Old Nag

[georgehenry]

Old Nag / Triggers Broom
How long does an electric bike last? I am still getting excellent use out of my Oxygen Emate City that was my first electric bike that I bought at the beginning of June 2011. To be frank it looks very second hand now, and needs a new rear rack and a set of front forks, but despite this continues to work really well.



There is an element of triggers broom, as I am using my third motor wheel and have replaced the battery a couple of times.



The first motor began failing at the end of my second year of ownership and after some email correspondence with (then Andrew) at Oxygen I was sent a new rear motor wheel. That first motor had done about 6,000 miles, as I used the bike to commute to work and back and many other tasks as well.

The second motor lasted until about a year and half ago.



I bought two spar refurbished rear motor wheels that were the right ones for my bike from John the new owner of Oxygen in Yorkshire in 2014. John told me that buying two motor wheels was probably a bit overkill but they were only £120 for the two and sat on a garage shelf for many years.

Then finally the second motor broke a control wire probably where the wires enter the axle and I was glad to be able to get down the dusty box with my two motor wheels and on went one of my replacement motor wheels I had bought in 2014.

The first replacement motor wheel broke spokes and it took me a while of replacing spokes to stabalise that wheel. However the original failed motor wheel provided lots of replacement spokes and I became a dab hand at changing them over when they broke and had a couple of spar spokes taped to the rear rack ready for when I heard that characteristic tinkling noise from the rear wheel instigating a formla 1 esk spoke change.



The third motor wheel has not broken any spokes even though the bike is regularly overloaded.

So despite all this it continues to work really well. Three basic levels of assist and an unrestricted throttle. The throttle seems to allow the bike to go quickest and it tops out at about 18.5 mph on my latest motor wheel.



My son and I now share the use of it. My son commutes to work and back on it, about 10 miles a day. I use it for shopping trips with overfilled Ortleib panniers. I also use it when I catch the train, hoping that its shabby appearance might be a theft deterrent alongside the D lock and non quick release bolts on the front wheel and saddle post.



So a bit like the Voyager probe my Emate is probably working well beyond its original design life span now that it is over 10 years old, but how many other people or still riding old electric bikes I wonder?



I don't take many pictures of this old work horse but the pretty ones were from a rare leisure ride down my local canal tow path.

How many miles has it covered. I don't really know. But 6,000 miles in the first two years and about 2,500 miles each year since, as it gets used nearly every day. So somewhere in the 20,000 to 25,000 mile range.

 

[Nealh]

Still reliable and trusty GH and for it's age cheap ebiking, esp if one is able to carryout the repairs. The joys of simple bikes easy to repair/maintain without ever needing to see a shop. No complicated closed systems that can't be repaired.
For most generic China stuff, hub bikes are the cheapest option and you have proved this as I have also done by using them off road in places that most don't ride hub motors.

 

[georgehenry]

Yes, I agree Nealh, those first two years when I commuted to work on it were when I began experimenting with an off road route, and was surprised how well it coped, until I bought my hard tail crank Drive Haibike.

As you say the ease with which you can repair these types of bikes and cheaply keep them going is the key to their longevity. Very relaxing to ride and gentle on their drive trains as well.

 

[georgehenry]

TLC/Bodging

A couple of maintenance jobs, one of which caused by a breakage after parking it at the station.

Job 1. Replace the Brake Discs/Rotors

The original brake discs where getting a might thin as the bike headed into its second decade. I bought a new pair including bolts of Amazon for £12.99 delivered.

Should have been a very easy job. However I had been lazy when I commissioned a spar rear motor wheel during the first lock down and rather than do the job myself had the job done by a bike shop.

I now discovered that In swapping the rotor over from the old wheel to the new one the bike shop had used an assortment of small bolts probably that they had lying around, some star drive, some Allen key heads, to attach the rotor, and after removing the back wheel the first bolt I tried refused to budge and then the small star drive head stripped.

I really did not want to get into drilling them out and re tapping threads.

I took the whole bike to my mates house to see what the pair of us could achieve.

Drink tea and natter to start with.

With his more comprehensive range of tools we managed to get three of them out.

The last three were more difficult and we used an angle grinder to cut a groove in the bolt heads and then an impact driver. That got another two out.

The last one however could have ended badly. The groove we cut in the bold head was a little too deep and one side sheered off when we used the impact driver. we cut a groove in the remaining bit left and very fortunately got the bolt turning when we used the impact driver and got it out. From there the job was easy.

Could have been nasty.

The new bolts that came with the new rotors were a much more sensible size.

Job 2. Re attache the brake cut off switch.

The front brake cut off switch got irretrievably broken when the wire got ripped out by someone removing their bike next to mine at the station some time ago.

The rear one though still worked and one brake cut off is enough.

Then I managed to rip the rear cut of out when pulling my bike out of the bike rack at the station again a couple of days ago when the wire got caught in the bike next door.

I was cross with myself and did not look at the damage when I got home.

