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Maintenance

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After taking delivery of your new LifeCycle electric bike.

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Our advice is to ride gently for a few days, let the motor bed in and settle and the brakes find their bite.

When your bike is new, fully discharge the battery by riding it, and re-charge charge the battery fully. Do this at least once when the battery is new. This conditions the battery cells,and after that, there is no need to discharge the battery before recharging. LifeCycle batteries have no memory effect so you can top them up at any time, and we recommend that you do this.

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After a few weeks your new electric bike gear and brake cables may stretch a little causing the brakes to feel a little softer and the gears not to change so smoothly between gears.

This is normal stuff and is easily corrected with a little adjustment. The gears and brakes have adjustment barrels built into them for this very purpose. Any new electric bike will need these adjustments and your new electric bike is unlikely to need any further cable adjustments after the initial period of settling in.

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If you feel confident to make these adjustments yourself, you can click on our adjustments section for help and advice, alternatively call us and speak to our help desk or arrange to bring it in and we will do it for you free of charge.

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Your new electric bike should be checked regularly so you can make any adjustments that may become necessary to keep it in full working order.

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Routine maintenance.

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Following our advice – we are experts in electric bikes after all! – will help keep your bike in top condition! An electric bike is a sophisticated piece of engineering, so it will pay off in the long to keep your eye on your bike and take proper care of it.

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  • Keep your tyres pumped up – This is very important! You’ll be surprised at how much smoother the ride is and how much better your e-bike will perform with the correct tyre pressure. Every bike’s tyres have the right psi written on the side, plus you can find the correct pressure required in the manufacturer’s manual that came with the bike. Our standard tyre as fitted to the bike needs 60 psi for optimum performance.

  • Keep your chain oiled – But don’t drip oil on it – this will only make a mess! Simply take oily cloth, hold onto the chain and turn the pedals to allow the chain to smear the oil on. Don’t go overboard as you only need to keep it lightly oiled. We get so many bikes in for service that have been over oiled and end up with a completely gunked up chain and derailleur which affect gear shift performance. Use a lubrication oil and not WD40 which is not suitable for bike chains. There are many specialist chain oils on the market but you can't go far wrong with good old 3-in-1.

  • Don’t power wash your electric bike – Power washing your bike could cause unnecessary damage to the electrics, battery, controllers and mechanics.

  • Your new bike is quite an investment so clean it regularly with car shampoo or one of the many bike cleaning products– You can clean electric bikes with a simple wash down with a car shampoo, warm water and cloth. This will keep your bike looking like it is brand new. Be sure to avoid cleaning any areas that need to be greased thoroughly in order for the bike to work such as hubs, bottom brackets and so on.

  • Keep an eye on the brakes, they wear slowly and you get used to them so you may not be aware that they are performing less  effectively as they were when the bike was new.

  • Check over the tyres for any damage or nasties stuck in the tread.

  • Once a year, book it to our service department for a complete and comprehensive service.

  • Regularly check the condition of the battery charger and bring it to us if there are loose wires, broken casing or loose plugs as this can be hazardous.

 

Just a few moments of maintenance every week can make all the difference; Take care of your electric bike, and your bike will take care of you.

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Routine adjustments.

1. Gears.

Firstly raise the bike so that the back wheel is off the ground and can spin freely. This is not so easy with an electric bike of course as they are heavy; try a turbo trainer if you have one but note that many do not stretch wide enough to accomodate the wider rear wheels on hub motor electric bikes. If you have a stand, which you should have if it is a LifeCycle , tilt the bike over onto the stand and spin the wheel that way to check gears.

Alternatively you can turn the bike over, which we don't recommend but many people do carry out maintenance this way

Make sure the battery is off and the key removed for safety. Then turn your attention to the gears. If you change down to a lower gear but the chain is not moving to the bigger cog and is making a clicking sound then you need to tighten the cable using the barrel adjuster on the rear derailleur - to do this turn it anti clockwise. If the chain is not changing down onto a smaller cog when you select a higher gear turn the same adjuster clockwise.

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And that’s it. Don’t forget to keep the chain and gears lightly oiled.

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2. Brakes.

Brakes are critical for the safety of yourself and others so keep them working well. LifeCycle bikes can be fitted with 3 types of brakes and they will be dealt with separately here.

Rim brakes - Two blocks of rubber that are squeezed against the wheel rim. So it seems sensible to check the pads are lining up against the rim and that the rim is not contaminated in any way. If the brake lever feels spongy, that is it pulls in a long way before you feel the brakes coming on, then the cable has probably become too slack. You can rotate the barrell adjuster anticlockwise to tighten the cable and make the lever feel taughter when braking.

Cable disc brakes - Because these types of brakes utilise a cable they can be adjusted the same way as rim brakes above.

Hydraulic brakes - These brakes are self adjusting and should not need adjustment.

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Keep oil and grease away from your brake components, they should only be cleaned with a proprietary brake cleaning fluid.

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3. Tyres.

When you buy a bike from Electric Bike World you probably hear us say that the tyre pressure is very important many times. However very few bikes come into the shop with tyres inflated to the recommended pressure. Ride quality and motor efficiency improves so try to keep it at around 60 psi. Note that a tyre at 40psi will feel much like a tyre at 60 psi so a touch test is not always sufficient, a tyre pressure meter is a useful device. If you pass a garage on your commute most of them have free air pumps and with these you can set the pressure before inflating.

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4. Removing rear wheel - Click here for our guide to removing the rear wheel.

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