The tale of a £100 second hand electric bike.

[georgehenry]

Another short week of commuting.....

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the 15th, 16th and 17th of September.

I chose not to ride on Tuesday as heavy rain was forecast.

Wednesday was a 5:00 am alarm call and 10 mile road ride to work to start work at 06:22 am, then a return road ride home at 15:00. From what I can recall Wednesday was mild and traffic in both directions reasonably light.

Thursday was a 06:00 am alarm call and I started work at 07:20. When I pop down stairs I poke my head outside to see the weather and it was decidedly cooler. I wore a long sleeved top and windproof cycle jacket, warm gloves and a my Mr Smiley beanie hat and leggings. The traffic not bad on the way to work. I road home at around 17:00 and there was quite a lot of traffic and impatient drivers wanting to squeeze by. The beauty of shift work is that I do not often ride when the roads are busy. The rear view mirror that came with the bike really helps.

Friday was an 08:22 start time and finish at 16:02. Nippy again but I took my hat off part way there as it was too warm. Again busy impatient traffic on the way home.

On two of these trips rather than go straight home I went via the town centre to pick up something to eat.

So 60 miles ridden, and I oiled the chain. I cannot imagine a better utilitarian electric bike for this task.

I am now within a 150 miles of 3000 miles ridden.

 

[Deleted member 16246]

Great to find this thread and envious of your massive bargain bike. When I first read of the sagging battery voltage when hill climbing, I wondered (since the bike is a good age) whether it had a NMIH battery. Looking at the Oxygen bikes line up, I doubt that now.

Anyway - a great bargain, you lucky b*gger...

I hope I get as good service from my Bafang mid drive conversion, but I somehow doubt it - not that it has done anything bad so far.

Those Oxygen Emates are not even expensive - about a thousand quid from Ebikes Direct.

 

[georgehenry]

Dormant but not completely forgotten

The main job of my £100 Ebike was to take me to my early shift jobs at work, and a splendid job it made of it.

Since retiring in October 2021 it has done nothing. Actually I did put a new chain on as the old one had reached its wear limit.

I have two other electric bikes that are used a lot and it is usually only if the other rear hub bike, The Old Nag, is out of action that the £100 ebike gets used.

Quite by chance my other two electric bikes require a little bit of minor work so my super sub has been called into action this week for a couple of shopping trips.

One of those trips was a 10 mile ride to the next Town and I was reminded how great she is.

Last year at about this time I recorded how many miles I had ridden the £100 ebike over the previous year and noted it was 1,141 miles.

So i thought I would do the same this year and it has only been 325 miles.

The total mileage for the bike now stands at 2,925, and there was 500 miles recorded when I bought her back in September 2018. The bike was sold originally probably back in 2011, and is now heading into her 11th year.

Most of those were carrying me to my early shifts at work, and now that I am retired there are no early shifts to go to, hurrah.

I have a friend who is about to have a hip operation and I might lend the £100 ebike to him to give him some gentle exercise to aid his recovery. He has been told that an ebike is a good thing to use.

My son has secured a new job that starts in May and after using The Old Nag to commute to a previous job and enjoying it, might want to do so again and that would mean the £100 ebike would become my shopping bike.

Although, quite remarkably the original battery that could be nearly 11 years old still works, its range is much reduced now, so I have just bought of Ebay a Yose 15Ah silverfish battery, including charger, for £165.62, which seems a bargain, but we will have to see.

I have bought a Yose battery previously that I still use and is now over 4 years old, so fingers crossed.

We will have to see how many miles I do on her this year, my 4th year of ownership.

 

[georgehenry]

Dormant no more....

My son is now using "The Old Nag", my other Oxygen Emate that I bought new in 2011, to commute to his new job in the centre of town. A short commute of a couple of miles each way, but one definitely of two halves, so to speak, with a level portion and then quite steep down hill into work of about a mile, and then the quite steep hill to climb on the way home.

What this means is that all the shopping trips and errands I used to do on The Old Nag, are now being done on my alternative splendid £100 second hand Emate. This means that miles are once again gently being added to her. Nothing too startling, but 81 miles since my son commandeered The Old Nag. That takes her total mileage over 3,000 miles now.

The Old nag will be adding around 80 miles a month to her tally, and a modest minimum of around 960 a year to her total, but as she has no mileage recorder, how many miles she has done in total can only be guessed at.

