Boardman ADV 8.9 E

[robgul]

I have been reading all 24 pages of this thread because I would like to buy the Boardman, if only it was available!

I have had a Fazua powered Cube C62 road bike for 2.5 years and the system suits me very well. I ride mainly rural routes and the volume of mud on the roads results in me using my non assisted mudguard equipped bike much of the time. At 75 years old I getting to the stage where assistance is preferred at all times. The Cube is a lovely machine and I don’t want to fit it with mudguards.

So it makes sense for an assisted winter bike to be Fazua powered in the expectation that batteries etc will be interchangeable.

The issue with torx bolts isn’t confined to Halfords, I had the same problem even though the Cube came from a LBS. They used Araldite to fix it.

I also find the lever release for the battery very stiff, the force needed is worrying as I think I could snap it off.

I’m a convert to tubeless and would want to run tubeless on the Boardman, are the wheels suitable or should I look at an upgrade?

My Boardman adv, dropbar model, has tubeless ready wheels - I assume the flat bar has too?

Very pleased with the bike (I have others as well) after nearly a year . . . I swapped the awful splayed bars for normal drops, swapped tyres for Schwalbe Marathons, fitted mudguards and a rack . . . as well as a Brooks B17. I've been trying to buy a second battery but they seem like rocking horse droppings unless you're prepared to pay massively over the price.

 

[ianmac62]

Some good points there, @kapelmuur, and in @robgul's reply.
1) I'm 74 and perhaps a lung operation after pneumonia and then a heart attack make me 75 in the real world too.
2) I use my Boardman all year round because (picture earlier in the thread) it makes a good tourer as well as a winter bike. Pootling around on my own I have other non-e bikes. So good that a good friend in my weekend riding group bought one soon after.
3) I don't know about availability. When I bought mine in early 2021 I had to wait just ten days. Things have changed.
4) Don't know that the battery lever release is stiff. My problem is that sometimes the battery is reluctant to drop out. I've learned not to do it in a hurry!
5) Like the earlier reply from @robgul my Boardman came with "tubeless ready" rims and tyres, although actually equipped with tubes.
6) I've come to like the "splayed" bars (which I understand may be common for gravel bikes).
7) Agree Schwalbe Marathons are a great improvement on the Vittoria tyres that came with the bike.
8) I swapped saddles to a Brooks C15 but saddle choice is always going to be personal and you may get on with the Fizik that came with my Boardman.
9) Bought the second battery at the same time as the bike. Halfords had them in stock back then!
10) Finally, although you don't mention this, I find that replacement parts (when I have the bike serviced at a good LBS) of, for example, the drive chain, are (a) sourced after a long wait and (b) seem expensive.
Hope this helps! Cheers, Ian.

 

[kapelmuur]

Some good points there, @kapelmuur, and in @robgul's reply.
1) I'm 74 and perhaps a lung operation after pneumonia and then a heart attack make me 75 in the real world too.
2) I use my Boardman all year round because (picture earlier in the thread) it makes a good tourer as well as a winter bike. Pootling around on my own I have other non-e bikes. So good that a good friend in my weekend riding group bought one soon after.
3) I don't know about availability. When I bought mine in early 2021 I had to wait just ten days. Things have changed.
4) Don't know that the battery lever release is stiff. My problem is that sometimes the battery is reluctant to drop out. I've learned not to do it in a hurry!
5) Like the earlier reply from @robgul my Boardman came with "tubeless ready" rims and tyres, although actually equipped with tubes.
6) I've come to like the "splayed" bars (which I understand may be common for gravel bikes).
7) Agree Schwalbe Marathons are a great improvement on the Vittoria tyres that came with the bike.
8) I swapped saddles to a Brooks C15 but saddle choice is always going to be personal and you may get on with the Fizik that came with my Boardman.
9) Bought the second battery at the same time as the bike. Halfords had them in stock back then!
10) Finally, although you don't mention this, I find that replacement parts (when I have the bike serviced at a good LBS) of, for example, the drive chain, are (a) sourced after a long wait and (b) seem expensive.
Hope this helps! Cheers, Ian.

It’s the lever that’s stiff, it doesn’t want to disengage from the catch.

I recently found out that there’s a Fazua trained ebike shop in Wilmslow which is close to where I live so I’ll use that for servicing in future.

I had read that ebikes need more robust drive train components than non assisted bikes but I don’t understand the logic. Even on full epower I’m generating fewer watts than a young, fit rider, so am putting less strain on the drive train.

 

[ianmac62]

It’s the lever that’s stiff, it doesn’t want to disengage from the catch.

I recently found out that there’s a Fazua trained ebike shop in Wilmslow which is close to where I live so I’ll use that for servicing in future.

I had read that ebikes need more robust drive train components than non assisted bikes but I don’t understand the logic. Even on full epower I’m generating fewer watts than a young, fit rider, so am putting less strain on the drive train.

No Fazua-trained bike shop near me. I haven't gone back to Halfords. My independent LBS was recently taken over by Rutland Cycling (an expanding chain owned by venture capitalists who seem to have thrown money at the owner enabling him to take very early retirement in comfort). Fortunately the two technicians / mechanics have remained and I've known them for years. So they see to the mechanical parts of the bike when it needs a service; and I simply keep the Fazua kit up-to-date in terms of software / firmware (though only after other people have run updates and reported their effects on a Fazua Facebook page I look at from time to time.

