Does anybody know how to disable the governor on a Baja BE500 scooter?

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Thu, 03/25/2010 - 20:57

My Baja BE500 has five kilometers on the odometer and has a top speed of three MPH. Even though the battery is fully charged and the battery output measures 53 volts, I can prevent the scooter from moving by simply putting my feet on the ground. The power output is anemic.

My owners manual states that "The governor wire plug is located in the right hand grip housing." "With the governor unplugged, the motor will reach a maximum speed of 30mph." I popped the governor cover plate and found a transistor soldered onto a three-wire cable. This appears to be a messy soldering job with no insulation on the transistor leads. If I pull the wire and transistor out slightly, the scooter will not work at all. If I position the transistor back into its cubby hole, the scooter operates as described in the first paragraph. Any insight on this problem will be greatly appreciated.

Topics: 
Baja BE500 Governor
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Comments

Submitted by mf70 on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 08:51.

Three MPH CAN'T BE the governed speed! Any warranty?

There must be something wrong. I'd check all electrical connections, especially those in the battery pack and between the battery and the controller and the motor.

Mark

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Tue, 04/06/2010 - 09:36.

A warranty appears to be a joke! I sent BajaMotorSportsonline.com an email asking where I could get the BE500 repaired under warranty, and have not received a reply after two weeks. I called a service rep at Baja, left a message on his voice mail and have not received a response after three weeks. I spoke with an assistant manager at Northern Tools, where I bought the scooter. He said that he would get back to me, but again, I have not heard from him.

I did not want to mess with the wiring if there was a possibility of getting it fixed under warranty. It appears that this will not happen, so I will take it apart to see if I can find something amiss.

Submitted by mf70 on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 05:44.

On other posts, I have commented that we have to realize that buying something at scalped-price rates means we give up the "amenities" we would get at an established dealer structure; i.e. we can't expect that someone who is passing the savings from buying a container full of scoots along will be able to provide full and prompt repair service.

I'd say this is an exception.. Baja may very well "flake out" on you, but Northern Hydraulics should be willing to step up to their responsibilities. (Pep Boys had a fling with Baja electic scoots a few years back, with disastrous results.) It must have worked at the factory before it went into its crate.

If you ARE left high and dry by both businesses, I'd check connections, as I said, (also, perhaps there's a bad connection with the throttle?) then get a generic 48V brushless controller. There are "issues" with correctly connecting the phase wiring, but as I understand it a wrong connection between phases will merely keep it from running rather than destroy anything. Even if your controller turns out to be good, having a backup isn't a bad idea.

Mark

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 20:22.

Thanks for the previous comments to my posting.

I removed some of the housing, inspected the wiring and found nothing obviously wrong. Closer inspection of the governor compartment in the in the right hand grip housing showed that the electronic device that looks like a transistor was positioned somewhat loosely in the compartment. There is a smaller compartment inside the large governor compartment that is a very tight fit for the transistor. I moved the transistor inside the smaller compartment, and the BE500 now works, albeit not as I expected. It now has a top speed on a level street of 14 MPH, or 23 KPH. The advertising states a top speed of 20 MPH. So I am still interested in finding out how to remove the governor from the BE500 as stated in the owner's manual.

This is only a guess on my part, but it would appear that the older BE500 scooter has some kind of governor plug that can be removed, as described in my owners manual. The new owners manual that can be downloaded from Baja's Web site makes no mention of a governor. Perhaps they changed the design so the owner cannot remove the governor. Does anybody have some insight on this?

Submitted by mf70 on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 06:03.

Sounds like something shorted during shipping and you fixed it. Congratulations!

NOw, AFIK, there are two speed limiting elements in the wiring:

  1. There are some jurisdictions which require a further limit on speed below the stated 20MPH top speed to about the speed you have now. In my scoot, this "governor" is a jumper wire from the controller. It travels up to the instrument cluster, through a grey plug, and back. If it is left unplugged, the full designed speed is "released."
  2. These scoots have controllers which have been designed to NEVER exceed a certain maximum phase frequency. At 48V, that amounts to almost exactly 20MPH. In my scoot, there is a 1cm sq. PC board in a shrinkwrap sleeve in line with the throttle that serves as a "trimmer" to get the max speed exactly at 20MPH. I haven't seen any difference from fiddling with it.

Mark.

Submitted by newtolects on Sat, 04/10/2010 - 20:05.

Thanks for your information regarding the (governor) on BE500. Checked the wires from the throttle to the instrument cluster area. As stated in item 2 mine was as you note. I found that two wires were to a PC Board, and the red carried on to the controller. There were two other wires from the Throttle that I found had been soldered. I suspect these are possibly used for the kill switch which is integral to the throttle assembly.
I found that by turning the trim (pot or rheostat) counter clockwise it had a significant increase in speed. Left it about 20% range. The wiring schematic for my scoot shows only 3 wires from throttle going directly to Controller (no PC Board Trimmer) I am inclined to completely remove the trim PC and wire from throttle direct to the Controller.
As to the comments stated in Item 1 , yes I opened the connector, and found an increase in speed. However, it was only when I had adjusted the trimmer to its original setting. Tried the scoot to day and on level reached 50 kmh however wished that it had more torque on hills its horrible.

Submitted by mf70 on Sun, 04/11/2010 - 18:28.

Hee hee, it IS only 500 Watts! If you want to feel more encouraged, go for a ride alongside a friend on a bicycle. He'll be able to keep up, but he'll be puffing....

