another inspection and maintenance item

Something I've done before on my Mercane Single motor is to check and if needed attend to the suspension swing arm pivot. This sounds harder than it is, because in part the Mercane is an easy scooter to work on.

The suspension arm pivots around this point

there is one on each side, and both front and rear (so 4 bolts in all)

The covers have to come off so you'll need your 2.5mm allen key (that came with the scoot) and the 4mm allen key (that also came with the scoot). I'll be using my own tools here.

with the cover off you can see the bolt that needs inspection. The scoot does not need to be raised (unless you want to, I just sat on the floor) and you can just put in your allen key and test that it does not move when you attempt to tighten it (righty tighty). Mine did on one side and so I took it out, applied some permatex and replaced it. NOTE: it will probably only be one side because of the design.

While I was there I also checked that the axle nuts were tight (with the supplied 18mm spanner) (and again, righty tighty). Some small movement of the axle will occur because its keyed in (not perfectly circular) and can turn a few degrees ... don't mistake that for looseness. You'll see the axle move if you're careful as the indicator. All my nuts were tight (no comment).

Anyway, when looking at the bolt there was no evidence that any thread locker had ever been applied, there is of course a little grease there because the pivot is greased inside.

So I applied some

The astute will notice some silicon in places, this is because I put a small dab of silicon on the inside of the covers so that the outside small bolts just hold it in place and the silicon holds and prevents the plate from rattling ... inevitably some of that gets onto the swingarm as seen below. Its of no consequence.

So with that drop in place, I snuggled it in firmly but not "strip its threads tight", knowing that the permatex will indeed do the job of preventing it vibrating loose again.

Also a drop of permatex on those small bolts makes sure they can remain just firm (not even plastic cracking tight) and won't vibrate out.

So all in all I had to tighten 2 of the 4 pivot bolts.

For the curious watching this video will make it clearer how the pivot works. Start from this point if that video starts at the start ...

Why do this? Well keeping things running right is the most important way to prevent failures. I use my scooter hard and "a stitch in time saves 9".

Lastly I have a bunch of points on maintenance on this blog post. I mention over there the type of thread locker I use (permatex) and its important to get the right strength (doesn't matter if you prefer loctite as a brand, they have one too.

Enjoy

up and back

I went for a scoot this afternoon, up to Queen Mary Falls and back.

regen question?

I was also interested to explore regen a bit so I had that in my mind on this up and back trip. First observation was that that it uses relatively little of the battery climbing hills (of course the distance was only 4.5km. But to me the trip reveals how little I'd get back on regen braking, even on that mountain descent, because simply put: I don't even feel inclined to use the brakes.

Had I used the brakes somewhat then it would have been quite the boring descent in comparison.

Trip was only 9km, and you can see from this how the turn around point is much shorter than half the time .. so even any imagined recharging time would be less than the discharging time. Even shorter if I wanted to keep my speeds as I did.

Obviously because I am going faster the duration of (time taken to cover) that distance is less time than the climb. So in reality even on a really steep hill I'll get "stuff all" back from regen (BTW the hill elevation looks like its a higher slope because I've put it on duration not distance too). It's impressive how the speed on the way up was so stable, despite hill slope changes made clear on the descent.

Right near the bottom of the hill I had a "close encounter" with (what I think is) a wren.

For those who may not have watched the whole thing, I managed to edit together this, the point where the small bird (probably a wren) flew out and collided with me (gently)

I hope you enjoy the trip as much as I did ...

Mercane Dual Motor top speed

I get a bit curious about all the claims of "up to 45kmh" by people with this scoot, and to be frank I was never attracted to it on any "high speed" belief. I wanted it for the capacity to do better on uphills.

So I've been meaning to do this for some time, and finally decided to do this test yesterday. This is peak speed and to be honest it felt like it was no longer creeping up speed (and the hill was leveling off too). On this test I chose a long straight slight downhill and disabled the speed limiter.

Assuming my GPS on my phone is close then 45kmh seems unrealistic on a flat. This is good news to me and feeds into my statements about brakes being sufficient for what it is supposed to be ... a scooter that's speed limited to less than 25kmh.

Main Range National Park on the scooter

Too the opportunity before lunch to drive out to the edge of the plateau to head down the range and ride along a little way at the bottom of Main Range National Park

As is common down there the cows were out wandering about

So if you feel inclined to spend 20 min with me on the scoot here's the video. Be aware that I make a few remarks about vegan bullshit with relationship to the area where I live ... if you're sensitive, best not watch.

Enjoy