Known Issues & Problems with Juiced Bikes Products + Help, Solutions & Fixes

[Rooster]

Well I have a beef! It's too fast, too easy to pedal, & too much damn fun. Where's the challenge in that?
Furthermore, though I was pedaling a lot before, I haven't bought gas since July, & I still have more than
half a tank. This could ruin our fossil fuel based economy.View attachment 18997 View attachment 18998

Other than the problems I have had with trying to upgrade I must say that I am quite happy with my ocean current. Very good design just would like a little more power but I guess one can't have everything, or can he?

 

[daniel58]

Other than the problems I have had with trying to upgrade I must say that I am quite happy with my ocean current. Very good design just would like a little more power but I guess one can't have everything, or can he?

Yes he can of course, actually the OceanCurrent can easily take a front electric hub driven motor; maybe another five hundred watt motor in the front to give oneself two wheel drive for a combined total 1,000 watts of electric hub driven e-biking; one could even re-use the front brake inhibitors, disc brake rotors, disc brake calipers and front brake levers; though one could definitely probably use a second additional 12.8ah lithium ion battery pack mounted to an additional front rack; well if one really had the "need for speed"; with that said it is definitely not impossible but highly doable and would definitely make ones Juiced Bikes OceanCurrent; now as a result it would be the first officially certified one kilowatt electric motor pedalac infused "beach cruiser" styled Juiced Bikes "1Kw e-bike" floating along on its massive classic looking 2.35" big balloon Schwalbe "Fat Frank" beach cruiser whitewall tires; violating all known laws of cycling propulsion physics naturally of course as it flies by like a speed demon!

 

[Rooster]

Yes he can of course, actually the OceanCurrent can easily take a front electric hub driven motor; maybe another five hundred watt motor in the front to give oneself two wheel drive for a combined total 1,000 watts of electric hub driven e-biking; one could even re-use the front brake inhibitors, disc brake rotors, disc brake calipers and front brake levers; though one could definitely probably use a second additional 12.8ah lithium ion battery pack mounted to an additional front rack; well if one really had the "need for speed"; with that said it is definitely not impossible but highly doable and would definitely make ones Juiced Bikes OceanCurrent; now as a result it would be the first officially certified one kilowatt electric motor pedalac infused "beach cruiser" styled Juiced Bikes "1Kw e-bike" floating along on its massive classic looking 2.35" big balloon Schwalbe "Fat Frank" beach cruiser whitewall tires; violating all known laws of cycling propulsion physics naturally of course as it flies by like a speed demon!

Yes but this ocean current already has vee tire co. Speedster 2.80x26 fat tires and looks the roll

 

[Rooster]

I'll work on that, I'm in the middle of a build right now.

 

[Rooster]

Definitely food for thought, you got me straining my brain now

 

[Andy_in_CA]

Sounds fun but also a battery hog!!!!!

 

[mal robot]

FYI, I just had 2 spokes break on my CCS rear wheel within a week. I took it to the bike shop in between the breakage and they lowered the tension on the spokes (they said they were overtensioned). Next ride I lost another spoke. I'm getting frustrated.

 

[Tora Harris]

This is interesting, which bike shop did you take this to? What is the terrain you ride? What are the speeds? What is the total payload? Did you open a support ticket for this issue?

 

[mal robot]

This is interesting, which bike shop did you take this to? What is the terrain you ride? What are the speeds? What is the total payload? Did you open a support ticket for this issue?

Hi Tora,

Thanks for the reply. To your questions:

• When I first received the bike, I got it looked at because I bought it online and assembled it myself. It was initially tensioned by Velofix (they come to your house). After the first breakage which happened on Monday, I took it to Electric Bike Attack in Santa Monica, which is a Juiced Bikes dealer, where they replaced one of the spokes.
• I ride mostly flat paved beach path and street with some sand and some small hills.
• The total payload is me + bike + the big battery + a small bag, so probably on the order of 260-270 lbs.
• Speed probably averages 22-24 MPH (mode 2 most of the time).

I'll open a support ticket now.

 

[Andy_in_CA]

I have almost 500+ miles on my CCS and I have no issues, purchased in September.

