Explorer-1
Have bike, will travel
- Region
- USA
- City
- Boston North Shore
July 4th independence day started with a 65km little trip to the beach and the long way home. The odometer on my RCS ended the day at 1035 km, so I thought it was time to share my thoughts. I'll start with my over all impressions, but continue reading if you want to hear about the warts.
Juiced eBike RCS purchased Nov. 12th 2019 on a Holiday sale that they started a bit early. Saved a couple hundred dollars, but nothing major. The bike was delivered just about a week later, which was fantastic, better than I was expecting. I was very happy about that. This is only my second e-bike and I purchased it for the larger battery (19Ah Advertised), and to try FAT Tires as I often was riding on sandy trails that could be very tricky with narrow tires, and though heavy washouts where the mud was too much at times for narrow tires.
My Overall Impressions
After 1000km I feel that the RCS is a very nice bike, and I am very happy with it. It met my expectation that I bought it for really well. The one battery is large enough to get me to and back from many of my destinations (I carry 1, and sometimes 2 spare batteries with my other bike the 2018 DJ-ebilkes MTB). Still I have range anxiety on the RCS as I've never taken it on trips long enough to exhaust the battery, I will get a better idea of range hopefully before the 2000km. I've taken its on my typical 55-65 km trips, and it has worked well. I'm typically using 10-12 Wh/km, and around 8 Wh/km when I'm being more conservative; as calculated by the display on the bike, but I don't have a lot of confidence in those numbers although they seem to align with my real world travels on my other bike.
The bike is big and heavy which can sure be a problem on some more challenging trails, and getting around trail barriers meant to keep Motor Vehicles out. Some quality control problems, but it seems the same with all the on-line vendors. No one is checking very carefully the components or assembly of these bikes.
The bike assembly was pretty straight forward, as there were no missing parts. There was one incorrect part, that I was able to make work, and I added a few washers and lock-washers to the assembly, as I felt they were a good idea. There were two manufacturing issues I had to work around, one with the frame, and one component installation issue i discovered later that I was just barely able to work around. I didn't call the Vendor for either of these issues (details further down). Assembly instructions are pretty poor, and there are no videos that actually match this specific bike.
Performance of the bike is fantastic, just what I had hoped for over my other e-bike. I live near the coast so I have a lot of fairly flat terrain and hills are not much of an issue except for shorter durations and on some trails. Performance is above my DJ-MTB.
General - More good stuff
Below I will talk about a lot of things, many bad things, but overall I love this bike, and it met my needs and expectations completely. Durability is still to be determined.
More Details, some not so good
The Warts / What the He?? were they thinking
1. A few things leave me scratching my head on the overall bike
Assembly - The bad parts
Serious issue with Manufacturer's Assembly
Operational issues
Summary of the General Issues; That his quite a long list of bad things, but we shall not dwell on them too much. Only one really serious issue. although the brake cable length and routing really bugs me. If you are buying on-line that ships their bikes without inspecting them from the factory then I feel these issues are going to happen. I hear of issues event with the top name brand bikes that are crazy. No robotic assembly and testing for bikes yet it seems.
Components
Generally I'm very happy with the components installed on the bike. They generally work well. The brakes are good, but personally I prefer the simpler adjustments and maintenance of mechanical linkage brakes, but hydraulic are nice to operate. The indexed-shifter works very well and was correctly and precisely aligned from the factory; however just not a fan of this style of shifter and it prevented me from moving the throttle from the left to the right where I prefer it, the ergonomics would just not work. Still most I think most would prefer this shifter over more basic ones, and probably love it.
Some Rambling
To repeat some of my conclusions above, I really like this bike, it is great to ride. My DJ-MTB feels small and fragile for the first 5min after I’ve been riding the RCS for a while yet it is not it is really a tough bike.
I had to add some cable wraps to the RCS to tame all the long cables at the front of the bike, and to protect them for trail riding. With the high rise handle bar there was not enough room to add all my accessories, so I added a daughter-bar and that worked great and looks great.
