it looks like my xl-4000li battery is dying
Just got my xm-4000li (used). The bike has been in storage for months. It was shipped to me from New York. First I got the DC-DC converter problem. That seems to be fixed now, See: DC-DC converter . Last night I charged up the moped to full. This morning I rode it to work, it is only 5 miles. During the trip the battery gauge dip down to the red zone at some hilly roads (about 10 - 15 degree and I only weight 135-lbs). When the needle was at the red zone the red LED was blinking. When I got out of the hilly road, the needle was not quite at the red zone but fairly close. When I got to work, the kickstand was down, the needle of the battery gauge indicated that I had use up about 30% of the capacity from full level. I plugged the charger to a 110v circuit, it took about 1hr to charge it back up to 100%. I have the following questions,
1. How bad of a shape you think my battery is?
2. The red LED on the dash board is on solid the whole time when I turn the moped on, is it normal?
3. Occasionally when I ride above 40 mils/hr or climbing a hill, the needle drop down to the red zone. Is it okay to ride light that?
Thanks.
1. Your battery is in bad shape. The only time my 4000li ever dipped into the red zone (with LED flashing) was when the charge was extremely low. It is also termperature dependent, and you didn't mention what the ambient air temp. On full charge, healthy cells, and warm weather of 90F, my 4000li barely dips below 3/4 even on hard acceleration. Now I am at 13,250 miles, and still within battery warranty, so I plan on checking my cells soon and replacing any that are low.
2. LED should always be on. Just not flashing.
3. I think regardless of what you do, you will be replacing the cells soon. It sounds like they sat too long without being cycled and charged. And a 5 mile trip, and 40 mph should be nothing for a 4000li. I have been able to maintain 50mph and 40+ mile trips with no problem when the cells are healthy.
Mine sat for awhile too as a showroom display prior to me purchasing it with 14 miles on it for $1900. Fortunately I have the full 2 yr warranty on the batteries and will be sending them in for warranty check and replacment in a couple of months.
Your battery pack is heavily unbalanced and probably some cells are dead. If you don't want to damage and kill even more cells, do not charge the pack and do not ride! Every charge cycle will damage the pack more and more.
You need to individually measure voltage of every cell. Each cell should read at least 2V. If some of the cells will read 0V, it needs to be replaced. If reads below 2V it still may be OK or may have reduced capacity.
Then individually charge each cell to 3.6V. You can get special one cell charger for that (like: http://www.ev-power.eu/Chargers-Single-Cell-4V/Charger-3-6V-6A-for-LiFePO4-cells-1-cell.html ) or an universal lifepo4 charger used by RC guys like Turnigy ECOSIX etc..
Then you are ready to ride again. But I still heavily reccomend you to get a balancing BMS to keep your pack safe and healthy.
You may try with 20cell of CHL 40AH battery come with BMS,Usd1450 include freight !
Sorry,wrong photos,that's for ZAPINO
see attached XM4000li with CHL battery
okay, I gutted my 400li,
Fist I have the battery charged up to full. Then I measured the voltage of the whole battery and the voltage of each cell with no load. The result show in the following table,
With a full battery, I had the bike on center stand, I turned on the bike with full lights and full throttle to simulate the load. Then I measured the overall voltage and the voltage of each cell after running for 60 minutes, then after running for another 70 minutes, then after running for another 120 minutes, then after running for another 100 minutes, then after running for another 30 minutes where at this point the battery meter showed the charge was at the bottom of the gauge. The following is the readout of voltages being measured,
Base on this info, I hope someone could tell me what I should do next. Thanks.
When battery is full,no accurate to find out the difference.
Only check voltage when battery is low,this way you will easily find out defect cells
ezquimin, no need to take cells out nor disconnect them for measuring their voltage individually. About how low to go I'd be careful, going too low is one of the deadly things you can do to your LiFePO4 cells...
Bottoming out is never a good idea, unless you are attempting to end the battery life now. I have a digital voltmeter on my dash, and I have never run as low as 57.8v under load. The lowest I have ever seen is around 59, and I kept that brief. At 3913 miles, my cells at low charge were identical at 3.28 v. (yes all 20) In perfect balance. Also at 3913 miles, full charge of 79 volts, my lowest cell was 3.52 and my highest cell was 4.07. In my opinion, your cells are way off. Your 4000li sat too long without being charge.
I am at 13,250 miles now, and my full charge voltage reads around 75 now. I am going to check all cells for warranty soon. But 13,250 completely trouble free miles with no BMS....I wouldn't even accept BMS if someone tried to give it to me.
