Known Issues & Problems with Magnum Products + Help, Solutions & Fixes

[David Paisley]

We ordered two bikes in late summer 2021 from Epic Cycles; a Metro and a Navigator. Both arrived with problems out of the box.

The Metro:

• There was a slight rubbing noise on the front wheel.
• I removed the fender and confirmed that the brake pads were rubbing.
• I slightly loosened, but did not remove the brake bolts, squeezed and released the brake lever five times and re-tightened the bolts while squeezing the brake lever.
• The rubbing was now a slight metallic pinging.
• I repeated the procedure about three times with the same result; there was always the slight pinging when the wheel was spun.
• I carefully inspected the disc area and found that the head of the lower brake mounting bolt was lightly rubbing on the disc.
• I loosened the bolts again and tried manually moving the brake away from the disc. I also checked that the wheel was firmly seated in the dropouts, which it was.
• I squeezed the brake lever and re-tightened the bolts but the bolt head kept rubbing.
• Finally, I completely removed the bolt to confirm that it was not bent. It did not appear to be.
• I re-installed the bolt and repeated the brake alignment procedure a couple more times and the rubbing serendipitously stopped with no change in procedure.
• The lower bolt head had very little clearance to the disc; much less than the bolt on the Navigator. It appeared to me that the mounting post on the fork may have been drilled and tapped slightly off kilter. I should not need to go through so many repeated steps when re-aligning the brakes to prevent the bolt head from rubbing and finally have it just stop by chance. If the fork was properly drilled and tapped, I don’t understand why the bolt would rub in the first place.
• My wife sent photos to Epic and the response was that I must have used the wrong tool and stripped the bolt. I used a 5mm Allen key from my set and they have a sharp tool face. I have an essential tremor which means that my hands shake slightly at the best of times and get worse when stressed. The photo of the brake bolt showed paint chipping due to my hands shaking as I had to repeatedly loosen and tighten the bolts (while becoming increasing frustrated) until the bolt head finally stopped rubbing on the rotor.
• Gave up on the bike and sold it.

The Navigator:

• After a couple of initial rides, the front brake was leaking oil at the coupling to the brake lever. Checked it; it was tight.
• Epic sent a new brake assembly; unfortunately, the hydraulic line was too short.
• Epic sent the correct brake assembly; installed and now working fine.
• Defective and too short brake assemblies returned to Epic.
• We noticed a consistent issue where the display on the bike shows the battery to be full but the indicator on the battery shows it as depleted; the bike actually ran out of power at one point while the display still showed full. We checked the settings and the factory had set the voltage of the battery at 36 volts. Even after setting to 48 V, the issue re the display not showing the correct battery status is still there.
• Other than the display issue, it ran OK until a recent spoke break, so we kept it.
• My wife, who is of normal height and weight, just experienced a broken spoke (back wheel, derailleur side) on her Magnum Navigator while riding on a smooth bicycle path. The bike is roughly two years old and has had only moderate use (too cold to ride in Calgary for about half the year!) mostly on paved roads and smooth bicycle pathways. I saw on this forum that it appears spoke issues are not uncommon with Magnum bicycles. Our family owns three other brands of ebikes and have ridden non-powered bikes for years with zero spoke issues, so I suspect that this is a manufacturing issue.
• Contacted Epic and they said bike was out of warranty so tough luck. But they did offer to sell me new spokes.
• I will purchase a new spoke locally. No more business for Epic/Magnum.

I had the Navigator ( now sold) and had three broken spokes on the rear wheel. After paying for one, I learned to replace the other two. After that I had no problems with the spokes. It was an OK bike, my first. I moved up to better quality.

 

[Eli in NZ]

Hi everyone

My name is Eli and I live in New Zealand.. I have a Magnum Peak 27.5 that I use mostly for commuting. I have done around 300k on it but the last few rides my throttle has not worked every time (I use it when I need an extra boost when getting from stand still at the lights in traffic etc when needed) but today I got on my bike and the throttle is not working at all?? I thought maybe break inhibitor could be stopping it but I can't see anything. Has anyone had this happen to them before? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated thanks!

 

[bob99]

Hi everyone

My name is Eli and I live in New Zealand.. I have a Magnum Peak 27.5 that I use mostly for commuting. I have done around 300k on it but the last few rides my throttle has not worked every time (I use it when I need an extra boost when getting from stand still at the lights in traffic etc when needed) but today I got on my bike and the throttle is not working at all?? I thought maybe break inhibitor could be stopping it but I can't see anything. Has anyone had this happen to them before? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated thanks!

does the pedal assist work? If it does, the brake inhibitor is not the problem, as if it was, the pedal assist would not work also. Check all connections on throttle cable, both ends of it.
If all is good, that throttle lever itself is probably bad. Your could check it with a digital ohm meter if you have one. Or buy another throttle lever.

 

[Eli in NZ]

does the pedal assist work? If it does, the brake inhibitor is not the problem, as if it was, the pedal assist would not work also. Check all connections on throttle cable, both ends of it.
If all is good, that throttle lever itself is probably bad. Your could check it with a digital ohm meter if you have one. Or buy another throttle lever.

Hi bob thanks for your reply! Yea the peddle assist does work I have had a good look around the cable. I dont have an ohm meter so I may look at getting another throttle lever. I’ll let you know how I get on.

 

[Susan W]

Now i have a 4th broken spoke - almost 500 miles after the rear was re-spoked ... other than the spoke issue, it has been fine but i am really questioning whether or not i should sell this and go with another brand - in my 3 months of ownership, it has been out of service for almost 1 month due to this issue (although I have travelled 900 miles so far).

I had a broken spoke and the bike shop replaced it with a heavier guage spoke. I haven't had a problem since.