I go on some long rides, my typical ones are 55-65km, by record was 95km, but just recently I broke that with a 112km ride that would have been more but conditions were not right. Those long rides were both on my DJ-MTB using 2x625Wh batteries, the 95km one may have used 3 batteries because I wanted higher speed when returning, but the second battery was not depleted.
The RCS battery 52V/19Ah (~971Wh) is fantastic. It really means on most known trips I just need the one battery and it has still great power and able to still hit 40km/h or close at the end of my journeys. However for longer trips or more exploratory ones where I don't really know how far I will go I take the DJ-MTB with 3 batteries.
I'd like to have an extra battery for the RCS, but an extra one from Juiced is $1300 + shipping. That is basically highway robbery, so I was working on adapting a better battery to the RCS. That project is delayed right now, as a small miracle happened and I found a smaller used 13Ah battery on eBay for cheap and it works great. These are big batteries though to carry extra, I’ve done it a few times, but never needed it. The day is coming very soon though where I'll break 100km on the RCS in a single ride. I'm really disappointed Juiced can not offer their battery at market standard pricing, let alone competitive pricing. The WW Titan battery is probably a better battery at 38% less, and other options exist for less. If small WattWagons can offer a quality-cell battery for so much less, then Juiced certainly can; everyone else in the industry manages to do it also. Any way I’m happy my situation is currently sorted and am exited about a future battery expansion project.
My DJ-MTB is still my better scout bike due to available battery capacity, being smaller, lighter, and more nimble, cargo capacity setup, and my explorations often involve some hiking or technical trails in forests. I'd like an even lighter bike that was just as tough. The RCS is great for open terrain, sand, and mud conditions, although the extra power of the RCS is really handy on some tougher trails, if they are not too tight. It has surprised me on a couple in a a good way.
I really want by next e-bike to have a minimum of 1500Wh on-board. I think 2kWh would be crazy good.
I've not really discussed the torque based pedal-assist based system on the RCS vs the cadence sensor based system on my DJ-MTB. I guess I’m really still trying to understand it in my own mind. I'm really happy with both. For the first time e-bike rider, the torque sensor system on the RCS would definitely be easier to adjust to. I’ve adjusted well though to my cadence sensor, I have a low cadence, and unlike when I was young and my Nishiki lived in it's 12th gear, life has taken it's toll on me. Both bikes have a throttle to help me through the rough spots or when I’m in the wrong gear, or just don't feel like switching gears often.
Juiced eBike RCS purchased Nov. 12th 2019 on a Holiday sale that they started a bit early. Saved a couple hundred dollars, but nothing major. The bike was delivered just about a week later, which was fantastic, better than I was expecting. I was very happy about that. This is only my second e-bike and I purchased it for the larger battery (19Ah Advertised), and to try FAT Tires as I often was riding on sandy trails that could be very tricky with narrow tires, and though heavy washouts where the mud was too much at times for narrow tires.
My Overall Impressions
After 1000km I feel that the RCS is a very nice bike, and I am very happy with it. It met my expectation that I bought it for really well. The one battery is large enough to get me to and back from many of my destinations (I carry 1, and sometimes 2 spare batteries with my other bike the 2018 DJ-ebilkes MTB). Still I have range anxiety on the RCS as I've never taken it on trips long enough to exhaust the battery, I will get a better idea of range hopefully before the 2000km. I've taken its on my typical 55-65 km trips, and it has worked well. I'm typically using 10-12 Wh/km, and around 8 Wh/km when I'm being more conservative; as calculated by the display on the bike, but I don't have a lot of confidence in those numbers although they seem to align with my real world travels on my other bike.
The bike is big and heavy which can sure be a problem on some more challenging trails, and getting around trail barriers meant to keep Motor Vehicles out. Some quality control problems, but it seems the same with all the on-line vendors. No one is checking very carefully the components or assembly of these bikes.
The bike assembly was pretty straight forward, as there were no missing parts. There was one incorrect part, that I was able to make work, and I added a few washers and lock-washers to the assembly, as I felt they were a good idea. There were two manufacturing issues I had to work around, one with the frame, and one component installation issue i discovered later that I was just barely able to work around. I didn't call the Vendor for either of these issues (details further down). Assembly instructions are pretty poor, and there are no videos that actually match this specific bike.
