You can always see ebikes in poor repair here, squeaky
brakes and wobbly wheels seem to be a feature of just about every bike you
see. I used to think that this was just
people being lazy about maintenance, but I recently found out what the real
cause is.
A while ago the brakes on my ebike were starting to get a
little loose, it was taking a bit too long to slow down, and on roads where
people pull out and no-one looks where they are going I though I had better get
them fixed sharpish.
Along most streets are little stools with signs up saying
‘vehicle fixing’, they are fairly small with lots of tools, charging stations
and gas pumps for tires. So I stopped at
one and told him that the brakes are no good and need to be fixed, he said no
problem and swiftly took out a screwdriver and twisted a screw around the rear
wheel. Pumping the brake handles seemed
to have solved the problem, they were no longer loose but felt firm and
solid. I gave him 20 p and got on my
bike feeling good at how quick and cheap it was. As I accelerated away though the bike seems
to be a little slower than usual (which is very slow indeed) and didn’t reach
full top speed, as I was on my way to school for class I though I would leave
it for a day and see how it goes.
After school I got back on the bike and started to ride
home, the battery was draining fast and the bike seemed to ride like it was
constantly going uphill. I had an
inkling of what the problem was and so pulled the bike over and put it on it’s
stand, I used my hand to turn the back wheel and as I expected it was very
difficult and did not want to rotate without much effort. The man had tightened up the brakes so much
that they were constantly on.
So the next day I took the bike back to him and told him
that the brakes were too tight, he looked at him funnily and seemed a bit
confused that I had just taken the bike to him complaining that the brakes were
too loose and was now complaining that they were too tight. So I thought I would just let him see, I put
the bike on it’s stand and turned the back wheel with my hand showing that it
absolutely would not spin unless given a lot of force. This seemed to have no effect on him and he
still looked at me like an idiot who didn’t understand that wheels go
around. So I just told him to loosen up
the back brake, he got out his trusty screwdriver and made some adjustments
again, I gave the wheel a good spin with my hand and it actually continued to
spin by itself for a good second or two so I assumed he had sorted the problem.
I was only going to find out however,
you can’t solve one problem here without creating another even bigger problem.
I gave the bike a little test ride, I accelerated up to
speed and then gave the rear brake a little pull, expecting a small reduction
in speed I was surprised by suddenly coming to a complete halt, the brake had
somehow applied itself and giving it the lightest touch will resulted in full
on braking. Ebikes have a nifty feature
of cutting the electricity out every time you use the brakes, so you can’t
accelerate and brake at the same time, hence saving some battery life. And with my newly fixed brakes every time I
touched the rear brake and came to a complete stop I was left without power for
a few seconds as the brake recover from their frantic braking, leaving me only
to pedal desperately and shuffle along with my feet.
I though as long as I didn’t use the rear brake, it would be
ok, the front brake was still OK and I could just be a bit more cautious,
probably better to ride a bit slower anyway.
However, this is the land where people absolutely do not look when
crossing a road, people will blindly drive their ebike across a road without
seeming to care that a car could pile in to them, so as you can imagine driving
around you get a lot of scares, and the involuntary action when someone pulls
out in to the road 5 meters in front of you is to at least apple to brakes a
little bit to slow down and be ready for an emergency breaking manoeuvre. So each time this happened I would
automatically touch the brakes and then be slowed to a complete stop, whether
there was actually any danger or not.
Then have to pedal like crazy to try and unlock the brakes so the power
can cut back in. After a couple of days
and many stops I realised I couldn’t take it any more. So I took it to get fixed.
I rolled up to the old matey with his screwdriver and told
him about the brakes were still broken, that they were worse than before and I
wanted them fixed. So he made some more
adjustments, I made him loosen up the brake so that it didn’t automatically
lock itself and then told me that the problem was the actual brake lever, and
he couldn’t fix that, and to get a new one.
When I asked where I could get a
new one, he said “at a shop”. So I left
and though forget it, the rear brake isn’t locking itself now so I’ll just
leave it at that. I got on the bike and
started to ride off, I didn’t get far though before unsurprisingly a problem
arose. The bike just died, drifted to a
complete stop and the accelerator was unresponsive, the lights were still
working and it showed to have electricity but it just wouldn’t go. I was flabbergasted, I couldn’t understand
how one idiot with a screwdriver could brake my ebike just by turning one screw
on the rear brake. But somehow he did,
and I soon realised what was the problem, he had somehow managed to loosen up
the wire too much, while leaving the actual brake fairly tight. And this slack on the wire wasn’t pulling the
brake lever back so it was just flopping around and this was engaging the
energy saving no power while braking feature.
