The tale of a £100 second hand electric bike.

georgehenry

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2015
1,425
1,251
Surrey
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.
 

Tony1951

Esteemed Pedelecer
Mar 27, 2016
305
214
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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

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2015
1,425
1,251
Surrey
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.
 
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georgehenry

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2015
1,425
1,251
Surrey
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.
 
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georgehenry

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2015
1,425
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Surrey
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.
 
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Nealh

Esteemed Pedelecer
Aug 7, 2014
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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.
 
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georgehenry

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 7, 2015
1,425
1,251
Surrey
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.