Ebike Maintenance For New Ebiker
Ebike maintenance
1.Loose Headset
Situation: This is usually noticed when you`re ridding a rough trail or under breaking you hear a bit of a knocking or clicking coming from the headset of your electric bike.
Test: Hold on the front brake stationary , push the bike back and forward and feel if there`s any movement around the top headset cup.
Method: Get your allen key into the side of that stem, loosen those bolts off , preload the top bolt, pull the headset cups up together, remove that movement out the bearings, re-torque the bolts on the side of the stem and then test the headset on the ground, make sure it`s running nice and smooth, move your bar side to side , pull the front brake and rock it , put your fingers around the top cup to make sure the movement is disappeared.
2.Suspension Check
Situation: After a few rides, you may encounter that the suspension on your ebike is a little bit softer, maybe you1re getting more pedal strikes on the trail or you`re bottoming out on those bigger hits. This is because your suspension is getting a little bit softer, it`s lost a little bit of pressure.
Method: Using a shock pump to replace the lost pressure.
How to do:
Step 1: Measure how soft that suspension actually by measuring the sag.
Sit on your bike, load the suspension up, and the suspension you will find a rubber band that you can slide up to the base and stand off of the bike , there are markings to show how much sag you1re actually using. If you`ve gone past the recommended sag or above it , you know the suspension is either too hard or too soft.
Step 2: Pump it up using a shock pump.
You need to find the valve, unscrew it, connect the shock pump to the suspension / shock, pump and increase the pressure to the recommended psi.
3.Gear Tune
Situation: Gears don`t index properly or are skipping around all over the place.
Method: Find the barrel adjuster on the shifter and if they`re not selecting up the gears so going towards your easier gears, you need to add more cable tension. Wind the barrel adjuster out just one or two clicks, try your gears again. If you are not shifting down well enough, , maybe you got too much tension on the barrel adjuster , it is the same but just the opposite way , turn it in and decrease the cable tension and see downshift return well.
4.Rubbing Brakes
Test: Spin the wheel, make sure your rotor isn`t bent, if it`s an intermittent noise every time is goes past the caliper , it denotes a bent disc, but if it`s constantly rubbing the whole time , get those calipers centered.
Method: Undo the caliper mount bolts on your fork , get your allen key in there and undo those , loose and give the caliper a little wiggle to unseat it. Hold on the brake and center the caliper then just a in case of re-torquing the bolts back up. When you doing this , you need to constantly hold on the brake , once it`s torqued up tight, then release the brake and you should see that the wheel spins freely without any rubbing.
5.Chain Maintenance
Situation: The chain chirping away and grinding away or even the other end of the spectrum with a dirty overlubed.
Tool: Degreaser , a rag and some chain lube
Method: Use the degreaser on the chain, rinse it off and then dry the chain. Then use a proper lube for your chain.
Common mistakes to lube and degrease the chain:
1.Lube in a wet chain
2.Apply too much degreaser
3.Applying lube in a wrong way(apply it to the outside)