Performance of the bike is fantastic, just what I had hoped for over my other e-bike. I live near the coast so I have a lot of fairly flat terrain and hills are not much of an issue except for shorter durations and on some trails. Performance is above my DJ-MTB.
General - More good stuff
- This bike is SUPER stable. Geometry, tires, it all comes together to make a super stable bike. It is so easy to ride without hands on the bar, and I got it up to 54km/h going down hill and and it was perfectly stable and easy to control. If this bike had a more powerful motor, people would be cruising fast on it. It feels great to ride due to its super stable stance. Love this aspect of the bike.
- The FAT tires really work well for many of my rides that use dirt trails with sand and gravel in sections. The trails often have washouts and serious mud in the Spring or after heavy rains. This bike eats these trails and ultimately makes this bike quite useful to me even though I have the DJ MTB. They do produce quite a bit of road noise, but I was able to adjust to it fairly quickly, and prefer to ride off road anyway, but uses the roads to get there when necessary.
- This bike is pretty fast, especially on a fresh battery, and the speed lasts longer as the battery is depleted than my DJ bike. I was hoping for this, so I’m very happy. It also has extra power over my DJ MTB for hills that can be very handy off road.
- The throttle is always hot. That is even when the assist-level is 0 (off) the throttle still works. I really like this as I can use zero assist more often, and still have the throttle when needed. This is a bit dangerous though, and it means sometimes turning off the bike/display when bumping the throttle might be an issue. It would be really great if there was just a pushbutton on the top of the throttle to turn it off, so it would be easy when lifting the bike over rocks and trees or steps to have the throttle disengaged; just quicker than turning on and off the bike.
- The gearing on the RCS is great! This lets me know that Juiced did seriously think about some things, or got good consultation/information, as they nailed the gearing i believe for this bike. This also makes the bike very nice to ride. This is a nice improvement over my DJ MTB.
Below I will talk about a lot of things, many bad things, but overall I love this bike, and it met my needs and expectations completely. Durability is still to be determined.
More Details, some not so good
The Warts / What the He?? were they thinking
1. A few things leave me scratching my head on the overall bike
- A 1.5mm Hex head screws for the LCD display mount, now how stupid is that? A precision screwdriver sized screw used for a handlebar mount? What kind of psycho thought that was a good idea, should they even be allowed to work on bikes, let alone design components for them.
- No Rear Fender.... Juiced has to take the blame for this one. Hard to believe they know anything about what they are doing when they make a bike like this without a rear fender. The truth is they know and went with it anyway. When Juiced can't solve a problem they just seem to ignore it, they need to sell bikes.
- There is no videos or manual that actually matches this bike. First time assemblers or less inclined might find this very difficult when it need not be. Again, Juiced's focus seems more on new different bikes than customer experience.
- One issue (of a few) with the fork is that it does not really fit the bike, or is not protected by a stop. When the handlebars are all the way to the right or left the top of the shock (the adjustment control) hits the frame, OUCH! you'll have a nice scratch on your frame in no-time if you use the bike a lot in tight places and having to navigate around barriers or your bike falls in some case. You could end up in breaking the shock.
Assembly - The bad parts
- The assembly videos on the website never actually feature a Rip-Current S, and I don’t believe a single one of them was even accurate. Even the unboxing video was wrong, but that one didn’t really matter unless you are looking for Zip-Ties that do not exist.
- The paper manual that is included in the box is talking about some other bike, mounting the front tire is all wrong. It did get their generic LCD correct, and mounting of the handlebar with the 4 screws. It says to verify the tires are inflated properly, but does not say anything about what they consider is proper, or where to get that information.
- You have to figure out how to mount the front fender yourself, not too difficult, except the clamps you need to put on the fork to attache the stays were different sizes and only one fit the fork correctly. As others have mentioned the clamps are such poor quality that just hand tightening them you can push the head of the screw right through the clamp. I agree treat the clamps gingerly when tightening.
- Manufacturing defect; One of the mount points to mount the rear rack stays was not properly tapped to the correct depth and I twisted the head off the screw. Thank god for old quality vise grips, and having a shorter 12mm screw on hand.
