Riding an electric bicycle in the rain

paul said:
over 6,000 miles on my motorized bicycle and still not caught in a real rain, few times light but not enough to get drenched. its just a matter of time but amazes me. this island will have all these rain showers about 3 miles in diameter. I have had them all around me but never hit me, I have pulled into work parked the bike and big time down pour soon as I walk in the door, sooner or later my luck will run out
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We get those type of rain showers too as I live not so far away from the coast here in New Zealand. The hub motor kit I installed on my Hercules trike a good few years ago now is a no-name generic Chinese made kit that cost me all of $NZ250.00 including two SLA batteries. I mostly seem to avoid the rain but even when having to ride in the pouring rain the hub motor just keeps on keeping on.
A major test for my poor old trike came when I had a bad relapse with this illness I have and it stood out uncovered in all weathers over the course of a wet Winter. Leaving it out in the weather was not intentional as I normally park it under cover, but as it happened I didn't have much say in the matter. When I finally was able to rescue my trike and give it a much needed clean and service I discovered that the electrics were fine and the motor hub still worked without any problems.
When I installed the kit I made sure to lay out wires so that water couldn't run along them and enter the motor and controller, but apart from that I didn't take any special precautions. I know some folk don't like SLAs, but for my kind of local riding and also for a trike they work out fine and don't break the bank when I have to replace them. Mind you I've only had to replace the batteries once in the past seven years so I'd call that a success.

:crash:
 
The only issue I had was on the currie brushless bike, it has a red and green
button cluster for on/off and pas/tag.
Water getting into that and it will freak out..
The lower tech, brushed motor system used a rocker sw to select between
packs, located at the back of the rack/pwm box. (which eventually failed mechanically but not to rain.)
 
I don't know if you've ever heard of Never Wet. They sell it at Home Depot. It's made by RustOleum. it looks great, but I've heard there's a problem for our purposes. It discolors painted surfaces. Supposedly RustOleum is soon to be coming out with a clear version that will solve that problem.

http://www.neverwet.com/
 
luck finally ran out. got caught in a Caribbean down pour today on my e-bike. had to stop because I couldn't see. bike ran great and not worried about it any more
 
I have ridden mine in the rain quite a few times now. I carry an umbrella and putt along at 5 to 7 mph. Lucky for me I live close to work. I have 450 miles on the bike so far its doing OK.
 
thats a great idea kev, i have a small one that collapses and will fit in my trunk bag, thank you!
 
My bike would fail in the rain right now. It has a 5 pin connector by the swing arm that isn't the least bit water proof. Water wicks into it and shorts out the hall effect sensors. I'm going to have to replace it with a water proof connector.
 
A just came close to getting caught in big rain, miles away from home on my electric. It wasn't supposed to rain till tomorrow. For some reason I was dilly dallying for about an hour, and then just as was I was rolling my bike out of the garage it suddenly started pouring down. I would have been about 17 miles away if I had left when I first thought about it.
 
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