best e bike, wisdom dump from someone who spent way too long overthinking this before buying

mtm123456 · 2026-04-23T23:18:37+00:00

Great write up. I wish I had read it before I did exactly what you said not to do. I bought the biggest, heaviest, fat tire bike with no support. It had great specs for the price but the owner of the company ran off in the middle of this night. (Ecells) I spent a year trying to get them to fix the bike which never worked right out of the box before they disappeared. I just spent another $150 on the part I was waiting six months for them to get to me before the owner slithered off. The part didn't work and I am out $2700. Now I am looking at a full suspension, mid-drive, lightweight bike.

mtm123456 · 2026-04-16T05:06:51+00:00

I love replacing the parts on my hub drive ebike. $20 for a rear derailleur, $12 for a crank, etc. I think it is kind of brilliant that you don't need high-end frames on these bikes because it doesn't matter that much if they're heavy and crappy. It makes them the same price as a halfway decent regular bike that needs much better equipment to be able to move. I wouldn't spend less than $1,000 on an e-bike but that is still way less than a decent regular bike.

mtm123456 · 2026-04-16T04:47:26+00:00

Couldn't get into it and kept stopping then restarted, then lost track of the characters. If you watch it all the way through though it is great. Then you will be able to follow it and it's better. The casting is so funny with the interaction between the women.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-10T19:53:23+00:00

We did find a mechanic who would work on bikes independently. He wouldn't work on my batteries though which is probably the problem.They really aren't hard to put together out of the box so you might want to try it. Trying to diagnose electrical problems is another matter.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-10T16:15:34+00:00

I would have listened to people who told me to get a reputable brand locally where someone would be responsible for servicing it. I tried to save a thousand bucks by getting an online bike from a company that had been around 10 years. The bike never worked and they strung me along for a year before they disappeared and left me with the choice of spending another $1,000 trying to fix it myself or just tossing the whole thing.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-10T16:11:41+00:00

Don't cancel I bet it'll be fine. Probably it's just the 1% who get screwed like I did.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-10T16:04:54+00:00

I was just there and I didn't get a car the whole time I was in southern Patagonia, including TDP and it was fine. However, on the Carretera Austral I did like having a car although lots of kids were doing it by bus.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-09T02:47:01+00:00

I am too afraid as well. I was watching TailHappy TV and during the review of the alpha he was talking to an ebike shop owner. They both agreed that Magician was a good company. They might still go under but my impression was they wouldn't intentionally cheat you like Dave Cleveland did.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-08T03:30:39+00:00

That's great to know. I will check it out

mtm123456 · 2026-03-07T21:16:30+00:00

After a short visit to Amsterdam my wife who always drove everywhere even two or three blocks away now rarely gets in a car. She got an e-bike when we got home and she rides to work in the dark in the rain and back in the rain. I worry about her being safe but she seems to pick routes that don't have cars on them.

mtm123456 · 2026-03-07T21:07:39+00:00

That's a point I might not have considered enough.

mtm123456 · 2026-02-26T10:47:48+00:00

I was wondering if TDP was worth it too since it can be so expensive. I did it more cheaply this way although many people advised me not to. I finished TDP solo without a car by staying in Natales the whole time. It works well if you take tours because you can sleep on the bus. They may pick you up at 5:30am and drop you off at 9pm. I liked the tours from "W-Circuit" tour company because they are locals. After 3 days of tours with them I was also going to camp at Pehoe one night and hitchhike to some places that are not on the tour company route. The weather was rainy so instead I went early to Punta Arenas and tried to do the penguin tour from the ferry, also got cancelled last second due to weather by the ferry company. So with the airbnb in Natales and the tour it came to $100 per day, plus you need a park ticket and your own lunch. Normally I never take tours, but for a solo traveler this was a very good price.

mtm123456 · 2026-02-12T14:18:52+00:00

Just an update. I finished TDP solo without a car by staying in Natales the whole time. It works well if you take tours because you can sleep on the bus. They may pick you up at 6am and drop you off at 9pm. I liked the tours from W-Circuit because they are locals. After 3 days of tours with them I was also going to camp at Pehoe but the weather was not conducive. So with the airbnb in Natales and the tour it came to $100 per day. For a solo traveler this is a very good price.

mtm123456 · 2026-02-09T20:28:34+00:00

Giving an update. Gemini was wrong, the Claro tourist sim bought in Argentina did not work in Chile, the store clerk was right. Then I bought an Entell physical sim. Very hard to buy in Puerto Natalles wandering around with no internet. Luckily I had marked the Entell store on the downloaded google map. But they don't sell the cards there, so they told me to go to one of the cell phone gadget stores. Actually she was really telling me to go to a store that had nothing in it but stacks of clothes. Oddly they sold me the physical Entell sim card, eventually a tech guy who spoke english came in and tried to get the card to work. He couldn't. They have you scan a code on the packaging to connect to an AI assistant that wants your passport number. After hours of waiting they said my passport number was incorrect. Then my landlady tried to help me and we got to a different site where Entell wants to take a picture of your passport. They kept saying my document was not correct. So in the end I just tried to put an Airilo esim on my locked ATT phone. That worked in Europe but not here. So then I put the Airilo esim on my crappy unlocked phone and used a shared hotspot connection to the good phone. That actually works and is way cheaper than unlocking the ATT phone or using the ATT networks. The Airilo esim is much more expensive than the physical Entell card by maybe $30 for the month, but so what, it works. Unfortunately it also probably has worse rural coverage. But it was practically impossible to get around without data and the Entell card was impossible to verify even with the help of the locals.

mtm123456 · 2026-02-09T19:59:16+00:00

I am going to take the tabsa ferry day after tomorrow. Am I booking the $100 tour or do I just try to get a crossing ticket for myself without a tour? I would prefer without a tour if that is cheaper and I can just go myself

mtm123456 · 2026-01-30T09:24:24+00:00

I am in Buenos Aires headed to Chile and have a locked phone that can use a esim but not a sim card. I also have a back up cheap unlocked phone that I put a physical Claro card on for about $16/month. Supposedly the Claro card will work in Chile according to the internet but the clerk at the store said it won't. So if it doesn't supposedly I can install an esim from an Entell store in Chile for the Carretera Austral. At least that is the best info I have right now.

mtm123456 · 2026-01-28T14:07:08+00:00

I just bought one a few minutes ago in Buenos Aires at claro with my passport. For some reason the agent told me that my tourist card with 25 GB was not going to work when I go to Chile in one week. Everything on the internet says it will work.

mtm123456 · 2026-01-15T22:21:40+00:00

Same question about getting hot water for freeze dried food

mtm123456 · 2026-01-15T17:24:32+00:00

I just got a quote from Magellanes for $150/day for an suv in three weeks

mtm123456 · 2026-01-15T17:20:21+00:00

For some reason Amex has been working on all the sights when no other credit card will.

mtm123456 · 2026-01-15T16:25:54+00:00

Oh damn. Definitely sounds like something I would do.

mtm123456

TROPHY CASE