A cautionary tale.
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When I found out you don't need a licence to ride "green light" escooters and bikes, I immediately started to fancy one! I initially had my eyes on a Fiido Q1S, because it's a cute lil' thang, has cargo space, and you can sit down. But then I strolled into Edion And On And On, and saw... this!
That carrying case thing didn't come with it, I was just too lazy to take it off for the picture. Nothing special as far as scooters go, but it's got a more powerful motor for hill climbing (such as it is in Osaka), more volts, and a mammoth 20ah battery for an alleged 80km of range between charges! The range is more like 60km between charges (and on flat roads, at that), as it starts to struggle when the charge gets low, but if they lied, how bad are the ones advertising 30km range? The website, admittedly through Google Translate, claims it's "domestic", too. I'd be supporting a small Japanese manufacturer! Anyway I bought it, watched the mandatory safety video (in Japanese only!) and, for once, Edion didn't fuck me around with loyalty card applications, stupid, intrusive questions, or just barking "¥5000!" and pointing at another till. Result! It got delivered, and I even shot some video of the unboxing I won't bother to repeat here. The manual said to make sure the various bolts and screws are tightened. Most of them use allen keys to tighten. Had they given me all the correct sizes of allen key? Had they fuck, eh? Had they fuck. Luckily I had my own set, and got to tightening. These three immediately got "smoothed", because they're made of shitty soft metal that my top-quality Daiso tools destroyed. Now they can't be turned at all! Let's hope they aren't anything important, eh?
Also during the unboxing and initial check-out (I didn't yet have number plates, so couldn't drive it outside yet), I turned it over and found these labels! Odd that labels in simplified Chinese should be on a "domestic" scooter, eh? Yep, guess it's an Aliexpresscial after all... Anyway, numberplates were duly obtained, and "road tax" (which is an 'insurance' sticker you put on the numberplate, but I really doubt it "insures" you for anything if the scooter gets stolen, in a crash, or destroyed in a fire... which isn't out of the realm of possibility for these cheap Chinesium machines, just ask the people in that Korean block of flats). Fuckup 1: The folding mechanism.
Once I got the scooter out of the box, it was easy enough to unfold it, just push the stem up until it clicks. But you try folding it back up again! The video tutorial on Ekon's Youtube channel makes it look plenty easy, just push the lever down and stem forward to release it - simple! In real life, it was a proper struggle. Sometimes the lever would go down with such sudden force my hand would slip off it, and I'd be back at square one.
Anyway, I eventually found the easiness of folding was directly proportional to the tightness of the bolt at the hinge of the lever. To later be renamed the "life or death bolt", for reasons that will become clear. Also extending the handlebars to maximum height gives you the most leverage to unlock them, though you still have to awkwardly brace your foot on the back of the deck. Fuckup 2: The left indicator. Once I got the numberplates and took it out on the road (the near-instant acceleration to 20km/h taking me by surprise, as I was used to the rather more sedate Loop scooters, likely with ~250w motors), I soon discovred a new issue - the left rear indicator didn't work! At first I was despairing of sourcing a new bulb and working out how to change that, but then I noticed this:
These little plugs are designed to be taken in and out, so you can remove parts when, say, changing the rear tyre (a future operation I look forward to with absolute delight, as you can imagine. At least E-kon's tutorial is vaguely relevant and clearly-shot... this time). Of course E-kon have used the bare minimum length of wire, only just enough to slot the plug together. This means bumps and jolts constantly make it slip out, and cause the left rear indicator light to stop working. 5mm more of cable would have fixed the problem, but trust the sellers of this Alibaba crap to cost-cut as much as phsyically possible, eh? It's easy to push the connector back together, so I usually just end up checking all four indicators are working before each ride. I considered supergluing it, but that would only introduce it's own problems.
Hey, I ripped the tyre tutorial, as they will inevitably delete it, to "make room" (on a Youtube account) "for new models" one day, leaving users of their older scooters without any help. Fuckup 3: The folding mechanism, again.
After a few months of riding completely normally and as-intended (bar the indicator), I was going up this slightly rough patch of road. Some indecisive, dementia-ridden old biddy was coming down on her mamachari, weaving everywhere as usual, so I had to brake hard. I used the front brake, while also hitting the bump you can see at the bottom of the picture. This combination caused me to push the stem forward far enough that the folding mechanism activated! Even without me pushing the folding lever down at all. Also some pieces of the shitty soft metal from the inside broke off in flakes. I did save those in my wallet, but now I've lost them.
I waited until too late to take pictures of the shiny slivers where bits broke off, it's all corroded back to the same colour. Still, look at those rough edges and obvious low quality... Anyway, the biddy having trundled obliviously off on her own course, regardless of who has to swerve out of the way, I pulled over further along and tightened up the bolt in the folding lever, thinking that might fix the issue. Fuckup 4: The real near-crash. Not having tightened the bolt enough to make folding the scooter impossible, I continued on my merry way for a few more months. I was going down this slightly-bumpy patch of road (coincidentally very close to where the previous fold-up happened, there's a cheap supermarket over that way)...
