Can You Ride Your E-BIKE in the RAIN? | Electric Bike Questions

Hey everyone, Peter, sixthreezero. Can you ride your e-bike in the rain?

All right. First, I'm going to see if I can jump over this bike. First attempt ever. All right. So can you ride a bike in the rain? Well, I'm in Southern California, which I absolutely love. I wasn't born here, but I moved here because the weather's awesome. And I don't know what it's like to ride in the rain. Well, no, I do because I grew up in North Carolina it rained there pretty much every day, North Carolina. Very beautiful.

Okay, so, you can ride your e-bike in the rain. Okay. However, there are several caveats, and it's not necessarily recommended at this point, but you can. Okay. So all the parts on here are meant to resist water, but there are limitations. So we'll point some of those outs I will remember to have Nate come up here and show you some closeups so that we can show you what those mean. But let me...

So first of all, everything is made to... If water comes spraying your way, if it's a light rain or whatever, things are going to be fine, you're going to be all right.

But there are different ways that... Experiences you can have with, with water, downpour, et cetera, whatever. If it's driving rain, if it's a heavy downpour, that's a lot different than if there's a mist or if it's light rain. So these are all different factors. Obviously, you probably don't want to ride in a downpour. You wouldn't go out, but if you find yourself caught in one that's another thing. You may even want to just get out of it for a while. You know how you see those guys when you're driving on the highway and there are motorcyclists heading under a bridge? That might be you. Okay.

So the battery, let's talk about the battery. The battery itself is really completely enclosed, which is pretty amazing. Okay. It's really amazing. There are these seals all around. Now, these seals, I imagine could be penetrated in theory. So that is one consideration. And you absolutely do not want to get water in the battery. I think you probably have to use a pressure washer at least to get into this thing with water, but it's a completely sealed thing. However, inside there are your 48 or 52, eighteen six-fifty cells, and you don't want to get those wet. It's dangerous and also costly. But yeah, this is pretty much a self concealed, self-contained system with maybe the exception of the connection right here, the electro connection, where it connects into the controller. Well, Nate, why don't you come up? And then we'll show some close-up things that matter.

Okay. So here's the battery. If you want to take a look at that, I'll show you an example of the seal right here. Right here. The body right here is all one piece.

It looks like metal and feels like metal, but it's actually, I think it's plastic, but okay. And then that comes in and goes into the controller. So this connection right here is going to lock into the controller connection. So I'll show you right here. It's going to go in like this. So that's an area where water could potentially get in if the seal isn't okay. Also, depending on how hard the rain is driving, or if you're spraying water at it. I wouldn't ever spray water directly at these parts. That's always the recommendation with your bike.

You can wash your bike with a hose, but you want to not spray it at entry points, like into your hub, into your bottom bracket, down into the head tube or the headset, or any of these points that... Where there's a seal.

So we open this up and like I said, we have a self-contained battery. Now, this part is a little more interesting because I already unscrewed right here where the controller is housed. So the controller is housed in here. Now the controller is a little bit more vulnerable because let me show you, it looks like this. Okay? And some of these parts, this one goes to the throttle for instance. That's not protected from water at all, except for the fact that it's inside the controller housing. But the controller housing is not entirely waterproof. If you submerge that or the water was heavy enough, water could get in there. So that's a concern as well. Again, if you're out in light rain or whatever, you'll be fine. But it's again, not entirely recommended.

So there are a lot of other connections right here. I want to check this one out, Nate.

I'm going to unwrap this just a little bit here. There are a whole lot of connections on your bike. They're going to, and from various parts. The motor, the controller, the display, et cetera. They're going to look like this. These are very water-resistant. Okay. When you put these together, be very careful, there are tiny little pins. And in order to get these lined up properly, there's an arrow on each one. So you can line up and then push it, push those nice and firmly. Those are protected against water. Again, you wouldn't want to dump it in a pool or anything, but yeah, with an irregular rain, you'll be fine, okay. And then the controller is another concern. I saw a really cool... Bolt and eBikes has a good video on this topic as well. And he actually said, Hey, this part's a little bit more susceptible than in the rest. he, the controller. I mean, the LCD display is not as waterproofed as other parts. And he actually there at Bolt, he puts a PLA, he puts a plastic bag over it with a rubber band. Pretty clever idea. I think it's a good idea. So I want to give him credit for that. I didn't come up with that good plan. I think the throttle is probably as well, a little bit susceptible.

Last thing you want to think about right, in the rain with an e-bike, is the motor. The motor is sealed. It's fine. But again, you don't really want to chance it. But I think that the motor wouldn't really be compromised at all by any rain you'd have to almost like remove the gears and spray a pressure washer directly at it, or hit it from the other side directly in where there are openings.

So anyway, the main thing of concern would probably be the controller and the controller housing here. Again, you can ride an e-bike in the rain. Absolutely. If you get caught out there or if it starts to rain a little bit, a drizzle or whatever, I wouldn't worry about it. In a hard-driving rain, I wouldn't go out or I would probably shelter for a while. And then lastly, if you do get your bike wet or you want to wash it, which is also fine, just dry it off, just dry your bike off. And also don't ever store your bike out in the weather. So, that's pretty much it.

Yeah, you can do it with some reservations, and definitely don't go out in super bad weather.

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