Electric bicycles - who buys them?
Discussion
bmwmike said:
What sort of miles have people got on their ebike motors? Just ticked past 1800 miles on mine, going great.
Fitted new bearings earlier this year to my Bosch CX motor after 6 years and 19500km. It hadn't failed but just didn't feel as smooth as it once did. Feels like new again now. Hoping for the same again. basicasic said:
bmwmike said:
What sort of miles have people got on their ebike motors? Just ticked past 1800 miles on mine, going great.
Fitted new bearings earlier this year to my Bosch CX motor after 6 years and 19500km. It hadn't failed but just didn't feel as smooth as it once did. Feels like new again now. Hoping for the same again. maybe I need to book in on a regular basis a 'E service' once out of warranty.
PushedDover said:
stanlow45 said:
another chain for me.
Which then exposed the wear on the Cassette, so thats now changed too
Don’t know how as riding through a field on a bridleway, but almost 30deg kink that needed some careful bending to a ‘get me home’ status-
Sounded awful on the way home and the back mech had its work cut out as the kink kept changing gears on the cassette
PushedDover said:
basicasic said:
bmwmike said:
What sort of miles have people got on their ebike motors? Just ticked past 1800 miles on mine, going great.
Fitted new bearings earlier this year to my Bosch CX motor after 6 years and 19500km. It hadn't failed but just didn't feel as smooth as it once did. Feels like new again now. Hoping for the same again. maybe I need to book in on a regular basis a 'E service' once out of warranty.
basicasic said:
PushedDover said:
basicasic said:
bmwmike said:
What sort of miles have people got on their ebike motors? Just ticked past 1800 miles on mine, going great.
Fitted new bearings earlier this year to my Bosch CX motor after 6 years and 19500km. It hadn't failed but just didn't feel as smooth as it once did. Feels like new again now. Hoping for the same again. maybe I need to book in on a regular basis a 'E service' once out of warranty.
Edited by President Merkin on Monday 27th November 08:58
bmwmike said:
What sort of miles have people got on their ebike motors? Just ticked past 1800 miles on mine, going great.
I had a decent mileage on my Swytch kit (front wheel motor) before the folder frame cracked. Maybe 3000km? No issues other than the cracked frame!13500 on my hardtail/hybrid (retired for summer use). One main bearing rebuild at 8000ish in summer 2021
3500 on my commuter
My wife’s commuter is at 14000, no bearing maintenance yet.
All Bosch powered CX Performance Motors.
Barchettaman said:
I had a decent mileage on my Swytch kit (front wheel motor) before the folder frame cracked. Maybe 3000km? No issues other than the cracked frame!
13500 on my hardtail/hybrid (retired for summer use). One main bearing rebuild at 8000ish in summer 2021
3500 on my commuter
My wife’s commuter is at 14000, no bearing maintenance yet.
All Bosch powered CX Performance Motors.
14000 miles? wow 13500 on my hardtail/hybrid (retired for summer use). One main bearing rebuild at 8000ish in summer 2021
3500 on my commuter
My wife’s commuter is at 14000, no bearing maintenance yet.
All Bosch powered CX Performance Motors.
I'm at 1800 miles at the moment on a shimano motor. No odd noises and bearings smooth. Have made some extra flaps to keep mud away but other than that its out in literally any weather and definitely not babied - its treated like any of my other MTB's. Any weather anywhere.
Some great mileages here. I've seen posts by people needing replacement motors multiple times over the course of a warranty - seems odd to me, i get the odd failure but they should be fairly reliable at this stage or is it still luck of the draw? Or people are abusing them in a way which causes failures, though i can't imagine what that would be - powerwashing maybe.
Certainly I went in expecting a failure by now and must admit its been better than i expcted by far.
Certainly I went in expecting a failure by now and must admit its been better than i expcted by far.
You'd probably only get reliable numbers from dealers & manufacturers & they're not telling. What we do know is earlier Brose motors on Spesh bikes failed reliably. Shimano EP series motors probably look over represented in forums and so on since they offer very little support for repairs, keep it all in house & tend to replace under warranty. Bosch are the biggest sellers, so that would produce skewed figures on its own & then you need to take account of subdivisions of use.