 

[Tora Harris]

Thanks mal robot once again for taking the time informing and supplying feedback response for those who in fact "may" or "may not" be considering purchasing a Juiced Bikes CCS with the alleged supposed new and improved protocols for assuring spoke breakage problems are resolved or not; it is definitely not looking good for Juiced Bikes at this point; any other Juiced CCS owners please feel free to definitely also chime in with your insightful feedback response in order so that we can get a better idea of both the continued "scope" and the "breadth" of this apparent ongoing alleged "spoke breakage problem" being actually resolved; apparently both "wheelbuilding skills" and "quality assurance" testing protocols at Juiced Bikes asian chinese factories is questionable at best.

Yes Daniel, please chime in about your CCS as we want to get a better understanding of how exactly the bike is getting used in the field and continuously react to these conditions absolutely as rapidly as possble.

This forum is a great way to get instant and valuable feedback so we can better improve our products. Some things customers do we have no idea until there is a post about it.

The CCS is very high performance, nearly 50% faster than the average e-bike in this new Class 3 format. The tires can be pumped very high pressures and its possible to carry a good amount of payload on the rack. With the massive battery you can basically ride till you get tired.

This new production of CCS and moving forward we have switched to heavy duty SAPIM Belgium-made spokes and a improved lacing pattern. Unfortunately such spoke is not found in the China and need to be imported to our Asian factory first. This production took a little bit longer due to the slower arriving spokes, but we have pre-ordered around 100,000 units at a time to improve this situation.

The 13G spoke is smaller than the 12G and sits flatter against the flange of the motor so there is less movement. Also 13G is easy for most shops to get and cut. 12G which we used before is very difficult for shops to obtain. We have also adjusted to the improved inbound-outbound pattern.

SAPIM spokes are used on high end e-bikes. Check out the incredible strength of these spokes.

Here a bike mechanic puts SAPIM bicycle wheel on a car and drives it around:

More about spokes on hub motors:

http://www.ebikes.ca/learn/wheel-build.html

 

[mal robot]

Hi Tora,

Thanks for your reply & I'm glad future customers will have a better spoke setup. I am still very happy with how the CrossCurrent S performs and have 800 miles on the bike now. With respect to my situation, I now have 2 outstanding tickets against Juiced support (for this spokes issue and an issue related to a charger I ordered): #SU00006411 and #SALES-00006163. When I brought my bike in to Electric Bike Attack this morning, they said they've also had issues getting in touch with Juiced for another customer's bike who had spoke issues. Hope you can resolve these customer support issues soon.

Thanks!

 

[daniel58]

Hi Tora,

Thanks for the reply. To your questions:

• When I first received the bike, I got it looked at because I bought it online and assembled it myself. It was initially tensioned by Velofix (they come to your house). After the first breakage which happened on Monday, I took it to Electric Bike Attack in Santa Monica, which is a Juiced Bikes dealer, where they replaced one of the spokes.
• I ride mostly flat paved beach path and street with some sand and some small hills.
• The total payload is me + bike + the big battery + a small bag, so probably on the order of 260-270 lbs.
• Speed probably averages 22-24 MPH (mode 2 most of the time).

I'll open a support ticket now.

here is something interesting from the "Grin Technologies" knowledgebase website and also from my cycling knowledge based from the Eugene Sloan's cycling primer book "Complete Bicycling"; as one can readily see this is an easily solvable problem at least according to: http://www.ebikes.ca/learn/wheel-build.html:

Seating at Bend

A common reason for spokes to fail on electric hub motors isn't because the motor puts extra strain on the spokes, or because the spokes aren't a thick enough gauge, it's because of fatigue failure from spokes that aren't held snug against the flange. If the spoke bend radius is too large or too far from the head, then it can flex up and down at the bend with each wheel rotation, eventually causing it to crack and fail.

This problem has been legendary with overseas built hub motors, and we had some Crystalyte shipments where about half the customers would experience spoke breakage on a recurring basis. Ideally the distance between the head and the bend in your spoke will match the thickness of the hub flange, and you won't have problems.

