Hi,
I've bought a vectrix which was crashed some months ago in an car accident. The battery is in good shape, but, without receiving any charge during months, the voltage had dropped to 30v.
There are two ways to raise the voltage over 90 volts, which is the minimum voltage to turn on the main charger.
1- Unplug the battery and wait the voltage to raise.
2- Try to charge the cells. That was my choice. The Only charger I have at home is a typical 12v-24v 4A-8A lead charger. 24v 8A gives an open voltage of 33v.
If you divide 102 cells by 3, you get 34 cells in each division. Fortunately the 34c division is placed in the upper layer. I charged 1/3 of the battery each time, first 12v 4A, 12v 8A, 24v 4A, finally 24v 8A. After 1 hour of working on the cells, the main charger turned on.
There's one issue. When I switch on the vectrix, the rear light turns on, and the braking light works perfectly. But the Display gives no response. Maybe the display is damaged (looks good), or the problem is in the ICM (also looks good)? Does it need the throttle to turn on?
Finally, I need a new throttle to check that vectrix, anybody can sell me one?. Many thanks in advance.
Great idea!
Because you just want to bring each cell to 1.2V or so (to get the charger to work again), you could also charge the accessible blocks of 27, 8, 32, 8, 27. You would introduce only a minuscule amount of imbalance if you disconnect the charger as soon as the voltage gets to 1.2V/cell.
I'm surprised you approach has worked, I would think that the lead battery charger could only bring the voltage up to 29.4V maximum, giving you a total of less than 88.2V and falling as soon as you disconnect the charger.
Maybe the low voltage threshold for the stock charger is a bit less than 90V?
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There is always a way if there is no other way!
Why do all that work? Can't you just take a positive and a negative pair and go to an Anderson connection and leave it in glove box. This way you can kill two birds with one stone sort of speaking. Measure pack voltage and pipe in a small charge via a small Variac and a full wave rectifier. Just dial up Variac to what ever current it is rated and let sit for a few and re-check pack voltage on pack. If you put a 12 volt 50 watt lamp in series with Variac charger you can view the current with the brightness of bulb. Also that by definition is a constant current charger which is perfect for NiMH and Ni Cads.
Using a Lead Acid charger is too bad bad for it can limit charging current to what ever the charger can produce.The cells are 30 AH so I like to keep current to a cool 3 or 4 amps and that is why I use a 50 watt lamp in series.
KB1UKU
I must admit this is quite strange: When applying 4A, the open voltage only raises to 29v, but at 8A program, the voltage increases to 33v. 33v+33v+33v=99v
33v in 34 cells = with very little charge the cell's voltage increases to nearly 1.0v.
I experienced that the voltage dropped very quickly. However, after one hour of random charge the internal charger finally resurrected. I apologise, I could not check the exact voltage when the internal charger turned on, but I guess it may be a value between 90v and 95v
For two reasons:
1- I had to recover the voltage from 30 volts to over 90 volts to turn on the internal charger of the vectrix.
2- I live in Catalunya. My country is systematically spoiled by a country next to us called Spain. This has lead us to a deep crisis, and we have little money to spend on extras. In plain words, I can't pay a Variac, or any other external charger, to bring up the voltage.
The 24v charger worked fine, at 0 extra cost.;-)
Avout the LCD display problem, any ideas? It does not turn on. ICM problem, or broken display?
Many thanks in advance.
The scooterdiag says de ICM is fine, the problem is placed in the display.
I'll test rhis display in another vectrix, to see if the problem is placed in some broken wire, or inside the display.