BH bike truck load at Lenny's. Anyone else catch this on their Instagram?

[Edrummer]

I would walk away.
Brose in the USA is basically non existent. There is one shop in Colorado that works on Brose. I had my motor overhauled last year with all new bearings and a belt. I have since put over 7000 miles on it. But……….when I made the call to get it fixed , the first question they asked is …..” is the engine throwing any error codes?” If it was throwing errors, then the motor would have to be sent back to Brose in Germany. My answer was no , and so I sent it away to be overhauled. Unfortunately you don’t have that option because you can’t turn it on to see if it’s throwing any errors.

There is a company that showed a drop in replacement motor for Brose at a recent European bike show. No specs were given if a generic battery replacement coupled with the drop in motor would work. But if they allow that, it would be a life saver for anyone in your situation.…….me included. The company’s name is oli-ebike.com

 

[EMGX]

That's the elephant in the room with these proprietary mid drive ebikes. Something significant goes wrong and you have a unusable multi-thousand $ bike that can't be fixed or the cost to fix would be unjustified. I'm not sure what I would do if in the same scenario with my BH gravel bike (yamaha). If something goes wrong with one of my mid drive Tongsheng aftermarket conversions there are lots of options. Virtually every part is available to end consumer, only requires generic battery. Bike can easily be converted back to stock. There are potential issues (some of which can be avoided with diligence) but nothing of the magnitude of proprietary bikes. Still, I love my BH bike and happy to have it.

 

[pxpaulx]

Over 1200 posts, started a thread about a bike he expressed excitement for, purchased and influenced others to buy, was to have been delivered well over a month and a half ago - but now nothing. Curious what might have gone awry.

Too funny!

So to start, yes something did happen with the delivery - one of the screen cables was pulled out of the housing (not sure if that happened during packing/shipping or some other point). Anyway, CL had a tech coming up to the twin cities the next weekend - they dropped by and swapped with another display and I was good to go. Immediately after that my wife and I both came down with covid, so we'd been out of commission and haven't had too much time to ride since. Only about 50 miles on the bikes so far, with no issues outside of the initial screen problem.

And yes, I started a thread about great deals on bikes I was excited to get. So what? Still better than any of the fly-by-night $1,500 parts-bin bikes people are buying online by a mile, for not much more $.

These bikes are #5 and #6 from BH for us. I have appreciated everyone of them, and found them to be quality bikes with unique designs and frame-integrated batteries going back many years. Since I already had an Atom X bike which I really like, I jumped at the chance to pick up 2 more for my wife and I. Plain and simple.

 

[pxpaulx]

Creating drama where there is none. I was in on hooking up 7 people with the BH bikes and accepted and assembled 5. Although there were a few hiccups all is good and owners are extremely happy. Basically they got BroseS motor, 720wh 21700 cell batteries with decent suspension and components at half price. All bike conform to US Class 1 regulations and top out @ 20mph. I do believe they are grey market bikes as had been suggested awhile ago.

All but one are the AtomPro frame which is different looking but rides well. Although there are some braze ons above the shock they are pretty worthless cause you'd never fit a bottle in there. Maybe a tool kit. One of the bikes is a more conventional frame but still has the 720wh battery, As far as they go basically equivalent to low end levo's, except the carbon ones.

Also got one of the 29" Xtep Shimano models, not shown as well as 2 like the second from left carbon fiber type that went direct to AZ, with an E7000 and 720wh battery and XT in a beautiful blue color that ended up almost matching the owners car.....

View attachment 136226

Looks like at least one bike you received is a 2021! Seems like there was a combination of the 2 model years in the load of bikes they received:

2021 BH ATOMX Lynx 5.5 Pro-L E-Bike​

 

[J.R.]

Specialized and Serial 1 (Harley) both US companies, use Brose motors. Brose is very much alive and well in the USA.

 

[Edrummer]

Specialized and Serial 1 (Harley) both US companies, use Brose motors. Brose is very much alive and well in the USA.

Go on the Serial 1 forum and you’ll see that alot of the dealers are not capable of servicing these Brose motors. Also…….there are no batteries available for purchase on their website! This has been the case since the bike has come to market.
It’s been almost 2 years now and they’re still not available.