Easily solved though, whilst riding use fingers to push the brake lever
forwards, just very annoying while trying to ride.
After a couple of days of this I was on the point of
throwing my ebike in to the river, I would have rather have done that than take
it back to the screwdriver man. So I got
it taken to a proper repair shop, they said that the rear brake was broken and
it needs a new one, which would take a few hours. So I left the bike with them and went to
work. I came back a few hours later to
find my bike ready and a nice new £7 brake system on the rear wheel. I paid and drive off, I tried the rear brake
to see if any disasters had occurred, they hadn’t, the brake worked perfectly,
and so perfectly that if you pulled it hard enough it would actually lock the
wheel and you would skid. I drove off
back to work feeling very pleased, and safe knowing that I could actually stop
every time someone pulled out in front of me.
After work I got on the bike and started to ride home, when
I was about a kilometre away from home the bike suddenly started making a funny
noise every time I accelerated and then the transmission went. If I accelerated the motor just made a
rotating, grinding noise. And I think
that what had happened was the motor had become disconnected from the rear
wheel, funny though, as the motor is the rear wheel. But anyway, there was no drive and I had to
pedal it back home, and then the next day pedal it back to the shop, this was
made all the worse by it being summer and incredibly hot and humid outside,
also the bolt that connects the left foot pedal to the shaft had come loose,
which was in itself another story of repair failure, so that meant I had to
stop every 5 minutes and tighten it up to stop the pedal falling off on to the
street. But got it there and they fixed
it for free. And guess what, it hasn’t
broken again since!
What this whole adventure really showed me is the lack of
skill in professions here, I assumed that a man who made his living out of
fixing ebikes would be able to fix a small problem, or at least identify the
problem and help me get it fixed. But in
truth he had as much of an idea how to fix it as I did. I assumed him to be an old master of bikes,
but he wasn’t. All he does is fix
punctures and pump up tires, and I don’t know why he needed his little station
cart with all his tools layed out looking like he could do a half decent fix of
anything, I think that all he really used was a puncture repair kit and a
bucket of water. During one of the
visits to him I asked him to put some oil on the chain, and he said ‘I don’t
have any oil’, so his wife went round the corner to get some. The old man makes his living by fixing bikes,
and luckily for him there are so many people riding poorly kept bikes on the
road, and a lot of poorly kept roads, that a lot of people get punctures,
enough to keep him busy every day fixing them.
He doesn’t need to worry about giving a great service so that customers
return, no-one’s going to push a bike with a puncture half way across the city
to let good ol trusty screwdriver man fix their tire. They’re going to push it to the closest
one. So when I come along with my bad
brakes, he can tighten it a little, maybe solve the problem, but why would be
bother delving in to something new when he can sit back and do what he always
does, if it get’s him by.
And this seems to be the attitude of many Chinese people
when it comes to work, people don’t want a job with challenges, where they have
to work out new problems, adapt and make progress. What most people do here is pay a large sum
of money to get a job which is considered good, and a good job has to be
stable, so that they have a future. A future
also doesn’t mean great prospects of rises or increases of responsibility, it
means to be able to do the same job until you want to retire. With no stress, an easy office job where all
you do is stamp papers is considered a really good job, where you don’t have to
be worried about being overworked, you can spend most of the day sitting down
not working, have a nice long lunch, and then an afternoon nap. And do the same thing day in day out.
There doesn’t seem to be a need to be so productive, it’s
more about how long you work than what you actually do. As long as you put your hours in you’ve done
your job, and that usually means 6 days a week 9 or 10 hours a day. You could probably squeeze all the work in to
a third of the time if you worked hard, but most people don’t want to work
hard, they don’t want the stressful life of maximum efficiency and a heavy
mortgage. They want to not have to worry
about work, have enough time to eat good Chinese food and enjoy life. This is essentially done by being close to
your family and eating Chinese food. And
I think this is an admirable way of life for the average person. Even if it does result in people like
screwdriver man who seem to do a half assed job, maybe it’s my fault for over
expecting his abilities. I wouldn’t
expect a decent slap up meal from someone selling street food here. But anyway, I’ll know what to do the next
time the brakes on my ebike start getting bad, the same as every one else,
nothing!