The vast majority of eebs will be on commuter type bikes, in here, there's probably a disproportionate amount of MTB people, giving their motors a very hard life by comparison & then there's all the Chinesium Ali Express crap that you're lucky not to have burn down your house. Pure failure numbers are a bit reductive without factoring in all the variables around them & that's just not readily available information.
The vast majority of eebs will be on commuter type bikes, in here, there's probably a disproportionate amount of MTB people, giving their motors a very hard life by comparison & then there's all the Chinesium Ali Express crap that you're lucky not to have burn down your house. Pure failure numbers are a bit reductive without factoring in all the variables around them & that's just not readily available information.
bmwmike said:
14000 miles? wow
I'm at 1800 miles at the moment on a shimano motor. No odd noises and bearings smooth. Have made some extra flaps to keep mud away but other than that its out in literally any weather and definitely not babied - its treated like any of my other MTB's. Any weather anywhere.
Apologies, KMsI'm at 1800 miles at the moment on a shimano motor. No odd noises and bearings smooth. Have made some extra flaps to keep mud away but other than that its out in literally any weather and definitely not babied - its treated like any of my other MTB's. Any weather anywhere.
I do!
I'm sure if I scroll back far enough I'll find a post I wrote how they're cheating, then maybe a year later saying they're okay for the old or infirm blah blah blah. Anyway, once my riding mates starting to buy one, the tide shifted, and we all had to get one. This is mine.
It's the new, 2024 YT Decoy Unchanged. By 'new' it's the same as last years with a new (pretty cool in my eyes) paint scheme and the bigger battery as standard and the Shimano 801 motor, I'm not sure by last years might have been the 800.
Interestingly, and they only released them after I'd ordered mine, the Core 3 Decoy is exactly the same as the Unchanged 10, down to every tiny part, only it comes in either black or white, and it's £500 cheaper. It's a good thing I like the colours.
It arrived last week, but I'm pretty busy at the moment so I still haven't really finished setting it up. Note the shocking cable routing, the silly bar angle, the sticker left on the mud guard and the masking tape on the chain stay.
Saturday I rode it at Cwmcarn (Twrch, the red extension and K-Jam from the Cafal Trail) Sunday at Afan (Blade and bits of Skyline because there's a load of diversions).
My observations so far.
Every e-bike rider will know this anyway but is it easier than normal MTBing - No! It's faster. My quads didn't have quite the same workout but climbing MTB trails at 15-20kph is a workout, it's just as tough as descending, but you still have to pedal which meant a lot of pedal strikes.
Range anxiety isn't an issue yet, I used 40% of the battery at Cwmcarn and maybe 50% at Afan. I mostly climbed in trail and descended in boost. I probably could have used boost all day, but ultimately, I'm planning to ride further when I get used to it and get it dialled in.
It descends like an absolute pig at the moment, rocky Afan was especially hard, I'm sure it will be better, I've been riding for nearly 20 years now and I'm too modest to claim any sort of impressive speed, but I know what I'm doing. Trying to move around 25Kgs of poorly set-up eBike over rocks is murder. I felt like a train had hit me when I got home. My Bird Aeris would have sailed through it all.
As for being a 'bike' the geometry is far kinder than my Bird, not quite as long despite being a larger size (ML verses L) but with a far greater stack height. I was reading recently that the onus on MTB geo has switched from top tube and head angle to stack height and I can see why. The Bird was ahead of it's time when I bought it 4 years ago, very LLS, but this is a easier bike to ride, I'll wait to see as I get it closer to my usual speed how that works out.
The water bottle is an obvious after thought. It's a stupid shape, quite small (400ml) and hard to reach.
I'm sure if I scroll back far enough I'll find a post I wrote how they're cheating, then maybe a year later saying they're okay for the old or infirm blah blah blah. Anyway, once my riding mates starting to buy one, the tide shifted, and we all had to get one. This is mine.
