Congratulations on your new scooter purchase!
Here are some important care and maintenance information and
tips to help you get the most out of your new scooter:
Battery Life: (thanks to
Currie Technologies): In order to ensure the maximum life of
your scooter/bike batteries, try to recharge them after every use.
Try to avoid draining the battery too much. While this may
sometimes be necessary, for average use, try not to drain the
battery more than 50%. Doing those (recharge after every use
and not draining beyond 50%) will ensure 300 - 400 recharges to your
batteries.
If you consistently drain the batteries, say by
80%, you will reduce the lifespan of your batteries considerably,
getting only about 100 - 200 charges instead of 300 - 400. (A
good guide is to not exceed half of the rated miles per charge. i.e.
if the rated miles per charge is 20 miles, try to not go over 10
miles between charges). Another way to extend the life of the
batteries is to charge the batteries once a month if you are not
using your bike/scooter for extended periods - batteries can
discharge very slowly over time, particularly in cold conditions.
Battery life for Currie products:
SLA batteries need to be kept at a full charge
when not in use. If you park your scooter for any length
of time without a full charge you will damage your battery
cells.
The
longer a battery sits without a full charge, the more sulfated
it becomes, restricting its ability to hold electricity
The
Currie Electro Drive™ reserves the bottom 20%
of the battery to prolong its life. Without this system, a
completely drained battery would give only 100 re- charges. By
using 80% of the battery capacity we increase the number of
recharges to 400-500 cycles. If you use half of the available
charge, you can get up to 700-800 cycles. As you can see, the
battery life is dependent on how often you use it and how deeply
you discharge it. Riding 6-10kms 4 to 5 times per week would
allow about 2 years of battery life.
Performance: The batteries included with
many
out-of-the-carton, lower end products, are often only meant to provide you with the bare
minimum in battery performance. Most scooter and bike
manufacturers are in the business of making bikes or scooters - not
batteries. So, in order to keep the prices of their products
as low as possible, the batteries are often of lesser quality,
particularly with the low-end scooters or bikes.
We highly
recommend that, when it comes time to replace the factory
supplied batteries, replace with high quality batteries in
order to achieve the highest performance from your electric scooter
or bike. You should always replace the batteries as a pack!
It is a waste of time to put one new battery together with an
old one.
Remember: the battery pack is only as good as the
weakest battery! All the batteries might be
perfectly new and fully operational, but if one bad cell
exists, the entire system will be brought down to that
level of performance.
Another way to get the power you need, when you really need it (IE
getting out of the way of a racing herd of buffalo) is to give the
battery a few seconds to "rest". After a few seconds of
coasting (if your model is so capable) the battery has time to build
back up it's voltage somewhat so that when you hit the throttle for
a bust of power, you will feel the extra push in the motor.
It's not a dramatically significant effect, but you will notice it.
When your batteries are seriously drained, you can kind of hobble
home by using short little bursts of throttle rather than trying to
maintain a constant drain on the batteries.
Getting the most distance: If you can only think in
terms of how many horses are under the hood, electric is not for
you. Let's face it, no current technology gives more raw power
than the sustained controlled miniature explosions of the combustion
engine. But what it lacks in explosive power, it gains in
efficiency. Here are a couple of ideas to get the most
distance per charge:
1. Acceleration is not our friend! The faster you
push to get up to warp speed, the more energy it takes.
Accelerate slowly and evenly, getting up to a nice cruising
speed a little at a time, and you will get more distance per
charge. Getting any mass moving from a still state to one
of motion requires the most "juice" and so a little kick to get
motion started can save a little bit more (for kick assisted
scooters or bikes).
2. Sustained speeds. As much energy as it takes
to get us up to speed, maintaining that speed is not nearly as
drawing as acceleration is. But it's still requires some
energy to defeat the pulling forces of gravity. And the
more the mass, the more energy it takes to maintain higher
speeds. So, if you want to make it downtown and back, SLOW
DOWN. It takes less energy to keep 200 pounds rolling
along at 10 miles per hour than it does at 20 miles per hour.
The wheel does "deflect" gravity, but it cannot stop it's
braking effect on moving objects. So if you want to go
farther, go slower.
For more information on batteries visit
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/index.htm
Charging: NEVER turn on the bike with the charger
connected and live. ALWAYS unplug the charger first, then
unplug from the recharging port on the bike, THEN you may switch on
your bike or scooter. Sending too much current through the
charging port to the controller/motor can result in permanent damage
to your scooter. When charging, do the reverse; turn off the
power to the bike, plug in the charger to the port on the bike, then
plug the charger into the outlet. Almost every charger now
days is a "smart" charger, meaning it will stop the flow of
electrons to the batteries once a full charge has been achieved.
No overcharging, no wasted electricity. Sweet.
Quick Release! Always be sure to have the tip of the
quick release leaver pointed towards the rear
of the bike/scooter. If they were to face forward and and get
caught on something, it would pull the Quick Release into the
release position while you are moving - needless to say, that
wouldn't be much fun.
Registration: If you have bought a Currie
Technologies electric bike/scooter, please be sure to register
your product with them at
http://www.currietech.com/html/CTI_homepage.html. While
your serial number and product information is registered with us, it
will help us to give you the best and fastest service if you
register with Currie.
Battery Care guide courtesy of
Currie Technologies

Click on Image for a 1000 pix wide image.
Quick Setup Guide for Currie
Technologies scooters

All bikes or scooters need to be assembled by an adult prior to
first use, or by a qualified shop like Scoot On This! LLC.

Shop rates:
Full Service and support after the sale. Authorized Service Center for Currie
Technologies (Schwinn, GT, Mongoose, I-Zip), and Lashout Products.
We also service the American Flyer, Akzan, Citi-bug, HCF, Pukka, Rad-2-Go,
Razor, Scoot-n-Go, Sola, X-treme, and most other brands of electric
Bikes & Scooters.
Visit our Shop Fees home page. Click Here.
More care and tips as we get the chance!
Drive safe and have a blast!!
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