Reconfiguring our bikes

First, a picture of our site at Newport / Little Diamond Lake KOA (Thousand Trails) Campground:

The site is "tight". I had posted a picture a few days ago showing how close the Jeep was to Gracie's front end... we've now moved the Jeep so it is parked between our site and the one next to us -- there is a huge rock that prevents us from parking closer to our site... the joys of Thousand Trails campgrounds sometimes!

One of the configuration changes we had wanted to do to our e-bikes was to try to get the handlebars closer to the seat. Carl had done one change which brought them back by less than an inch, but we both have really found that leaning over to reach the handlebars is not very comfortable.

We had read on one of the Facebook groups for owners of the Lectric xPremium that you could reverse the handlebars at the stem...

Loosening the Allen screw that holds the handlebar stem in place...

... still loosening.

We got it loosened, took out the handlebar stem, and then put it back reversed -- making sure we got it as straight as possible. Then Carl took the handlebars off and reversed them. He needed to make a few customizations so the controls on the handlebars were in the right place... then it was time to try it out. Wow - this is so much more comfortable!

Showing the difference in the angle of the handlebars to the seat...

5-6" closer to the seat

Now the difficulty is that the handlebars used to fold "outside" of the folded bike... now they will fold "inside" the folded bike... which will make the folded bike wider, and put pressure on the items on the handlebars from the two sides of the folded bike.

Original configuration bike on left (the handlebars are folded down on the far side), altered configuration on the right... that's not going to work to with that handlebar sticking up to get it into the Jee-rage....

... so we pulled the stem of the handlebar out, laid the rest of the stem down in the folded position, and bungee'd the removed handlebar to the back rack of the bike.

We had read about others doing this, but we hadn't determined if we'd be able to get the new configuration into the Jeep. I (Patti) have ordered a different kind of solution for my bike -- it was delivered to the Amazon Hub Counter in Spokane on Friday and we plan to pick it up on Saturday... we'll see which we like best.