 

[EMGX]

will post pics when it arrives!

Both bikes arriving tomorrow, super excited!

I don't disagree, you are too funny!
Nice bike, have fun with it.

 

[EMGX]

Specialized and Serial 1 (Harley) both US companies, use Brose motors. Brose is very much alive and well in the USA.

Maybe there is a chance for chez to have her bike at least diagnosed by a bike shop that sells/services Specialized then? Might be worth checking at least.

 

[J.R.]

Go on the Serial 1 forum and you’ll see that alot of the dealers are not capable of servicing these Brose motors. Also…….there are no batteries available for purchase on their website! This has been the case since the bike has come to market.
It’s been almost 2 years now and they’re still not available.

I made the point in fact that Brose is very much alive and well in the USA. It wasn't a reply to you. I know shops that are servicing these bikes, so I don't need to check.

 

[pxpaulx]

I made the point in fact that Brose is very much alive and well in the USA. It wasn't a reply to you. I know shops that are servicing these bikes, so I don't need to check.

Agreed. The other thing is at least in my case if I were to run into any problems I would go back to Lenny's to see what they can help with.

On a directly related note, I sold my Bulls FS e-stream 27.5 (the one in my profile pic with the yellow accent) to a local buyer after receiving my new bike. It was working when I sold it, but he ended up having trouble with the display and asked for any suggestions. I texted CL and asked if they could help, they said yep and I haven't heard from him since (no news = good news I assume, because he had texted me a few times with different questions). I will note that he was also able to get that bike correctly diagnosed locally in the twin cities, they were just unable to source parts from Bulls.

 

[Mike TowpathTraveler]

That's the elephant in the room with these proprietary mid drive ebikes. Something significant goes wrong and you have a unusable multi-thousand $ bike that can't be fixed or the cost to fix would be unjustified. I'm not sure what I would do if in the same scenario with my BH gravel bike (yamaha). If something goes wrong with one of my mid drive Tongsheng aftermarket conversions there are lots of options. Virtually every part is available to end consumer, only requires generic battery. Bike can easily be converted back to stock. There are potential issues (some of which can be avoided with diligence) but nothing of the magnitude of proprietary bikes. Still, I love my BH bike and happy to have it.

Regards to the BH Yamaha powered ebikes: The external battery on your BH gravel bike will fit on & "talk to" my Haibike Full FatSix PW powered bike. A couple years ago I did a local meetup with a forum member, he with his BH PWX drive Rebel and my Full FatSix. I put his battery on my bike and it worked just fine. Parts like the battery, controller and display are available pretty much anywhere and it's just replace-in-kind with a similar new part from the shelf. For repair parts, you just want to make sure you get the correct display and handlebar controller as they've changed from the PW to the PW-X series & they do not interchange with each other. So, in the long run, you and I will be fine as long as Yamaha makes available repair parts for the earlier PW motors.

The problem I think with the BH battery and why it might not match up with what Specialized uses is the actual battery case design and whatever exclusive "computer code" that Brose wrote for the BH bikes vs Specialized and other Brose brands.......

 

[JRA]

"Looks like at least one bike you received is a 2021! Seems like there was a combination of the 2 model years in the load of bikes they received:"

Hadn't noticed but seems like it is, a small btw and the new owner is in love with the bike.

I don't understand the negativity happening in this thread. Sure it was a gamble in a way but all involved were told of the potential drawbacks but were willing to get Levo class eMTB's for half price.

 

[tomjasz]

"Looks like at least one bike you received is a 2021! Seems like there was a combination of the 2 model years in the load of bikes they received:"

Hadn't noticed but seems like it is, a small btw and the new owner is in love with the bike.

I don't understand the negativity happening in this thread. Sure it was a gamble in a way but all involved were told of the potential drawbacks but were willing to get Levo class eMTB's for half price.

