Jeff McD
Well-known member
Wanted to throw this out there because of so much moaning/grief in the forums over the Brose motor failures and many other brands of ebikes as well. My 2020 levo had a motor failure with the belt beginning to breaking down making the tickety-tick-tickety-tick sound that is typical of that problem at about 1000 miles of use. I am an aggressive rider who loves to climb god-awful steep hills with occasional bogging down in turbo, really putting a load on the motor. Made an audio recording of the sound and Specialized replaced the motor under warranty before breakdown as it was steadily getting worse. The bike was only in the shop one day.
Unfortunately, my replacement motor began making the same sound after only 200 miles-now getting steadily worse. Will be needing replacement soon. Date of manufacture was mid April 2020-was initially hoping that it was the newer motor with stronger belt that was being described online about then, but obviously not. Started thinking about what might have led to this situation. Came up with this:
GEN 1 levo Motor was very sturdy with few problems. Then came time to make a better, stronger, lighter motor. My thinking is, we know that the Brose people thought they had a winner with the new Gen 2 motor, manufactured a ton of them, and stockpiled them. Obviously the belt might have been one of the parts they lightened up, and if so that's a corner they should not have cut in retrospect.
However, as many of us in the forums have stated, it's early days for this E bike technology and problems are to be expected. To go on repeatedly moaning that you deserve a flawless product because of the amount of money it costs-that's just not realistic! Isn't that being an idealist demanding utopia which is nonexistent and never will be found. But at least we can hope the companies involved will take care of the problem.
Does it not seem that Specialized and Brose got together and decided the best way forward was to keep replacing warranty returns with the unimproved, stockpiled motors until the excess supply was finally exhausted (what, you expected them to throw them in the waste bin?), and since that would take several years, in order to do the right thing, extend the warranty on the '19/'20 bikes to 4 years cause it might take that long? No need to extend to 4 year warranty on the '21 bikes because the excess supply motors will have been exhausted before their 2 year warranty runs out. So they should stop worrying that they didn't get the 4 year warranty. They will be taken care of as well.
Brose's staff was absolutely smashed busy trying to design fixes for the GEN 2 motor's multiple failing parts & would not have had time to open up all of their stockpiled motors to fix them perfectly immediately. That's just not realistic thinking. Find me a company that would have been able, especially in the midst of a pandemic, to immediately hire a huge number of additional workers, immediately train them to open these motors up and replace the failed parts, parts that haven't even really been completely redesigned yet, and then give you your bulletproof replacement after your first motor died?
Then once the oversupply motors are exhausted, begin using the finally completed GEN 2 motor with stronger belts/sprague clutch/hardened crankshaft/better seals for water ingress/etc, reasonably hoping that their motors be bulletproof, since it has been long enough to pin down which parts fail. And they are so confident of this timing that with the rollout of the 2022 Levo model, Specialized seems to be guaranteeing that you WILL get this improved motor. They never actually guaranteed that on the earlier models, just said they were coming as quickly as possible, but sadly left us with that impression that we might be getting them in 2020.
We know that Specialized stands by their product and will take care of us. We need to just let it go, acknowledge the brutal reality of early days for this technology, and let this problem get worked through. Always failures in early days for new technologies. We bought into early days, we decided to be a beta tester (you did do your homework before your forked out all that money, right, and understood this, right?).
My LBS is nearby. If I lived 100 miles from the nearest shop where I would have to take the bike for repairs/warranties, knowing I was going to be a beta tester, I would I have bought a used GEN 1 levo as cheap as I could find for their reliability. One of my riding buddies wanted an Ebike 2 years ago, and he paid $2000 for a 2017 GEN 1model. He's never had a single problem, and he bought a rental levo from the LBS. They really get abused, but again- problem free.
The GEN 2 motor problems are not going to last forever. Quit whining, gut up, accept that you didn't do your homework, wait it out.
Unfortunately, my replacement motor began making the same sound after only 200 miles-now getting steadily worse. Will be needing replacement soon. Date of manufacture was mid April 2020-was initially hoping that it was the newer motor with stronger belt that was being described online about then, but obviously not. Started thinking about what might have led to this situation. Came up with this:
GEN 1 levo Motor was very sturdy with few problems. Then came time to make a better, stronger, lighter motor. My thinking is, we know that the Brose people thought they had a winner with the new Gen 2 motor, manufactured a ton of them, and stockpiled them. Obviously the belt might have been one of the parts they lightened up, and if so that's a corner they should not have cut in retrospect.
However, as many of us in the forums have stated, it's early days for this E bike technology and problems are to be expected. To go on repeatedly moaning that you deserve a flawless product because of the amount of money it costs-that's just not realistic! Isn't that being an idealist demanding utopia which is nonexistent and never will be found. But at least we can hope the companies involved will take care of the problem.
Does it not seem that Specialized and Brose got together and decided the best way forward was to keep replacing warranty returns with the unimproved, stockpiled motors until the excess supply was finally exhausted (what, you expected them to throw them in the waste bin?), and since that would take several years, in order to do the right thing, extend the warranty on the '19/'20 bikes to 4 years cause it might take that long? No need to extend to 4 year warranty on the '21 bikes because the excess supply motors will have been exhausted before their 2 year warranty runs out. So they should stop worrying that they didn't get the 4 year warranty. They will be taken care of as well.
Brose's staff was absolutely smashed busy trying to design fixes for the GEN 2 motor's multiple failing parts & would not have had time to open up all of their stockpiled motors to fix them perfectly immediately. That's just not realistic thinking. Find me a company that would have been able, especially in the midst of a pandemic, to immediately hire a huge number of additional workers, immediately train them to open these motors up and replace the failed parts, parts that haven't even really been completely redesigned yet, and then give you your bulletproof replacement after your first motor died?
Then once the oversupply motors are exhausted, begin using the finally completed GEN 2 motor with stronger belts/sprague clutch/hardened crankshaft/better seals for water ingress/etc, reasonably hoping that their motors be bulletproof, since it has been long enough to pin down which parts fail. And they are so confident of this timing that with the rollout of the 2022 Levo model, Specialized seems to be guaranteeing that you WILL get this improved motor. They never actually guaranteed that on the earlier models, just said they were coming as quickly as possible, but sadly left us with that impression that we might be getting them in 2020.
We know that Specialized stands by their product and will take care of us. We need to just let it go, acknowledge the brutal reality of early days for this technology, and let this problem get worked through. Always failures in early days for new technologies. We bought into early days, we decided to be a beta tester (you did do your homework before your forked out all that money, right, and understood this, right?).
My LBS is nearby. If I lived 100 miles from the nearest shop where I would have to take the bike for repairs/warranties, knowing I was going to be a beta tester, I would I have bought a used GEN 1 levo as cheap as I could find for their reliability. One of my riding buddies wanted an Ebike 2 years ago, and he paid $2000 for a 2017 GEN 1model. He's never had a single problem, and he bought a rental levo from the LBS. They really get abused, but again- problem free.
The GEN 2 motor problems are not going to last forever. Quit whining, gut up, accept that you didn't do your homework, wait it out.
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