E-Bikes & Bikes Customised to You
Welcome, e-bike fanatics. Peter at Sixthreezero. I know that you got a rear flat, so I'm going to teach you how to fix it.
Okay. So here we go. Let's change out the tube on the rear wheel of your e-bike. Okay. You just need a few tools. You can use an 18-millimeter wrench. If you don't have one of those, obviously a Crescent wrench will work. You need something to snip the zip tie with, scissors or some snips or something. And then probably not needed on this bike, but you may need it on some other bikes is some tire levers. Okay, dope. So I'm not going to use the Crescent wrench. I'm going to use the real wrench. Don't throw your tools, that's juvenile. Hey, I know that you don't have a bike stand at home and so we're going to do it the way that is done at home. I would always put this in a bike stand in a shop, but today we're going to flip it upside down, which is not the normal way I would do it, but we probably have to do that if you are on the road or at home maybe.
Careful for this LCD monitor. When you turn it upside down, you don't want to wreck that, get that messed up. Okay. So here we go. Let's flip her upside down. Ooh. And then I'm going to get my snips and the first thing I want to do is snip the one zip tie that is holding the wire going to the rear wheel. There you go. And then we're going to disconnect the connection. I'll have [Nate 00:01:31] come up here and I'll show you what that looks like.
So I've snipped the zip tie here that was holding the wire to the motor. And then right here is the connection. We're going to pull it apart like that. Okay. When you put it back together, I'm going to repeat this, there's an arrow here and an arrow here. So you can line those up. When you put these together, you need to line the arrows up and you also need to be gentle. These prongs can be bent quite easily and when you press them back together, it needs to be really firm and positive, or else the bike will turn on, but your motor won't go.
All right, next step. Let's grab our wrench and we're going to pop these little rubber caps off on this side. Nate, show them on this side, how it comes and covers the wire. So on this side, it's covering the wire that goes to the motor. Okay. If you want to expose those. Now we just need to loosen the axle nuts. That's already ready for... Nope. Nope quite, for finger tight... It's a little tight on this side with the derailleur guard. That'll slip out eventually.
And then on this side, be careful right here is the rotor for the e-brake. I'll step on this side. This guy can be pretty sharp. So watch your knuckles. Don't cut yourself on that. Also, make sure that you don't bend it. If you bend that thing, you'll probably have to bend it back or maybe get a new one. So here we go. Let's go ahead and... Oh, don't you wish you had ratcheting tools at home? Yes, it's so nice. There we go. So that's nice and loose. And now we should be able to yank this right up, pulling the derailleur back and the wheel comes right out. Okay.
So now it's ready to be serviced. This one's full of air because it's not actually flat. So I'm going to go ahead and let the air out of it so we can take the tire off. You can just do that by pressing on the valve stem with anything, ballpoint pen, something pokey. Let's do that right there. Just going to let the air out... Okay, cool. So now... oh, you're going to need a pump for this too. Huh. So I don't need tire levers for this one. I'm going to show you I can do it with my hands. I can just pop it off like that and go around. But I'll also show you how to use tire levers properly. Okay. So that's off right there.
Let's say that it was on and you were having trouble getting it with your hands. Sometimes it takes a little hand strength and I've developed some from doing this over the years. Here we go. So here's how it would look with tire levers. Okay. Whoop! Get back on there. Okay. There are some tire levers, just bought these at 99 Cents store. Just kidding, they don't have them. So you can insert one and if you want, you can hook it here on the spoke. Then I usually just go ahead and grab the little part that's open, move it down a little bit more. Often, two levers are enough, but we'll go with three since they gave us three to make it easy.
Again, you may not need tire levers. I'm just showing you how to do it. There it goes anyway. And then you just go and follow the bead around kind of like that mysterious little process you've seen at the car tire shop, the [inaudible 00:05:17] machine. Okay. So here's the valve. We're going to start the other side, yank the tire off with the tube in it. So here we go, naked wheel. And then here's the rubber, tire tube.
So usually you'll replace this with a brand new tube or you can also patch it if you have a patch kit. Usually, when I go out riding, I bring a spare tube with me and I also bring a patch kit. Sometimes you'll get two flats, it happens. Also, because you may run through some patch or something where the tire picks it up in two spots and you'll get one flat. And then later on another sharp piece will work in, you'll get another flat. So having a fresh tube on you and then also a patch kit is a good idea. Okay.
So you never want to put the tube back in completely deflated. So when it comes out of the box, it'll be completely flat. You want to go ahead and pump the tube up just enough so that it holds its shape. All right. And then tuck it back into the tire. This way it'll be nice and safe from getting pinched between the bead of the tire, which is the nice part here that's kind of rigid. Sometimes they have wires, but nowadays it's mostly just a thicker or more rigid piece of rubber.
