In the process of diagnosing the latest Stromer electric bike fiasco, I had to go on extensive test rides.
Poor, deluded souls are invariably impressed with the distinctive-looking machines. When they express this admiration I have no choice in my OCD but to take the time to try to explain all the reasons they should question the substance beneath the eye-catching looks. Or I just grunt, pretend I didn't hear anything or smile wanly and try to get away as quickly as possible. But even if no one says anything I know what many of them are thinking: "Hey, there's another one of those neat bikes. Maybe I should look into getting one."
Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! I'll wake up one morning and everyone but me will be a pod-person! Actually, POD stands for Power on Demand on the Stromer console. PAS stands for Pedal Assist.
The price tag for a Stromer stops most casual inquiries. But if the unaffordable version sparks sufficient interest, the interested party can find plenty of other offerings at lower price points, and lots of happy people on forums to say how great the machines are and how simple every little process is. You can find answers to just about every question that will come up when you try to reduce your workload by increasing the weight and complexity of your bike with electric motors, batteries and control circuits.
I feel like an idiot riding around on the thing. I know that's my own problem, but since I would not own one and I would not advise anyone to get one, I feel very keenly that I function as an unwitting ambassador for the concept when I'm tooling around out there. Adding to my unease, I know a lot of pedalists who think anyone on an e-bike is a wanker. Please! I'm not one of them! I'm only doing my job!
So there I am, tooling around the steepest nearby hills in Wolfeboro, trying to get the bike to malfunction in the way described by its owner. The bike has an absurdly wide saddle that makes a squeaky, metallic fart noise with every pedal stroke. I can't stop pedaling, because the bike only screws up in pedal assist mode. So I'm grunting up Friend Street, Pleasant Street, Forest Road, and connecting them with bits of Main Street, Sewall Road and short side streets, going squeak-fart, squeak-fart, squeak-fart, over and over around the course, waiting for the pedal assist to quit on me as the owner says it does. I pass walkers and real bicyclists with a pained smile and eyes averted. Squeak-fart, squeak-fart, squeak-fart.
The assist in pedal assist is not a magic effort eliminator. You have to give to get. I topped out on the hills breathing hard and sweating. I simply got there faster than I would under my own power on my own bike. Having a motor allows you to go faster and perhaps work less, but because the assistance comes on and goes off in response to your effort, the drag of the motor cuts in whenever you let up, slowing the bike more than an unassisted bike would slow down from gravity alone when you let up momentarily on the pedals. The bike yaws as the power fluctuates. It's pretty annoying, especially if you're predisposed to be annoyed.
Nothing about the ride made me suddenly feel, "Hey, I want this." I just wanted it to be over.
Because the bike never misbehaved, I could only go on what my research discerned. The lithium-ion battery probably cut out because it had not been charged lately and the long grade the owner was climbing threatened to over-discharge it. Either that or the system was overheating from the long effort and cut out because of that. The battery was pretty low when she brought it in and went flat overnight. But my first test ride on a shorter course with the low battery did not trigger a malfunction. My longer test ride, after fully charging the battery, did not cause any trouble either.
Bikes functioned happily for a century without electrics or hydraulics. Think about that.
Every time I have to wrestle with the problems of someone's ultra-modern marvel, whether it's a high performance carbon road rocket, a kinkily articulated full suspension mountain machine or a three-ton behemoth of battery power I go over and kiss my own bike hanging on its hook. You and me, baby. Simple pleasures.
Showing posts with label Stromer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stromer. Show all posts
Monday, August 18, 2014
Friday, August 15, 2014
Most of these tuneups should be overhauls
The Bike Tune Up generally includes the basic adjustments to bearings -- those that might still be adjustable on your modern marvel -- gears and brakes. Customers dutifully bring their bikes in every year or so for the traditional laying on of hands.
A bike that has been well tuned and not abused will still be in adjustment a year later. Brakes might get sloppy from pad wear. Index shifting might slip a bit from housing compression or cable stretch. But a properly adjusted bearing will stay adjusted as long as whatever was provided to lock the adjustment works in the first place and is correctly secured by the mechanic.
Inside that properly clearanced bearing, lubricants break down or get flushed out by various environmental stressors. I can perfectly adjust a bearing that has no grease left in it. It will run a bit roughly, but better than it would with no attention.