The next day I had a look at it and the wire with cut of still attached had simply been detached from the attaching point, and in being forcibly detached the attaching part was broken, but when you held the actual brake cut off part near where it had been attached the cut still worked.

This was established by turning the bike on and gently opening the throttle while bring the detached cut off close to its attach point. Useful things throttles.

So mending this was really just a matter of finding an appropriate small bolt and washer to re attach it. So my rear brake cut off lives again. Hurrah.

 

[Deleted member 16246]

Great account. I love the idea of keeping an old work horse going. I'm very much against throwing stuff away if it can be worked on.

 

[georgehenry]

Old Nag / Throttle Story

I and my kids went on holiday to Devon at the beginning of August. We hired a beech hut not far from where we were staying. The parking near the beech hut was not easy. We took the old nag and locked her at the beech. I used the old nag to collect sandwiches from the nearest little shopping parade just over a mile and a half away.

On one of these excursions returning to the beech hut I spied a new looking crank drive up ahead. I slowly hauled it in and then slowly overtook it.

It was a nice looking very new cube of some description.

As I was pedaling slowly by the rider commented, " You must be trying much harder than me"

At which point I pinned my unrestricted throttle, stopped pedaling, carried on overtaking and replied, "Not any more"! as the gap slowly opened up between us.

Got to love an unrestricted throttle.

 

[georgehenry]

Old Nag to the rescue....

Enjoying my retirement I had agreed to go to a friends house today to meet up with two more friends and go for a walk.

I usually take the car and according to google maps it is a 15 mile journey to my friends house. As we had agreed to meet at 10:30 and the weather looked like it would be good, I thought I would ride my Haibike over to my friends house using a fair chunk of off road tracks.

I suddenly remembered I needed to check the chain stretch on my Haibike and found it was just on the point of needing changing.

So rather than not ride I thought I would take the old nag instead. What a hoot I had. The Old Nag is far more capable off road than she has any right to be.

I did also worry about whether my now 4 year old battery would last the course because of the large off road section and steady quite steeply rising climb to the half way point of the journey before mostly a decent to my friends house.

As an insurance policy I decided to take the spar battery off my other identical rear hub bike that I bought from the classified section of Pedelecs for the princely sum of £100. That was for the whole bike including the original battery from around 2011.

As it turned out, although the crude battery indicator dropped to only one light illuminated and power from the motor was noticeably diminished I made it to my friends house without needing to swap batteries over.

We then did a very nice walk of around 8 and a half miles, before riding the Old Nag home. I charged the battery in my friends garage while out on our walk.

Although the first part of the journey home involved a similarly large amount of climbing, this time riding on the road, the off road sections were now mostly downhill and great fun.

The unsuitability of the bike just added to the experience. One thing The Old Nag has that The Haibike does not is an unrestricted throttle that came in handy. I did however miss the hydraulic brakes of The Haibike.

Although I tried to pick the smoothest lines I could there were inevitably moments of crashing over roots etc and I was worried that I might do her some real damage and she might not see her eleventh birthday in June.

But all's well that ends well and she got me back home and does not seem to be too much worse for the experience.

All in all a great day out with plenty of exercise for my old body.

 

[georgehenry]

Shopping Run

It never ceases to amaze me how much shopping I can fit in my Ortlieb roller top panniers, and how capable the old nag is at carrying too much shopping back home up a pretty steep hill.



It will be 11 years since I ordered my Oxygen Emate on the 3rd of June 2011.

 

[guerney]

Nice rack! Bigger the better A fine pair of pannier bags

 

[PC2017]

My frame is getting on a bit now, purchased in 2018, the motor, now 6 year old still works well but I can see the bearings failing soon and I am not looking forward to tackling that task. I had a small annoying squeak on my NCX seat post but that was easily sorted with a little TLC.
My 3 batteries are in fair condition, the 36ers are near 7 years old but the 48v is nearer 3 years. I too need new forks, going rigid next week sometime however that is a shop job, but gear alignment and new brakes I do myself every spring.

Tbf I did save up vast sums from selling parts and general penny pinching, originally, like you @georgehenry, to acquire a spare motor if the need arose, then I saved up more and started researching a new build but figured to actually get something of quality that would actually suit a KT system whilst mitigating almost every teething problem I had during my newbie days proved harder than expected, in fact the final build was very similar in frame, factory gear system and the brakes I already had, the main difference was the wheel size. So I decided to stick where I am adding and fixing as I go until the frame cracks.

Great Blog - good idea georgehenry - Refreshing read

 

[georgehenry]

The Old Nag is Eleven Years Old !



Another year older and still running very well.The forks are still knackered but still function and so are not an urgent job. I placed my order for this bike (My first electric bike) on the 13th of June 2011.

Over the last year she has had a pair of new brake discs. Also a new chain, cassette and chain ring. That is a new battery but the silver fish batteries are shared between my two Oxygen bikes, so it was not bought specifically for The Old Nag.