But if not, there are basically two rather effective cost effective ways to address the presented given case study situation as mentioned previously:

One is to basically insert a simple washer under the spoke head which is probably the simplest cost effective method;

The second way is to also lace the wheel in an over/under pattern, such that the spoke tension compresses the bend part of the spoke into the flange;

now using both of the two above basic commonly known wheelbuilding techniques in combination will go a long way towards helping to ensure that one is not likely to introduce unnatural and/or unknown undesireable torsional twisting forces about the "J" Spoke Bend radius at the hub flange; that will eventually directly cause and introduce premature metal fatigue failure at the "J" Spoke Bend radius at ones hub flange.

I have personally read from the excellent and comprehensive Sheldon Brown encyclopedic bicycle primer on everything about cycling must read "everything on cycling" primer, which includes "wheelbuilding" and according to him a properly hand built bicycle wheel built by an trained and experienced skilled wheelsmith's should easily be able to survive a direct crash into the back bumper of a car at twelve miles per hour(but not to exceed 12mpth); the resulting effects of that crash would "in fact" cause the bicycle fork to be bent and likely cause the immediate structural failure of the fork blade assembly itself;

but the properly expertly built bicycle wheel by the skilled wheelsmith builder will not only be able to survive but it will only be slightly bent but probably likely repairable with just "truing up the wheel"; that is the value of having a bicycle wheel built by a properly trained skilled wheelsmith with just standard rather ordinary average quality "DT Swiss Spokes" and just standard rather ordinary average quality double wall aluminum alloy "Alex Rims 700C sized rims"; so long as one follows the basic skills and principles used in typical wheelbuilding by skilled trained bicycle wheel wheel builders.

http://www.ebikes.ca/learn/wheel-build.html

 

[john peck]

Hi! please send us an email to [email protected] so we can forward you the draft we have. We will be finishing up some guides pretty soon

Also one of our guys sent us this video for us to test the Gaadi ( snake ) tube. This would be helpful for a "get Home" kit. We will update you after we give it a test

di
Thanks!

Actually, the Gaadi repair technique will work with a regular tube, just patch it. I recently replaced spokes without removing the wheel
in this manner.

 

[john peck]

We notice some users have some difficulty with the battery install and some intermittent power over bumps. We have had a little bit of time to understand the issue. Here is why there are some tight fitting battery packs.

Tora, have you checked New Atlas,( Gizmag), lately? There are some very interesting bits of new battery tech worth investigating.

The down tube of the frames are extruded like pasta then cut to the length required. The tubes are then CNC cut out. Basically its a precise drill that cuts out that battery cavity section.

The big packs (17.4 and 21.0 Ah) we make our selves and have more control.

The standard packs 8.8 Ah and 12.8 Ah packs we buy from Reention (http://www.reention.com/product/2) the battery case, the upper and lower interface bits. The interface bits get screwed into upper and lower slots of the cavity that is cut out of the frame.

When you insert the battery, it should snap in and lock. Everything has to be millimeter precise or the pack will:

1. Rattle around and disconnect over bumps.
2. Be too tight and does not set all the way in and disconnect over bumps.

The tricky part from the manufacturing standpoint is that the parts are changing at different rates but they all have to come together with millimeter precision.

So the cavity of the downtube can be adjusted by adjusting the numbers in the CAD file which is used to CNC cut the tube, easy. The plastic parts are basically not changeable by us. they are injection moulded and sent to us, so we just buy it. Hard.

The thing is the company making the case and the battery parts sometimes make tiny changes to the design. We have to each adjust the CNC to the plastic parts. All this creates massive confusion, on a few of the Air bikes the section is a little too tight.

We have checked all the bikes as they come off the line and the battery can go in and lock solidly in place, yes but it is quite tight. Tight is better as the interface parts are plastic and can compress over time. There has been some reports from other assemblers of the pack being so loose they fall out. We have the opposite problem.

Most all of the packs that lost power is because the pack is not all the way seated and locked in place. One way to test this is to insert the battery, then try to pull the pack out without turning the key.

1. If the pack comes out without turning the key. It WILL disconnect over bumps.
2. If the pack stays locked in and can’t be pulled out, it is very unlikely the pack will disconnect over bumps.

