Let me preface this by saying that I really like the new RadWagon 4. I received my bike on September 24 and since then I have put just over 50 miles on it.
Yesterday while riding to the post office, I heard a small pop and then a loud scraping sound. I quickly realized that the kickstand was dragging freely on the ground. I hopped off to see what happened and saw that the remaining kickstand spring had deformed so badly that it slipped out of its hole and there was no longer anything holding the kickstand up. Earlier in the week, I had found a deformed spring on the floor of my garage, but I couldn't place where it might have come from, so I threw it on the workbench and didn't think much more about it. Now I realize that the first spring had failed earlier in the week and the second spring finally gave way yesterday. Luckily, I was close to a store so I pushed the bike over and bought some zip-ties so I could at least make it home.
Here is what the springs looked like after failing:
Initially, I thought that maybe the failure could be due to poor quality springs, so I made a trip to Lowe's to see if I could find some replacements. I ended up picking up a pair of these:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Hillman-2-Pack-3-1-8-in-Zinc-Gate-Extension-Spring/3120573
When I got home, I put the new springs on and everything seemed to work fine, so I assumed that the problem had been fixed. Yesterday evening, I rode the bike with my daughter to the park, and before we made it a few blocks, one of the new springs failed. Luckily, we were able to make it home with the remaining spring, but it likely wouldn't have survived much longer.
Here are the new springs after failing:
I took a closer look at how the springs attached to the kickstand, and I realized that this isn't a materials failure, but rather an engineering failure. The kickstand is designed in such a way that the springs are over-extended and bent at an extreme angle when the kickstand is down. This leads to the spring ends deforming and eventually pulling out of their mounting holes:
Since the closest Lowe's to me is ten miles away, I picked up an extra set of springs on my earlier trip. Knowing that the springs would likely just fail again if I put them back on the same way, I decided to mount them differently. I ended up wrapping some stainless-steel mechanic's wire around the frame of the bike to create some temporary spring mounts. This allows the springs to hold the kickstand up while riding, and avoids the extreme bent spring angle when the kickstand is in the down position:
I will try this solution for a while, and if it ends up working well I will machine up some stays to take place of the wire.
I opened a ticket with Rad tech support, but I haven't received any response.
Hopefully this will help others. I'm looking forward to seeing if this is an issue that others experience.
I am really enjoying this bike, but it is essentially useless without a kickstand, especially since I am using it mainly to haul my five year old daughter to school, the park, the grocery store, etc... Without a kickstand, it seems pretty dangerous for a kiddo to try and climb aboard.
Has anyone else had this issue with their new RadWagon?
Yesterday while riding to the post office, I heard a small pop and then a loud scraping sound. I quickly realized that the kickstand was dragging freely on the ground. I hopped off to see what happened and saw that the remaining kickstand spring had deformed so badly that it slipped out of its hole and there was no longer anything holding the kickstand up. Earlier in the week, I had found a deformed spring on the floor of my garage, but I couldn't place where it might have come from, so I threw it on the workbench and didn't think much more about it. Now I realize that the first spring had failed earlier in the week and the second spring finally gave way yesterday. Luckily, I was close to a store so I pushed the bike over and bought some zip-ties so I could at least make it home.
Here is what the springs looked like after failing:
Initially, I thought that maybe the failure could be due to poor quality springs, so I made a trip to Lowe's to see if I could find some replacements. I ended up picking up a pair of these:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Hillman-2-Pack-3-1-8-in-Zinc-Gate-Extension-Spring/3120573
When I got home, I put the new springs on and everything seemed to work fine, so I assumed that the problem had been fixed. Yesterday evening, I rode the bike with my daughter to the park, and before we made it a few blocks, one of the new springs failed. Luckily, we were able to make it home with the remaining spring, but it likely wouldn't have survived much longer.
Here are the new springs after failing:
I took a closer look at how the springs attached to the kickstand, and I realized that this isn't a materials failure, but rather an engineering failure. The kickstand is designed in such a way that the springs are over-extended and bent at an extreme angle when the kickstand is down. This leads to the spring ends deforming and eventually pulling out of their mounting holes:
Since the closest Lowe's to me is ten miles away, I picked up an extra set of springs on my earlier trip. Knowing that the springs would likely just fail again if I put them back on the same way, I decided to mount them differently. I ended up wrapping some stainless-steel mechanic's wire around the frame of the bike to create some temporary spring mounts. This allows the springs to hold the kickstand up while riding, and avoids the extreme bent spring angle when the kickstand is in the down position:
I will try this solution for a while, and if it ends up working well I will machine up some stays to take place of the wire.
I opened a ticket with Rad tech support, but I haven't received any response.
Hopefully this will help others. I'm looking forward to seeing if this is an issue that others experience.
I am really enjoying this bike, but it is essentially useless without a kickstand, especially since I am using it mainly to haul my five year old daughter to school, the park, the grocery store, etc... Without a kickstand, it seems pretty dangerous for a kiddo to try and climb aboard.
Has anyone else had this issue with their new RadWagon?