Rad's Battery Charging Guide, dated October, 2023, says,

"You do not need to balance your battery unless your Owner's Manual or Rad Power Bikes Product Support recommends it. Batteries from Rad Power Bikes stay well balanced under normal use conditions. Follow the use, charging, and storage instructions in the Owner's Manual, and your battery will provide you with excellent performance. "

They used to say you should routinely cycle the battery three times of 12 hours on the charger. Now they say not to do it unless you call Product Support to complain about your battery. As long as cells don't all have the same rate of self-discharge, balancing will be necessary. I think the new policy reflects a belief that most users leave their chargers on enough to keep up with balancing.

I plug my Kill-A-Watt meter into the wall and my timer into the meter. Normal charger wattage with a green light is about 1.7. If the green light is on and the charger is drawing 2.0 or more, I assume it's balancing and leave it on. Normally, I don't need to run a charger overtime. The time I let a battery sit several months, it needed hours of balancing, according to my watt meter.

My Radmission had a different problem with the same solution. The rear brake signal wire was too short to raise my bars where I needed them for stability and comfort. I found an extension on Amazon, but it was 30 inches or so. I bought these, thinking they were short extensions.
https://amzn.to/3tRPH9p

I had to splice them. I was glad I had a temperature-controlled soldering iron because soldering fine wires is tricky. First, I slipped some tan heat-shrink tubing over the cable and slid it out of the way. Instead of trying to insulate my connections, I staggered them so they wouldn't short together. Then I slid the heat shrink over the whole thing and heated it. I happened to have an elastic velcro band to keep my pants cuff away from the chain. To keep my splice from getting tugged, I held it against the riser with three wraps of the band.

I have three. I've been riding daily for 3 years. They aren't dirty, so I'm sure I've washed them, but I don't remember how.

Pump-up sprayers, one for cleaning solution and one for rinse, can clean without getting water everywhere. I once gave my niece's 4-year-old daughter Cora two sprayers, a step stool, a washcloth, and a brush. She washed my car, my motorcycle, and her mother's SUV while I stood criticizing. I even found fault with her for being unable to wash the roof of the SUV.

At a gathering of relatives a few hours later, it was time to  eat crow. I asked her mother if Cora had gotten the car clean. She said yes. I turned to the group and admitted that I'd told Cora she wasn't doing a good job, but her mother said she'd gotten the car all clean, so I was mistaken. I repeated it emphatically: "I was MISTAKEN!"

The next day Cora came to me beaming and said she loved to wash cars. By playing her adversary, I'd given her a chance to build character. She could rightly be proud of her conduct in the face of undeserved criticism. Since I was impossible to please, she had continued working to please herself, and that's a work ethic. With pump-up sprayers, she could wash to her heart's content without making a mess.

I plug a wattmeter that reads in tenths of a watt into the outlet. I plug the timer into the wattmeter and set it for the estimated charge time. If I come back after it's off, I'll turn it on to see if the green light comes on and the wattage is below 2.0.

Even if the green light is on, if it's drawing more than 2 watts, I assume it's balancing and give it more time. I think that's better than occasionally leaving it on 12 hours.

Quote from: John Rose on December 09, 2023, 11:30:06 AM

As an afterthought - do the speedometers/odometers use the cadence sensor to derive the speed and distance? If that's the case, then the number of magnets is probably important.

The speedometer sensor magnet can be on a spoke but on rad bikes is in a part of the motor assembly that turns whenever the wheel turns.

AFAIK, the cadence sensor just tells the controller when you are pedaling. I wonder why the number of magnets matters.

Quote from: John Rose on December 08, 2023, 12:50:54 AM
From the article:

Yeah. I went out for my first winter e-bike ride today. (brand-new RadExpand 5 with 20"x4" tires, inflated to 30 psi)  Temperature was a fairly pleasant -5?C. A few inches of loose snow on grass was no problem, but on patches of hard-packed snow or ice I resorted to throttle-only. Even with minimum pedal assist the slight delay before the motor kicks in makes it unpredictable, which is worse if you're turning.

The oddest thing was trying to ride it on a walking/biking trail (a former rail line) where pedestrians had already made quite a few footprints. It was so unpleasantly bumpy that I just turned around and took the paved road home.

I thought my Radrunner would be great on snow or mud: just find a suitable tire pressure. The Electric Bike Review video I saw, featuring the Radpower founder, indicated that reducing pressure was fine; he ran his with an adult passenger at 18 psi. To the contrary, the manual said you must maintain the pressure on the sidewall, no more, no less. That's 30 psi.

That's rough on bumps. I discovered that the round cross section would ride up sideways on snow, mud, or sand, which meant no steering control. I made it rideable by reducing pressure to 10 psi, which flattened the tread and created a sort of corner against the sidewall. Unfortunately, those tires are 30 threads per inch. Besides giving less puncture protection than 60, it's less flexible. Low pressure is hard on the tire and eats up a lot of watts. I knew of no option for the Radrunner's 20 x 3.3 tires.

They ride more conventional bikes all winter in places like the Netherlands and Finland. Some switch to studded front tires for steering control on ice.

What model do you have?

It's too bad Radpower won't at least point you to a source. I had the same problem when three of their spokes broke. I asked where to get replacements and they ignored me.

