New Vectrix

oh boy!
exciting!

any links for information about that?

129v is a nice voltage, you can travel 5 km more. This is good, Your bike SW and battery are getting used to your daily trip. There are some minor tricks wich worked fine to me to extend my vectrix's range:

1) I usually overinflate the tyres. 2.6 bar front, 3.0 bar rear. I get 2-3 km more .
2) I installed a switch to kill the 35w head lamp during the day. Thanks to this energy saving I get 0.3-0.5 extra km.
3) I took away the rear brake (and exchanged brake levers = left lever brakes front wheel). The brembo brakes are excellent brakes for oil burners, but their brakes pads are always frictioning on the disc. They're not suitable for an electric vehicle. I gained between 2-4 km of extra range thanks to saving energy from this constant friction.
4) Crooping the rearwheel fairing. NO increase of range experienced at all, but sure it helps when the bike is moving around 90-100 km/h.

Have a look at this post, with some pictures about my vectrix.
http://www.voltforum.cat/voltforum/YaBB.pl?num=1219356394/all

I usually get between 55-70 km of range.
Today I travelled 55 km from Piera - Esparreguera- Barcelona, 20km of them at 60 km/h, 35km of them at 85 km/h. 4 bar remainded.

2) I installed a switch to kill the 35w head lamp during the day. Thanks to this energy saving I get 0.3-0.5 extra km.

You can do that without having an extra switch. Just hold the high beam blinker switch long enough, so that you see, that the low beam icon, on the dashboard, has disappeared and then release the switch. Head lamp will be off and just front position LED will be on.

4) Crooping the rearwheel fairing. NO increase of range experienced at all, but sure it helps when the bike is moving around 90-100 km/h.

Have a look at this post, with some pictures about my vectrix.

Que es lo que quiere decir? Podrias por favor explicar en castellano y ademas poner alguna foto?
Gracias

You can do that without having an extra switch.

Certainly, new SW enable this option. However when I installed the switch, this SW option didn't exist. On the other hand, I find it absolutely impractical: I can kill the light at my ease while riding the vectrix, depending on surrounding light conditions. The Sw option only works when the bike is stopped.

Sure! no problem, however I'm afraid this forum is intended to be in English; Please feel free to ask any further question in castellano in our local forum, http://www.voltforum.cat.

I'm posting a picture of the rear wheel fairing, compare it to a normal Vectrix:

ps: please ignore the flag, it has no political intention ;-)

I'll be thrilled if mine will do that.

Have you managed to recharge at work?

You can do that without having an extra switch.

Certainly, new SW enable this option. However when I installed the switch, this SW option didn't exist. On the other hand, I find it absolutely impractical: I can kill the light at my ease while riding the vectrix, depending on surrounding light conditions. The Sw option only works when the bike is stopped.

The old one has/had it too. I was driving for 6 months (October 2008 - May 2009) on the old software and I know it had it ;-)

The old one has/had it too. I was driving for 6 months (October 2008 - May 2009) on the old software and I know it had it ;-)

Nice. I'm driving a Vectrix since 05-2007. During 2007 the very first SW didn't have this option.
There were many updates to solve initial battery problems. The first SW ended my patience: with 13 bar in the bar gauge the battery was completely empty. The Sw wasn't capable of resseting the battery level. Useful range was 4 bars... Almost nothing!
cheers.

Aha, I wasn't aware, that there existed even earlier version of the software prior to the one, before October 2008 (2 versions back of the current one).

Have you done the procedure you have to do, when you get a new bike?

1. Run the bike to the red battery telltale
2. Full charge
3. Again Run the bike to the red battery telltale
4. Full charge

If you haven't, you can do it now.

removed

recharged at work today, but unofficially...

I got out to the bike at 5:50am to find it only charged to 4bars over middle. With only 10 min extra charge, I made it to work as I hit the 80km/h speed limiting.

What happened there?

Put it on charge at 10pm last night. Thia morning, I turned the key on while charge still powered up to check the gauge, voltage and temp (CP 000, showing) but only 4 bars over half??