It's the new, 2024 YT Decoy Unchanged. By 'new' it's the same as last years with a new (pretty cool in my eyes) paint scheme and the bigger battery as standard and the Shimano 801 motor, I'm not sure by last years might have been the 800.
Interestingly, and they only released them after I'd ordered mine, the Core 3 Decoy is exactly the same as the Unchanged 10, down to every tiny part, only it comes in either black or white, and it's £500 cheaper. It's a good thing I like the colours.
It arrived last week, but I'm pretty busy at the moment so I still haven't really finished setting it up. Note the shocking cable routing, the silly bar angle, the sticker left on the mud guard and the masking tape on the chain stay.
Saturday I rode it at Cwmcarn (Twrch, the red extension and K-Jam from the Cafal Trail) Sunday at Afan (Blade and bits of Skyline because there's a load of diversions).
My observations so far.
Every e-bike rider will know this anyway but is it easier than normal MTBing - No! It's faster. My quads didn't have quite the same workout but climbing MTB trails at 15-20kph is a workout, it's just as tough as descending, but you still have to pedal which meant a lot of pedal strikes.
Range anxiety isn't an issue yet, I used 40% of the battery at Cwmcarn and maybe 50% at Afan. I mostly climbed in trail and descended in boost. I probably could have used boost all day, but ultimately, I'm planning to ride further when I get used to it and get it dialled in.
It descends like an absolute pig at the moment, rocky Afan was especially hard, I'm sure it will be better, I've been riding for nearly 20 years now and I'm too modest to claim any sort of impressive speed, but I know what I'm doing. Trying to move around 25Kgs of poorly set-up eBike over rocks is murder. I felt like a train had hit me when I got home. My Bird Aeris would have sailed through it all.
As for being a 'bike' the geometry is far kinder than my Bird, not quite as long despite being a larger size (ML verses L) but with a far greater stack height. I was reading recently that the onus on MTB geo has switched from top tube and head angle to stack height and I can see why. The Bird was ahead of it's time when I bought it 4 years ago, very LLS, but this is a easier bike to ride, I'll wait to see as I get it closer to my usual speed how that works out.
The water bottle is an obvious after thought. It's a stupid shape, quite small (400ml) and hard to reach.
Nice, looks good.
I'm a convert too. Used to think it was cheating. I've had my emtb coming up for a year now and i've done nearly 2000 miles on it, mostly local trails. My HR on my analogue HT was always about 174 if i really pushed. I have had 192 on the emtb, and actually thought i was going to die. IMO the speed gets you wanting more and its like anything - you get out of it what you're prepared to put in.
Enjoy the bike!!
I'm a convert too. Used to think it was cheating. I've had my emtb coming up for a year now and i've done nearly 2000 miles on it, mostly local trails. My HR on my analogue HT was always about 174 if i really pushed. I have had 192 on the emtb, and actually thought i was going to die. IMO the speed gets you wanting more and its like anything - you get out of it what you're prepared to put in.
Enjoy the bike!!
I’m definitely a convert, albeit to the mid power, lighter bikes.
The 25kg of the full power bikes killed them for me if I’m honest. My favourite part of riding is mucking around on jumps and drops and that is where I noticed the weight the most.
Totally agree re the workout; I’ve found my solo rides far more intense because I’m just riding more descents with the sting taken out of the fire road climbs locally.
The 25kg of the full power bikes killed them for me if I’m honest. My favourite part of riding is mucking around on jumps and drops and that is where I noticed the weight the most.
Totally agree re the workout; I’ve found my solo rides far more intense because I’m just riding more descents with the sting taken out of the fire road climbs locally.
There is a handling sweet spot with full fat ebikes with short chain stays. Off the top of my head the Focus Jam2, various Thoks, Yeti for the dentists among us etc. All of those are lively for being squat by comparison. Still reckon the next big step forward will be batteries shrinking in weight to the point a normy & an eeb end up just a few kilos apart.
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