Ice Bear Trikes and PDI -- Again By ellpee (Read 904 times)

[ellpee]

Bought an Ice Bear Magnum recently, and due to a ?difference of opinion? with my dealer did NOT get an Ice Bear PDI -- scoot arrived in crate, wheels and rear fenders not attached, etc. OK, that's history and not any kind of knock on IceBear.

Did a partial PDI myself, but at 520 miles just discovered a serious thing. Came back from my last ride and parked the scoot in the garage, went down today to hit the road again and couldn't push it backward out of the garage. Would roll forward, but not backward. So okay, no riding today. Pulled the rear fenders off (cracking one in the process, grrrrrrr!) and a quick inspection revealed right rear brake caliper missing one bolt, just hanging on by the other, which obviously was already loose and the next candidate for falling out.

I did look at the calipers when the scoot first arrived, and they seemed okay at that time, but obviously the bolts were not as tight as they should have been, and definitely not "LocTited." Could have been a really serious problem out on the road somewhere, I consider myself lucky that I got home after the last run without any catastrophic problems.

So I guess the moral of the story is, Ice Bear's China factory suppliers are far from perfect, no matter how good Ice Bear themselves may or may not be. If you DON'T pay for and receive a full Ice Bear PDI, it behooves you to go over EVERYTHING very, very closely when your scoot is delivered. I can only imagine what the consequences would have been if that second bolt had fallen out at 50 mph somewhere and the entire right rear caliper had wound up dangling from the brake hose.

[rapidjim]

Very true.

A complete PDI is very important. This is one of the things that people must be aware of when ordering any machine that is delivered in a crate. This is part of the reason that some folks like to bad mouth Chinese Machines. They take delivery of a machine that is in a crate, ruch though the assembly and when something goes wrong, they blame the machine and not themselves. I am sure that ellpee didn't rush it, but things happen. I am just glad you found it before something drastic happend.

When you buy from a lot ( no matter if it is Japanese, Chinese or whatever) the inspection and PDI is done before the machine is sold. Ice Bear also offers to do the PDI (additional cost ) and drop ship the machine ready to ride. Regardless of where you get the machine or if the PDI was done, it is very important to periodically check nuts bolts ect. Vibration is not our friend.

Jim

[ellpee]

Yup. Don't remember 100%, but I'm pretty sure I put a socket'n'ratchet to all the bolts in the rear end before I installed the fenders, and all of them seemed snug. If I had it to do over, I'd REMOVE every one of them and re-torque them with Loctite. Of course there's no torque table I know of for all that, would just have to go by feel, but with Loctite and serious torqueing things should be good. Too much torque could be a bad thing with engine and tranny bolts, I imagine, where you're dealing with aluminum or whatever, but everything in the rear end seems to be good solid iron/steel.

[rapidjim]

For your info

Standard Torque Settings for nuts and bolts

5mm 3.5 Ft Lb
6mm 7.5 Ft Lb
8mm 16.0 Ft Lb
10mm 26.0 Ft Lb
12mm 40.5 Ft Lb

With Flanged Head

6mm 9 Ft Lb
8mm 20 Ft Lb
10mm 30 Ft Lb

Jim

[ellpee]

"Flanged head" is the ones that look like they have a permanent, built-in washer, right? Was wondering what they're called, nobody at our local hardware store seemed to know (and they didn't have any anyway). The one that fell out I replaced with a standard 8mm bolt and a washer and plenty of Loctite.