- Manufacturing defect; The rear Rack mount extensions had a QC issue the thread hole was not parallel to the bottom drilled hole so it then did not align nice and flush with the lower attachment point as it is twisted relative to the frame.
- Manufacturing defect; My seat post had a gouge in it that left a surface burr so I had to file/grind that smooth as i didn’t want to be scratching up the tube.
- Design Issue; The front headlight was installed, but pointing at the sky. They probably intended you to actually unmount it though as you need access to the mount point to mount the front fender. I used some extra hardware of my own to secure the fender to the fork so the one nut does not hold both the fender and the light. This is a 'fiddley' part of installation, but more importantly it is a bad design with a suspension fork (not a good design with regular fork either) as the light is bouncing up and down with the tire, as well as poor angle. I have never used this light and mounted proper lighting.
- This one bugs me the most; Looks like the brake cables were sized and routed for euro/motorcycle layout, but then at the last moment the positions swapped to match silly US bike layout, but cable length and routing was not changed. Really ugly and because they are hydraulic fixing them is a pain that most regular people will not want to mess with. If I could I would want to put them into their 'proper' positions. One day I will do it.
Serious issue with Manufacturer's Assembly
- Discovered later after some km when the chain started skipping; I was very unhappy to discover that they had installed the rear derailleur components incorrectly. The 'B' screw, or 'Tension' screw, for the derailleur adjustment was not working at all, it was a screw that was just spinning in free air when adjusted, and the manufacture had use lock-tite on the screw in a position where it had absolutely no effect. Luckily I was able to work it out such that I could just limit the derailleur and that seemed to be sufficient. I don't know how to fix this, I would have to remove the rear wheel to see if they alighted the tension adjustment on the axel incorrectly, if so it is likely broken now as it should not be possible to get the alignment wrong, but I don't know anything about this derailleur. I saw one other person report an issue with the RCS, which sounded very similar, unclear if they fixed it the same way, and it is unconfirmed it was the same issue.
Operational issues
- The Walk-Mode is not quite powerful enough for my uses off road, or steps, or in general if the bike is loaded. Some say my DJ-MTB has a walk mode that is too-fast, and I can see that on flat ground with an unloaded bike, but to me it has the power needed to get up steep trails, or get a loaded bike home with a flat; the RCS just is not good for any of that, it might be good for slow walkers on a flat surface, I've never needed that. Since the throttle is hot all the time though that can get me out of most situations, except it has a power/stall cut that can make just a few steps a problem at times. I also find on the LCD it is hard to keep the walk mode active as the display is not solidly mounted and you have to keep pressure on the button to keep it in locked mode. Most people would probably think the walk mode is fine though, not heard any other complaints.
- I sometimes miss having an easy way to have the trip OD on the main screen, but it's a very small thing and generally I'm fine with the way it works.
- Another problem with the fork is that it does not really fit the bike. When the handlebars are all the way to the right the top of the shock (the adjustment control) hits the frame, OUCH! you'll have a nice scratch on your frame in no-time if you use the bike a lot in tight places and having to navigate around barriers or your bike falls in some case. You could end up in breaking the shock.
Summary of the General Issues; That his quite a long list of bad things, but we shall not dwell on them too much. Only one really serious issue. although the brake cable length and routing really bugs me. If you are buying on-line that ships their bikes without inspecting them from the factory then I feel these issues are going to happen. I hear of issues event with the top name brand bikes that are crazy. No robotic assembly and testing for bikes yet it seems.
Components
Generally I'm very happy with the components installed on the bike. They generally work well. The brakes are good, but personally I prefer the simpler adjustments and maintenance of mechanical linkage brakes, but hydraulic are nice to operate. The indexed-shifter works very well and was correctly and precisely aligned from the factory; however just not a fan of this style of shifter and it prevented me from moving the throttle from the left to the right where I prefer it, the ergonomics would just not work. Still most I think most would prefer this shifter over more basic ones, and probably love it.
- They did not include a rear-derailleur guard, that should be included on such a big heavy bike. I have not been able to verify if the frame can support mounting one, something I need to look into.
