Ebike Rescue Mission: Fixing & Upgrading a Rad ebike
[Music] What’s going on everyone? It’s early in the morning and I’m on a mission, an ebike rescue mission. I had somebody reach out who lives somewhat locally and he’s got a broken ebike. Was hoping I could help him fix it. It’s a broken Rad Rover, which sounds right up my alley, man. That I know everything about that bike. That was my first bike. That’s the Citizen bike that I heavily modified and I’ve changed every part and piece on it. Uh, so I got a lot of parts in my garage, too, that could potentially fix his bike. So, I’m going to meet him today. Hey, we’re going on our way now to meet him and I’m going to pick up the bike and we’re going to get the story from him of what’s broken. I don’t even remember what he said. If it if it doesn’t power on or if it’s throwing error codes or or what’s going on, we’re going to get the detail from him what’s happening with the bike. I’ll bring it back to my place and see if we can’t fix it. He also mentioned doing some upgrades. So, I think he said hydraulic brakes and maybe a stronger controller. I’m going to see if I can’t help him out in that department as well. So, let’s go get the story. What’s up, Brian? What’s going on? How’s it going? Doing good. Good. All right. Give me the down low. A little bit chilly. It’s a little cool this morning. Um, there it is. All right. Looks familiar. Very. That’s how yours originally started. Originally, yeah, I see you updated here. Yeah, you updated the riser. Every bike should come with that. I mean, it’s Yeah, the lights new cuz remember the original light had like a little square box. It was like so stupid. It was like annoying. Um and and then you know I had that Sunour Sunour post. Yeah. Other than that looks pretty stock. Yeah. I mean are these even Juggernaut? The original tires. Holy cow. How old is this? Like 5 years old? Yeah. What’s it doing? What’s wrong? Um I So I was riding and all of a sudden it just it just quit. You know it it went out. So I checked the connections and everything. I I un I had to ride thinkly. I was only about a mile away from home cuz as you know when you ride these things with no power it’s not too much fun. But uh yeah, I got it home. I checked all the connections. So I think it’s just the screen. Do you think the screen went out? Yeah, I think the screen is no good. But I figured, well, if I’m going to replace this screen, might as well try doing the whole upgrade with the controller and everything. Okay. Um, all right. So, it just doesn’t power on. Screen doesn’t come on. Nothing. Okay. So, power issue probably. Yeah. And the battery I mean the battery checks out, you know. I mean, it could be the wiring harness, too. It’s just not giving power up to the screen. So, it could be. I mean, I tried I my I have a you know, a tester, but I couldn’t get it inside those little tiny pins. You know, you got to watch with that. Trying to test those little pins in there. I’ve shorted out stuff before because you accidentally touch them together. Yeah. So, I couldn’t really tell for sure, but I don’t think it’s the battery. I I think it’s either the screen or the controller, obviously. But All right. So, we got to figure out what’s going on, why it doesn’t work, and then possibly do the controller upgrade, 35 amp controller, and then you mentioned possibly hydraulic brakes, cuz you got cable brakes on here. Yeah. So, what do you think? Is is is the hydraulics going to be an upgrade or is it like I never really had a problem with these brakes, but if it’s an upgrade, it’s an upgrade. I mean, it’ll be an upgrade. It’ll probably feel a lot better, but if they work for you, you don’t have to change them. Yeah, that’s up to you. I think I have a set I could put on it. Okay. Um if you want them. It looks like it’s still in really good shape. There’s not really any marks on it. You know, this is like an old pair of jeans. You know, it’s like it it’s just comfortable. It just like its it just like when I’m on it, it’s just like perfect, you know? It’s very light. Forgot how light these were. What is this like 70 lbs? Oh my gosh, fat tire bikes are so much heavier now. All right, we made it back to the shop. We’ve got our Rad Rover 5 here to diagnose and fix. I went through my boxes of parts. I found all kinds of goodies, including this original Rad Rover display screen. We can try see if it’s a display that’s broke. I also have a Bolton or Area 13 controller here, the 35 amp upgrade controller. I don’t have a display in this box, but I know I have a display hanging around here somewhere. And I found hydraulic brakes from Big Game Bikes that I could install on this if we need. But let’s try uh the display screen. He thought it might just be the display. Let’s uh see if he’s right or not. Get this camera set up for you. All right, turn the ignition on. Hit the power. Nothing. We got nothing. So, no power getting display right now. Let’s swap them out real