I checked Amazon for "nutt brake pads." There were a lot of offerings. If you click one, on the left is a column of thumbnails to pull up different illustrations. Each offering is likely to have at least one illustration with precise measurements. (That's why I was confident that the ones I bought would fit.)

https://amzn.to/3HrwLkT
https://amzn.to/3Ho4ATQ

These have 6 magnets, but I don't know if either would work.

Quote from: John Rose on December 08, 2023, 01:22:20 AM

During the business of tightening the adjuster "until the wheel won't turn" I should leave the two mounting bolts loose so that the caliper centres itself to the rotor, right? Then torque down the two mounting bolts.

Yes, that's it, but I want the brake on (lashed) when I tighten the bolts, so that the caliper is clamped to the disk, to keep it aligned. (Yours seems to be out of alignment with the disk. Radpower's instructions seemed to say to align it visually, and that sounded too tricky for me. If it's loose, clamping it to the disk will align it. If I release the brake, I might turn it out of alignment while tightening.)

With cables, I discovered something else. Eventually, I'd get "cable stretch" on the rear.  It wasn't the cable but the housing, which is like a coiled spring. Over time, repeated flexing from turning the handlebars would stretch the housing. Lengthening the housing would shorten the bare cable at the caliper, causing the pads to drag lightly and wear. When I pulled the lever, I'd have to compress the housing before I could get much braking.

Periodically, I'd put the rear cable housing under compression overnight by lashing the rear brake lever to the handlebar. I'd find much less "cable stretch" in the morning.

It wasn't such a problem with the front because turning the bars didn't flex the cable.

When I assembled my first Rad bike, I discovered that the step-by-step manual skipped the front wheel. I'd never mounted a quick-release wheel or a disk-brake wheel. I had to guess. It came out okay.

My second Rad bike was worse. The skewer assembly came mounted with a hard stainless steel spacer between the nut and the dropout. I figured they wouldn't use hard stainless steel as packing material, so I used it when I mounted the wheel. Several weeks later I noticed that the nut was loose because the spacer had let it rotate. I don't know why it was there in the first place.

My Aventon came with a solid front axle. I can remove the wheel about as fast as with a quick release, and it's safer because it's foolproof besides making a stronger assembly.

The drag and long lever movement of your front brake suggest to me that the caliper is misaligned, like the rear caliper of my first Rad bike. The fix is easy. Make sure that the cable is loose enough to let the lever on the caliper open to the stop. Loosen the two bolts holding the caliper half a turn or so, allowing it to be repositioned.

With a 5mm hex bit on a shaft maybe 6" long, reach through the spokes to turn the adjuster on the spoke side of the caliper. Turn it clockwise until the wheel won't turn. Then back off a click or two until the wheel turns freely.

Now apply the brake with the lever on the handlebar. If the lever bottoms out agains the bar, you'll need to tighten the cable. If you tie the lever to the handlebar to keep the brake applied, the disk will keep the caliper aligned while you tighten the two mounting bolts.

The result should be firm lever action and no drag.

When I needed new pads, I noted the brand of the brakes and put a pad on my desk for comparison. I checked Amazon for pads to fit that brand. I compared those offered to the one on my desk. Then it was a matter of choosing organic, semimetalic, or metalic.

My grandfather was a postmaster from 1930 to 1954. He had a Hammond atlas with an extensive listing of U. S. towns so he could route letters to unfamiliar places, especially if handwriting wasn't clear.

Zip codes came in in 1963. Then came four-digit extensions so every address could have a unique number. Then came bar codes. Often a machine can read even a handwritten address and apply the bar code for the 9-digit number. Sometimes a human is involved.

I guess there wasn't a 9-digit code for your address, and post-office workers were under such pressure to do so many pieces per minute that time after time, nobody took a moment to figure out where to route it.

Quote from: John Rose on November 26, 2023, 02:39:22 PM
Well, that's a double coincidence. I recently bought both a RadMini ST2 and a Ryobi cordless electric mower.

That reminded me to check the lithium battery of the hedge trimmer I bought in 2022.

The nicad battery on my B & D hedge trimmer lasted many years. When it deteriorated, I bought a B & D nimh battery, which was supposed to be a replacement. I soon had trouble, so I bought a brand that was supposed to be better. Same thing. I thought it must be the charger. New charger, same thing.

It turns out, the B & D charger, which was supposed to be good for both types, would drain a battery at a few milliamps. When the battery came down to a certain point, the charger would come on and top it off. That seems to be the best way to maintain a nicad and why the original battery lasted so many years. With nimh, there's a drain current but the charger never comes on to top it back up. It's best not to leave the battery on the charger. B & D never explained that. They surely made a lot of money manipulating consumers into replacing batteries and chargers.

Several times a year I needed to cut back an enormous hedge with hand tools because the electric trimmer wasn't aggressive enough. When I saw a more aggressive one marked down, I bought it even thought it was B & D. It's lithium. B & D said to recharge it after each use. I wasn't inclined to believe their battery advice. I'd charge it only when it began to slow down.

Your mention of a Ryobi mower made me think. I read 16.6 volts on the 20 volt battery. I don't know what kind of cells the B & D has, but suppose it's 5 in series, which could be 20 volts fully charged and 18.5 nominal. I put it on the charger for an hour or so, measured 18 volts, and it was still 18 when I checked after it had sat an hour.

If they published state of charge vs voltage charts for particular batteries, I could see if a battery was suitably charged for storage.