Most of the bikes that customers bring in for tuneups should have overhauls instead. The bearings need to be opened up, cleaned out and re-greased, if they're serviceable bearings at all.
Bike shop workloads run on a boom and bust cycle. Bike owners all get the idea around the same time, the Bike Season, and storm the shops for service. If even half of them said to go for the overhaul instead of the less effective tuneup, the wait time would surge into weeks instead of days. Taking someone's bike for that long in the season risks killing their enthusiasm either for riding or for getting their bike serviced. So we do the best we can with the time we have. We're like a battlefield hospital, patching up the wounded as best we can.
Many of our seasonal customers save their bikes for us to fix because they do not feel well served by their local shops. It's flattering and a helpful source of revenue, but all these people arrive with time constraints.
A couple of days ago a father and son came in asking questions about how to perform various procedures and what tools to buy. Refreshingly, they seemed to absorb information readily and had the vital ability to visualize a mechanism and a procedure from a verbal description. I did a little show and tell, but we managed to cover a lot just from discussion. They came back the next day for more little parts and further guidance, but it was building on the previous information, not filling it in again because it had all leaked out of their brains.
That poor kid is at risk of ending up in the bike business. My own slide down the slippery slope began because I wanted to be able to maintain my own bike. Then, hard up for cash in a career slump as a sort of a journalist, I wandered into my local bike shop in search of supplemental income. Turns out bike repair is steadier and more reliable employment than quasi-journalism. I'd been a copy editor, which is basically a word mechanic and someone who repairs press releases, so it's all kind of related. When the newspaper fell on hard times and eliminated my position, the mountain bike boom brought enough money and work into the shop to turn my part time into full time. Not lucrative full time, mind you, but enough to find a survivable balance of income and expenses. I've found that to be more valuable than a feast or famine roller coaster of big money followed by no money. I've seen people ride that one. It's all good fun until the screaming plunge.
The repair load has been inconsistent this season. Right now we're in a big weekend, with two triathlons and the Mount Washington Hill Climb. In addition, certain seasonal visitors we had not seen yet seem to have arrived for their stab at summer. The lulls even on a busy day are still frighteningly quiet and deep, but the surges are almost like the real thing.
Yesterday I had to make a 7-speed cassette out of an 8-speed because a customer needed it and we didn't have a proper 7-speed in stock. It wasn't as simple as just dropping one unwanted cog, either. I had to find a 12-tooth high gear cog to keep the steps reasonable and match the one we were replacing. That meant a treasure hunt in the cog farm. You can find all the 11-tooth cogs you want. Good luck finding just the right 12. I had to change the lock ring to one with a wider flange to secure the best 12 in my bin of spare parts.
In the middle of the onslaught, one of the X Family's Stromers showed up with yet another weird problem. On long, steep climbs, when you would want the pedal assist the most, the motor cuts out completely. This is probably because the no-longer-new lithium-ion battery is protecting itself, but it could be several other things in the system. The worst part for me is having to test ride the thing extensively, because I have to be seen in public on it.
I don't care if people want to own and ride these things. I just don't want to do anything that might convey the impression I endorse them in any way. I may have to sneak back to town at night and work on it then, where the kindly darkness will hide my shame when I have to go road test the latest attempt to iron the kinks out of the infernal machine. Or wear a ski mask.
A bike that has been well tuned and not abused will still be in adjustment a year later. Brakes might get sloppy from pad wear. Index shifting might slip a bit from housing compression or cable stretch. But a properly adjusted bearing will stay adjusted as long as whatever was provided to lock the adjustment works in the first place and is correctly secured by the mechanic.
Inside that properly clearanced bearing, lubricants break down or get flushed out by various environmental stressors. I can perfectly adjust a bearing that has no grease left in it. It will run a bit roughly, but better than it would with no attention.
Most of the bikes that customers bring in for tuneups should have overhauls instead. The bearings need to be opened up, cleaned out and re-greased, if they're serviceable bearings at all.
Bike shop workloads run on a boom and bust cycle. Bike owners all get the idea around the same time, the Bike Season, and storm the shops for service. If even half of them said to go for the overhaul instead of the less effective tuneup, the wait time would surge into weeks instead of days. Taking someone's bike for that long in the season risks killing their enthusiasm either for riding or for getting their bike serviced. So we do the best we can with the time we have. We're like a battlefield hospital, patching up the wounded as best we can.