Half price no parts. Go figure…

 

[rjj19047]

That's the elephant in the room with these proprietary mid drive ebikes. Something significant goes wrong and you have a unusable multi-thousand $ bike that can't be fixed or the cost to fix would be unjustified. I'm not sure what I would do if in the same scenario with my BH gravel bike (yamaha). If something goes wrong with one of my mid drive Tongsheng aftermarket conversions there are lots of options. Virtually every part is available to end consumer, only requires generic battery. Bike can easily be converted back to stock. There are potential issues (some of which can be avoided with diligence) but nothing of the magnitude of proprietary bikes. Still, I love my BH bike and happy to have it.

I ride my rebel gravel x more than any of my bh bikes. What Tongsheng conversion upgrades did you do? I rode in the DC Ride in September and only used 8 percent of my battery.

 

[rjj19047]

Too funny!

So to start, yes something did happen with the delivery - one of the screen cables was pulled out of the housing (not sure if that happened during packing/shipping or some other point). Anyway, CL had a tech coming up to the twin cities the next weekend - they dropped by and swapped with another display and I was good to go. Immediately after that my wife and I both came down with covid, so we'd been out of commission and haven't had too much time to ride since. Only about 50 miles on the bikes so far, with no issues outside of the initial screen problem.

And yes, I started a thread about great deals on bikes I was excited to get. So what? Still better than any of the fly-by-night $1,500 parts-bin bikes people are buying online by a mile, for not much more $.

These bikes are #5 and #6 from BH for us. I have appreciated everyone of them, and found them to be quality bikes with unique designs and frame-integrated batteries going back many years. Since I already had an Atom X bike which I really like, I jumped at the chance to pick up 2 more for my wife and I. Plain and simple.

How do you like the carbon bike? I am glad you posted about the bikes. I was just browsing the forum and saw your post. I ended up buying 3 bikes and had a friend buy an Atomx Lynx 5.5 Pro. So thanks for posting!

 

[EMGX]

I ride my rebel gravel x more than any of my bh bikes. What Tongsheng conversion upgrades did you do? I rode in the DC Ride in September and only used 8 percent of my battery.

The BH (easymotion) rebel gravel x is a great bike. I had sort of been ignoring it but now back to riding it more regularly. I was able to buy a new 500wh battery for it from someone clearing inventory but usually just use the stock 400wh battery which has good range for how I ride.
I have two tongsheng mid drives. Bought the first one (36v 500w) for use on my wife's Dahon Briza folder but since she can't ride that bike anymore (at least until after she has hip surgery) I've put it on other bikes that I had sitting around. The only modification to that motor has been to replace the main gear and the reduction gear to make it compatible with a coaster brake and a deeper dish chainring for better chainline. Everything you can do with these motors is very easy and straightforward for the most part. Since then I've replaced those gears with stock since it is no longer on the coaster brake bike. Another TSDZ2 48v 750w that I put on a Schwinn hybrid bike, no modifications other than a 34t dished chainring for hill climbing. The 34t chainring bolts directly to the main gear with no spider in between. It is so easy and quick to remove a tongsheng and restore bike to stock that I frequently take them off and put them on other bikes for a while. It takes an hour or less total. I've put them on 6 different bikes just because and on and off a few bikes more than once. Parts tend to be inexpensive and widely available. I recently ordered another display (LCD6) and another speed sensor, $40 for both, because those two parts take more time to switch from bike to bike than installing the motor itself.

 

[tomjasz]

Cheap Chinese carbon can catastrophically fail. This from an engineer brother running a cabon fiber USA factory. Probably a bit skewed by having to compete but still an honest engineer . FWIW.

 

[J.R.]

Cheap Chinese carbon can catastrophically fail. This from an engineer brother running a cabon fiber USA factory. Probably a bit skewed by having to compete but still an honest engineer . FWIW.

As I recall, BH has frames built in Taiwan and Japan.

 

[tomjasz]

As I recall, BH has frames built in Taiwan and Japan.

My comments are aimed at those AliExpress carbon frames. Mea culpa…

 

[J.R.]

My comments are aimed at those AliExpress carbon frames. Mea culpa…

Your warning is 100% on point. Ebay and Amazon are chock full of cheap carbon fiber parts. Imagine leaning on carbon fiber mtb bars that cost $35.