Hi all.
New member from Rotorua, New Zealand here. I bought my first e-bike, an EX-e 9.7 in May last year after reading and re-reading this thread, and I have about 2000km on it now. I really like the bike, and I would recommend it to anyone who fits the profile of a lightweight ebike, but it hasn't been all smooth sailing, so I thought it might be worth documenting my experience with it.
Before riding it I had the stock tires changed to Maxxis and the Vorsprung Secus moved over from my old Pike, so I don't know what the stock fork feels like without that mod. I cut the bars to 760, shortened the brake lines and cable housings and added conduit to tidy up the cockpit and had to drastically reduce the stack before I could get enough weight on the front tire.
After a few shakedown rides to get all that sorted (especially the stack) I was happy and all was going great except the crank bolts wouldn't stay tight. At about 200km it developed a noticeable creak so I took it in for a free service. They tightened everything up and it was good for one ride before the creak came back. It took the local shop a couple of goes, but eventually (on my suggestion based on this thread) they adjusted the motor mounts and stopped the creaking. It has never come back, but the crank bolts never stopped working loose. Eventually the shop replaced the useless alloy crank bolts with longer steel ones and red loctite. Every owner of an Ex-e should look into this fix. The stock bolts are crap. Speaking of stock bolts, I'm sure every owner has noticed the chainguide bolts rusting, and I eventually changed these out for stainless ones.
Somewhere north of 600km I noticed a light clicking sound occasionally coming out of the motor. It wasn't much at first, and not very frequent. It got worse over time and on one ride it started getting quite loud. I recorded it with my phone and showed the video to the shop where I bought it. They asked for the video and sent it to Trek NZ. Within a day I was told a new motor was on its way. I think it came from Australia, as it took several weeks, but that didn't matter as the motor still worked fine.
The new motor arrived, was installed and was noticeably more powerful and consistent in its power delivery than the old one. It also uses noticeably more battery and the rider input on the screen reads about 50 watts higher. The motor was changed at about 1,300km and the bike mileage re-set to zero. It's almost up to 800km again and the new motor has been flawless.
The rear hub bearings managed only one wet ride before rusting and developing play (and noise). I replaced them with Enduro bearings and no more trouble there.
The rear shock lower hardware was too narrow and over time it developed play. I noticed a bit of hollowing out of the carbon on the bolt head side of the frame. The hardware was replaced under warranty with wider hardware and I was told if the hollowing out of the carbon was a problem then the whole frame would be warrantied..... so far not required, and seems a bit of a waste as I could fab up an engineered solution in about 20minutes... which would void my warranty.
And so to the biggest headache I have had with this bike.... The Fox Float X rear shock.
First, I was a bit bummed to see it topped out with a mild clunk right from new. Coming off a DB inline on my old bike this felt a bit cheap. Then it lost quite a bit of air over the first few months. It was gradual, and I didn't notice until one day it bottomed out with a clunk. I checked the pressure, added about 40psi and kept riding. It kept bottoming out. I have a suspension tuner right over the road from work, so I took it in to him to ask about adding a token. He found that the bottom out bumper was destroyed and had gone right around the large washer behind it so now they were out of position. New bumper, one token, and one travel reducing spacer removed, and I was back in business with a 62.5mm stroke. Now the problems really started. On the first ride my shock started making a terrible sucking sound which had gone by the following morning. Then it developed a chronic knock, and this is the thing that has been plaguing me for months. My tuner (Jono at Suspension Lab) mentioned that he had seen a number of Float Xs had an issue with knocking, and he could see something weird was going on on his dyno. The usual fix (on a lot of different shocks) was to scuff up the piston surface to prevent surface tension blocking oil flow, so I got him to do this. I didn't want my shock to be away for weeks for warranty service, so I stumped up the cash.
This improved things, but didn't fix them. I persevered for a few more weeks, but the knocking was getting worse again and I was seriously thinking about buying a different shock. We discussed it some more and Jono suggested re-valving the shim stack for me. His opinion was that the tune specced in this shock is miles out of line with normal Fox tunes. It is just far too stiff. He re-valved it with something very close to a stock medium linear Fox tune in both compression and rebound. I only have one ride on it but the difference was immediately noticeable. It handles small bumps and chatter far better, and I was really surprised by a noticeable increase in rear grip. I'm glad I persevered with this shock as now I'm very happy with it.... oh, yes, and all the noise is gone, including the top out clunk.
Edit: I also had the fork extended to 160 and everyone should do this too. It should come this way from the get-go.
So yeah, that was a long post, but well, I thought it would be useful enough info for anyone looking at one of these bikes. They aren't perfect, but with a bit of patience the niggles can be worked out, and the warranty service here in New Zealand has been great. For the trails I like to ride in the time I have available it is a great bike.
ethirteen.eu
www.wolftoothcomponents.com
www.bike-discount.de