Many of our seasonal customers save their bikes for us to fix because they do not feel well served by their local shops. It's flattering and a helpful source of revenue, but all these people arrive with time constraints.
A couple of days ago a father and son came in asking questions about how to perform various procedures and what tools to buy. Refreshingly, they seemed to absorb information readily and had the vital ability to visualize a mechanism and a procedure from a verbal description. I did a little show and tell, but we managed to cover a lot just from discussion. They came back the next day for more little parts and further guidance, but it was building on the previous information, not filling it in again because it had all leaked out of their brains.
That poor kid is at risk of ending up in the bike business. My own slide down the slippery slope began because I wanted to be able to maintain my own bike. Then, hard up for cash in a career slump as a sort of a journalist, I wandered into my local bike shop in search of supplemental income. Turns out bike repair is steadier and more reliable employment than quasi-journalism. I'd been a copy editor, which is basically a word mechanic and someone who repairs press releases, so it's all kind of related. When the newspaper fell on hard times and eliminated my position, the mountain bike boom brought enough money and work into the shop to turn my part time into full time. Not lucrative full time, mind you, but enough to find a survivable balance of income and expenses. I've found that to be more valuable than a feast or famine roller coaster of big money followed by no money. I've seen people ride that one. It's all good fun until the screaming plunge.
The repair load has been inconsistent this season. Right now we're in a big weekend, with two triathlons and the Mount Washington Hill Climb. In addition, certain seasonal visitors we had not seen yet seem to have arrived for their stab at summer. The lulls even on a busy day are still frighteningly quiet and deep, but the surges are almost like the real thing.
Yesterday I had to make a 7-speed cassette out of an 8-speed because a customer needed it and we didn't have a proper 7-speed in stock. It wasn't as simple as just dropping one unwanted cog, either. I had to find a 12-tooth high gear cog to keep the steps reasonable and match the one we were replacing. That meant a treasure hunt in the cog farm. You can find all the 11-tooth cogs you want. Good luck finding just the right 12. I had to change the lock ring to one with a wider flange to secure the best 12 in my bin of spare parts.
In the middle of the onslaught, one of the X Family's Stromers showed up with yet another weird problem. On long, steep climbs, when you would want the pedal assist the most, the motor cuts out completely. This is probably because the no-longer-new lithium-ion battery is protecting itself, but it could be several other things in the system. The worst part for me is having to test ride the thing extensively, because I have to be seen in public on it.
I don't care if people want to own and ride these things. I just don't want to do anything that might convey the impression I endorse them in any way. I may have to sneak back to town at night and work on it then, where the kindly darkness will hide my shame when I have to go road test the latest attempt to iron the kinks out of the infernal machine. Or wear a ski mask.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Guess I'm off the bike for a few days
An itchy patch of skin on my left ankle on Thursday grew into a pink swelling on Friday. Yesterday things really got interesting.
I rode to work as usual yesterday morning. My ankle was a little sore to walk on, but warmed up to riding. I pulled an average of 17 mph for the 14.3 miles of my normal route inbound.
When I got to work I felt lightheaded and headachy with a bit of neck stiffness thrown in for added interest. My ankle hurt and I felt what seemed like a lymph node up my thigh. Of course this happens as a weekend begins. If I couldn't hold out until Monday to try to get in with my regular doctor, I would have to go to the emergency room. Ka-ching! Health care in America is already ka-chingy enough without going to the ER.
By late in the day I knew I would be a fool to delay treatment. No point losing a foot just to avoid a crippling medical bill.
Here's how it looks after one IV bag of antibiotics and two horse pills of additional antibiotics.
The cellist and I spent five hours in the ER getting the blood work, X rays and, eventually, treatment. I had been increasingly tired all day, so I napped during the long waits. I had a fever of 103. Hey! I'm hot blooded, check it and see! Yeah, and I'm old enough to have heard that song when it was new. In the musical vein, as it were, I have to go back for more intravenous meds, so There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm Where All the Money Goes:
I rode to work as usual yesterday morning. My ankle was a little sore to walk on, but warmed up to riding. I pulled an average of 17 mph for the 14.3 miles of my normal route inbound.
When I got to work I felt lightheaded and headachy with a bit of neck stiffness thrown in for added interest. My ankle hurt and I felt what seemed like a lymph node up my thigh. Of course this happens as a weekend begins. If I couldn't hold out until Monday to try to get in with my regular doctor, I would have to go to the emergency room. Ka-ching! Health care in America is already ka-chingy enough without going to the ER.