I am using my crank drive Haibike Yamaha quite frequently for leisure rides of fitness and fun with sometimes a bit of shopping thrown in, and last week I rode her on four of the five Monday to Friday days covering 74 miles, having lots of fun and enjoying the nice weather. The Haibike does record the miles covered and has now reached the dizzy heights of 15,806 miles ridden since I bought her in March 2015.

Andy-Mat will not like a crank drive bike doing that, although in fairness to him, I generally agree with his sentiments that crank drive bikes from large manufacturers do not offer good value to their buyers as they are not well supported out of warranty and sometimes inside it, and often either very expensive or impossible to fix, made much more difficult by the defeat technology built in to them that only helps the manufacturer.

I have managed to fix mine when it went wrong, and also got a new motor free of charge right at the end of its two year warranty, but I think also been lucky.

 

[georgehenry]

A bit of TLC makes my £100 second hand electric bike ready to ride again.

A few months back, after what seemed like a gap of well over a year, David, my £100 second hand bike broke a spoke in the rear wheel. I had been sharing the shopping and errand jobs between David and my other Oxygen Emate City bike.

It had been so long since it last broke a spoke that I had forgotten the procedure and I have to admit that my laziness meant that it has just sat in my garage waiting for that job to be done.

Anyway today I roused myself and set to the task. It is a bit more involved changing a spoke on David than my other Oxygen Emate City of the same era.

Considering they were both made around the same time around 2011 there are quite a few differences between the bikes, and for spoke changing the differences make changing a spoke in Davids rear wheel a whole more time consuming affair than my other Emate where a spoke could be changed in just a minute or two by the side of the road.

The motor in David is wider than in my other Emate, necessitating taking the brake disc off to change some spokes. The wheel of David has a double wall rim rather than the solid single wall rim of my other Oxygen, that means you have to take the wheel out and remove the tyre, inner tube and rim tape to get the access you need to fasten the spoke nipple to the new replaced spoke.

Anyway, none of this is too hard, and it all went smoothly.

After putting the wheel back, I checked the wear on the chain and added a bit of oil. Pumped up the deflated tyres and rode it up and down my road. All was well, so today's shopping trip was done on David.

I have owned this £100 second hand bike for over four years now and am pleased to be riding it again. The bike can fairly whizz along and is a real pleasure to ride.

 

[Nealh]

That good to hear 'Super sub rides again'.
David like his name sake is dependable. I seem to remember every time super sub came on, he always scored and is one of the greats of that era.

 

[georgehenry]

Gentle use over the last year......

Just for the record as of today Sunday March the 26th, the recorded mileage stands at 3,291, and the mileage last year on March the 24th was 2,925. So over the last year I have ridden a modest 366 miles, and 2,791 miles since I bought the bike second hand with 500 miles on the clock.

It might get use more this year as my other child is starting a new job in a town about 6 miles away and will use my original Emate to commute until they pass their driving test.

Now so far there have been negligible running costs. The tyres (marathon plus) are still good. I adjust and change brake pads as needed and might be on my third set but cannot remember. I put a new chain on at some point and keep a casual eye on its wear.

After finally getting around to changing the spoke in the rear wheel that broke a month or two back I did not need much of an excuse to use my splendid £100 second hand Ebike to go to a medical appointment which was at 09:45 and the other side of the A3 in Guildford about 7 miles away and is an area of Guildford that can be a slow and tedious place to get to in a car. Sun was forecast so off into busy morning traffic I went. It was somewhere I had not been before but what a blast of a ride I had. Quite often showing early 20's of miles an hour and able to get around the traffic snarl ups I got there much earlier than I expected, and enjoyed every second. I had looked on Google maps and used a step free bridge to get me over the A3, and a path that connected to the dead end bit of a no through road, the other end of which was within sight of the NHS facility. You cannot do that in a car.

