Rurui XT10 Electric Mountain Bike 150 mile review

 

I like bike riding for exercise and fun.  I have began riding much more off-road where a fat-tire full-suspension bike is really needed.  I started shopping for one and ended up with this Rurui XT10.  It was on sale through Amazon for $1899 with a $300 coupon making the price $1599.  Given all the features this bike has, that seems like a good price for what you get.  I call this my Cheat-O-Cycle since the electric power on a bike is sort of cheating.

The bike came shipped in one box.

It took me about 30 minutes to complete the assembly.  It was pretty intuitive which is good given there was no documentation, manuals, or instructions at all.  I later emailed Rurui and got the manual for the display.  I also found out later that one of the videos in the Amazon listing is an assembly video.  

The bike feels very solid and inspires confidence.  The hydraulic disc brakes are fantastic.  This is my first disc brake bike and this has been a huge upgrade.  The improvement is comparable with the difference between my 1968 Ford Mustang with 4-wheel no-assist drum brakes and my 2006 Porsche Cayman S.  The rear suspension is a bit too soft for me when you are off-road in rough terrain at speed.  The front can be adjusted so I set the preload to the maximum, and the damping about half which works well.  I plan to upgrade the rear shock soon. The headlight as great, although I have not ridden much at all in the dark.  I wish they would have included a wired taillight as well.  They included a battery powered taillight but that is a bit inconvenient.  The controller does have outputs for brake and tail lights and I may add that in the future. I really like the clamp-on grips as they feel great and stay put.  All my previous bikes had slip-on grips and they were always moving around.  The seat is really great too.  This is the best bike seat I have ever had, by far.  The shifter is great.  Button click upshifts, and you can downshift multiple gears at once.  

I wanted electric assist as a heavy, fat-tire- full-suspension bike like this takes more pedal power to ride.  The electric assist is fantastic to help with that.  I pedal pretty much all the time and let the electric power assist.  I still get plenty of exercise but my range is at least triple what I would have without electric assist, probably even more. So far my longest ride has been 30 miles and that used about half the battery.  Only having 7 speeds means you don't have the lower gears you would with a mountain bike that has a front derailleur.  The electric assist fills most of this gap but in very tight technical bits, I do miss the lower gears.  The electric assist does not work as well at speeds below about 5mph. I have considered changing the gear set to have a lower first gear to help with low speed riding.  You tend to ride much faster off-road than you would without electric assist.  I found myself going up loamy grades at over 15mph where I would be going more like 5mph without electric assist.  I also noticed my rides work my arms much more than before because I am riding much faster off-road.  

Fat tires make a huge difference in soft loamy conditions.  My other mountain bike has 2.2" tires and they just sink in and you stop.  The 4" wide fat tires float over most of that.  You also retain steering control much better in soft conditions.  It enables riding in places I just would not with narrow tires.    

I had some strange issues with the display.  It would only read speed when the motor was engaged, and even then it was way off, only reading about one third actual speed.  I emailed them back and forth for a while until finally fixing one of the parameters.  The display has settings you can change in a programming mode.  My parameter P07 was somehow set to 255 when it should have been 1.  I have heard others having parameters being off on bikes like this.  If you get one, and you have issues, check these settings.  My speedometer now works correctly.  You can also calibrate it to ensure accurate speed.  They have a wheel size setting as well as a fine tuning speed adjustment.

The color display is very hard to read in the sunlight, especially when wearing sunglasses.  It is very important to make sure your sunglasses are not polarized!  Even with non-polarized sunglasses, and on the brightest display setting, it is very hard to read.  

I would prefer a high-contrast black and white display that is focused on easy reading in direct sunlight.  Color is really just a gimmick.  Sure it looks pretty but it is much less functional.

The rear shock is not properly mounted to allow for proper rotation in the joints.  I noticed creaking when riding.  When I removed one end of the mounting, I found the other end to be clamped very tight.  

I replaced the front bolt with a longer 8mm shoulder bolt that I cut and added a locking nut.  I also greased the inside of the shock mounting hole and the bolt as this surface will be moving.  I was able to file down the rear shock enough to prevent the binding.  I also lubricated this.  Now the suspension moves freely with no binding or creaking.  

My first off-road ride was great, but I did have issues with how low the crank is to the ground, especially when the suspension is compressed over bumps.  My pedals took a beating.  I adjusted the front preload to the maximum and that helped.  The rear could really use a preload adjustment, and a longer shock.  See the "upgrades" section below.

When riding fast over very bumpy terrain the chain sometimes comes off.  This is a common problem with mountain bikes when you ride them aggressively off-road.  See "upgrades" section below. Mountain bikes with a front derailleur don't tend to have as much of a problem with this as the derailleur guides the chain back on the sprocket. 