By late in the day I knew I would be a fool to delay treatment. No point losing a foot just to avoid a crippling medical bill.
The cellist and I spent five hours in the ER getting the blood work, X rays and, eventually, treatment. I had been increasingly tired all day, so I napped during the long waits. I had a fever of 103. Hey! I'm hot blooded, check it and see! Yeah, and I'm old enough to have heard that song when it was new. In the musical vein, as it were, I have to go back for more intravenous meds, so There's a Hole in Daddy's Arm Where All the Money Goes:
The doctor said she identified it as MRSA. At least she didn't say flesh - eating bacteria. Losing a foot sounds like an expensive nuisance. I would want at least a slotted bike cleat prosthesis as well as an everyday foot. Fortunately I don't appear to have to deal with that from this.
Watching the nurse get the IV started, I laughed, thinking about how I had started my day chasing air bubbles out of an injected fluid. Big G and I finally managed a good bleed on Mr. X's Stromer. George had to mind the syringe and coupling at the master cylinder while I put fluid in from the caliper end. Wow, that system hides a lot of air.
Stromer did admit they have a problem with those calipers. They sent a couple for the affected bikes in the last shipment received by Mr. X and The Chairman. Oh yeah, and six more are on their way. But these are step-through models that have only exhibited electrical problems, not brake problems. Gee, and more often than not they actually work right out of the box. I can always hope.
The cellist has forbidden me to ride for a week. I'm going to hate driving to work, but I need the money. Good timing to face the bulk of my recovery on days I'm normally off anyway. Apparently there's a good chance we don't have health insurance anymore. The cellist's school contract ran into August, but she recalls getting a notice that the insurance ended on June 30th. You can't blame shenanigans like that on a fairly recent and highly flawed government program. Termination of coverage is a time honored insurance company move. Hell, you don't make a profit by paying out money.
Friday, July 18, 2014
Today's contrast
This was on the stand:
when a guy walked in with this:
Mr X called to see if we could slap on the new rear caliper Stromer sent for his bike in 30 minutes or less. The person who said we could does not do wrench work and did not ask those of us who do. I got to disappoint him in person when he showed up.
Stromer has admitted that they have issues with those brakes. I was right.
Lunch is over. Back to work.
Stromer has admitted that they have issues with those brakes. I was right.
Lunch is over. Back to work.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Stromer Tar Pit
Sunday, Mr. X pulled up in the back parking lot with his brand-new Stromer ST 1 Platinum on the bike rack of his SUV. The rear brake had gone mushy on this one exactly as it had on the other black diamond-frame bike in the batch I just assembled.
I was glad I had ordered a new bleed kit to replace the improvised one from the 1990s that our shop had used on Magura rim brakes. Along with all the other sucking chest wounds in the repair shop I told Mr. X I would have the bike ready for Monday morning when his gang was going for a ride. I'd already done it on one bike with a less than optimal tool kit. It should be a snap, right?
I put the bike in the stand, removed the neoprene sleeve over the wiring on the chain stay, unhooked all the wiring connections, cut the various zip ties, broke loose the 19mm axle nuts and maneuvered the 25-pound rear wheel out of the dropouts past the derailleur. I removed the brake pads and inserted the block to hold back the pistons in the brake caliper. Next I undid the forward mounting bolt to help orient the caliper vertically once the bike was positioned with the front wheel up at the ceiling. That had to be tied to a pipe in the overhead to hold it straight so the brake lever would remain in the proper attitude.
The latter maneuvers required a stepladder, as does the bleeding process itself on these bikes.
Once the bike was positioned I could hook up the syringes of the bleed kit to the fittings on the caliper and the brake lever.
Magura's video, in addition to being dubbed in English so Bernd the technician's lips keep moving after the narration has stopped, shows the bleeding procedure on a front brake on a conventional mountain bike. It's quick! It's easy! It's fun for the whole family! Need the caliper oriented vertically? It basically is already. Piece of cake.
Even though our new bleed kit supposedly has the fittings for Magura brakes, they don't fit exactly right. Magura's own kit is a lot more money and the fittings shown in the catalog look identical to the ones on our old rim brake kit, which also does not fit the new disc brakes precisely. So there's a bit of weeping and the chance of air being introduced during the procedure to eliminate air from the system.