I have three batteries that still work, one over four years old, one eleven years old and this almost new one bought in March 2022 when I spotted it for £165 on Ebay. I know that inflation is out of control at the moment but this is the least I have paid for a new Yose battery.

The rear rack is also very tired but I made a splendid repair bodge adding new struts to each side to restore structural integrity if not beauty, and retain the ability to carry too much stuff and that bodge so far is working very well!

The Old Nag is now used by my son to commute to his Job in the centre of Town, a modest 4 mile commute. When available I still use her for the usual shopping, errand, and Train Station duties.

Yesterday evening my son and I did a leisure ride, my son on the old nag and me on my Haibike Yamaha. We traveled by road initially and then off road tracks to a nature reserve to tether them both up and enjoy a gentle walk taking in the views and beautiful natural environment. By the time we got home I was quite surprised that we had ridden 18 miles. A lovely early evening ride. So she rides and works considerably better than she looks! Will she survive another year? I cannot see why not, but we will have to see.

 

[PC2017]

The forks are still knackered

I pulled the trigger on a ridged fork last month and tbf it was a good decision, I really don't know how well supply lines will hold up in the short to medium, but I purchased mine just in case. Mine are currently 3 in stock and surprisingly the price has not changed, however I assume shipping cost will increase very soon.

 

[georgehenry]

Night Out

I had arranged to go with friends to see Raynor Winn and the Gigspanner Big Band at a venue in Farnham. On the Thursday of that week I had taken the motor of my Haibike down to Peter at Performance line bearings to have it refurbished. The gig was the next day and the weather was nice so I really wanted to cycle to Farnham using my off road route from my days of commuting to work.



So needs must, with no Haibike available I decided to use the The Old Nag, my old rear hub Oxygen Emate. Quite a lot of the route is OK for the emate, but one section I cut out as it was a little too demanding for the old girl. Probably some other bits of the route should have been cut out too, but we made it with quite a lot of alarming crashing and banging. After one appalling loud bang with an associated metallic ringing sound I stopped, pretty certain I had mortally wounded The Old Nag, but after an inspection, nothing seemed too amiss, so on I carried.



At The Station I struck lucky when a member of Platform Staff I knew said I could put my bike in the same room I used to when I worked there. If I had known that was going to be possible I would have taken my charger! Having had no tea, I had made a ham sandwich. Now having a nice private room to sit in I popped to the nearby chippy to augment my ham butty with a portion of chips and a cold can of coke. Lovely.



It reminded me of my recent Train Driving Days where I had enjoyed a similar bite to eat in the same room on many an occasion.



Then I got changed and walked to the venue. With a few minutes to spar and my friends not there yet I got stuck in to the very nice bottled IPA. Friends arrived and bought me more IPA, splendid. Great gig, more IPA, great evening out.

Travelled back home full of bonhomie with my bike on the train. Cycled back to my house from the station. A good evening was had.

 

[georgehenry]

Maintenance

The back light on The Old Nag, Oxygen Emate City circa 2011, started to play up sometimes on and sometimes off, but slowly more off than on. I always also have a rechargeable bright red flashing light on the seat post as well but like to have the original rear light working as well.



In a spar moment I took the reflector off to have a look inside, perhaps assuming that in its twelfth year it might need a replacement bulb.



I did not really understand what I had revealed. Someone on here might explain, and tell me if there is the equivalent of a bulb that could be replaced.



I put it back together and then examined/wiggled the wire along the length I could see from the rear light back to where it entered underneath the bike into where the primitive controller must be.

I found there were breaks in the wire and that wiggling could cause the light to briefly illuminate. A quick phone call and over to my long suffering ex BT engineer friends house with the bike for him to rummage in a box of wires to identify an almost identical one to replace the section between close to the rear light to where it disappears into the frame. He used some heat shrink tubing to cover and waterproof where the old wire was connected to the new, and the light was brightly shining once more.

So fortunately on this occasion there was nothing wrong with the light itself but just a few breaks in the old wire that connected it.

 

[RHB123]

Still reliable and trusty GH and for it's age cheap ebiking, esp if one is able to carryout the repairs. The joys of simple bikes easy to repair/maintain without ever needing to see a shop. No complicated closed systems that can't be repaired.
For most generic China stuff, hub bikes are the cheapest option and you have proved this as I have also done by using them off road in places that most don't ride hub motors.

As a novice coming to the forum recently, may I confirm what you're saying Neal? Cheap Chinese bikes are relatively easy to repair oneself? I'm asking as after Christmas, I'm looking at buying Fiido. Thanks buddy. Richard.

 

[Nealh]

As a novice coming to the forum recently, may I confirm what you're saying Neal? Cheap Chinese bikes are relatively easy to repair oneself? I'm asking as after Christmas, I'm looking at buying Fiido. Thanks buddy. Richard.

Mechanically yes no differen to any push bike.
Electrically also yes as long as no proprietary parts/comms are used.
We have helped many folks get old or broken ebikes working at a small cost for buying parts. On the electrical side one needs to be able to wield a soldering iron.