The motor power is great from about 8mph to over 27mph.  However, when running full power for long periods sometimes the motor cuts out.  I suspect this is either the controller overheating or battery voltage at the controller dropping intermittently below the 39V cut-out.  The first time it happened I was going up a soft loamy grade that was at least 6% and very long.  After about 20 minutes on assist level 2, and moving fairly slow, the power assist surged a few times and then dropped out.  I felt the motor temperature and it was not that warm.  I was tired anyway so I rested for a few minutes.  After that the assist was fine again.  I have found on very long steep hills you need to use assist level 1.  I had the power drop out like that one other time.  This time it was at the end of a 30 mile ride where I had been using full power for a long time and the battery was about 1/2.  This was all in December so it was cool out.  In all my riding so far this issue has been rare and temporary.  If you are wanting a off-road bike that you don't have to pedal, just get a dirt bike.  This bike is great for my use case though.

See my 700 mile update for how the motor performance problems were fixed: https://jimroal.blogspot.com/2022/10/rurui-xt10-700-mile-update.html 

One thing you will notice when shopping for bikes like this is that many of the components can be found on competitors bikes.  Most of these bikes are a collection of components assembled into a complete bike.  This is of course true with many things today but it seems even more so with these ebikes.  Some are so similar you may not be able to tell them apart except for the labels.  I found other bikes which appear to even have the same frame.  

Overall I am very happy with my purchase especially given what I paid for this bike compared to the alternatives.  The bike is a blast to ride and I ride more often, and go places I never did before.  The first 150 miles have been great.  Sure, there are a few things I will change but even making those changes I am well under $2,000 for a well featured electric mountain bike.  The 150 miles I have ridden so far has been a mix of pavement and off-road but mostly off-road.  It has enabled rides I would just not be able to do on my other mountain bikes.  

Upgrades

As I mentioned above, there were a few things that I wanted to improve.  I made the following modifications to the bike at 150 miles.

Rear Shock Upgrade

In order to keep the pedals from hitting the ground so much I needed to raise the bike.  While I was at it, I also wanted more aggressive damping and preload.  The original shock on this bike was 165mm (mount-to-mount) and most of these shocks have 35mm travel (at the shock).  I wanted a 190mm shock at least.  Given the space in this frame, I needed an air shock rather than a coil spring type.  The front fork has a lockout so when you are riding on pavement you can reduce your energy consumption that is absorbed into the suspension when pedaling.  It is even more important on the rear.  You can easily spend $400 or much more on a rear shock with these features.  I found a DNM AO-38RL-190 that looked like it would work well and was only $99 on Amazon. It is 190mm long and has 55mm travel.  

It was tricky getting the remote cable routed.  I was not able to use the routing they intended because the cable would interfere with the suspension.  If I rotated the shock 180 degrees, then the air port was not accessible.  Instead I routed the cable the opposite direction and added a cable clamp I made from a simple screw, nut, and washer that I drilled a hole through.

Now the cable housing is what locks the shock.  Leave the original cable set screw loose in this orientation.  It actually works quite well like this.  The cable has a nice long loop to prevent fatigue with suspension movement.

I took it for a good hard run off-road over very bumpy, rocky, rutted trails and it works great.  Much more controlled overall.  It no longer sacked the suspension even over the very rough stuff.  My pedals never hit anything either.  Before this was a common issue and an issue I had on this same trail.  I found myself riding faster and with more confidence.  The feel of the bike really improved. 

I tried the shock lock on the road while I was pedaling hard.  It worked well.  The suspension did not move while pedaling when locked.  The lock is not a full lock but it makes it enough stiffer that the suspension acts pretty solid.  Over real hard bumps it may move some though.  Perfect actually.   I like having the remote cable instead of having to stop and fiddle with a shock valve.

Front Sprocket/Chain Guard

A problem with mountain bikes is that the chain will come off when traveling fast over very rough terrain.  Not having a front derailleur makes it much worse.  The problem generally happens when going downhill where you don't have tension on the chain.  Riding in 3rd gear really helps as the chain is straight between the sprockets in that gear.  Also, make sure you don't rotate the crank backwards at all on rough terrain.  I had this issue pretty bad.  First I tried this chain guide, after significant modification.

It really helps.  I had it come of once or twice but far less than before.  I noticed that I tended to roll the pedals back at time while riding downhill over rough terrain and that would cause the issues too.  I was careful to stop doing that and it worked pretty well.   I was not thrilled with this approach though.

I noticed another electric mountain bike that solved this by adding an inner sprocket guard such as the Cyrusher XF900. I decided this was a better approach to solve this issue.  I bought this one from Amazon. It is made of plastic which is what I wanted so it would not get bent or wear with chain contact.  It was intended to be used on the outside but I just bolted it to the inside.

It worked fantastic!  I took the bike on a good rough off-road ride and never had an issue.  It retains the chain on the sprocket great.  In first gear the chain actually touches it a bit but it is silent.  Even if you pedal back a bit the chain stays on the sprocket.  Since installing this the chain has never come off again. 

Here is a short video discussing these upgrades