Between interruptions from customers I worked my way through the bleed and reassembled the bike: untie, lower, clean caliper, insert pads, reinstall 25-pound rear wheel, reconnect wiring, and, finally, test squeeze the brake lever.
Totally dead. It was now 15 minutes to closing time and I was supposed to ride an hour home in time to shove down a bit of supper before some guests came over to share a birthday cake the cellist had made for me. But I'd told Mr. X we would have this done. I had to try at least one more time.
Tired of lugging that 25-pound rear wheel around, for this round of bleeding I removed the caliper completely from the bike, cut the remaining zip ties to allow it to hang down below the bottom bracket and screwed it to a wooden framework I scrounged up that happened to be a convenient shape and size. While this did not put the caliper and lever ends in exactly easy reach it was easier than going up and down a stepladder over and over. I was able to fill and bleed the system in half an hour.
Successful bleeding of the brakes on these two brand new $4,000 Stromer electric bicycles does not answer the question, "why did they need bleeding in the first place?" I had seen a sheen of fluid around the vicinity of the caliper on both bikes, but there was no big stain in the box when I unpacked them or a massive dripping mess to indicate where the system had emptied itself catastrophically. There was just that little schmear. It looks as if the halves of the caliper do not mate quite correctly, but nothing is obviously warped or loose. I won't be surprised to see a Stromer or Magura brake recall on MT 2 disc brakes before the year is out. But why only on the two black men's bikes and not on the white and red step-through models?
I've given up on getting a lot of two-way communication from Stromer. They're obviously too busy selling these things to worry about a few that don't work, even if the bikes belong to some of the richest people in the country. It's nice to see they're not letting their heads be turned by all that dough. You can see their point, can't you? The rich folks have already spent their money. That makes them no more use than any other customer who has already purchased the product. Time to move on to new conquests.
I'm not sure when loyalty to old customers became a liability and the quest for new new new ones became the mark of success. I guess it's all part of the growth philosophy that drives corporate planning and cancer. An old customer is only as good as the money they're willing to spend on your new product. And since the products are poorly thought out and badly supported, new customers are your only hope. Go for the people who haven't heard about you yet!
I was glad I had ordered a new bleed kit to replace the improvised one from the 1990s that our shop had used on Magura rim brakes. Along with all the other sucking chest wounds in the repair shop I told Mr. X I would have the bike ready for Monday morning when his gang was going for a ride. I'd already done it on one bike with a less than optimal tool kit. It should be a snap, right?
I put the bike in the stand, removed the neoprene sleeve over the wiring on the chain stay, unhooked all the wiring connections, cut the various zip ties, broke loose the 19mm axle nuts and maneuvered the 25-pound rear wheel out of the dropouts past the derailleur. I removed the brake pads and inserted the block to hold back the pistons in the brake caliper. Next I undid the forward mounting bolt to help orient the caliper vertically once the bike was positioned with the front wheel up at the ceiling. That had to be tied to a pipe in the overhead to hold it straight so the brake lever would remain in the proper attitude.
The latter maneuvers required a stepladder, as does the bleeding process itself on these bikes.
Once the bike was positioned I could hook up the syringes of the bleed kit to the fittings on the caliper and the brake lever.
Magura's video, in addition to being dubbed in English so Bernd the technician's lips keep moving after the narration has stopped, shows the bleeding procedure on a front brake on a conventional mountain bike. It's quick! It's easy! It's fun for the whole family! Need the caliper oriented vertically? It basically is already. Piece of cake.
Even though our new bleed kit supposedly has the fittings for Magura brakes, they don't fit exactly right. Magura's own kit is a lot more money and the fittings shown in the catalog look identical to the ones on our old rim brake kit, which also does not fit the new disc brakes precisely. So there's a bit of weeping and the chance of air being introduced during the procedure to eliminate air from the system.
Between interruptions from customers I worked my way through the bleed and reassembled the bike: untie, lower, clean caliper, insert pads, reinstall 25-pound rear wheel, reconnect wiring, and, finally, test squeeze the brake lever.
Totally dead. It was now 15 minutes to closing time and I was supposed to ride an hour home in time to shove down a bit of supper before some guests came over to share a birthday cake the cellist had made for me. But I'd told Mr. X we would have this done. I had to try at least one more time.
