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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

Loved my e-bike. Hated the constant maintenance required. Is there a relatively maintenance free bike (electric or otherwise)? I don't spend my weekends tinkering with my car, so I don't see why I should have to with my bike either.

Some things which went wrong with the bike before I abandoned it: punctures, chain falling off (3 times), rear derailleur completely destroyed itself, loose joints (everywhere and needed tightening almost every journey), left crank fell off (apparently very common on all bikes). I ended up riding with a complete toolkit.

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This question could probably be better answered on, say, an appropriate subreddit.

There is a serious difference between the sort of bike you get at a department store and the sort of bike you can get at a bike ship in terms of component quality. Good components can last a ridiculous length of time. You can get puncture resistant tires if you are willing to pay the price.

Chains are still a maintenance weak spot for bikes (they shouldn't fall off). There are belt driven bikes that are supposed to be more reliable than chain driven bikes.

Point taken, although in this case I didn't buy a "bike-shaped object", but something that cost about US$1200 (apparently that's not enough to spend for a decent e-bike).

That's dirt cheap for an electric bike. I don't think you get good quality parts for that price.

My human powered bike is in similar price range (should be a bit cheaper in the US) and I've had to do some maintenance on it. It has quality parts but chains and sprockets get wear and tear and needs to be compensated by small adjustments (derailleurs, chain tensioner, etc) and the occasional spare part.

I get my bike maintained at a bike shop about twice a year and regularly oil it. But I get 2000+ miles a year.

I could do it myself for less but I don't have a space to work and store tools in.

For low maintenance, the cheapest geared option is to use a hub-geared bike. Since the chain never shifts, it's heavier gauge and experiences less wear. It's also fitted tighter, so is very unlikely to drop off.

As upofadown mentions, belt drives reduce maintenance even further - I have this setup on a hub geared bike I use for long tours. Before, I'd clean and oil my chain every 3 or 4 days on tour, now I just need to change the oil in the hub yearly. However, you can get a similar effect more cheaply by using a sealed chain cover, as seen on most Dutch bikes (it's no accident that these are the most popular commuter bikes there)

I find cable disk brakes to be another good low-maintenance option (compared to eg canti brakes constantly needing toed in, and changing pads is easy).

You can go tubeless to prevent punctures, but retrofitting that to existing wheels is messy and more work than I've had in a couple of years worth of punctures. For tour/commute I just rely on tyres with kevlar protection (eg Schwalbe Marathon Plus). They cost a little more than standard tyres but you save on tubes in the long run.

All of this increases weight, but not a lot. If you're looking for low maintenance, you're not racing, and you can probably easily lose more weight by riding your bike than you can shed by changing parts.

I ride with just the usual tools - multitool, levers, pump, spare tube - but another option is using a folding bike. I also have a brompton and would often ride that on a city commute with no tools at all; if things go wrong (which they never did) my backup plan was always to fold it up and jump on public transport, fixing it later.

And a crank falling off is _very rare_ on all bikes.

I can't speak to ready-made ebikes but from building a couple myself I know that they can be made relatively maintenance-free (of course you'll need to replace brake pads and tires once in a while, and other standard bike maintenance).

For the punctures, get better tires. My personal recommendation is the Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires. They're made to comply with EU standards required for e-vehicles going up to 50km/h (i.e., ones that require a license and inspections). I had three punctures my first year, second year I switched to these and haven't had a puncture in the two years since.

The chain falling off sounds like bad workmanship. I had a similar issue with my first bike which was a mid-drive. The motor shifted the chain line slightly outwards, and that was enough to cause drops. I got a new front sprocket that cups inwards to correct the chain line and have had no chain drops since then (about two years also). It's surprising to me that an off-the-shelf ebike would have such issues, it suggests shoddy design work and/or insufficient testing.

Loose joints again sounds like a workmanship problem. I'm a software and electronics guy, not a mechanic, but I don't have any such issues on my bike. The first time I mounted the motor I didn't tighten it hard enough and it worked itself loose (still worked, I just noticed that it had a bit of play). Tightened it again and no such issues since.

The left crank coming out is not something I've heard as being common on bikes. It's never happened to me in the 15000km I've put on my ebikes, or the thousands I put on it before installing the motor. Sounds like it just wasn't tightened well enough, which again suggests shoddy workmanship.

All in all, it sounds like you got unlucky and either bought from a disreputable manufacturer, or you got a lemon. Either that or my amateur builds are much better done than the purpose-built ebikes being sold, but I doubt it.

You can get a "race face" front sprocket that has alternating thick-thin teeth. This holds the chain more tightly and makes it much more difficult to fall off.

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