The Lemmertorium

It’s not easy getting a bike fixed in China. Especially if your problems are out of the norm for most bicycle repairmen. Unfortuneately Werewolf (my bike that I mentioned here) had a bad axle. And when I rode my bike it grind as I pedaled. While riding my bike would go errrrrrk…errrrrrk…errrrrrk. We went to Bike Alley (the street where 99% of Pingdu’s Bikes are sold) to get Kyle’s battery fixed, and my pedal fixed, AGAIN. We began with Werewolf’s paw (you may remember about that from this post). I have had constant problems with Werewolf’s paw since the day it fell off. It grinds when I pedal it, and the nut loosens. The local bike shops only hammer the pedal on and tighten the nut. They literally take a big hammer, whack, whack, whack, whack, and tighten up the nut. I’ve had about 6 different people do this when the pedal had gotten loose. They tell me the bike’s fixed after that. I ride a little bit. After a few days, or a single day, or in some cases 10 minutes, it grinds again. Finally, we decided to take it in to the peoeple that I bought the bike from. They looked at it a little, whack, whack, whack, put a washer between the nut and the pedal, and told us it was fixed. No matter how many times we said it wasn’t fixed, they told us it was fixed. It creaked as I rode it away. Then we went to get Kyle’s battery fixed. It had potentially gotten fried from the power surge. We were pretty nervous about this operation, but our fears were relieved as we talked to a very friendly, and very skilled repair man. He new his electric bicycles inside and out. He opened up the battery case, checked the three batteries inside, and put everything back together. We asked him to plug in the charger for a few minutes because it tends to start smoking. He did this, and replaced it when it began to smoke. The coolest thing that this guy did was replace the glue inside the battery. Often when you buy a new product there’s that plasticy/rubbery glue inside. It’s reminiscent of dry rubber cement, and the battery’s wiring was held in place by this stuff. He pulled out the dry stuff when he looked at the battery, and then asked us for a lighter. He needed a lighter to remelt the dried glue, and drip it into place so that the wiring would stay secure. We don’t smoke, and no one around had a lighter. His answer was as cool as it was crazy. He took an old bicycle battery (which looks like a tiny car battery). The two poles were flat pieces of tin, and were clearly exposed. He placed a long metal stick between the poles. It instantly began to grow a brilliant orange. You could tell the man had done it before, because he was quick to whip it away before ig got too hot. He then held the violently orange stick against the globs of plastic, allowing the wet glue to drop in place on the wires inside the battery. When Kyle and I watched him doing this our eyes widened. At first we were sure he was going to hurt himself, but we soon saw that he could do this all day. Just puttin’ a metal stick on the battery to make it hot.