The tricky thing on some of the bikes is the pack is so tight that tricks some users from thinking the pack is locked in when actually it is not. It is something like when you slightly close a car door. It seems closed, but its not really all the way closed. You have to use a bit of force to get it to shut completely. We found if you install and remove it a few times it gets much easier to do as the plastic beds in a little.

In the future productions we will have this issue solved, by firstly more carefully understanding the battery and interface bits more carefully before doing the CNC work.

So what if the battery still cannot sit in totally and lock in place even after pushing with more force? Contact our Tech support again and we have several ways to improve it and can get 100% of them to work normally.

 

[john peck]

View attachment 18322 I received my cross current s and am having a problem finding the cord to hook up the front light. I'm unable to find the cord that was supposed to be tucked into the downtube. I've attached a picture of the cords that come out of the downtube. Did anyone else have this problem?

Reach in there with a bent paper clip & fish it out

 

[Theodore Deffenbaugh]

here is something interesting from the "Grin Technologies" knowledgebase website and also from my cycling knowledge based from the Eugene Sloan's cycling primer book "Complete Bicycling"; as one can readily see this is an easily solvable problem at least according to: http://www.ebikes.ca/learn/wheel-build.html:

Seating at Bend

A common reason for spokes to fail on electric hub motors isn't because the motor puts extra strain on the spokes, or because the spokes aren't a thick enough gauge, it's because of fatigue failure from spokes that aren't held snug against the flange. If the spoke bend radius is too large or too far from the head, then it can flex up and down at the bend with each wheel rotation, eventually causing it to crack and fail.

This problem has been legendary with overseas built hub motors, and we had some Crystalyte shipments where about half the customers would experience spoke breakage on a recurring basis. Ideally the distance between the head and the bend in your spoke will match the thickness of the hub flange, and you won't have problems.

But if not, there are basically two rather effective cost effective ways to address the presented given case study situation as mentioned previously:

One is to basically insert a simple washer under the spoke head which is probably the simplest cost effective method;

The second way is to also lace the wheel in an over/under pattern, such that the spoke tension compresses the bend part of the spoke into the flange;

now using both of the two above basic commonly known wheelbuilding techniques in combination will go a long way towards helping to ensure that one is not likely to introduce unnatural and/or unknown undesireable torsional twisting forces about the "J" Spoke Bend radius at the hub flange; that will eventually directly cause and introduce premature metal fatigue failure at the "J" Spoke Bend radius at ones hub flange.

I have personally read from the excellent and comprehensive Sheldon Brown encyclopedic bicycle primer on everything about cycling must read "everything on cycling" primer, which includes "wheelbuilding" and according to him a properly hand built bicycle wheel built by an trained and experienced skilled wheelsmith's should easily be able to survive a direct crash into the back bumper of a car at twelve miles per hour(but not to exceed 12mpth); the resulting effects of that crash would "in fact" cause the bicycle fork to be bent and likely cause the immediate structural failure of the fork blade assembly itself;

but the properly expertly built bicycle wheel by the skilled wheelsmith builder will not only be able to survive but it will only be slightly bent but probably likely repairable with just "truing up the wheel"; that is the value of having a bicycle wheel built by a properly trained skilled wheelsmith with just standard rather ordinary average quality "DT Swiss Spokes" and just standard rather ordinary average quality double wall aluminum alloy "Alex Rims 700C sized rims"; so long as one follows the basic skills and principles used in typical wheelbuilding by skilled trained bicycle wheel wheel builders.

http://www.ebikes.ca/learn/wheel-build.html

As an alternative, Jobst Brandt--the late author of the Bicycle Wheel--never believed in spoke washers because it didn't make sense to him, and nobody could explain how it worked in detail. Jobst was a mechanical engineer, trained at Stanford and worked for HP, that wrote what many believe is the best description of how to building a sturdy wheel.

So what causes this breakage at the elbow? The short hand version of why elbows are so tricky is that the manufacturing process sets up the bend of the spoke so it is near it yield limits. When metal is near it's yield limits, it has a short fatigue life. (Metal fatigue was not understood when people first discovered it. It is actually microscopic cracks, but because people could not see the cracks, they assumed it somehow got "fatigued.")