Tired of lugging that 25-pound rear wheel around, for this round of bleeding I removed the caliper completely from the bike, cut the remaining zip ties to allow it to hang down below the bottom bracket and screwed it to a wooden framework I scrounged up that happened to be a convenient shape and size. While this did not put the caliper and lever ends in exactly easy reach it was easier than going up and down a stepladder over and over. I was able to fill and bleed the system in half an hour.
Successful bleeding of the brakes on these two brand new $4,000 Stromer electric bicycles does not answer the question, "why did they need bleeding in the first place?" I had seen a sheen of fluid around the vicinity of the caliper on both bikes, but there was no big stain in the box when I unpacked them or a massive dripping mess to indicate where the system had emptied itself catastrophically. There was just that little schmear. It looks as if the halves of the caliper do not mate quite correctly, but nothing is obviously warped or loose. I won't be surprised to see a Stromer or Magura brake recall on MT 2 disc brakes before the year is out. But why only on the two black men's bikes and not on the white and red step-through models?
I've given up on getting a lot of two-way communication from Stromer. They're obviously too busy selling these things to worry about a few that don't work, even if the bikes belong to some of the richest people in the country. It's nice to see they're not letting their heads be turned by all that dough. You can see their point, can't you? The rich folks have already spent their money. That makes them no more use than any other customer who has already purchased the product. Time to move on to new conquests.
I'm not sure when loyalty to old customers became a liability and the quest for new new new ones became the mark of success. I guess it's all part of the growth philosophy that drives corporate planning and cancer. An old customer is only as good as the money they're willing to spend on your new product. And since the products are poorly thought out and badly supported, new customers are your only hope. Go for the people who haven't heard about you yet!
Monday, June 23, 2014
Aggravated battery
Got a call from a wealthy summer resident last month asking if our shop would receive and assemble three or four Stromer electric bikes for him. He's been a dedicated pedaler for many years, but those years have a way of adding up. Mr. X gave up riding the Mount Washington hill climb a year or two ago.
One of his friends is executive chairman of a corporation known for battery powered tools. The chairman has been into e-bikes since Lee Iacocca had his fling with them in the 1990s. We've gotten to see the evolution of the type as he has brought in various broken ones from his fleet. Apparently he is an energetic advocate. Since he took up the Stromer brand he has hooked up several of his friends.
One of those friends brought in two older Stromers. They've lost the keys to the battery compartments. The customer service guy at Stromer told me they can't replace those. They're apparently not cross referenced to the serial number. Both bikes also have an intermittent electrical problem causing the pedal assist to cut out randomly. Intermittent problems are always great fun to track down. The manual says to check the right brake sensor. Just for grins I checked both of them. To do that I had to make a test lamp because I don't keep any kind of electronic diagnostic equipment here. The sensor is just a push button anyway. I needed to see how sensitive it was so I could determine whether a rider who rests a hand on the lever could cut the motor out with only a slight twitch.
To get the sensors out I had to remove the lever blades. Electric bikes are bulky, heavy and complicated. Some combination of those factors -- weight, size and complexity -- makes even a simple job take a lot longer.
The Stromers weigh at least 60 pounds. About 25 pounds of that is the rear wheel. The wiring for the motor connects back there. The rear axle is keyed so it goes in the right way. So any job that involves removing the rear wheel means you have to juggle this heavy wheel as you guide it into its nest of cables, past the rear derailleur, sliding the brake rotor back into the caliper, with the axle oriented the only way it will go in.
The older Stromers have Avid cable disc brakes. The levers used on electric bikes have to be set up to accommodate the brake sensors. These levers predate the introduction of cable disc brakes, so their leverage is set up for traditional cantilevers. This means when you pay upwards of two grand for a fancy electric bike with cable disc brakes they feel mushy. Admittedly I've only seen the e-bikes that have wandered into my shop, but every one of them across the price range has had the same lame brake levers hooked up to mushy cable disc brakes. You'd think the e-bike industry would have caught up with the times by retooling to make a sensor-equipped lever with the right pivot distance for the brakes they're actually operating, but that kind of organized thinking seems alien to the battery brigade.
The new Stromers I assembled have Magura MT 2 hydraulic disc brakes. There's only a sensor in the right lever, so you could ride the front brake while still powering the motor, but how many people use the front brake by itself? I do, but I'm a deviant.
The rear brake on one bike went really mushy without making a puddle of fluid to indicate a leak. There was a little fluid around the caliper, but nothing to indicate exactly where it came from or when it got there.
