What's the best maintenance free bike?

[cwah]

Hello all,

I'm starting to be sick to always repair my bikes. I do that every few days. Every few days there is something that does not work properly.

By order of frequency I can cite:
- Brake issues. And that's one of my biggest pain point. Brake pad wearing so quickly, pad rubbing against the disc brake or rim, bend disc or wheel making it rub, falling bolt, brake lever to re-adjust, brake cable getting worned out after few weeks...
- Flat tyres. Second biggest headache. Always always happen. Average once a month. I tried about all sort of puncture proof tyre and it still happens.
- Chain issues. Chain is misaligned. Get rusty. Fall off. Rub against my jeans. Need frequent cleaning and is quite a pain.
- Wiring issues. A simple fall on the floor or get wet and I start to have wiring issue. Especially at the connectors levels.
- Light/accessories robberies. Thieves will steal whatever is present on the handlebar or back of the bike. It needs to be bolted or they can even cut the wires
- Blown controller/charger. Get a nice long slope or carry a passenger and controller will blow. Charger blow randomly without reasons
- Broken motor. After several months of high power motor just blew apart.
- Battery wobbling/moving away. Vibration just end up tearing apart the holder. Sometime it takes few months.


It does feel that I have a huge amount of fix to do on the bike. And sometime I feel that I spend more time fixing the bike than driving it.


Now, I come to the idea of having a maintenance free bike. Something that is weather/time/thief proof. My only requirement is that it has to be able to be parked outside and reach 25mph.


My current idea is to have some Dutch drum brake bike to sort out my biggest pain of all time. The brakes. Then maybe a nice BBS02 with a belt drive (is it possible?) to reach 25mph and still have decent torque at low speed.


What's the best maintenance free bike/configuration that can be parked outside overnight you can think of?

 

[Alan Quay]

For low maintenance, look for hub gears, with back pedal brake. Virtually maintenance free. Of course you will now need a front hub motor or crank drive.

I find that good quality rim brakes give the least trouble, so maybe those at the front. Lube the pivots once in a while, change the pads every 1500 miles or so.

That said, if I was tearing up city streets at 25mph I'd want hydraulic disks back n front.

 

[amigafan2003]

Scott sub 10 is very low maintanence.

http://www.evanscycles.com/products/scott/sub-speed-10-2014-hybrid-bike-ec056054

Of course, if you add an electric kit to it, you introduce adtional points of failure. Stick with a low power, light weight front hub (something like a Q100) and it doesn't matter if the kit breaks down as it's light enough to just ride like a normal bike.

Oh, and don't carry passengers on your bike ;-) If you want to do that, get a motorbike.

Three rules to building cars and ebikes:-

If it's cheap and reliable, it isn't fast.
If it's cheap and fast, it isn't reliable.
If it's fast and reliable, it isn't cheap.

Pick the two most important to you.

 

[KirstinS]

Absolutely agree with mike on hub gears. In particular the shimano alfine 8 has proved itself to be all but bullet proof. Far more do than the nexus series or the alfine 11. Mine has lasted 4.5 years of 5 days a week commuting in rain or sun in a salt air environment (South Coast of England)

As for brakes I don't quite agree with mike that rim brakes are most maintainence free

I'd say You need hydraulic disc brakes. Not cable disc brakes. Hydraulics adjust themselves. Cable brakes need adjusting all the time as you are finding out the hard way, unfortunately. This is one source of your pad wear problems

I totally agree with mike that hydraulics on the speeds you do in town are essential. Dutch drum brakes is madness IMHO !!

Then some marathon plus tyres - no more flats (or far far fewer)

 

[JohnCade]

Kalkhoff S pedelec one of the Endeavor range. Expensive but Kalkhoffs don't need much attention. That's one of the reasons why they are expensive. Very waterproof too. But nothing is thief proof...An eighteen months old one sold on eBay for only £700 last week, if the seller completed the sale that is and he had very low f/b.

Or you could buy a s/h standard Impulse one with hub gears and borrow the dealer device to change the software to go up to 25 mph or so. It would have hydraulic rim brakes which are really good, or disks depending on the model.

 

[KirstinS]

Also, in case you hadnt seen this, woosh have a good page on the zoom brakes and how to adjust

http://wooshbikes.co.uk/support/ZOOM-MTB-Mechanical-Disc-brakes.pdf

 

[JohnCade]

The best thing to do with Zoom brakes is to throw them away and replace them with some cheap hydraulic ones though. The front one anyway. They won't stay adjusted for more than a couple of days or so and they don't stop very well at all.

 

[One_Box]

Sorry, a maintenance free bike does not exist

It sounds like a moped may well be a better bet for you if you want to achieve 25 MPH on a regular basis.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Brakes is easy. You need proper hydraulic disc brakes front and rear. The reason that your back one wears out is because it can't stop you. You need a front one to stop you, and then all your brake problems will be over. Rim brakes are totally unsuitable for a 25mph electric bike.