Click! The folding mechanism spontaneously activated on me again! I had to jump/fall off the back and do comedic big-step, too-fast running down the road, as I bought things under control. The people in the car just ahead of me must have been pissing themselves laughing. But that's just it, isn't it? I was behind a car, on a 20km/h section of road. What if I'd been in front of a truck, on a 60km/h section of road? What if I'd been driving not an E-Kon City, but an E-Kon Grande Plus, which appears to be mostly identical to the City, except it can go at 30km/h?
Do not buy this, YOU WILL DIE There I go, using the scooter in exactly the intended manner, for less than a year, when it's shitty soft-metal, badly-designed folding mechanism ups and activates completely at random. And I'm not the only one who's had this shit, neither...
"Return it then" you say. Nah, Edion told me when I bought it that they wanted nothing more to do with it, and couldn't "offer service". Which should have been a major warning in retrospect. But this is the same Edion that asked me loads of ridiculous questions like "how many people does your company employ?" (and wasted 45 minutes of my time) when I was applying for a loyalty card, so I tend to brush off anything they say as if it's just meaningless mindless gorilla grunts. Besides, looks like that bloke's had the runaround and his problem was never solved either. I'm sure if there's any actual legal action against E-kon, they'll "go bankrupt" and relaunch, initially at the far end of Japan from their victim, as F-Kon. Fixup 1: The bodge! Wanting to still get my money's worth from the scooter (and it's still fun in the twisties!), I decided to BODGE it! The first step was to tighten the bolt in the folding lever right up, and never ever fold it. Luckily that bolt seems to have been made out of some decent quality steel, so it wasn't stripped smooth by the application of a ¥10 Daiso allen key. This was my initial design for a fold-preventing mechanism:
But one of the threaded rods I bought was too small, and my job was really busy at the time, so I never built up the arsed to go and get all those bits. Also the cost of them would add up! I downgraded to this...
But couldn't cram the threaded rod through properly. So I bought a few additional parts, and got to bodging with that I have!
And... it's been alright after about 7 months! Fuckup 5: The "tutorial" for fixing the brakes. I once wanted to start a page or blog dedicated to "The Shittiest Tutorials". Among them would be Darkbasic, teaching you how to open a pre-made game and run it (yeah nah, thanks for taking us through iterations of writing that game ourselves and explaining what each part does, you cunts), and some 3D model programme which tells you how to make Gimli's helmet, starting with "open the helmet prefab...". Anyway, I've found a new champion of shitty tutorials. Ekon's manual says to replace the brake pads after 500km. By 477km the rear brakes were basically useless (The front brakes were still an insta-stop, stem-shaking suicide lever, due to never being used). Of course, E-Kon's Youtube channel, with it's decent tutorial on how to replace tyres, ALSO has a decent tutorial on how to extract and replace the brake pads right... right? How about we watch it, eh?
Ripped and locally hosted, because they've already shown themselves willing to hide embarrasing facts. Yeah, that's all the videos relating to the brakes they have. How to randomly twang the lever a bit. Great help there, lads. Luckily, there are other generic tutorials on maintaining the disc brakes of escooters and mountain bikes online. By some amazing miracle, E-Kon scooters appear to use the generic (and cheap!) circular brake pads used in a bunch of other scooters and bikes. I was expecting them to be some bespoke, one-off unobtainium which only E-Kon sells (or, rather, used to sell, but doesn't any more, because they don't give a fuck about you). I'm sure they'll implement that for the new model. Fixup 2: Bodging the brakes So, I was able to fix the brakes, right? Hah! Wanna buy a bridge? Nope, of course one of the allen key bolts has seized or cross-threaded, so I can't get the old pads out. I was able to adjust the old pads inwards, so they can grip the disc more tightly and I can get a bit more use out of them. I beleive the metal edge of the pad is also rubbing on the disc, as I got a tremendous howling sound. Still, that's great for waking up the demented old codger on his bike, who's drifting sideways across the road into me. Or the thick bint who's randomly just stepped out to cross the road without looking at all. And these people have the vote!
I need to get the whole brake mechanism off and give it a good soak in WD40 (Japanese version WD四十), so I can hopefully extract the old pads and fit some new ones. Further updates to come! Fuckup 6: Both indicators and the horn. With the brakes bodged, I was able to ride it a bit more. At one place I work I've stashed a 900w / 800wh Ecoflow and a 400w solar panel. With some actual sunny weather for once, I drove it over there. Then I noticed the beeping sound from the indicators had stopped working. As, indeed, had the indicator lights and the horn!
Yes, it's another one of those little connectors, with exactly-enough-and-no-more cable connecting them, which has pulled apart. A quick, at-the-lights repair was a non-starter, with the risk of bending or shorting the tiny pins within. Luckily I was almost at my job. When I got there, I found out, in a rare example of intelligence (from the makers of the connectors, and not E-kon, of course) that there's arrows on the connectors, so you can locate them properly. Would have preferred 5mm more cable so they didn't pull apart, but there you are. |
