This week brought these two bikes past the workbench, one is heading out, the other just coming in.
On the way out is the black A2B Galvani, it came out in 2015, so it is old as far as ebikes go. Here is Electric Bike Review’s take on the Galvani. A quality ebike for the day, it has a gearless 350Watt motor (think longevity), front shocks, fenders, hydraulic disk brakes, build-in lights and rack. It needed a new inner tube, some chain lubrication, a brake adjustment, and shift indexing, and the deraileur was stuck/rusted in place. Its battery was dead, but I was able to find a factory original that was used, but in good shape, and now it is ready to ride again!
The orange RadWagon just came into the shop, it after 3 years, something went wrong on the electrical side of things. I tested the battery, it was putting out plenty of volts. Then I disconnected the motor, and reconnected it to my RadWagon, and the motor worked fine. As the display had been recently replaced, it seems most logical that the controller went bad (the display gave a variety of errors, then just turned off). So it has been ordered, and is on the way, I am confidant that it will cure the problem, but I am not sure. There can be mulitiple points of failure in any system, and the best way to figure it out is to fix one after the other till it works!
About Ebike Warranty Service I’ve found that many support techs at the major brands want you to start with the cheapest possibility, then work from there, company policy, even when the solution seems obvious to me (I’m looking at you Lectric). I did the full monty with the great folks at Vela (Brazilian commuter style), all the diaganostics were for naught, and after several internationl work sessions, they sent a new bike, and paid for all my labor besides, a good company!
I now judge ebike brands not so much on their level of quality, but rather on how they fix their problems when they occur. Different quality levels are needed as many folks have budget constraints, so no judgement on $1000 ebikes. So an inexpensive brand with good service can be preferable to a more expensive brand with poor or non-exitant service except in major cities, (I am looking at you Van Moof)!