The bike has covered 3,750 miles and required two mechanical services. On both occasions the mechanics judged it required new chainring, chain and cassette. The chainring and chain are "for e-bikes" while I don't think the cassette is. The mechanics swapped the SRAM cassette for a Shimano one at the first service. But I'm with you - I don't understand (a) why "e-bike" parts are necessary or (b) why they are more expensive. Mind you, at that LBS they told me that most e-bikes they sell overall at Rutland Cycles are sold to people in their twenties and early thirties who want to get uphill as fast as they can in order to enjoy the downhills both on- and off-road. So maybe the majority of users of e-bikes need to have sturdier components.

Does your experience with your Fazua-equipped Cube suggest that the Fazua components need more servicing than just keeping the firmware / software up-to-date?

 

[kapelmuur]

Does your experience with your Fazua-equipped Cube suggest that the Fazua components need more servicing than just keeping the firmware / software up-to-date?

No! I have to confess to being useless at anything practical, so I just clean the bike, inflate the tyres and lubricate moving parts.

It hasn’t had a lot of use because it was an expensive buy and comes out only when conditions are perfect. I have a gravel bike with mudguards for wet roads, which seem to be most of the time.

In 2.5 years the Cube has covered 2030 miles with the battery/motor removed and 2450 miles as an e assisted bike.

I had it serviced last April by a mechanic who treated it as a conventional bike and replaced the cassette and chain with standard Shimano components.

Last November the battery refused to turn on and in desperation I downloaded the Fazua app and it updated the software. Immediate success and improved performance.

So my experience is that the system is robust, it had no problems with the Flandrian cobbles during a holiday last year.

I will start reading the Facebook page from now on!

 

[robgul]

In response to the question about e-bike specific cassettes and chainrings - the cassette will be no different from the average product, arguably the chains sold as e-bike specific MAY be different but the word from the KMC supplier rep when I was managing a bike shop was that they are just the same as the regular chains with an E prefix on the box (although there are of course different qualities of chain . . . if you believe that there's any difference beyond the packaging, with a very few exceptions)

 

[gzoom]

It cost me £300 in servicing for 3000+ miles of commuting in all weather's with zero maintenance in-between. That cost included new chain, cassette, brake pads, brake fluid, gear change cable, and wheel turinig, so essentially new drivetrain.

My spare battery did die though, almost certainly cell failure out of warranty, not going to get another one (got a whole new bike instead).

Overall as a car replacement, the Fazua/Boardman setup works pretty well. But you can very much tell the bike bit of the setup is the 'weaker' part of the package.

 

[ianmac62]

My spare battery did die though, almost certainly cell failure

Was the failure as a result of something else you've identified? It sound a disaster. I don't think of my "second" battery as a spare; I alternate them between rides. I'd hate it if one of them packed in.

 

[gzoom]

Was the failure as a result of something else you've identified? It sound a disaster. I don't think of my "second" battery as a spare; I alternate them between rides. I'd hate it if one of them packed in.

Battery cells fail all the time in all kinds of devices. The manfactures usually have different 'Cut off' limits for different applications- for example cells in EV (cars) are usually really high quality vs cells found in a cheap £10 light off eBay.

I suspect Fazua (despite their premium price), aren't sourcing the top spec/best cells - ie Automotive grade. If you go on the FaceBook group pack failure isn't uncommon given the relative small number of bikes they sell.

 

[fasteasyfree]

Bit of a stretch here potentially, but does anyone have any knowledge of the rear axle/hub? Or able to take a photo of the non-drive side?

Long story short, there was play in the freehub. I removed the bolts and axle to see if things needed tightening, putting them down on a table in the correct order.

I then spilled the things everywhere and can't tell if I'm missing something on the non-drive side, because even simply making things hand tight now the axle doesn't spin freely; there's a clicking, grinding feeling like the bearings are gone.

Took the wheel into Halfords and they couldn't get hold of any diagrams to diagnose.

 

[robgul]

You're probably better to ask Boardman (at the website) for tech stuff rather than in Halfords* - I'm guessing that the hub is probably just a standard SRAM part as the rear-end, at least on mine, is SRAM.

*yes, I know Boardman is a Halfords brand but the local branch knowledge is usually sadly lacking.

 

[ianmac62]

Wot @robgul siad +1

 

[fasteasyfree]

You're probably better to ask Boardman (at the website) for tech stuff rather than in Halfords* - I'm guessing that the hub is probably just a standard SRAM part as the rear-end, at least on mine, is SRAM.

*yes, I know Boardman is a Halfords brand but the local branch knowledge is usually sadly lacking.

Wot @robgul siad +1

Cheers both. Yeah, I'd also fired off an email to boardman tech support when I posted here to cover all bases.

 

[fasteasyfree]

Cheers both. Yeah, I'd also fired off an email to boardman tech support when I posted here to cover all bases.

Well, no reply whatsoever from Boardman tech support....

Anyway, it's been a journey. The dodgy wheel's been with Halfords for over six weeks all told! After ordering multiple bearing sets and wheels, they were all wrong. In the end, they had to order an entire new bike (!) to take the rear wheel off and give to me.

In the meantime, I got fed up with being unable to ride my bike. After seeing some Mavic AllRoad 650b wheels on sale with Merlin Cycles, I thought it would be rude not to so I went and ordered them. And centrelock rotors, as well as new tyres (47c).

So I have two wheelsets ready to go, the new 650b's with a 11-46 cassette on there for the rougher paths, and the original 11-42 and 700c wheels for when adventures take place on road/canal/cycle path.

 

[fasteasyfree]

As an aside - does anyone know if replacement cranks (for a reasonable price...) are available anywhere? I'm looking for shorter ones with an increased Q factor. In order to use the stock ones, my duck-footed stance needs pedal extenders for my heels to clear the chainstays when using SPDs.