Getting the ebike fixed!

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!