rad power reliability

[tonyfam13]

Hi Folks I'm thinking of buying a Rad power ebike but i have no service provider anywhere near here. Ho reliable are these bikes. How easy to service and does rad power provide parts in first year on warranty?   Call me
Interested

[finbackchief@gmail.com]

My wife and I both have the Rad Runner. We love them and they have been very reliable. We're only had one problem. They don't seem to want to charge right away after a long ride. But if you wait for a few minutes they charge fine. This is the same for both bikes.

[JimInPT]

Hi Folks I'm thinking of buying a Rad power ebike but i have no service provider anywhere near here. Ho reliable are these bikes. How easy to service and does rad power provide parts in first year on warranty?   Call me
Interested

Anecdotally, I think you'll find most owners report very good reliability.  Aside from the usual adjustment and tuning after putting it on the road, my only issue so far (since Mar 2021) with my MiniST was a squeak in the front end that I couldn't track down.  A call to customer service for some advice to diagnose it led to a complete fix as the CSR who answered the phone asked me a couple questions and walked me through the simple fix in my garage on the phone, willing to stay online as long as it took to fix it, which turned out to be about 20 minutes overall.  Didn't need to transfer me to a "technician", it was just the guy who caught my call.  Impressive.  All post-sale questions and accessory purchases have been handled very professionally with some limitations due to parts not in stock or staffing shortages.  They have even applied significant discounts to a couple of orders without being asked to do so.  In fact, I called to add another part I overlooked to an order I'd just placed online, the CSR did so, but then just added a discount that made the new total less than the original total!  Gobsmacked, I was.

So you can expect good support from Rad via phone or email and they will ship parts under warranty; I've even heard of them covering labor costs for bike shops to do the fix. 

Mechanically, they're bicycles, so any good bike shop can do bikey things like assemble it and tune up the shifter, brakes etc.  I took mine to BikeShopBob in town, who I've known for 20 years, to tune up and inspect my new ride for shipping damages (there were none) and he was fairly impressed with the bike's design and components for the price, and had assembled 4 Rad bikes for a single customer the previous week - his only gripe was that Rad needs a special socket to remove the freewheel, so he had to get one of those for another customer's job (it's not a commonly-needed thing, like adding a specialized tool to the toolbox for occasional use) but my understanding is that there are many different ones out there from other companies as well.  If you know which end of a wrench to hold, you can do most routine maintenance and adjustments yourself, but like any bike make sure you understand what you're doing - you don't need to do something dumb and get thrown off at 20mph.   

Electrically, Rad will assist bike shops to get up to speed, but some shops may be unwilling to even consider working on them.  Given the rapid growth in e-bike sales, that attitude will cause them to go out of business if they can't adapt, IMHO.

One thing to consider is that due to supplier shortages, Rad (and other companies) have been making parts substitutions the last few months and I've seen some forum posts about teething problems with them.  Rad stands behind the bikes, but is forced to use parts they haven't used before, so there may be some issues, but this is speculation.

So you should be fine.

[JimInPT]

My wife and I both have the Rad Runner. We love them and they have been very reliable. We're only had one problem. They don't seem to want to charge right away after a long ride. But if you wait for a few minutes they charge fine. This is the same for both bikes.

If you're putting them on the charger right after you get home after being worked hard, the battery and/or controller may be too hot to properly accept a charge and are thermally-protecting themselves until they cool down.  I've never seen this on my MiniST and if both your bikes do it, that would be my conclusion. 

It's always good practice to charge batteries when at room temperature, neither too hot nor too cold.

[sc00ter]

My RadRunner 1 has over 2000 trouble free miles. It's not the most refined ebike on the market but overall I'm very happy with it. In fact, I was considering upgrading to something more premium (Tern) but I'm unwilling to give up my throttle so I'll just get another Rad. The 20mph limit is fast enough for my needs as well.

I had the same issue with charging a battery after a long, hot ride. Just let the battery sit for about an hour before charging it.

[Altema]

3000 miles on a RadMini here, and it's been very reliable.

[Jman]

Good quality for the price.  Just make sure you put flat protection in the tires/tubes because they are not fun to push.

[wtfg]

And if you do have a problem expect a week for them to get back to you after email
Then expect another 3 days for the part to ship, and another 3 to 5 to get it!!
Their Mission is a good bike there response time is bad.
People say they got big too fast, maybe so but you still need to take care of your old customers too.

[Islandcruiser]

Ive got 1500k on my radwagon. And so far ive only had to adjust the brakes. Althought it looks like I might have to replace brake cables next spring. Got some strand breakage. But thats pretty normal for brake cables, on any bike. I ride it pretty hard, and its often heavy with stuff. Other than that, no problems.

[Ryan]

We had 4000+ on our 2018 RadWagon before we sold it. In my experience, if anything major is wrong with it, it will happen within the warranty period (or there are issues straight out of the box). Of course, there are exceptions but any issues Rad has taken care of them. We are awaiting a new rear wheel for our RadWagon which is out of stock. But frustrations like this are to be expected with the current state of bike components.