quick. All right, we plugged in our display. Let’s uh hit the power button. See if it comes on. Oh, we got it. Wow. Okay. Easiest fix ever. His display screen’s bad. So, I could give him my display screen and this bike would be up and running. Wow. He was right. It was just a busted display. Well, um I don’t want to give it back to him like this, though. I do want to do the upgrade stuff for him. So maybe I’ll I’ll give him this to have as a backup if he wants if he just wants to keep it original. But I think we should install the upgrade controller. Give him a little bit more power. It’s not going to increase speed any, but we’ll give him some more power with the 35 amp controller. And uh we’ll throw on the hydraulic brakes for him as well. But yeah, that was one of the easiest fixes I’ve ever had to do on an ebike. It was just a bad display. I was betting it was the wiring harness, but it’s actually good news. It’s not the wiring harness because I don’t have a spare one of those in here, I don’t think. All right, let’s get some things disconnected here and we’ll give this baby an upgrade. All right, we got most of the zip ties off. Let’s get this old controller off here. I’m so glad that it wasn’t wrong screwdriver. Let’s see if this one fits better. I noticed a lot of times these screws they use our JIS Japanese International Standard. Yeah, that fits much better. But I’m so glad it wasn’t the wiring harness so I don’t have to mess with that. I can literally just plug in a new display, plug in a new controller, and this baby should be, you know, back up and running even better than it was. It’ll have a lot more power. You’re going from this little tiny controller. Oh, I can’t get to those screws. The battery cradle’s in the way. But yeah, this controller, does it say I can’t move it enough to see. It’s usually like 16 or 18 amp controllers on these original rads. Um, and you’re going to go to 35. So, that’s a lot more power going to the motor. Now, the only tricky plug is the one that goes to the wiring harness that’s inside the frame here. There we go. Old controller removed. It is a 40 volt. It doesn’t even say. It doesn’t even tell you how many amps it is. Well, it says it’s 48 volt and it was made in June of 2020. No idea how many amps it is. And the controller we’re going to put on is way bigger. Here’s the new controller. Oh, it’s actually lighter. This is lighter than this. Kind of a big difference in size. Roughly the same thickness, same length, but way wider on this. We already got some Velcro here. Here we’ll put a little Velcro on the back of this post right here and we’ll stick it and then we’ll zip tie it. That’ll be good. All the same plugs. Super easy to change. All right, we’ll just leave it a little loose for right now. I’m wondering now that I’ve got all this stuff kind of loosened up down here. Maybe I should feed through our hydraulic brake lines right now while I’ve got a little space down here. All right, my camera died on me. But we got the front brake all installed here. There’s our new lever all the way down to our new hydraulic brake on there. Everything’s working for the rear brake. You know, I had to disconnect everything from the old mechanical caliper here. And then I already started feeding it through the bike frame here. I just took my new hydraulic line and I black taped it with Gorilla tape to the old line and I’m now feeding it through the frame here at the bottom. And it’s going to have to go up through this frame and out this little spot right here. There we go. It’s coming. It’s really tight fit. There you go. It’s through. Get some slack here. All right. There we go. There it is. Got the cable right here. Our new line taped to it. So, we’ve successfully run the hydraulic line through the frame. Good to go. Just plugging in the lever. And then we just need to button everything back up. Get that controller situated. New display screen on there. All set. Ebike repair man. Fun project though. I just like doing fun stuff. All right. We’re pretty close to having this wrapped up. We got all the hydraulic brakes installed, lines run. I got the controller hooked up. We got a new display on there for the Bolton upgrade. Area 13 it’s called now if you’re looking to upgrade your Rad Rover. We got all those parts on there. Let’s make sure it works before we button everything up and zip tie it and make it look beautiful. All right, we got to turn our ignition key on and then hold the power. There it is. Let’s make sure it runs. Tilt it up on the kickstand. It’s working. Okay, back to functioning. I mean, we we fixed the bike in 20 seconds with the new display, but it took us about 2 hours to do all the upgrades here. So, he’s going to get a nice little upgrade, a lot more power out of that 35 amp controller, full hydraulic brakes, and then I I put on some new grips. It had the old rubber or the uh the leather wrapped kind. They were kind of This bike’s like 5 years old, so they were