the bigger hills. For someone as fat as I am a good gear ratio to help the motor makes a huge difference to overall ride enjoyment.
Basically, I liked how the motor took the edge off riding: The hills were faster and easier, and the cruising was fun with or without pedaling.
I had the seat up pretty high (long legs) and the clip held it snugly the whole time. I think I will figure out how to raise the handlebars a bit and rotate the brake levers down some, but overall very comfortable ride position. The seat is OK, and the tires take a lot of shock out of the ride so OK is good enough.
My wife wanted a try. She is 5'3" and normal weight for that height. Dropping the seat down all the way gave her a comfortable ride height and she was able to stop without falling over. She's about half my weight, so the bike really took off for her, which she liked. *Word of caution for shorter people*, that middle bar is pretty high so don't slide off the seat intending to stand when dismounting. Instead, you will end up sliding down onto it and you will regret it. No comment on how my wife figured that one out!
Oh yeah, the big tires take some getting used to steering-wise. I had never ridden a really fat-tire bike before, but the learning curve is short. I think I might pump them to max and see how that effects handling.
I think I will ride it into work tomorrow and give it a little longer road test...
Thanks so much Team Sondors for making such a fun bike available at such a reasonable price!