Our second Super Soco TC (beige) just broke its front rim, too. Same spot, same fault. This is getting serious.
it broke "out of the blue". nothing special had happened. it seems that the aluminium casting does not stand 6500 km of frequent braking. it is very mountainous here, lots of curvy winding streets.
I expect that the next owners to suffer from ruptures of their rims will also live in hilly terrain. The first TC broke at 3950 km (driver weight 92 kg), the second TC broke at 6500 km (driver 72 kg). It is just a matter of time until we see very severe accidents with braking TC rims. This is a systematic defect.
Super Soco *must* replace all rims or they will die. Nobody wants to own a motorcycle which puts at risk its driver's life.
Pictures of broken rims show buildup of aluminium oxyde which after intensive use which may lead to hair fractures in my opinion. To avoid this problem I am considering powder coating my rims to prevent oxydation. If that does not help at least the rims will look prettier. ? Any thoughts on this?
Just noted that the TS model has fewer spokes (5pcs vs 8pcs) on the TC model, must be even more fragile!?
The TS rim design is different: the rims have a central reinforcement, and the brake forces are distributed equally onto all 5 spokes.
The TC spokes are thinner in their central region, they have reinforcement only at their very outer part. The brake disk is attached directly to 4 of the 8 spokes, so 4 spokes bear most of the load.
The broken rim case is communicated to the KBA which is the German traffic security authority. The KBA has so far only reports of 4 broken rims (4 / 12.000 km), all of them broken in the La Palma island in very mountainous terrain on 2 different TCs. There are no reports of broken rims elsewhere so far reported to KBA.
There is one additional case of a catastrophically broken TC rim (all 8 spokes broken) during the Hungarian TOTALBIKE24 50ccm competition of 2018. Interestingly, Super Soco Hungary did not mention this rim rupture when claiming that Super Soco "won" the TOTALBIKE24 competition. In fact, Super Soco placed 25 from 33 teams. There were 2 electric bike teams among them, the other being Tarrot. Tarrot placed 30 from 33. So tecnically Super Soco was first in the electric category.
Should the KBA decide that the TC rim is unsafe for use on public roads, all European TCs will have to be retracted.
The new Super Soco TCs sold in Germany have a new rim design with closed, stronger spokes:
https://www.elektroroller-forum.de/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=8115&start=170#p129591
This will solve the broken rim problem.