To bleed the brake the bike needs to be oriented so the hydraulic lines run upward to the lever. Stromer puts the rear brake down on the chainstay. Magura says to remove the pads and push the pistons back all the way before bleeding the system. So that means the 25-pound wheel needs to come out and the bike needs to be held in the work stand with the front end pointing at the ceiling.
My bleed kit was improvised late in the last century. After two rounds of bleeding -- completely reassembling the bike to check each time -- the brakes were better, but still not great. Interestingly, there were two black bikes in this shipment and the brakes felt a bit mushy on both of them. The brakes on the red men's bike and the white step-through felt much firmer. The color is coincidental, but perhaps it indicates production runs with different personnel or even different factories.
A new bleed kit is on order. Friggin' hydraulics.
If you're thinking of getting an electric bike, don't. Just go the whole Hog, as it were, and buy the new electric Harley Davidson. The pedal assist thing is novel, but when it quits on you you're left with a bike that handles like a truck. Imagine pedaling a truck. A two-wheeled truck with sluggish steering. The heck with that.
The older Stromers I've worked on have twist throttles you can use when the control unit is set in the proper mode so you can just twist its ear and feel it leap forward. It takes more out of the battery than any other mode, but it cuts right to the best part of having a motor: putting out no effort to fly through space. Pedal assist not only requires that the pedals be moving, you also have to put at least some pressure on them. That sounds exhausting. And because the power comes on in spurts based on your own output it can make the bike surge a bit erratically. I suppose you adapt after riding electric bikes long enough. I only get to play with them for a few minutes at a time.
In the repair shop the bikes take up a lot of room, especially when you start taking them apart. Information about their innards is hard to get, even from the manufacturer. Manufacturers seem much more interested in pumping more products into the market than in helping existing customers keep existing bikes running smoothly. It seems to be part of the inherent nature of electronics that things work perfectly until they don't work at all, whereupon you junk the whole rig and start over. But some of these characteristics apply to all modern manufacturing and many modern products. Shimano shifters, for instance. And all manner of consumer electronics.
If I did not have an immensely wealthy person's name to drop, I wonder if I would get the level of service I've received so far. Even with the magic name the quality of service has diminished. I think the Stromerians may have crunched the numbers and decided they don't need to be quite so responsive to get their trickle from the trickle-down. No sense wasting deference when profit remains the same. Even a high profile customer is just another existing customer. In modern business ethics, existing customers get taken for granted while the energy goes to snaring new customers. Customer loyalty does not engender manufacturer loyalty, it breeds contempt. That attitude has afflicted the bike industry since the 1990s. No one can tell them how foolish and shortsighted it is. They'll have to learn the hard way, if consumers ever wake up and decide they're sick enough of it to support a different model. A whole lot of shit will have to hit a whole lot of fans for that to happen. So maybe the contemptuous manufacturers are right not to worry.
Mixed in with the electric shenanigans were plenty of brain teasers involving conventional bikes. Repair season is upon us, though business seems to diminish every year. It's not going to competing shops...much. People just don't seem to be around, let alone spending money.
One of his friends is executive chairman of a corporation known for battery powered tools. The chairman has been into e-bikes since Lee Iacocca had his fling with them in the 1990s. We've gotten to see the evolution of the type as he has brought in various broken ones from his fleet. Apparently he is an energetic advocate. Since he took up the Stromer brand he has hooked up several of his friends.
One of those friends brought in two older Stromers. They've lost the keys to the battery compartments. The customer service guy at Stromer told me they can't replace those. They're apparently not cross referenced to the serial number. Both bikes also have an intermittent electrical problem causing the pedal assist to cut out randomly. Intermittent problems are always great fun to track down. The manual says to check the right brake sensor. Just for grins I checked both of them. To do that I had to make a test lamp because I don't keep any kind of electronic diagnostic equipment here. The sensor is just a push button anyway. I needed to see how sensitive it was so I could determine whether a rider who rests a hand on the lever could cut the motor out with only a slight twitch.
To get the sensors out I had to remove the lever blades. Electric bikes are bulky, heavy and complicated. Some combination of those factors -- weight, size and complexity -- makes even a simple job take a lot longer.