So how to fix this issue? You do "stress relieving" when the wheel is newly built. Stress relieving consists of taking a heavy set of gloves, and squeezing parallel spokes so hard that the elbows deform as the spoke go above it yield limits. Now the spoke is nicely deformed around the spoke hole, and the section that had been close to the yield point has been stressed further than its yield point and deformed. When you release the spoke, this deformed section cannot spring back, and the stress is lowered as the other parts of the spoke do spring back and take some of the load off the stressed section.

This is nothing new as the early European bicycle mechanics supporting pro racing had stumbled on this but didn't understand why it worked so well. Their preferred way of doing stress relieving was walking on the side of the wheel! This could work if the wheel builder had an idea of what they were doing, but it could also permanent warp the rim. Jobst said to just squeeze hard for multiple cycles (hard enough that you'd need a pair of thick leather gloves.) The wheel may go a little out of true, but not enough to permanent hurt the wheel, and easy to true back to shape. I've been building wheels for 30 years, and Jobst's ideas always worked well for me, except when I got lazy and ignored his input.

Jobst said that >90% of wheels made by machines and low hour wheel builders were not tight enough. Why is this important? Because when you start having spokes break, it is tempting to say, "I'll just removed the stress by untwisting the spokes." Unfortunately, the stress is not there from the wheel tension (normal ranges for a wheel spoke tension that is properly built is only 30% of it's yield strength), but the aforementioned manufacturing process. Lowering the tension in the wheel makes it worse because the spoke can now move more setting up more metal fatigue, which means that the rest of the spoke heads will crack even sooner. If the bike shop "lowered the tension" without measuring the spoke tension, I would worry that they don't understand how a wheel works, so they need to measure the tension. Wheelsmith made a great tension spoke meter, but I don't think it is around anymore. The standard tool now is the Park TM-1. However, Jobst could basically just tell by the sound and feel. Unless there was a run away at the wheel subcontractor, the solution is not to lower the tension, but to stress relieve.

Unless your an ME with some history in metallurgy and/or material science, this may seem counter-intuitive, and indeed Jobst spent many a post on usenet (look it up kids) trying to explain this. While I'm an electrical engineer by training, his ideas seemed to be backed by my core engineering studies on mechanics, although I'm not a ME. However, I noticed that nobody that had a mechanical engineering degree ever objected to him on Usenet, but he had a ton of objectors who did not have a degree. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out if he was right, and I have no desire to restart a bunch of debates on how a spoked wheel works. Something so simple seems to be easily misunderstood.

Regardless, reading the Bicycle Wheel, still available on Amazon, will give you a much more detailed description. The trick is to realize that the metal is not failing due to lack of strength, but due to metal fatigue. The best solution Jobst would have suggested is not to find a stronger spoke, but to set up an alignment where metal fatigue is not the primary driver of the failure. Tora could have his subcontractors for the wheels add a stress relieving step into their process, and might help the reliability of the wheel.

 

[Andy_in_CA]

I feel like Juiced in my opinion is doing better. Yes they have had problems as i'm sure all growing companies do. But in my experience they have been good. And I have a CCS that I got in September, which i ride 22 miles a day 3-4 a week commuting..and the thing is rock solid.

my .02

Andy

 

[john peck]

I have to say the same as Andy. I've had a couple minor issues getting to know the bike. Ilost a couple spoke when
a stick got flipped into the wheel, but that's not Juiced's fault. Over all, I've spent a lot more time maintaining my
old road bikes. The CCS has been a delight from day one. I think Tora has kept his bikes evolving. Not perfect, but
better all the time, & certainly the most bike I could hope for at the price. All considered, I have to
say it's performed & held up very well.

 

[michael mitchell]

I've had a CC Air since March. It shipped with a defective throttle, but Juiced sent me a replacement within 1 week, and followed up to make sure the issue was resolved. No problems since then, and I've ridden in some really bad weather and rough Seattle roads. Worth every penny. Slightly off topic, but I'm also quite happy with my blix folder.

Someone mentioned this in another thread, we have to keep in mind that people with complaints will always chime in more often than satisfied customers. That's not unique to our little ebike world.