eScooter punctures & replacement tyres

Back wheel flat number 1

Well, it had to happen. I’d just charged the battery overnight and was planning to use it out at Petone foreshore and the back tyre was flat.

I’d ordered an inner tube when I bought the scooter and had a puncture repair kit so decided to fix it.

I’d seen one video on YouTube and found a 2nd one:

So followed the process on that. I was a bit hasty in clamping tyre back on and with last screw in rim cut the inner part of the inner tube, a far bigger hole than the original. OOPS.

Following the video got the job done, it took me about 45 minutes overall after messing up the first inner tube. I’ve got to get some glue for fixing the punctures on the original inner tube still.

Front wheel flat number 2 (Tuesday, July 6, 2021)

A week or so later and I’ve the scooter in the car to take the dog for a run & !!! the front wheel is deflated. So that walk didn’t happen, we did the beach instead. This is another puncture I didn’t notice until after my last ride and a battery recharge, so another slow leak.

Thinking about the front puncture I thought I’d have to lever off the tyre over the rim and that would make it difficult for me to think about putting on a solid tyre later (see below for purchase of tyres). After coming home I see that the tyre rim is split, similar to the back wheel, so it would be easy to replace the current pneumatic tyre with a solid tyre. Good to know when the order comes from China.

At present, I’d still not got a puncture repair kit with glue, the one I have has pre-glued patches and they don’t seem to work. So I went to the warehouse and got another puncture repair kit, this time with a tube of glue in it. $6 including aluminium tyre levers.

I also decided to get some “slime” and to try that out, I’d watched a couple of videos on that for scooter wheels and the reviews see positive and installing doesn’t seem to be an issue. In Repco there was 16 fluid Ounces for $40 or 32 fluid Ounces for $55. So I decided to go for double the amount for an extra $16 (40% more I get double the amount). I got home and no plastic tuber for filling the tyre, so I rang Repco up and will return to see if I can get tube.

So, still no fix at the moment. As I now have the glue I will repair the inner tube that I replaced for the back tyre and when that tube is fixed I’ll switch over and repair the front leaking inner tube just to see if process of fixing puncture for front tyre is as straightforward a process as the back tyre.

There seem to be a lot of spacers in the front tyre that you need to be aware of.

The brake disks were rubbing on the plate so I had to adjust this:

Using Slime & loctite

I may have to consider using loctite later on some of the screws.

I’ll put some slime in after I’ve replaced the tyres so hopefully it will reduce the number of punctures in the future. I want to put this in just before I go out for a run to make sure there is even distribution around the tyre of the liquid.

There is a slime calculator, the top is for vehicle type (no scooters) so best is using the bottom method, which requires 1 fl oz or 31ml

I returned the slime as the smaller bottle is $7USD and $40NZD at Repco, so a bit of a ripoff really. I’ll do a bit of research to see if its worth it./ Also, the punctures are on the side of the tubes, not at the bottom of the tubes where the tread is, that is where the slime is meant to work. I’ll think about this a bit more.

Replacement tyres

I must admit to being concerned about punctures, but the process went well. I decided that I do need some spares. So started to look online for getting some spare tyres and inner tubes. Looking at NZ online stores the tyres are about double than what you’d pay on AliExpress and about the same as on Amazon (although my Amazon research was a bit cursory) and then there is the cost of postage & packing on top. So you need a reasonably big order to make it worthwhile to purchase in NZ.

Solid tyres

One thing that put me off looking at the Zero 8 was the solid wheel that it came with, my concern being using it downhill from the lookout to town (which I haven’t attempted yet due to the daunting task of coming back up. I may have to try this next time Zoe is in town then she can stop and get me me on the way up when the battery goes flat).

On reflection, the pneumatic one does not like metal (nz gravel) or gravel unless its reasonably fine. Also, along the foreshore there are a lot of mussel shells where Gulls have dropped them from height to get at the meat, and they have sharp edges.

I’m not overly reckless with the pneumatic tyres as I think it would be quite easy to cut the tyre or get a puncture and I don’t want to go to far as carrying/dragging the eScooter a long way would be quite tiring.

I’d like to be more adventurous on bush tracks which would be a lot more rugged and surface less smooth so am looking at getting some solid tyres too.

I’ve put an order in for 2 x inner tubes, 2 x pneumatic tyres, 2 x solid tyres all coming to 126.45$ NZ.

I would have liked to get a RUGGED treat solid tyre but did not come across one of the size I wanted on Ali Express and a pair is about $170 +PP for pneumatic tyres and that is for a bigger diameter wheel in NZ with Black Sheep.

I want to have the confidence to throw the eScooter around and I think the solid tyres may be a better way to go in summer for better exploring on trail.

A pneumatic tyre is $45 + 10 PP =$55 NZ for NZ retail online & $18.26 from AliExpress inc PP but they will take 1-1 1/2 months to arrive.

As I’m not in a hurry I’ll buy from AliExpress and if I need something with some urgency I’d buy in NZ.

So I’ve decided to order from China , and I’m sure that the NZ shops purchase from China anyway.

Also when I came across something on an NZ site, I then found it wasn’t in stock, so best to build up my own stock so that I have my own spares.

Freed & Black sheep are the 2 places in NZ that I’ve found so far. I need to source some other places for spares so that I can look to get things quickly if I need to.

Delivered Wednesday, July 21, 2021

The tyres have come, quite quickly. There are the tubed tyres (on the left and the solid tyres (on the right). The solid tyres have a much smaller external diameter so that will mess up the trip measurement. I’ll need to do some accurate trip distances to measure a specific length on the large tyres and then measure the same trip on the smaller, solid tyres.

The latube tyres have an OD of about 210mm and the solid OD of 195mm. After getting the distance I’ll need to get the trip length and then try and adjust the diameter of the P setting for tyre diameter, (P6 see this article).

I presume the odometer is measured from the back wheel as that is where all the electronics link to. There is no wiring, apart from disc brake, to the front wheel, and the design would infer rotation calculated on back motor.

I haven’t had another puncture yet, and I’ll wait until that happens before I look at swapping out the tyres. I think a smaller back solid tyre and air filled front may be a good option to try.

I’m still awaiting the inner tubes I ordered.

Electric Skateboard

These look interesting and may be a fun thing to try out, although my balance isn’t the greatest.

End comment

I need to have some spares and also trial some solid tyres to see if they are more rugged. As I have suspension I can try out non-pneumatic tyres as there is some give in the carriage of the scooter. I do notice the difference in my scooter from the Beam scooter I hired. A definite extra dampening, but I am anxious about holes in seal or edges of concrete and gravel with the pneumatic tyres so trying out solid ones will be interesting. I need to see if I can hunt out some different sources of tyres and other spare parts.