The Stromers weigh at least 60 pounds. About 25 pounds of that is the rear wheel. The wiring for the motor connects back there. The rear axle is keyed so it goes in the right way. So any job that involves removing the rear wheel means you have to juggle this heavy wheel as you guide it into its nest of cables, past the rear derailleur, sliding the brake rotor back into the caliper, with the axle oriented the only way it will go in.
The older Stromers have Avid cable disc brakes. The levers used on electric bikes have to be set up to accommodate the brake sensors. These levers predate the introduction of cable disc brakes, so their leverage is set up for traditional cantilevers. This means when you pay upwards of two grand for a fancy electric bike with cable disc brakes they feel mushy. Admittedly I've only seen the e-bikes that have wandered into my shop, but every one of them across the price range has had the same lame brake levers hooked up to mushy cable disc brakes. You'd think the e-bike industry would have caught up with the times by retooling to make a sensor-equipped lever with the right pivot distance for the brakes they're actually operating, but that kind of organized thinking seems alien to the battery brigade.
The new Stromers I assembled have Magura MT 2 hydraulic disc brakes. There's only a sensor in the right lever, so you could ride the front brake while still powering the motor, but how many people use the front brake by itself? I do, but I'm a deviant.
The rear brake on one bike went really mushy without making a puddle of fluid to indicate a leak. There was a little fluid around the caliper, but nothing to indicate exactly where it came from or when it got there.
To bleed the brake the bike needs to be oriented so the hydraulic lines run upward to the lever. Stromer puts the rear brake down on the chainstay. Magura says to remove the pads and push the pistons back all the way before bleeding the system. So that means the 25-pound wheel needs to come out and the bike needs to be held in the work stand with the front end pointing at the ceiling.
My bleed kit was improvised late in the last century. After two rounds of bleeding -- completely reassembling the bike to check each time -- the brakes were better, but still not great. Interestingly, there were two black bikes in this shipment and the brakes felt a bit mushy on both of them. The brakes on the red men's bike and the white step-through felt much firmer. The color is coincidental, but perhaps it indicates production runs with different personnel or even different factories.
A new bleed kit is on order. Friggin' hydraulics.
If you're thinking of getting an electric bike, don't. Just go the whole Hog, as it were, and buy the new electric Harley Davidson. The pedal assist thing is novel, but when it quits on you you're left with a bike that handles like a truck. Imagine pedaling a truck. A two-wheeled truck with sluggish steering. The heck with that.
The older Stromers I've worked on have twist throttles you can use when the control unit is set in the proper mode so you can just twist its ear and feel it leap forward. It takes more out of the battery than any other mode, but it cuts right to the best part of having a motor: putting out no effort to fly through space. Pedal assist not only requires that the pedals be moving, you also have to put at least some pressure on them. That sounds exhausting. And because the power comes on in spurts based on your own output it can make the bike surge a bit erratically. I suppose you adapt after riding electric bikes long enough. I only get to play with them for a few minutes at a time.
In the repair shop the bikes take up a lot of room, especially when you start taking them apart. Information about their innards is hard to get, even from the manufacturer. Manufacturers seem much more interested in pumping more products into the market than in helping existing customers keep existing bikes running smoothly. It seems to be part of the inherent nature of electronics that things work perfectly until they don't work at all, whereupon you junk the whole rig and start over. But some of these characteristics apply to all modern manufacturing and many modern products. Shimano shifters, for instance. And all manner of consumer electronics.
If I did not have an immensely wealthy person's name to drop, I wonder if I would get the level of service I've received so far. Even with the magic name the quality of service has diminished. I think the Stromerians may have crunched the numbers and decided they don't need to be quite so responsive to get their trickle from the trickle-down. No sense wasting deference when profit remains the same. Even a high profile customer is just another existing customer. In modern business ethics, existing customers get taken for granted while the energy goes to snaring new customers. Customer loyalty does not engender manufacturer loyalty, it breeds contempt. That attitude has afflicted the bike industry since the 1990s. No one can tell them how foolish and shortsighted it is. They'll have to learn the hard way, if consumers ever wake up and decide they're sick enough of it to support a different model. A whole lot of shit will have to hit a whole lot of fans for that to happen. So maybe the contemptuous manufacturers are right not to worry.
Mixed in with the electric shenanigans were plenty of brain teasers involving conventional bikes. Repair season is upon us, though business seems to diminish every year. It's not going to competing shops...much. People just don't seem to be around, let alone spending money.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)