 

[georgehenry]

Getting used almost every day now

Another year of riding my bargain purchase £100 second hand electric bike. My other Oxygen Emate is now being used by my son to get to work and back, so the £100 second hand Emate gets a lot more use. It is now my go to errand bike for shopping and other miscellaneous activities. For example It took me to two Hospital appointments this week, Tuesday and Thursday. With a full battery it is a superb road riding machine and on the flat often indicates just over 20mph. No hassle parking at the hospital, and the physiotherapist I was seeing for my knee issues was impressed I had ridden there. Although as of today the odometer is showing 3,815 miles, I will have ridden it further this year as for four months the speedo and odometer stopped working, which turned out to be a broken wire to the speed sensor when I got around to fixing it. ( with lots of good advise from saneagle). So based on the odo reading I have ridden the bike 890 miles this year, but if you divide that figure by two and multiply by three to account for the four months when the speed sensor and odo meter was not working then I have actually ridden it 1,335 miles which feels more like it.

https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/possible-speed-sensor-problem.46450/#post-699180

I managed to allow the bike to fall over on my drive and annoyingly broke the front mudguard. I bought a set of SKS mudguards from Spa cycles. I only fitted the front one to replace the broken mudguard as the rear mudguard was fine, but I now have the sks rear mudguard ready to fit should I need it. I did use the stainless steel rear mudguard support clip that either came with the SKS mudguards or the universal fitting kit I also ordered with the mudguards, and it is a far superior way of supporting the rear mudguard than the previous bolt.

I lost a bolt that supported one of the rear rack support stays. I removed the one that had not gone missing and took it to Magnor Fasteners in Guildford who for a very small amount of money supplied me with a matching bolt and some nuts to act as a spacer, as the spacer had also fallen off. It all fitted back together very well.

I also keep an eye on the chains on both my Emates and put new ones on when they reach their wear limits. These old electric bikes with silver fish batteries that extend the wheelbase need some chain added to a new chain to make it fit properly. From memory about 10 links or so. I keep a new chain to take some off to lengthen a replacement chain when I need to fit one.

Today I put a new disc on the from wheel as the last set of pads wore too fast and I found out on my other Oxygen that this is a symptom of a worn disc. I had a new one in the garage and will need to order one for the rear.

So the bike is Thirteen years old now and continues to work very well. If the odo meter should be showing 4,260 miles now, and it had 500 miles on it when I bought it for my princely £100, then I have ridden it 3,760 miles. To be honest I get a lot of fun riding it.

 

[egroover]

13 years on the original battery ? Wow

 

[georgehenry]

Hi egroover, I still have the original battery, and it still works, but is now a back up as I bought a silver fish Yose 15Ah battery from ebay a couple of years ago when I saw it in a flash sale for £165.62 including charger. So that is on the bike at the moment. With two Emates that take the same batteries they do get swapped about a bit but basically I have the working original battery from the £100 Emate and two working Yose batteries of different ages that all can get used.

The battery I have been most impressed by is the one fitted to my 2015 Haibike Yamaha that has not been changed and still works really well and is now over 9 years old.

 

[egroover]

Hi egroover, I still have the original battery, and it still works, but is now a back up as I bought a silver fish Yose 15Ah battery from ebay a couple of years ago when I saw it in a flash sale for £165.62 including charger. So that is on the bike at the moment. With two Emates that take the same batteries they do get swapped about a bit but basically I have the working original battery from the £100 Emate and two working Yose batteries of different ages that all can get used.

The battery I have been most impressed by is the one fitted to my 2015 Haibike Yamaha that has has not been changed and still works really well and is now over 9 years old.

I've read some of your thread on your Haibike, 9 years on the same battery in regular use is amazing, if I ever went to the dark side (pre built mainstream mid drive bike) I would definitely consider Yamaha powered bikes.

 

[flecc]

if I ever went to the dark side (pre built mainstream mid drive bike) I would definitely consider Yamaha powered bikes.

25 years ago in 1999 the Yamaha complete mid drive bike with an NiMh battery was easily the best pedelec on our market, pretty good consistency over a quarter century.
.

 

[georgehenry]

Back when I bought my Haibike in 2015, Martin the owner of the shop I bought it from asked me if I would not prefer the hard tail Haibike that had the bosch motor with the piece of mind that a tried and tested motor system brought. That was the first year that Haibike had fitted the Yamaha system to their bikes so there was not any feedback on their relative reliability. In fairness to Martin he had organised a free test day which I had attended that had allowed me to ride both systems and quite a few bikes off road. I told Martin that I had preferred the feel of the Yamaha system in comparison with the Bosch and had no concerns about the build quality of the Japanese Yamaha system in comparison with the German Bosch. The Yamaha bike was much cheaper than the cheapest hard tail Bosch bike as well. Again Martin was clever to incentivise purchases from participants in the test day by offering a £100 discount if you bought a bike afterwards. The already well priced bike was reduced from £1,850 to £1,750 when I bought it.