Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable
Just like cars, tractors, computers, and seemingly every other product category, bikes—and especially e-bikes—are going all black box on us.
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I’m a daily downhill biker and i’ve only encountered that on cheap bikes. Anything over $1000 or so has the newest standards which don’t often change.
I agree with all the ebike stuff. even though i don’t ride one i have friend that do and make similar complaints.
I kinda disagree, there is still a lot of waste even with the best bike brands. Hydraulic brakes are probably my biggest gripe, it's basically impossible to rebuild 4 piston calipers, and that's if they even have replacement pistons/seals to begin with. Hope and SRAM are the only two I know of that have pistons readily available but they are also overpriced to hell (it costs around $100 for 8 pistons, almost the same price as replacing the calipers entirely). Magura, TRP, and Shimano make everything in-house but they only supply parts to rebuild the levers, the calipers are basically just wear items.
Dropper posts, carbonfiber parts/frames, the 3 different hub "standards" being used, and non-standard sized bearings are all adding to the irrepairability of bicycles. And that's before you factor in that Shimano and SRAM are hell bent on using electronic shifting and shoving wireless bullshit on all their products.
Yes, a good bicycle is repairable and will last decades, it's just getting harder and harder to find new bikes that are good.
I had a top end Specialized xc bike that's basically useless now because it has a proprietary rear shock, like all of their bikes of that line for the past 10 years. I couldn't even buy a replacement from them since they aren't compatible between different years and they stopped making the old versions.
Does your friend have a cheap e-bike?
Not really. It's one of the trek ones. Fuel if I had to guess off memory and looking at pics.
They look indeed hard to service. Way too many screws, hidden cables, and propriety parts.
I'm currently looking for a non e-bike as my 2nd runner, and I compared their mountain ebikes with the treks and they look so much cleaner and easier to service.
Happy Cakeday! 🍰🎂
I have a RadPower bike. It seems to be pretty straightforward to repair the normal bike parts. Not sure how I would replace the motor when it goes though.
Cheap E-Bikes seem more easy if you are willing to get into the wiring. A lot of them use very similar parts in terms of Hub Motor, Controller, Battery
