E-bike motors failing because of rain

Not surprised given the biblical rain the UK has had since September.

Some trails and roads are rivers.

@b33k34 – the test riding customer had fallen to the side, and the crank + pedal had taken the full weight of the bike sideways as it toppled down a rock face. Also cranks had gouges on the ends, so had also received hits. Clumsy inexperienced test riders = ride it like you stole it… The sprag clutch hates impacts like those.

My Brose has done 5 winters and plenty of hose action – although I don’t spray a jet directly at it, but plenty of water runs out of the drain holes in the frame underneath the motor.

Just stripped down to send to the motor repair company for some precautionary refurb work

That article reads like a sponsored content feature. It’s got a big fat link to a motor repair business at the start preceded by the hyperbolic statement ‘leading repair company’. A journalist wouldn’t/shouldn’t use that language.

Then there’s the penultimate paragraph that only links to said company but actually quotes their prices, prefaced by the word ‘only’.

Are the mounting built patterns the same for all motors?

I fear in a few years time there is gong to be a massive number of frames chucked due to the motors giving up.

I’ve a eBullit. If and when the Shimano motor dies I might upgrade it to a Pinion gearbox and a wheel motor.

https://www.bullitt-bike.de/pinion-bullitt/

“ Are the mounting built patterns the same for all motors?”

I think they’re almost all different.

My Levo is doing pretty well but I’ve only washed it about twice in six years and never with a hose let alone a jet wash. And if it’s had a wet ride it usually gets used the next day so rarely sits about being wet for ages.

Two riders from my group have Sspecialised ebikes, one of them spends more time at the dealers due to water ingress that it does being ridden.

The other was fine till just after the warranty ran out.

Both have recently been sent to a ebike motor specialist who waterproofed the loom for them

“ Are the mounting built patterns the same for all motors?”

I think they’re almost all different.

Scottish motor start-up Intradrive deserves a shout for making motor gearboxes and using EP8 mounting spec

https://www.intra-drive.com/

Other than I think bafang, no-one officially sells a motor only, so just upgrading motor is pretty tricky.

And even if the mounting points are the same, all of the corresponding electronics will be different even between subsquent versions from the same manufacturer (switch, battery, charger, display) so it will be a very expensive change.

The manufacturers have gone out of their way to make this difficult and expensive.

That article reads like a sponsored content feature. It’s got a big fat link to a motor repair business at the start preceded by the hyperbolic statement ‘leading repair company’. A journalist wouldn’t/shouldn’t use that language.

To be fair, they arguably are a/the ‘leading repair company’, but the rest of the article is a superficial, tossed-off thing that seems, for some reason, to have singled out Bosch as if they produce all e-bike motors.

All of which is a shame, as there is a decent, in-depth story to be written about the issues around e-bikes including reliability, sustainability and the lack of any sort of universal standardisation across different brands and motors. Why does no-one produce an e-mtb motor that’s been built from the ground up to allow consumer replacement of crank bearings, drive-belts etc?

It seems like a good one for someone at ST to have a go at, but also problematic in that you’d probably upset half your contacts in the bike industry in one fell swoop. How about it? If e-bike reliability really is as poor as it anecdotally appears to be, it probably explains why many of the things are so expensive.

I’m still waiting for someone to come out with a heavily weather-proofed, UK-friendly ‘tough’ e-mtb, that’s been designed specifically to cope with wet and gritty conditions. What the hell is the point of producing e-mtbs that can’t cope with a simple stream crossing and shouldn’t be hosed down. How is a bike that shouldn’t be hosed down supposed to cope with a typical UK downpour on the trail? And afterwards, are you supposed to clean the cow shit off  with cotton buds and dry wipes?

I get that journalists are regularly supplied with box-fresh bikes that get a few months use before being sent back to base and these things aren’t really front of mind, but for an owner, they’re very much an issue.