pretty weathered and on the kind of rotten away, honestly. So, I put some different grips on there. He can change them if he wants. All right, we’re out riding and testing and the system’s up and running and working. The brakes feel great. New hydraulic brakes feel perfect. However, I do have a new problem that we’re going to have to solve. So, let me slow down and show you. Okay, here’s the next problem we got to solve. Let’s get up and moving here. Okay, so we’ve got power. We’re rolling. The problem is anytime I give it a lot of power, if I twist the throttle and it starts pulling a ton of power, it just cuts out. So, if I twist it easily and give it a little power, we’re fine, right? But if I call for full power on this, boom, it just cuts out totally and the bike just shuts off completely. So, what that’s telling me, I think anyway, is this battery pack just can’t handle the power. It’s a 35 amp controller. This might even be one I shunt modded. I honestly don’t remember. I robbed it off the citizen bike um because that one had a tail light plug. The other one I had in the box didn’t have a tail light plug. So, we’re dead in the water here. Let get off this. I’m going to put this on the kickstand. So, here’s the trick. Now, I can get back up and running. All I have to do is the key in, unlock the battery, disconnect the battery from the docking station, reinsert the battery, lock it, turn it back on, and now we got power again. So, I think this controller is just overwhelming this battery pack. It’s pulling too much power for this battery management system to handle. It’s a 48vt 14 amp hour battery pack. I have no idea what the output is. I’m surprised that it’s just shutting it off. I would think it would just give it limited power, but it is I think we’re just this is just too big. We’re just overwhelming it and it’s shutting down. And I’m trying to think, well, I didn’t have this problem on my bike at all. Well, I had changed battery packs. I put a 52vt shark battery on mine. So, I had higher voltage. I had a higher battery battery management system on it. It probably allowed for this controller to work no sweat. But this one just isn’t working. It’s just it’s overwhelming this battery. I think I might try my old my old RAD battery to see if it’s any different. Um the other fix, I guess, would be to upgrade this battery pack. I’ve already gone into the settings and tone down the controller pretty much to the the lows it’ll go. So, it’s the tamest it can be. It’s fine. And the bike works totally fine riding around with pedal assist when you’re not pulling more than like 4 or 500 watts, right? But the second you twist that throttle and it calls for big power, just cuts out completely. It just can’t handle it. So, that is the next problem that I’ve got to solve. If I just put a new battery pack on this or not sure yet. All right. So, I’ve been doing some additional experimenting and I’ve got it functioning where it does not cut out anymore. So, here we go. Full throttle. Here we go. Pulling,00 watts. No problem. We’re up and running. And what I did was I switched the battery pack. I took off his battery pack and I put on my like seven-year-old Rad Rover battery pack that’s been sitting in my garage and it works perfectly. So, I don’t know if his battery pack is going bad or mine just has a higher output and it’s able to handle this controller. I’m not sure. But, I’m going to go swap the controller cuz I’m pretty sure this one that’s on there is the one I shunt modded. I’m gonna swap it to just a regular unmodified 35 amp controller and see if his battery can handle it. Um, and if it can’t, then I know his battery just isn’t going to work. And he can have mine. I literally don’t use it. So, let’s do that. All right, we swapped to just a regular 35 amp controller and I put his battery pack back on. We’ll see if it can handle it here. Moment of truth. 3 2 1 go. Okay. Hey. I mean, it showed 1,250 watts and it’s working. Cool. All right. I think we’re in business here. I think we are up and running. So, we got everything done. We got this thing rescued. Success, I think, so far. I’ll do some more testing, but Rad Rover. I haven’t been on a stock Rad Rover in a while. I guess this one’s no longer stock. There you go. So, we got our 35 amp controller. We’ll get the wires buttoned up nice. I’ll I’ll shine this thing up for him. We’ll detail it. It’ll be nice and clean. So, we’re good to go. And I have a box of extra parts to give him, too. All up and running. He’s got some a little bit more power. It’s not crazy power, but 1260, 1269, 1270. So, we’re up to 1270 watts. What’s up, brother? What’s up? Welcome back. How are you? Good. You’re good. There she is. What do you think? Look the same. Yeah. No, it looks good. Can’t really tell. I mean, yeah. No, it’s a little bit bigger, but I mean, you know, it looks like it fits there. You know, it’s meant to be there. So, we’re all all upgraded 35 amp. I’ve got it kind of