Well I did some searching and reading on the xm-4000li battery. Now I am hopeful. My load test earlier with full throttle on stand and lights on for 6 hours shows the battery still have a lot of juice. I also notice for a new battery, it needs a number of charge cycles to maximize its potential. My bike only have 190 miles over a few years I would consider the battery is still new. Also the pulse charging after the battery is full made a different. With pulse charging my battery is now reaching 79v from previous 68.3v. About the flashing red light, it seems many new bikes has the same issue. Now I decided to put everything back and start riding and charging it to see if the battery get stronger. I also bought the Amp/Volt snap-on meter(3"x2") to keep an eye on the battery,
DC 100V 200A panel with Shunt ($20)
The following is my battery research on this site,
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zigalisr01 Thu, 09/16/2010 - 15:39
Ok, This is a great forum. I wish I had found this before I bought my XM-4000. It is more trouble then it is worth. For $4030.00 I expected it to work when it arrived. Any way, the first one arrive on 7/27/10. The next one arrive 8/26, after an 1.5 hours of unpacking I find it does not run. The battery meter says 3/4 full, all the lights work, the red low voltage light is on, but no motor. So, after several email about how sorry I was that I bought this the tech support people called me and we got it running. Now after 4 weeks of emails with tech support I still don't know why that red low voltage light is on constantly.
Fri, 10/01/2010 - 20:44
Sorry you are having so much trouble. I had some problems when I first got it but, nothing compared to yours. I just got the CA license for mine and drove it to work every day this week. Well not yesterday, raining. There is one part of my commute that has a 45 mph so, I can open it up to 50 mph. However, it does not run at that speed for more than 2 minutes then the low voltage light starts to flash and I slow down. It is fun when it does work. I would sooner buy a Honda, pay more and not have all of these problems.
Wed, 01/12/2011 - 12:14
Yeah I would agree a design flaw. The "fuel" gauge is just a voltage meter. So 66 volts is full and 63 volts is empty and the red light starts to flash. I know this because I too got a Cycle Analyst. http://www.ebikes.ca/drainbrain.shtml. This is well worth the money. The red light should be on all the time. I assumed that to mean the bike is ready to go, be careful. You should really get the Cycle Analyst it will make you feel so much better about riding and how far you can really go. It was pretty easy to install, I will post a picture of mine when I get home. Be sure you buy the high current shunt. I see 80 - 83 amps when I start off for about 5 seconds. Then about 15 - 20 amps cruising at 30 mph. For any acceleration the current will jump to 80 amps.
theBOZman Mon, 01/24/2011 - 13:58
I used to get flashing on the low voltage indicator at any amount of amp draw "acceleration", but now I have to pin it pretty hard to have it flash. If you roll on the throttle, you can keep the amp draw low enough that the low voltage indicator won't flash. drafting helps too [evil grin]
PzlPete Tue, 02/01/2011 - 15:25
My batteries from 2008 as well I believe. My date of Manufacture says 12/2008. Aren't we supposed to have a 60 volt system on the 4000li? Your 66 volts at full charge sounds about right. I was suprised to measure 74.9 after my last charge.
Fri, 07/15/2011 - 11:04 on the Xm-4000li
I have 3160 miles on my xm-4000li and it did take several charges for the batteries to condition. Initially, the battery strength indicator would go into the red and flash under acceleration even under full charge. After the first 500 or 600 miles, she ran much stronger and didn't even come close to the red under strong acceleration, or even drop below half. My best range to date is 47.5 miles, but that was after 1800 miles and several charge sequences.
In my opinion, the quality of the xm-4000li is outstanding. Incredible power. Silent and smooth.
Chasbro Fri, 07/15/2011 - 20:58 on his new Xm-3150
If I run it 10 ‘normal’ miles (which include some runs at 40-45mph), it knocks it back to 50% when I plug it in and it takes 2 hours to get back to 100% and voltage is then 64.8 and the ‘battery meter‘ is at the top of the green. Top speed is an indicated 47 sitting up, no wind, flat road, and I weigh around 175. When I get some more cycles maybe I’ll test the range a little more.
Sun, 07/17/2011 - 19:23
I’m starting to push the envelope a little. It went 18 miles today and the needle was right between the green and yellow at no load, which measured 60.7 volts. The charger showed 50% discharge and took 3 hours to bring it up to 100% and the Kill a Watt meter showed 1.05 kwh used. I noticed something about the charger - besides tapering as it reaches 85% and shutting off at 100%, it then goes into a pulse mode where it comes on every 10 minutes with a full 4-5 amp blast which quickly tapers off and is gone in 40 seconds. After getting ‘pulsed’ all night the kwh meter was at 1.18. This evening Max (my toy poodle) and I took it 21 miles and it took 1.25 khw (not including what gets pulsed into it tonight). Miles per kwh has increased with each ride from 14 to 16. It looks like 20 miles is a good working range, more than enough for my uses.