Any chain will go dry and rusty if you use it in the rain, especially when there's salt on the road. A chain guard will stop you from getting oil on your legs.

Hub gears might need less maintenance,but I don't believe that the benefit is worth the expense and inconvenience to change. Obviously, if you have a choice of two bikes, one with and one without hub-gears, and everything else is equal, choose the one with hub-gears provided that you can still pedal at 25 mph. Derailleur gears are more or less maintenance free. I've never had to do anything to mine other than an occasional squirt of oil, but I don't ride in the rain every day.

For lights, use the little clip-on Aldi ones. They're bright enough for normal use, but you'd have to replace the batteries from time to time. They're only £2.99, so buy a few.

You blow controllers because you over-power and over-load everything. You mustn't put your motor under high load when it's turning at less than half of its maximum no-load speed.

To stop thieves, make your bike as simple as possible. No LCD, removable lights, nothing on the handlebars except the brakes grips, throttle and gear-changers.

You get wiring problems because you have wires going everywhere with every accessory fitted. If you keep it simple with just the basic stuff connected: controller, battery, throttle, motor, maybe one brake switch.

If you want ready-made, a derestricted Kalkhoff impulse would be a good choice. You should be able to reach 35mph. The problem is that thievability increases.

 

[JohnCade]

Sorry, a maintenance free bike does not exist

It sounds like a moped may well be a better bet for you if you want to achieve 25 MPH on a regular basis.

You'd have to maintain that too. I think he's talking about more than just maintenance with his current bike though.

 

[Geebee]

Are Zoom discs particularly bad? I have Tektro's on one trike and one MTB and both have done a lot of k's with zero issues once setup correctly.

Ultimate zero maintainence brakes are drum brakes, there are some larger diameter ones out these days, should work a treat on small wheels.

 

[JohnCade]

I had Zoom disks on my last bike and yes they are bad.

Interesting about drum brakes though. I've never ridden a bicycle with them, but I've had a lot of motor bikes and cars with drum brakes in the past, and they always needed plenty of adjustment and maintenance.

 

[neptune]

I have a theory that on any vehicle, the amount of maintenance needed is proportional to the square of its average speed. In other words, go fast if you must, but expect to pay for it.

 

[KirstinS]

I have a theory that on any vehicle, the amount of maintenance needed is proportional to the square of its average speed. In other words, go fast if you must, but expect to pay for it.

May I provide an exception to that rule

My daughters s0dding pushchair never goes above 4mph (walking pace) and requires near constant maintenance !

 

[Geebee]

I had Zoom disks on my last bike and yes they are bad.

Interesting about drum brakes though. I've never ridden a bicycle with them, but I've had a lot of motor bikes and cars with drum brakes in the past, and they always needed plenty of adjustment and maintenance.

My first recumbent trike had drums, over 15,000 km and from memory I turned the adjuster on the brake lever once in that time, I pulled the drums off to check the pads prior to sale and they were barely worn.
I seem to recall Greenspeed mentioning 35,000 km pad life, I could be wrong though.
I like how they modulate they need a fair amount of pressure to lock up, and on smaller wheels they work a treat.

Actually that trike would have been the perfect example of low maintenance, fitted tyres when worn out, one puncture and clean and lubed the chain regularly in that 15,000 km's.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Cwah's rear brake is a Zoom hydraulic one. They're totally different to Zoom cable discs. The reason he has problems with it is because he goes very fast and has no effective front brake.

 

[KirstinS]

Cwah's rear brake is a Zoom hydraulic one. They're totally different to Zoom cable discs. The reason he has problems with it is because he goes very fast and has no effective front brake.

Ahh sorry - I misunderstood

 

[axolotl]

Just take a look at the bikes people use in the Netherlands. Take your sporty derailleur gears and chuck them in the bin - they're fiddly, unreliable and totally unsuited to low-maintenance commuting. This will solve your chain issues too because the chain isn't being forced to jump around all the time when you change gear. Upgrade brakes to hydraulic discs and it's job done on the mechanical side.

As for the electrics, personally I'd go for a professionally-built bike with a quality branded drive system - either Panasonic or Bosch crank drive both work well with hub gears. I'm told the Bosch hub drive is good too, and it may well be, but as it forces you to use crappy derailleurs, I wouldn't consider it.

 

[jackhandy]

Please note _ Crappy derailleurs are used on All pro & competition bikes.
You just need a bit of gumption to get the best out of them.

 

[Gubbins]

If you treat your bike as you would your wife it will work better and longer! Whatever you ride, leaving things until they go rusty, seize up or fall off is not the way. 10 minutes of preventative maintenance is worth a day of fannying about when things go wrong.