Cyklefanatic
Well-Known Member
OK this is a deep dive and solution into the battery fitment problem on Vado’s.
My OCD simply wouldn’t allow me to live with this problem any longer.
Short term I was using tape to keep the battery in place. Effective but too amateur.
So I had a look inside the battery case to see how this all works. Basically you have a latch actuated by the key, two rubber bumpers that the battery rests on and a spring loaded plunger that keeps the battery from rattling if it is a bit loose when locked. The battery has a shim to allow for manufacturing tolerances. They come in 3 sizes. +.25, 0, -.25mm. My battery has the thinnest shim which is the -.25.
The problem for my bike is that I needed a shim thinner than the -.25 because the distance between the latch of the lock and the bumpers was too small. So the battery never really fully latched in place. A sharp bump and out comes the battery. So I convinced my LBS to give me a shim and a ground it down to be a -.5mm. Actually it now has a taper on it to make it latch in easier.
Perfect the battery goes in without having to kick it in. Three finger pressure and it latches in nicely. It doesn’t rattle and because the latch drops all the way down now the battery will never fall out while riding. Another bonus is that the key smoothly releases the battery instead of having to almost break the key to get the battery out. The solution was simple but really Specialized should have known this and made some smaller shims and saved us all the aggravation.
My OCD simply wouldn’t allow me to live with this problem any longer.
Short term I was using tape to keep the battery in place. Effective but too amateur.
So I had a look inside the battery case to see how this all works. Basically you have a latch actuated by the key, two rubber bumpers that the battery rests on and a spring loaded plunger that keeps the battery from rattling if it is a bit loose when locked. The battery has a shim to allow for manufacturing tolerances. They come in 3 sizes. +.25, 0, -.25mm. My battery has the thinnest shim which is the -.25.
The problem for my bike is that I needed a shim thinner than the -.25 because the distance between the latch of the lock and the bumpers was too small. So the battery never really fully latched in place. A sharp bump and out comes the battery. So I convinced my LBS to give me a shim and a ground it down to be a -.5mm. Actually it now has a taper on it to make it latch in easier.
Perfect the battery goes in without having to kick it in. Three finger pressure and it latches in nicely. It doesn’t rattle and because the latch drops all the way down now the battery will never fall out while riding. Another bonus is that the key smoothly releases the battery instead of having to almost break the key to get the battery out. The solution was simple but really Specialized should have known this and made some smaller shims and saved us all the aggravation.