Mon, 08/01/2011 - 20:51
Hello Quintar,
To me it sounds like you might have a bad battery (or two). My bike has gone over 20 miles a couple of times and I’ve never had the charger show less than 50%. You’ll need to get a voltmeter across each of the 5 batteries and I doubt it will be easy to access them. I seem to remember a Zapino thread that described how to take the bodywork off. In the meantime, get the Kill a Watt meter (I found a Kill a Watt EZ discontinued at Radio Shack for $20) and continue to let the charger recondition the batteries. My range wasn’t very good at first either.
Quintar Wed, 07/27/2011 - 16:33
I just got an XM-3150 a few weeks ago as well.
I also get have similar issues with the battery. I charge it up over night so it's 100% full. I drive it to work and back which is a 3 mile trip and when i get home the charger says it's at 50%. I hope it get's better after charging it several times, but right now I'm wondering if there's a bad battery in the scooter. It's running down to 50% after 3-5 miles and dropping below 30% after about 10 miles. Also it acts really weird after I drive it 2 or 3 miles. I'll come to a stop at a traffic light and when it turns green i hit the throttle and the bike goes for a second and then dies. If i let go of the throttle and hit it again it'll go for a sec and then die. I have to start it rolling with my feet and then apply the throttle to get it to go. Once i'm going its fine it just wont start from a standstill. It seems like it's not getting enough power and overloads and cuts out.
Sat, 09/03/2011 - 23:33
I've been emailing back and forth with X-treme. They had me check a lot of things to find out if anything was wrong with the bike.
First, like was reccomended here was just checking the fully charged voltage of the batteries. I charged the scooter up for 2 days. I unplugged it and dismantled it and read the batteries after 1hr, 2hrs and 3hrs.
battery 1h 2hr 3hr
----------------------------
1 12.95 12.92 12.92
2 12.93 12.89 12.89
3 12.92 12.89 12.89
4 12.92 12.89 12.89
5 12.91 12.90 12.89
total 64.5 64.4
Then since they checked out ok I did a load test on the batteries. They started out at 12.8v and dropped to 11.2-11.4 under load. I also checked the output of the charger while it was charging the batteries and it was at 73v.
The motor seems fine since I can go 30mph in economy mode and 45+ in fast mode. I figured the only way to really tell how far the bike can go on a charge is to drive the bike until it stops.
I took the scooter out on a weekend and drove it until it wouldn't go anymore. Actually it would still go just very very slow and stuttered when I'd try to accelerate. I got almost exactly 30 miles. It was just me (165lbs), the bike was switched to economy mode, and i tried to keep it on a flat road but there were 2 or 3 very small hills. It was also a little windy and I was in the city so there were quite a lot of traffic lights.
The dash meter was just into the red and the charger showed <30% when I plugged it in. It took 6 hours to charge back up. I put a kill-a-watt meter on the plug and it showed that it took 1.87kwh to recharge the bike. I believe that should be pretty close to full use of the batteries since 5 batteries at 12v rated 35Ah should be 2.1kwh total...if I'm doing the math right.
From what I can tell the bike seems to be running great now. It has definitely gotten much better after passing 200 miles on the odometer. Perhaps the batteries needed some breaking in or conditioning.
I know they say it can go 50 miles on a charge but I think that's under perfect conditions. Does 30 miles sound pretty normal?
You don't need to connect it directly to the controller.
What you need is to buy the high current model with an external shunt of 0,5mOhm.
It's quite easy to connect, just connect the shunt somewhere between the battery and controller on the negative side, 2 wires from the CA to the shunt and 1 to pack positive.
For the speedometer you could use either the "magnet solution" wich is the simplest, or connect it to the hall sensors from the motor, which is a little bit more complicated.
Thanks Johnny, I just look at the cost. It is almost $200 with shipping and all. That is a little pricey for me. All I really need is a reliable way to measure the battery charge (or a good fuel gauge). I am looking around for a low end watt meter or Ah meter but all of them only handle up to 60v. I wonder if any one find a way to measure the Ah usage of these scooter while riding on it without have to pay more than $100? Thanks.
It's around $160 with shunt and shipping and I would say it's worth every penny. :-)
Thanks PzlPete. I was riding it in ideal temperature of 85 degree F. This really help me to know what kind of a condition I have with my 4000li and to have a good knowledge of how the machine should operate in normal condition. I tested it again today, it did not even make 10 miles. Because it is in the red zone consistently while riding, the battery is degrading fast. Well, the battery could cost about $1500 with shipping!