toned down on the power. Okay. You’ll see when you ride it probably feels stronger, but you can you can dial it up more if you want to. How’s it? I see. I’m not used to the new control. The new display, too. Right. Right. New display, new controller. I put I put new grips on it and some mirrors. And you can change them out if you’d like. The only thing I miss now is like I had what like,00 miles on it. Now it’s back to zero. That kind of There’s probably some miles on that display cuz they retain whatever you take them off. Oh, they do. So, it was the display that uh was the culprit. I figured that’s what it was. Yeah. I put the my old display on there and it was Oh, these feel nice. Ran. Yeah, they feel a lot different than Yeah, I do miss it. I I I don’t know what it is, Brian. It’s just It’s like It’s just like like I said, an old pair of jeans. It’s just I have had four other bikes, ebikes, and and this one’s always just my go-to. Yep. No, it’s a nice bike. They’re I mean, it’s lighter weight than a lot of the ones coming out now. Yeah. I just I don’t know. It just fits. All right, take it for a ride. See what you think. You can tell the power difference here. Let me get the battery for you. Off and running. Hopefully he likes it. He’s cruising. Jeez. I got the settings dialed back on that bike. It’s not at its full peak power. Uh the C5 setting, that’s the power setting. You can put it up to 10 and that would give you the full 35 amps on that controller. I’ve got it at like six. I doubt it way back because I didn’t want his battery cutting out. Um, it could probably handle higher than that. I don’t know how much higher though. It was cutting out before. So, he’ll notice the difference. I would imagine with it just being It’s probably pulling like 28 amps out of that controllerish. 28 29 probably. See what he thinks. What do we think? Good. Do you notice? It’s that um it’s not any faster it seems like on on top speed. Yep. They say about the same top speed. The only way to get more speed is like higher voltage. Yeah. But it does seem a little bit quicker on the takeoff. But um and the brakes are good. They feel good. And you, like I said, you can dial it up. Like if you put that C5 setting up to like 10, it’ll keep going up cuz you’re getting about it just getting that fast. It just a like torque. It’ll just be harder hit of acceleration. No, I think it’s perfect because it’s up to about 1,200ish watts now. Okay, cool. All right, so success. Yes. All right. If you’re happy, I’m happy. I’m happy. All right. You mentioned trying some other bikes. What What did you want to try? Yeah, I definitely want to try the U3. I’m anxious to see what you think of this one. So, it’s already set up in torque center. This is one you can change between torque and cadence. Okay. Oh, that’s right. That’s pretty cool, too. I keep it in torque. I like torque better. Okay. The basket doesn’t move, which throws me off. Yeah. I love the torque sensor. You know what it is? It if you want to, it almost feels like riding a regular bike. Yeah. Exactly. Whereas with that one, it you’re never putting effort. Even if you’re pedaling, it doesn’t seem like you’re putting effort into it. Y. Whereas this one, you could dial it down and actually get some exercise. It matches the pressure. Yeah. Really good. So, yeah. And it’s nimble. This drives me nuts, yo. It’s something to get used to, I guess. And I don’t mind thumb, but I like the thumb throttle on the right. I hate thumb throttles, but honestly, when I’m riding this, I’m almost always pedaling it, so I don’t even care. No, I the the thumb throttle don’t bother me. I just prefer the thumb throttle on the right. Just cuz what I’m used to, but super nimble with the tires. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. It’s That’s like the perfect tire size. Yeah. Nimble. All right. officially upgraded. Let me know if you have any uh questions on it or problems with it. Yeah. Oh, I got a box of stuff here, too. All your parts. Okay, sir. I appreciate it. Enjoy it. Thank you. All right. Success. He seems happy with it. So, I think we have officially completed our first ebike rescue. Never know. You could be next. If you got a bike that’s broken, you live close by me in North Carolina, shoot me an email, tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can try to help. We’ll see. And he also gave me a gift, too. Look, I got a bike stand. I’ve never had one of these ones that like clamps onto the seat post and holds your bike up. It looks pretty robust. Let me pull it in the light. It’s a stand from Park Tool. So, I have to try this thing out and see if it can hold some of these massively heavy bikes. It looks like it should be able to, but I’ve never had one of these. So, thank you for that. That’s all I got for you today. See you in the next one.
Fixing & upgrading a broken Radrover 5. The Brakes i used are from Big Game Bikes, and the Controller and Display were from Area14 ebikes.
