Saturday, July 12, 2014

More mechanic-friendly design from the e-bike industry

On a day when other people's schedule conflicts have left me running the mechanical side of the shop alone on a summer Saturday, in comes a guy who has blown the front tube on his E Z Pedaler T300.


On EZ Pedaler bikes the front one is the heavy one. It's not as heavy as a Stromer heavy wheel, but it's chunky.
There is no obvious way to disconnect the power cable. You have to undo the axle nuts and lower the wheel carefully to get the brake rotor clear of the caliper. You can then work the tire off the rim from that side. Be sure to provide a solid support for the wheel so it doesn't drop and hang from that cable.

I saw a couple of places where I might undo the connection, but they looked like they could just as easily be gateways to Hell.

When I got the tire off I discovered there was no rim strip.
The tube had blown in multiple places into the rim. Duh.

What passes for lunch is over. Days when I know I don't have the slightest chance of getting everything done are less stressful than when I believe I could and convince myself I should. I went into this day with a cheerfully doomed feeling.

4 comments:

Janice in GA said...

lolWUT??? I guess the customer didn't want the back tire checked for a rim strip?

Wow. Just wow.

cafiend said...

On my own initiative I peeked under the rear tire. Inexplicably, it HAD a rim strip. I just forgot to mention it as I pecked my hurried post. Work day blogging ends up pretty sloppy when there's actual work. ;-)

John said...

How far did he ride without a rim strip?

cafiend said...

The whole story was a bit vague. He said he was pumping up the tires after long storage, implying he had used the bike before it was stored. But there wasn't much wear on the tires. The front wheel didn't seem to be sitting right in the fork when I took it off. I figured he had tried to remove it and then gotten scared off by the motor wiring. But when I went to snug it up properly after putting in the rim tape and tube I discovered it needed a washer or two on the inside of the fork so the hub wouldn't bind up.

I don't see how the tube could have withstood full inflation, let alone riding, with no rim strip at all.