You don't want the tube to get caught between that and the rim. Okay. So we're going to find the hole for the valve, which is right here. And we'll go ahead and put one side of the bead onto the rim and put the valve through the hole. Okay. So here comes the valve. Here it is. And now I'm going to flip it around like I normally wouldn't do, to show you what I'm doing. I'm just putting one side of it on the rim. Okay. I'm going to turn it around though, to do it properly. So we're just going to do one bead on the rim. Okay. There you go, turned up. I've got one bead on there, almost. You really want to try and not use tire levers on this part, putting it back on, because you can puncture the tube more easily. You don't want to pop that fresh tube.
So now I have one bead on, looks correct on this side and then this bead still needs to go on. So I go back up to the valve and I'm going to kind of squeeze in and make sure that that valve is nicely tucked up in there and that there's no tube getting between the tire and the rim. Okay. So just go ahead and follow it around, easy-peasy. And then once I get it on there, it may seem a little redundant, but we're going to start up here again at the tube and I'm going to check on both sides. I'm going to squeeze the tire in and make sure that tube isn't poking out anywhere or else what'll happen is when I inflate it, it'll get caught between the bead and the rim and it'll pop. I know from experience that it's not fun.
So we're just checking each side to make sure the tube is completely seeded inside the tire. Very nice. Everything looks good. All right, cool. So now we're ready to put the... You can either inflate it now or you can inflate it after you get on the bike. Let's inflate it now. Let me grab, ah, just a quick one that'll get it inflated fast. On the road, you'll have either... you can get a frame pump or some CO2 cartridges, depending on what you want to do. Sorry, this one's a little noisy, but it's pretty convenient.
As you're pumping up, you want to look at both sides and make sure that nothing's coming loose, that you got it seeded all properly. Do that when you have just like maybe 15, 20 pounds in there, check both sides. [inaudible 00:09:19] some more... Check again, still looks good... If nothing pops or it slips out because you didn't seed the bead properly, it will sound like a gunshot. It's really not a funny experience.
All right. 40 PSI for this one. If you need to know how much pressure, it is right on the tire sidewall. So it'll say 40 PSI right here, max inflates to 40 PSI. And then you do want to replace the valve cover. Interestingly, a lot of folks, I think mistakenly believe that keeps the air in. It doesn't. There's a little tiny valve in there, but that valve is tiny. It has little tiny parts that are very delicate and you don't want any grit or grim to get in there. That's the real purpose for the valve cap. So do replace the valve cap. Again, it's not necessary to hold the air in. That's not what it's for, but it will keep dust and grit out, which can damage the valve. And you don't want to mess with that. Okay.
So now what we need to do is maybe, come over here, Nate, I'm going to show them how to feed it through the derailleur again. So the chain kind of has two lengths. There's one here and one here. You want to lift up so that it gets around... here's there just like that... Yep. That's correct. Okay. And then we're going to slide it into these dropouts. Also, what we're doing is feeding the disc brake into the caliper. So we've got the caliper right here and that's going to need to slide right between the pads and line these up. So there's a few things going on here. We have to get all of them right. This thing's in my way. [inaudible 00:11:31] my way.
Oh, here we go. There we go. Just have to turn the wheel a little bit. Okay, cool. So now make sure that the wheel is seeded all the way in the dropouts. Okay. And you can also test it when you flip the bike back up. I'm going to give a little spin, make sure it's running free there in the caliper, and that the derailleur looks correct. And then we're going to go ahead and tighten the axle nuts down if we make sure that the axles all the way down at the bottom at the... Yeah, the bottom of the dropout. Okay.
Now I'm going to tighten the axle nuts. Again, I'll use my ratchet over here because I can... There we go. And then this one over here, this one had the derailleur guard, so I'm going to slip that back on. Hopefully, that'll go on without a fight. This isn't a totally necessary part, but it can... I guess it can save your derailleur. Get in there, man... Come on. Yeah. Okay. There you go.
Then just position the derailleur guard so that it's protecting the derailleur. It's possible for these to get in the way of the function of the derailleur. If your derailleur is hitting it, you can readjust it or even bend it outward if you need to. Okay. Now we'll tighten the axle, this axle nut up. The axle nuts, just make them as tight as you can. You want it nice and secure. So really give the axle as much torque as you can.
Okay. Last step is going to be to reattach the electrical connections. So you probably can't see it on film here, but there's a little arrow right here. There's also an arrow here. I'm going to line these two arrows up and then I'm going to gently but firmly push these together. And then once they're inserted into each other, push all the way that you can get it. There's also kind of a line showing where that should be. Again, if you turn the bike on, the motor isn't turning, then this connection needs to be readdressed. Then what we would do is either now or at a later point, you can just zip tie that back. If you don't get back to it immediately, it's quite all right. We're going to replace these rubber caps, which will help protect your wire connection. So put the wire cap back onto the axle nut. And we'll just flip the bike back up. And we have fixed our flat.
I truly hope that was helpful for you. If you liked it, please do like it and hit subscribe. It helps grow our channel. And if you need any help at all, please contact us. You can call us at 310 982-2877 or email us at team@sixthreezero.com. Remember sixthreezero is spelled out S-I-X-T-H-R-E-E-Z-E-R-O. The team@sixthreezero.com. Thanks.
