Front Suspension on E-Twow Electric Scooter

Etwow scooters are sold under other brands too, including Frugal, SXT and UrbanGlide. I am not actually sure ETWOW is the original manufacturer or just another brand and scooters are manufactured by a yet another company.

I got myself a used one, and it came with several issues, one of which was a stuck front suspension. But first things first. This scooter has no air in tires, instead it relies on a spring front and rear suspension for comfort. In order to actually benefit from it you need to regulate it to your weight so that there is a sag when you mount it. The rear one is very easy, just loosen the screw tightening the spring. The front one has such a screw compressing the spring too, but the access is not easy. You need to detach the wheel and the steer pipe and then you need a special tool, a deep socket wrench size 10 if I remember correctly. Car mechanics usually have those if you can't find it in a store. See the photo below of how the scooter looks like being ready to loosen the tightening screw. Here is a link to the service manual for the scooter. You need to block the screw from the bottom with a 10 hex key, and turn from the top with the socket wrench. That socket wrench needs to be deep because there are four screw nuts on top of each other.

For my electric scooter that adjusting was not enough though. The suspension was stuck because the plastic hexagonal bed was too tight for the metal rod that was moving in it. A friendly mechanic polished the metal rod by hand using some sort of metal grinding tool (no machines involved) just to make it a bit thinner so that it would move freely inside the plastic bed.

Even with the suspension working the ride is not as comfortable as on a full size bike with no suspension. I don't think it is the superiority of air tires over a spring suspension, but rather a function of wheel size.

Disclaimer: Before all this work, I contacted etwow for some information on how to adjust the front suspension and the person I talked to said the front suspension is not adjustable and that the tightening screw is holding the spring in place and loosening is not advised. I chose to ignore him and adjusted it anyway. It works.