Espin e-bikes

I was looking for a decent e-bike for my wife without spending a huge amount of money. She doesn't ride that much so I was looking for something around $1500 or less. I like the look of the higher end bikes with the battery in the frame also 48V battery and Bafang motor. 

 I stumbled across these guys:  https://www.espinbikes.com/    

I watched some reviews and talked to some bike people and it seemed like they had a pretty good bike for around $1500. I tried to convince my wife to get a "step-through" Flow model but for some reason, she liked the Espin Sport. 

This Youtube reviewer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lU8dgo9OZg had a link to $150 off. Hopefully if you read this it's still good. It paid all my sales tax at the time, bringing the bike cost to just about $1400 even. Espin seems to be a pretty small place in the bay area of California. Like a lot of bike places during the pandemic, the bike was back ordered. As I recall it was about a 4 to 6 week wait. They hit their website advertised delivery estimate pretty close. The delivery driver left the box leaning on the house and I dragged it inside.

Obviously some assembly required. My wife and I are fairly particular when it comes to any sort of scratches or flaws. I have to say, this thing was packed well and didn't have a single mark or scuff on it!

 

The assembly is pretty much what you would expect. You have to put on the front wheel, pedals, handlebars. It's all pretty straight forward and they supply the allen wrenches.

 

It doesn't take that long, even if you're taking your time to take pictures!

 

The bike is built really solid like a tank but rides really nice and stable. That rear hub motor kicks in fast and you need to learn when and how to use your "power features". My wife isn't a cyclist but she learns how things work pretty fast and got the hang of riding it really quick.

 Loves the "throttle" maybe a little too much!. You do want to watch the assist and throttle 

when you're in a turn but I think that counts for all of the e-bikes. Overall, I don't 

have any regrets with this bike, it's a lot of fun and built well.

(I weighed it and it came in at 56Lbs!).

 Note on service: I did contact Espin with an issue with an intermittent headlight. 

It took a few e-mails back and forth to work out the sending me a spare. It was a bit frustrating

waiting a day between e-mails for a reply and then to finally get the replacement light. 

The process went on for a few weeks. I'm glad it wasn't something functional with the bike

because that customer service process seems really slow.

 

 

 

 

 

 Specialized Turbo Vado 4.0 SL EQ

 I got my first e-bike at the end of August in 2020. It was a gift from my kids. Overall it's a really great bike for people who still want to pedal and get some cardio exercise. It's pedal assist so you still have to do some work.

There were a couple of things I wanted to have just a little different. The bike is sort of a European, city commuter and that's not really my use case. 

First off, I thought that I might not use the rear bike rack for my rides. I tend to take just a small backpack and travel as light as possible.

I took off the rack and noticed that I could cut about a foot off the rear fender and rotate it forward using the existing holes in the fender that were there for the rack. Kept the mud flap and made it a little more mountain bike style.

 

 Cut about a foot off the fender and re-attached.

Then I had to re-wire the tail light back on...

I bought a sort of inexpensive suspension seat post...

The final thing was a bit tricky and required some electrical technician skills. I read that it's a law in some places in Europe to have your headlight always on. I didn't want mine on all the time during the day. Thought I could save a little power. I'm sort of surprised actually that an expensive German bike light had no off switch and also no connector to change the light if you wanted something different. I was able to open up the light and dremal out a little place for a sealed slide switch that I epoxied into place. I was also able to add an in-line sealed connector to work on the light and/or replace it.

That's about it! I weighed the bike and it came in at 37Lbs. really light for an e-bike.

All the standard info. on the bike can be seen on Specialized website  There are also some pretty good videos on Youtube about it.

e-mail me at killak13@gmail.com if you want details on the parts used or process.