Next time, have a look at the voltage and the battery temperature; then check if the "Recharge after BALPOR" scenario fits the bill:

http://visforvoltage.org/book/ev-collaborative-hand-books/7145

Have you done the procedure you have to do, when you get a new bike?

1. Run the bike to the red battery telltale
2. Full charge
3. Again Run the bike to the red battery telltale
4. Full charge

If you haven't, you can do it now.

you forgot the most important part: Balance the batteries first

Matt

Yeah, but how? He hasn't reached 12 hours needed for the EQ charging. Would you want him to open the plenum and manually charge the battery?

Would you want him to open the plenum and manually charge the battery?

correct.
Normally a dealer can (or should?) be able to force the charger to do it. However, a user doesn't.

A Ni-mh pack that has been sitting around for a long time will be well out of balance due to the high self discharge (or rather the high variation).

so if the first thing you do is fully discharge the pack, then the lowest cells will get reversed.

its why for my vectrix, im balancing the pack (by overcharge) before i take it for my first ride.

Matt

Not everyone has the equipment and skills to do it. In my case, my dealer's service engineer did that.

The only real solution would be:
1. To somehow force the added EQ charge
2. To fully charge regularly without completely discharging the battery and to wait until the EQ kicks in. After that, you can do a full discharge.

Which software do you have installed? If you turn off the kill switch and pull the left brake, can you see battery voltage and temperature on the left LCD screen?

The old software ran battery discharge way to low and it's charging procedure was:
1. CP
2. 15 minutes of TR with 1A charging
3. CC - 1 hour at 3A
4. EC - 1 hour of 1A charging

New software charges:
1. CP
2. 15 minutes of TR with 0A charging
3. CC - 1 hour at 3A
4. Aprox. 1 hour of cooling

After 12 hours of riding, it automatically adds 4 hours of Equalizing (EO) to the initial charge procedure.

What is the battery temperature when you start charging it and while charging?

Ugh, that's not good. I thought you have the new software installed. The old software has to low discharge cut-off. The newer software cuts-off at aprox. 20% SOC and has better charging procedure. You should have it updated ASAP.

Thanks Mik, it does fit that scenario

Think I am rapidly stuffing my battery

no more deep discharges for me.

This all makes sense now. my pack has been sitting in a crate for 18 months and probably out of balance. the first thing I am advised to do is over discharge the pack and kill the lowests cells... 5 times. I have noticed that if you plug in the charger witha an already full pack, it goes straight to EC. several wacks at this might have equalised it a bit.

Sorry I've become a bit slack, burnt out. I used to tell the newcomers to avoid deep discharges for quite a while to allow for some equalization before deep discharges; but I don't want to make myself a serial pest and write the same thing again and again....don't have the time either!

Discharging down to 13/17th works with March 08 firmware, meaning after that there will be CP, CC and EC stages of charging, which will probably slowly cause equalization.

If a gentle breaking in procedure would actually prevent premature failure in (particularly Australian) VX-1's is by no means certain, though.

I have been told by people who are likely to know these things that there have been severe problems with the Gold Peak NiMH batteries all along. And the Australian ones might be worse due to particularly long periods of inactivity.

At the moment one can buy three VX-1's for the price I paid for one - and with many hours of work one could almost certainly build one that has good performance (quiet gearbox, near full capacity battery of matched, balanced cells).

i would have thought that all the stock would have been updated...

I thought so as well. They should have. Until you do get it updated, don't ride it below 4 bars! That's essential!

Old software's charging procedure, if you went down to the red battery, really cooked the battery on full charge. You can do full charges, but not full discharges, or you will continue to kill the battery.

i would have thought that all the stock would have been updated...

At least they promised you that the battery rework has been done!

Shame you did not ask about the software version before buying, that would be interesting to compare notes!

I can't wait for antiscab to get the battery open and check with torque-wrench!

Let's see: Software update takes minutes, battery rework takes hours...

But maybe Vectrix Australia had their run-in (in court) with Vectrix Corpse (USA) before the release of the Oct 2008 firmware - they might not even have the software to update the remaining scooters they have boxed up.