Why a Great Electric Bike Takes Time to Build
by Erica, G&O Family Cyclery mechanic since 2018
At the Family Cyclery, we are committed to selling you a high-quality, well-built bike, one that can become a significant part of your everyday life. Your bike should be reliable and trustworthy, and our effort, knowledge, and care for our customers and their bikes yields better results for us as a shop, as well as for you as the customer.
Getting that high-quality bike to you takes time, though!
Customers sometimes ask us why our estimated build times (the time from when you order your bike to when you can pick it up) are so long.
Some parts of that equation are out of our control, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020. For example, we can’t control materials shortages, factory closures and slowdowns, backups at the ports on either side of the ocean, or delays in train or truck shipping. When one part of the manufacturing or shipping process is slowed down, every other part is slowed down too.
However, some reasons for our longer build times are within our control:
We sell high-quality bikes that use high-quality parts, and we want each of those parts to work well for you from the start.
We build bikes to a high standard. Our service team develops comprehensive, shared knowledge about each of our bike models. We create and use our own checklists and written resources to build your bike.
We choose to take more time with builds. When we pay more attention to detail, our customers ride better-built bikes that they will be happier with, and their bikes will need less maintenance.
We schedule New Bike Day appointments so that you have a dedicated time to learn about your bike’s many features and functions.
In short, we value the quality of our work over speed, and we think you will too!
Read on to learn more about our processes.
The Bikes We Sell
Bike manufacturers put in the time to design their bikes to be fun and safe to ride. Then at the factories, they do quality control to make sure the bikes they send to us are well built.
But sometimes, just because people are people and we make mistakes, something gets missed during assembly. Plus, anything can happen to a bike during shipping.
So at G&O, we back up the work of manufacturers, assemblers, and shippers by ensuring the bike we receive is safe and ready for you to ride.
We can’t unpack one of our bikes and have it ready to go immediately. Or rather, we could, but we think it’s really important that we have our trained eyes on every system of your bike. So we check all the systems thoroughly, including electrical, braking, shifting, and other mechanical systems. We install your accessories. Two mechanics do test rides of the bike, totaling an average of 3-5 miles, to bed in your brakes and adjust the setup as needed..
And then we doublecheck everything on your bike before it goes out, because everyone is carrying important things: themself, their stuff, and their families, including partners, kids, and pets. In 2020, we started doing an additional safety check on every bike before it’s marked complete. Among other things, the safety checker ensures that bolts are tight, brakes and shifters are working, and cargo and kid-carrying components are secure.
Our Service Expertise
We have many years of experience selling, assembling and maintaining the highest quality electric, cargo and kids’ bikes from the best specialty bike brands in the world! Currently, we specialize in bikes from Tern, Riese & Muller, Larry vs. Harry Bullitt, and Gazelle Bicycles.
Because we specialize in electric and cargo bikes, and our customers are often riding bikes at the leading edge of bicycle technology, our mechanics have a particularly high level of skill. Each of our mechanics develops this specialized experience over time, and is supervised and supported in their growth as a mechanic by the whole service team.
The service team meets every two weeks to discuss our progress through our build and service schedule. Mechanics share information about bike builds, including new components, reminders to look out for certain known issues, and questions. We solve difficult build and service questions together, and we build our knowledge collectively.
G&O’s service department is constantly getting more knowledgeable about the remarkable bikes we sell and more capable of supporting our specific riders with their bikes, as they use them in their lives.
Over time, when you bring your bike to us, we develop a base of knowledge about your particular bike and your needs, and a long-term relationship with you! We also give you extensive notes about your build and tuneups so you know what we’ve done on your bike.
Though we sell a lot of bikes, we pay attention to the specific needs of each bike and its riders.
Our Build Process
We use customized build checklists for every model of bike we sell. Each build sheet covers unboxing and basic setup of the bike; evaluating, tuning and adjusting each component and system; and finishing up with the best part, calling you to let you know that your new bike is ready!
Our build checklists ensure that every bike is built the same way no matter who builds it, and that any problems uncovered during the build process are handled before you get the bike.
We also address things during our build process that the bike manufacturers may miss, or things that we have noticed become problematic over hundreds of miles of riding. (For example, we take the wheels off the bike and true them, and we apply Loctite to the fender hardware so it doesn’t fall out.)
We communicate issues regularly to our suppliers, and they communicate with us. This partnership helps them assemble the bikes better at the factory, and helps us give you a better bike!
For example, in 2018 G&O mechanics found several issues with Tern’s first generation of GSD bikes. Hydraulic brake hoses were getting crushed inside the motor case, leading to inconsistent braking pressure right out of the box. This issue was sometimes quite noticeable, and other times didn’t cause problems until the bike had already been out on the road for a while.
Here’s what we did:
We diagnosed this issue and reported it to Tern.
We added the fix to our build checklist for all of the bikes we assembled until the issue was addressed at the factory.
Because we didn’t want to take the chance of it becoming a problem for our customers down the line, we also replaced the brake hose in all affected bikes when they came back in for service, regardless of whether the crushed hose was causing problems yet.
As a result, Tern’s manufacturing process changed to eliminate this issue.
When You Pick Up Your Bike
We ask that you schedule a specific time for your bike pickup. Sometimes this means you have to wait a little while to get your bike, but we think this step is really important.
Your appointment is a dedicated time with one of our salespeople. We’ll walk through all your bike’s features and answer your questions. You’ll get to know your electrical and mechanical systems and be aware of safety considerations when carrying passengers and cargo. We’ll also make sure you have the helmets, locks, and other accessories you need.
We want you to ride away feeling satisfied and confident, ready for riding success!
Our Bikes Work Because Our Processes Work
We’re really proud of the build processes and expertise we’ve developed over the years. We are constantly iterating those processes to make them better.
What that means for you is that even if our bikes sometimes take a little longer to build, the quality of what you’ll ride away on is much higher.
In the end, that means more time for you to ride your bike, and less time spent in the shop trying to solve easily avoidable problems!
If that sounds good to you, we’re eager to talk more with you about the bikes we sell, and get you out on a test ride.