E-bike maintenance: how to keep your new electric bike running like a dream

Maintaining even the best electric bikes isn't difficult, but there are some important things to know if you're going to keep it in top condition and get the best performance every time you head out on a ride.To get more news about ebike maintaince, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.

What checks should you do before riding?
Before heading out on your electric bike, a few quick checks will help make sure you're getting the best, safest ride possible."Mechanical and electrical checks are the key thing," says Thrasher, "so from a mechanical point of view, tire pressures and if you’ve got any mountain bike suspension settings as well. Mainly because if you’re riding an e-bike with deflated tires then you may not get the range out of the bike that you want."

You'd normally notice if you're riding a bike with deflated tires or worn gears – you'll have to work harder than usual – but an e-bike will compensate, effectively masking the problem and draining the battery faster than necessary,

"It’s also really important that your brakes are working properly because the e-bikes are slightly heavier," says Thrasher. "I’d have a check of the brakes and gears before you go on a ride. Just a spin around the car park or just down the side of your house, just to make sure everything’s operating mechanically as it should.

From an electrical point of view, making sure that the battery’s got a full state of charge," he says. "You’d ideally do this with enough time to make sure that you can put charge into it. There’s nothing worse than rocking up to a ride and finding that you’ve got one bar of battery. It’ll either be a very difficult ride, or the ride won’t happen.

"And a quick check of the cables as well. Speaking from a Shimano Steps point of view, the cables are quite delicate and they carry all the data through the system, so if they’re slightly damaged or you’ve managed to hook it on a car when you’re taking the bike off a rack, they can get damaged and that can cause an error to occur. So it’s definitely worthwhile checking."

You should also check that the cables are correctly plugged in. Shimano has a special wire tool (catchily named the TL-EW02), which makes sure that you're pushing on the correct part of the wire and not damaging it.

Also take a look at the magnet for the speed sensor. "It’s a bit like the old school cycle computers that you had where the magnet went round and it told you how fast you were going," Thrasher explains. "The e-bike has a drive unit that knows how much pressure you’re putting through the pedals – there’s an in-built power meter – but it also has a speed sensor to work out how fast you’re going. With those two metrics it can work out the right amount of power delivery, but if the magnet gets knocked then it can’t see that, and then the drive unit won’t work."

It's quite common for that magnet to get knocked out of place, either in transit or being out on the trails. Just make sure that the magnet is in line with the sensor, with the correct distance between it."If your bike has a Shimano Steps drive system, also watch out for an error code called WA13. Thrasher explains that this is a torque sensor error, and is easily fixed.

"This happens when someone hops on the bike, they start pedalling it off down the road or down the trail, and then they think ‘Oh no, I haven’t turned it on!’ So they turn it on, and then the system sees that there’s pressure going through it, which it doesn’t expect. What it then does is say ‘Well, that must be a problem’. So then it beeps and comes up with a WA13 error code.

"The easiest way to clear this is to stop the bike, get off the bike, turn the battery off, ideally if it’s a downtube-mounted battery remove it – that clears everything from the system – put the battery back in, turn the system on again without any pressure on the pedals. Nine times out of 10, that clears the WA13 error code."

Finally, make sure that the battery is secure in its mounting. That's not easy to do for an internal battery, but for an external one, make sure that there's no play between the battery and its mount. Any movement can cause intermittent faults.
How can you make the battery last longer?
There are lots of ways to eke greater mileage out of your e-bike's battery, some of which are more obvious than others. "We always think about marginal gains in cycling, but they’re all things you can do to improve the life of the battery, and certainly the range of the battery," says Thrasher.

"We spoke before about the tires being correctly inflated and things like your brakes rubbing. You notice all these if you’re a human being pedalling a bicycle, but with an e-bike they’re quite good at masking those little things."