Electric Bike Riders! These 5 Things Must Be Checked & Adjusted on Your EBike Every 50 Miles!

These are five things you need to check and adjust on your e-bike every 50 miles. Stick around to find out what.

Hey everyone, I'm Dustin. I have nearly 20 years of experience in the bike and e-bike industry. Today I'm going to show you five things you need to check and adjust on an e-bike every 50 miles. But before I get into it, hit the subscribe button below. Stay in touch with us here at SixThreeZero. Be the first to know about all the new content we're putting out, giveaways we're doing, and of course new product releases.

All right, so you've got an e-bike or you're thinking about getting an e-bike and you want to make sure you keep it up and maintained and you're riding as safe as possible every time you get out there. Well, on e-bikes, it's important to check certain elements, but for at least every 50 miles, if not before every ride. Unlike regular bikes, recreational, regular bike riders aren't logging nearly the amount of miles people are riding on e-bikes. I see a lot of recreational e-bike riders now doing 50 to 100 to 150 to 200 miles a week.

Now there are a lot of recreational non-e-bike riders that do that kind of miles, but a lot of recreational riders that maybe didn't even ride regular bikes before are now logging serious miles on e-bikes, and a lot of people are not aware of what needs to be maintained and checked on an e-bike and what can wear down or loosen, and these things need to be checked as you ride.

Okay, I've had the SixThreeZero Simple Step-Thru e-bike here. You can find this on our website, sixthreezero.com, linked in the description below. Let me run through the five things I would check at least every 50 miles if not every ride. Let's start number one with the pedals. Now, the pedals are a reverse thread on the left pedal, meaning both pedals tighten forward. So the left pedal is a reverse thread. It's going to tighten when you turn it forward. I've seen pedals fall off before. I've seen pedals come loose. Now the reason they are reverse threads is so they both tighten as they move forward. So in essence, they're sort of self-tightening as you move the bike forward or they're never loosening, but it can happen.

So it could be as simple as just taking your fingers and checking it. If you can't untight it with your two fingers, more than likely it's in there well enough. But I would say every 50 miles for peace of mind, just take your wrench down here, and give it a couple turns. If you had a bike shop do the assembly for you and you didn't do the assembly, it's pretty basic. If you just have a wrench at home, ours is a 15-inch on these. There are also other sizes of wrench. You can use an adjustable wrench. Just slide it in there again, and give it a couple of pushes. If it doesn't move, you're good to go. Check both pedals.

Now moving on to one of the more important bolts is the front axle bolt. Now if you have a quick-release front wheel, that's something you want to make sure if you take that wheel on and off, that front wheel is tight, and that quick release is tight. So I would suggest checking every ride, to be honest with you, to just make sure that wheel is nice and secure. If you have an axle bolt up here, the likelihood of it ever coming undone is pretty rare.

But again, this is a 15-inch. Put that on there. Just give it a couple of pushes. Make sure it's tight. If you do have an axle bolt, as I said, you've assembled it previously or a professional did it, unlikely that the bolt will come out. But again, if you're logging miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and if you're taking it into conditions that are putting a lot of strain on the bike, it's not to say nothing's impossible. And so it's just another safety precaution to take. It takes one second, put the wrench on there, crank it down, make sure it's tight enough, and keep you safe.

Now, one thing that I think can loosen over time is your handlebar bolts. Now, it depends on the type of stem that you have. There can be fixed piece stems, so in that case, you won't be able to adjust the height. But most of them will have some level or way to adjust the handlebar tilt. And typically, there's going to be either one bolt underneath here, or sometimes you have two up here, two up here, or sometimes four here, four here. Different combinations. But these two bolts up here on this one, you want to check these every 50 miles or so.

Just throw your Allen key in here, and give it a couple of tightens. Make sure your handlebars don't wiggle. Go like this. Just make sure they're nice and tight. Come up here and push down to make sure they won't move down at all. Especially if you've been doing a lot of hills and you've been putting a lot of downward pressure on these bolts, you want to just come in here and give that a little tightening. Because if you're climbing and these handlebars slip, somebody can hit their head right here. You could fly over the handlebars. If this bolt is loose, the handlebars are going to move and you're going to lose all steering abilities. So it's really important that you make sure those are tight. And again, over time it's not impossible. Everything can come loose, right? In cars, I've seen it as well. The bolts come loose. Nuts come loose. So to be a responsible, safe, at-home rider, check all these bolts.

Okay, now moving on to the absolute most important thing is your brakes. 99% of all e-bikes out there have disc brakes. On disc brakes, you have a rotor and then you have calipers. The rotor is on the wheel, the calipers clamp down, you pull your brake lever and it clamps the rotor and stops the bike. Now inside of the caliper are brake pads. Those brake pads are going to wear out over time. And the more you ride, the bigger hills you go down, the more you're working these brakes, the faster those brake pads are going to wear down. So brake pads can be replaced, bought on Amazon for very inexpensive. Less than $10, you can get packs of five or 10 if not more. So you can just look inside here and see if your brake pads are still ample, and how close they are to the rotor.

Also, you can adjust the brakes, and we have other videos about adjusting the brakes, to make sure that those pads are staying close to the rotor so you get a quick reaction time when you pull the lever up here. And you can see on my brake lever right here, I pull it about halfway. That's a pretty good adjustment. If you're pulling in, it takes this caliper to almost touch the grip. Well, it's time that you either adjust the brakes or you need new brake pads because you want to pull and get a good response out of this, especially if you're traveling at high speeds or downhills.

And you can also just get a sense like here, I pull... That's the rear brake. But I pull the front brake, you want to make sure it stops and the wheel doesn't move. These brakes are still good. So again, just important to check, and make sure the brake pad is there, especially if you're going out into a 20, 30, or 40-mile ride, You want to make sure you have your brakes.

Okay, now finally, the last thing you want to check is tire pressure. Tires are just going to naturally lose air over time as the bike sits and goes unused. So you could do a little hand check and if it feels good to you, you can live with that. You can also pick up these electronic battery-powered pumps these days that are inexpensive and you can hook it right up and you can see your tire pressure. Most tire pressures are going to be... Or the recommended pressure, the PSI, is going to be on the side of the tire. You can just put the pump up, check the pressure, and pump it up to the ideal one.

The less pressure you have in your tires, the less efficient your e-bike is going to be. Also, if you get out and you're running very low pressure, your bike's not going to steer as well. It's not going to go over bumps as well. It creates a big danger because the overall performance of the bike is going to go down. Now, some people like a softer tire versus a harder tire. That's fine. But there's a threshold where if your pressure gets below the recommended range, now you're talking about riding on unsafe tires, which is just not a good idea.

So those are the five things you need to check and maintain every 50 miles on your e-bike. If you have any other thoughts, questions, or comments, please put them below or you can shoot us an email, at theteam@sixthreezero.com, or call us at 310-982-2877. All of our e-bikes are on our website, sixthreezero.com, along with a Simple Step-Thru right here. If you're in the market for an e-bike and don't know what you're looking for, take our proprietary body fit quiz. You'll answer a few questions about your body and your life and our algorithm will recommend the perfect e-bike for you. We also have a 30-day test ride on your e-bike policy. If you don't love it in 30 days, send it back, no questions asked, no money out of your pockets, and we'll warranty everything for one year.

Lastly, we've got the Facebook Pedalers Group and an app where we have thousands of riders. Before you jump into a purchase, join the group, ask them questions, and get comfortable with our products before you jump into an e-bike. Then once you have an e-bike, track your rides on our app, make friends in the group, and post photos. It's so much fun. All right, thanks for sticking around, and don't forget, it's your journey, your experience. Enjoy.