Help and advice for my ebike

[Tallee]

Hi I'm new to this group I have a Victoria somerby pendleton ebike that I'm trying to replace the spokes on as they keep snapping,as far as I know DT swiss alpine are strong ones for ebikes unless anyone can recommend anything else please thanks,also I have a battery that won't charge,my fault as was recovering from car crash injuries and didn't think to keep it charged and read you can get them recelled.can you recommend anyone trustworthy and not highly expensive.theres someone on ebay but they want more than a new battery,thankyou

 

[sjpt]

The main expense of a battery is the cells, and add expensive labour for recelling and you can see why it won't necessarily save you money. Normally, if a battery is easily available and not absurdly expensive (eg many proprietary brands) recelling won't be worth while.

Jimmy at https://ebikebatteries.co.uk/ is the one people recommend here; I've never dealt with him personally.

 

[cyclebuddy]

Some bikes are known for weak or easily broken spokes. The Somerby isn't one of them. Most often, it's simply a case of buying a spoke key for circa £3 and watching a YouTube video to learn how to keep the spokes properly tensioned. It's routine maintenance, and a skill worth learning to avoid expensive repairs/re-spoking. If you're heavy and/or ride rough terrain, spokes will naturally loosen then ultimately break, so frequent checking is essential. Beyond that, you can have a wheel re-spoked with Sapim spokes, known for their durability.

As for the battery, as mentioned by sjpt, quite often a replacement can be lower cost than recelling. Ebay is a good source.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

The current model has thick 700x38 tyres and a 36 spoke wheel rear wheel plus a spring saddle. It looks a fairly robust design. If you are very heavy and carrying a lot of shopping at times then perhaps maybe think about thicker tyres and make sure you inflate the tyres so they are not so low pressure that they ground at times or too high pressure so they are rock solid and put all the road vibration through to the wheels and spokes and typically the rear tyre will be slightly higher inflated than the front tyre because more of the weight is at the rear. A common mistake is to inflate to the maximum pressure shown on the sidewall of the tyre but that may not be right for you. You want the sidewalls of the tyres to deflect slightly as you drop your weight on and off the saddle to maximise the suspension effect of the tyres. Once you have found these two tyre pressures write it down and carry this paper with you so you always know what pressure to inflate to. It will change if you change tyre sizes. This will also maximise your riding comfort and tyre grip on the road.

Maybe try to use a lower power level on the bike if possible. It doesn't look a hugely powerful hub motor and the fact the size of the motor causes the spokes to be shorter does add some strength to the spokes as longer spokes are flexed and fatigued more quickly hence the 36 spokes to reduce this issue. One of the benefits of a front motor often overlooked is it shares the power delivery between both wheels so at times it can give you better traction on certain surfaces a bit like a 4x4 vehicle and means the spoke load is shared more evenly between both wheels. However at other times traction is better with a rear hub motor because more weight is on that wheel.

A spoke tension gauge might help too.