What they don't tell you in all those youtube e-bike reviews.

All the reviews you see online for these e-bikes are for brand new e-bikes.  I don't ususually see a followup of the e-bike reviews after a year or even 2 years of use.  You really need to know how to fix your own bicycle and replace parts, if you want to own one.  This goes for regular bicycles too.

I'm a bit of a heavy user, riding 26 miles round trip, 2 days a week, to work, although the e-bike odometer shows 28, which is why I got an e-bike over a regular mountain bike.  It takes 45 minutes to get to work each way with the motor assist.  The exact same route by car takes 40 minutes, although, if I took the freeway or the back roads up a steep hill (for a bicycle) I could get there in 30 minutes, but I'd have to find parking.  I still only ride 2 days a week when it's not raining or too cold.  I skip a day in between so I can rest.  (I'm not trying to train for competitions, just getting in some weekly exercise.)

What I've found out these days, since production went to China, is that default bicycle parts such as brakes calipers, tires, inner tubes, are generally a bit sub par.  You will need to replace that first set much earlier than you think.  The Shimano brand derailers bend quite easily.  Even the frames had junk metal if you bought one of those cheap K-mart bikes.

Earlier bikes ones from the earlier part of the 1990s were decent, but starting aronud the late 1990s, they became junk when all the manufacturing started moving to China. I had my cheap, K-Mart Huffy mountain bike from the early 1990s and the original parts were solid.  If it didn't get stolen, I'd still have it.  They didn't fall apart or need replacements parts that quickly.  I rode a long time on them with the original parts.

The Kent Folding bike I bought around 2003 or 2004, had a decent frame compared to all the cheap bicycles.  It still had junk parts, which I've already described in a separate post.  I had to replace much of the parts in the first year.  The brake pads were extremely soft and wore down in a year.  I bought new pads from a local bike shop that sold pads made for hills and those lasted much, much longer.  I had used it for several years..

This junk parts problem seems to carry into the e-bike.  Maybe it was because I found this one through Amazon instead of the G-Force Bikes site, but I suspect it's just cheap Chinese manufacturing supply chains.  (That Amazon seller "disappeared" about a year later as did my original review.)  The frame itself seems sturdy enough.  However, The tires were exceedingly soft for an e-bike and punctured quite easily.  I've had several punctures on just my rear tire.  I somehow miss everything on the front tire, but the rear one seems to hit anynthing the front one misses.

The rear tire wore completely down to the Pinkish red wear marks at only 900 miles on the odometer, around a year of riding.  That's a really short amount of rides.  The indicators started showing one morning, and on the return trip, it was a full streak.  The front tire started show pink at 2400 miles and I'm still riding on it.  The replacement tire I bought was not as soft as the originals and at 1500 miles, it still has decent thread thickness and I suspect I could get to 4000-5000 miles on it.  The tire I bought claimed to be puncture resistant and a 3.5" deck screw went through it.  It wasn't even the pointed end the poked through, but the bigger head which stuck itself 3" into the tire.  I still have not gotten a puncture on the front tire.

My brakes wore down at around 2500 miles on the odometer.  It was already thin, and during this time it sapped my battery power because it was resting on the rotor too much.  At first, I thought my battery was already going bad and was losing capacity.  I started hearing screeching one day and upon inspection, my brake pads had completely worn down.  I immediately ordered new brake pads and had to skip a ride until it got delivered.  Once I replaced them, my battery range came back.  The original brake pads were too soft.  The new ones let me stop in a shorter distance.  They're not like motorcycle or car brakes and don't need as much force, so why did the original pads wear down so quickly.

Fortunately the actual frame seems sturdy enough, but the derailer seems like it would be damaged more easily if there wasn't a derailer guard.  The derailer felt sturdy in the beginnig, but the cable seems to have streched a bit and needs adjustment already.  I don't remember needing that much adjustment so soon on older derailers, although, maybe I'm just not be remembering it correctly.

I wonder how bad other e-bikes are after a year or 2 of riding.  My bike seemed solid during the first year, but all the wear problems started appearing once I've ridden it for a year.  This isn't exclusive to e-Bikes.  I've had this similar problem with regular bikes in the past.