AccuPro
New Member
- Region
- USA
So some background on me - I'm a 72 year old man, 5' 11", about 210 lbs. I have 50+ years on motorcycles and bicycles and am now retired and restore vintage Honda motorcycles for a hobby. I rode mountain bikes for about 20 years and got into Ebikes about 4 years ago. I'm rather anal and did over a years worth of research on Ebikes before pulling the pin on a 26" Bolton Blackbird in Nov. 2020, which I received in Sep. 2021.
I joined the Bolton Repair & Maintenance Facebook group and ended up being a paid subscriber to Bolton's "technician" YouTube channel to get advanced info etc. I participated in both of these groups while waiting for my Blackbird!
I was originally looking at RAD bikes and saw one of Kyle's (Bolton owner) videos comparing RAD against others and was impressed with Kyle's videos and then I started looking at his bikes. He does offer allot of bike for the money. I did find you could go on Alibaba and order the same bike for less money BUT you would have to take a risk with an unknown supplier, do all the QC yourself, etc.
The rub for me came as a result of my impression that Area 13 (aka Bolton) was unboxing and going over these bikes coming in from China prior to shipping them out to customers. He had his "special" Bolton tool, 3D printed logo's etc., etc., etc. Well the reality is, this does not happen and there does not appear to be a quality program in place to get systemic problems created during manufacturing fixed or addressed. Over time on the forum there were these reoccurring problems that kept coming up over and over and while Kyle and his team were always right there to send out replacement parts, or whatever the customer wanted, there did not seem to be any effort on Kyle's part to address these issues with the factory?? Most of the issues that come up are in essence manufacturing defects that were NOT caught at some kind of final production step OR in the case of Area 13, done by there technicians during setup! The ongoing consistent problems are loose everything from bottom brackets to spokes and everything in between. Motors that are intermittent and eventually go back to loose connectors, derailleurs significantly out of adjustment, and the big one for me was loose crank arms.
Many people have complained about the bottom bracket clicking or knocking while pedaling. The fix is to properly secure the crankarm onto the spindle. The spindle has a square tapered shaft that the square hole in the crankarm gets torqued onto, typically 50 to 60 foot pounds. The crankarm usually goes 1/2" to 3/4" or more onto this tapered shaft. Its nearly impossible to do this yourself as you are applying a significan force to a bolt on the end of the rotating spindle/cassette. This would typically be done in a factory jig during manufacturing as this is not something a customer would do or even have the tools to do.
So my Blackbird arrived and I fully inspected it and documented everything with pictures. For me I was willing to wait for Kyle's bike and maybe pay a little more then taking the risk of ordering from China directly. In fact at my age I wanted to rely on the "Bike Shop" to take care of everything for me, realizing in the case of mail order your basically only able to rely on them to unbox the unit and ensure everything was tight and properly adjusted before sending it out.
So its obvious the bike was not removed from the factory box as its tie rapped in place throughout with no evidence that any of this had been removed and redone. The box had been opened at the top on one end only and re-taped. I started tightening everything that was loose but have not trued the wheels yet due to loose spokes. The crankarms on mine did click/clunk like others had said so I did get it up on a stand and started looking at the crankarms, spindle, cassette, etc., that's when I found the right drive crankarm just fell off in my hand when I removed the loose screw. In my case the crankarms had never been torqued onto the spindle.
So I like Kyle and as his YouTube technician attempted to point these things out to him over time but never received a response or saw any actions as a result of my thoughts and opinions. So the reason for my dialog was to let others know that if your somewhat reluctant to order from one of these American based online sellers, but decided to bite the bullet and do it anyway, AND are older like me and are assuming the online seller is going to be going over your bike before you get it - I would pass on Area 13 (aka Bolton).
I joined the Bolton Repair & Maintenance Facebook group and ended up being a paid subscriber to Bolton's "technician" YouTube channel to get advanced info etc. I participated in both of these groups while waiting for my Blackbird!
I was originally looking at RAD bikes and saw one of Kyle's (Bolton owner) videos comparing RAD against others and was impressed with Kyle's videos and then I started looking at his bikes. He does offer allot of bike for the money. I did find you could go on Alibaba and order the same bike for less money BUT you would have to take a risk with an unknown supplier, do all the QC yourself, etc.
The rub for me came as a result of my impression that Area 13 (aka Bolton) was unboxing and going over these bikes coming in from China prior to shipping them out to customers. He had his "special" Bolton tool, 3D printed logo's etc., etc., etc. Well the reality is, this does not happen and there does not appear to be a quality program in place to get systemic problems created during manufacturing fixed or addressed. Over time on the forum there were these reoccurring problems that kept coming up over and over and while Kyle and his team were always right there to send out replacement parts, or whatever the customer wanted, there did not seem to be any effort on Kyle's part to address these issues with the factory?? Most of the issues that come up are in essence manufacturing defects that were NOT caught at some kind of final production step OR in the case of Area 13, done by there technicians during setup! The ongoing consistent problems are loose everything from bottom brackets to spokes and everything in between. Motors that are intermittent and eventually go back to loose connectors, derailleurs significantly out of adjustment, and the big one for me was loose crank arms.
Many people have complained about the bottom bracket clicking or knocking while pedaling. The fix is to properly secure the crankarm onto the spindle. The spindle has a square tapered shaft that the square hole in the crankarm gets torqued onto, typically 50 to 60 foot pounds. The crankarm usually goes 1/2" to 3/4" or more onto this tapered shaft. Its nearly impossible to do this yourself as you are applying a significan force to a bolt on the end of the rotating spindle/cassette. This would typically be done in a factory jig during manufacturing as this is not something a customer would do or even have the tools to do.
So my Blackbird arrived and I fully inspected it and documented everything with pictures. For me I was willing to wait for Kyle's bike and maybe pay a little more then taking the risk of ordering from China directly. In fact at my age I wanted to rely on the "Bike Shop" to take care of everything for me, realizing in the case of mail order your basically only able to rely on them to unbox the unit and ensure everything was tight and properly adjusted before sending it out.
So its obvious the bike was not removed from the factory box as its tie rapped in place throughout with no evidence that any of this had been removed and redone. The box had been opened at the top on one end only and re-taped. I started tightening everything that was loose but have not trued the wheels yet due to loose spokes. The crankarms on mine did click/clunk like others had said so I did get it up on a stand and started looking at the crankarms, spindle, cassette, etc., that's when I found the right drive crankarm just fell off in my hand when I removed the loose screw. In my case the crankarms had never been torqued onto the spindle.
So I like Kyle and as his YouTube technician attempted to point these things out to him over time but never received a response or saw any actions as a result of my thoughts and opinions. So the reason for my dialog was to let others know that if your somewhat reluctant to order from one of these American based online sellers, but decided to bite the bullet and do it anyway, AND are older like me and are assuming the online seller is going to be going over your bike before you get it - I would pass on Area 13 (aka Bolton).
The kit was $80 USD, so it was a nice upgrade that wasn’t too expensive. I had to make some corrections in the wiring, but all went well. I’ve worked with wire for the last 25 years and LOVE taking things apart (and back together). I also love troubleshooting and finding out not just where the problem is, but finding out why. When I bought my bike, I knew I was going to be the mechanic and electrician.