- The front suspension fork is not as shown in photos and videos, and so far seems to be complete crap (Maybe this should be in the “What the H*** Were They Thinking” category above). After several 100 km I decided to experiment with the pressure of the shock, I did get it to work a bit better and the adjustment lever now seems to do something, but it is still much worse than the cheep shock included on my DJ MTB. Basically I think buyers got hosed on the shock. I've learned to live with it, one day there may be a good drop-in replacement, but I understand that can be a bit of work. If anyone has tips on replacing the fork, let me know.
- The Battery - 52V / 19Ah ; I'm a battery guy, and one of my top 3 considerations with any e-bike is the battery. So far the battery has performed great. I really love the 52V drive on the Bafang motor. There have been a lot of problems with the battery mount in the past, no idea if the problems are really fixed, and no way to get the correct answer except watch for reports from newer owners. I use and extra rubber strap to secure the battery just in case, as sometimes i have to go over fairly jarring terrain. The Battery Charger is the typical cheap low quality variety, rated at 2.5Ah it does the job (slowly), and may not last or stay within spec for too long.
- I swapped out the seat, pedals, bell, rear light, and front light; so I can't comment too much on how they work, but felt they were not suitable for my needs.
Some Rambling
To repeat some of my conclusions above, I really like this bike, it is great to ride. My DJ-MTB feels small and fragile for the first 5min after I’ve been riding the RCS for a while yet it is not it is really a tough bike.
I had to add some cable wraps to the RCS to tame all the long cables at the front of the bike, and to protect them for trail riding. With the high rise handle bar there was not enough room to add all my accessories, so I added a daughter-bar and that worked great and looks great.
I go on some long rides, my typical ones are 55-65km, by record was 95km, but just recently I broke that with a 112km ride that would have been more but conditions were not right. Those long rides were both on my DJ-MTB using 2x625Wh batteries, the 95km one may have used 3 batteries because I wanted higher speed when returning, but the second battery was not depleted.
The RCS battery 52V/19Ah (~971Wh) is fantastic. It really means on most known trips I just need the one battery and it has still great power and able to still hit 40km/h or close at the end of my journeys. However for longer trips or more exploratory ones where I don't really know how far I will go I take the DJ-MTB with 3 batteries.
I'd like to have an extra battery for the RCS, but an extra one from Juiced is $1300 + shipping. That is basically highway robbery, so I was working on adapting a better battery to the RCS. That project is delayed right now, as a small miracle happened and I found a smaller used 13Ah battery on eBay for cheap and it works great. These are big batteries though to carry extra, I’ve done it a few times, but never needed it. The day is coming very soon though where I'll break 100km on the RCS in a single ride. I'm really disappointed Juiced can not offer their battery at market standard pricing, let alone competitive pricing. The WW Titan battery is probably a better battery at 38% less, and other options exist for less. If small WattWagons can offer a quality-cell battery for so much less, then Juiced certainly can; everyone else in the industry manages to do it also. Any way I’m happy my situation is currently sorted and am exited about a future battery expansion project.
My DJ-MTB is still my better scout bike due to available battery capacity, being smaller, lighter, and more nimble, cargo capacity setup, and my explorations often involve some hiking or technical trails in forests. I'd like an even lighter bike that was just as tough. The RCS is great for open terrain, sand, and mud conditions, although the extra power of the RCS is really handy on some tougher trails, if they are not too tight. It has surprised me on a couple in a a good way.
I really want by next e-bike to have a minimum of 1500Wh on-board. I think 2kWh would be crazy good.
I've not really discussed the torque based pedal-assist based system on the RCS vs the cadence sensor based system on my DJ-MTB. I guess I’m really still trying to understand it in my own mind. I'm really happy with both. For the first time e-bike rider, the torque sensor system on the RCS would definitely be easier to adjust to. I’ve adjusted well though to my cadence sensor, I have a low cadence, and unlike when I was young and my Nishiki lived in it's 12th gear, life has taken it's toll on me. Both bikes have a throttle to help me through the rough spots or when I’m in the wrong gear, or just don't feel like switching gears often.
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