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 15:54.

Mark,

Thanks for the feedback. I removed the instrument cluster on my BE500, but was unable to find a gray plug as you described in your item #1. What color is the jumper wire from the controller? I also cannot find a small PC board as you describe, so it would seem that not all of the BE500 scooters are manufactured the same way.

By the way, do you know where the controller board is located and what is the easiest way to gain access to it?

Thanks,
Bruce

Submitted by newtolects on Thu, 04/15/2010 - 22:52.

The controller is mounted under the seat area. However you will have to remove batterys, disconnect the wires to the breaker, and remove the various screws holding the battery/ seat panel. The wires to the throttle from controller are red,grn,black. Go to site EBike.ca then tech. and trouble shooting sections . A lot of general information regarding motors,controllers etc. Good luck hope that this is helpful. Gord

Submitted by Gordon60 on Sun, 04/18/2010 - 16:22.

I bought one just before the new year. Charger failed during it's first charge. Did get them to send a replacement. It works. Speed was governed to 15 KPH. Took quite a while but got the instructions to adjust the speed or disable the governor altogether.

This is the reply I got. There were a few pictures of the LEFT handle grip area.

""""""""""""
Do NOT remove the rectangular lid as the picture shows as you’ll probably break it and the part is not in stock. Remove the whole plastic cover.

You can test the maximum speed of the unit by unplugging the gray wire (approx 50 km/h) but then you must plug it back in as it is illegal to go at more then 32 km/h. To set the max speed at approx 32 km/h, turn the potentiometer counterclockwise in very small increments.
""""""""""""

So of course I unplugged the gray wire. It is easily reached from the handle grip opening. But I got only 34 KPH out of it after that.

I am interested to know how to get to 50 KPH because that is what they said it would do on level ground.

BTW since the law states that 32 KPH is the limit I licensed mine as an electric powered motorcycle anticipating the 50 KPH.

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Thu, 05/20/2010 - 19:43.

I finally found the gray governor wire tucked away and hidden behind the right handlebar. After unplugging the gray wire, the scooter now goes 50 KPH on a level road. Quite an improvement from the governed 23 KPH! It also seems to climb hills considerably faster without the governor.

I installed a SPST toggle switch so I can switch the governor in and out with ease. This is convenient to limit the speed for those times when a younger family member wants to ride the scooter. Does anybody know what will happen if I switch the governor in or out while the scooter is moving? I don't want to try this for fear that it might fry the controller board.

Thanks to everybody who provided information to this blog.

Submitted by Gordon60 on Sat, 06/19/2010 - 11:27.

A further update:

The governor issue: I was experiencing problems with trying to start moving again after a stop. It would not start up most of the time on the first twist of the throttle. I had to take the covers off the handle bars because I had to fix the rear brake, so I checked into the "governor". Turns out to be a small circuit board with about three components on it. I wanted to get all the speed out of the bike I could so I decided to remove that circuit board.

There are five wires coming from the throttle. Two are not used and on mine where heat shrunk together, I don't think they are connected together. The other wires are RED, not connected to the circuit board. BLUE connected and after the circuit connected to the GREEN wire going to the controller. BLACK connected and after the circuit goes to the BLACK wire to the controller. Checking with an ohm-meter shows the BLACK has continuity across the circuit board but the BLUE to GREEN does not. I cut the wires to the governor board and connected BLACK to BLACK and BLUE to GREEN.

Results: I didn't get any more speed but there is now no hesitation, ever, on starting moving.

Just another note: The speedometer shows low ie 30 Kph on speedometer is 34 Kph on GPS. The odometer shows high 10 km on it is actually 8.23 on GPS.

Question: Has anyone else had the covers off and seen which wires are connected from the throttle? ie BLUE to GREEN

Submitted by Gordon60 on Sun, 06/20/2010 - 23:25.

Hello newtolects;

Could you please describe the color of the wires going to the little PC board?

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 23:13.

Northern Tools has completely ignored my requests for replacement of the charger and batteries in my BE500. The batteries had melted with very few miles on my scooter. I finally gave up on Northern Tools. I contacted Baja parts department and they said that a new charger would not be available until August, and two 24V battery packs would cost $400. I shopped the Net and ordered four 12V, 22AH SLA batteries for $184.94 (including shipping) from RobotMarketPlace.com:

http://www.robotmarketplace.com/products/0B-PS22-12.html

As it turned out, the original battery charger was not defective, but the batteries were. The replacement batteries are the same size as the original ones and work just great with the original charger. An added bonus is that the 22AH batteries give 10% more range than the original 20AH batteries. At this point, I am now very happy with the performance and range of my BE500.

The speedometer on my BE500 is off by a considerable amount. I took my Garmin GPS along on a level road to compare the speedometer reading with the actual reading. When the BE500 speedometer showed 50 KPH, my GPS read 33 KPH, which is 21 MPH. I am happy with a top speed of 21 MPH.

Submitted by siiix on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 17:25.

just as feedback i only disconnected the gray cable, have not touched the board, and i have not experienced any problems

as said before the speed meter is WAY off on this bike , it show me max speed 65kmh but its actually 55kmh... witch is actually great

as added bonus i noticed that the acceleration got much better as well... the reason for that is the weird way they designed the govenour on this bike (attached to trotle, not speed control computer)... on previous ebikes i only noticed speed increase but no change in acceleration

Submitted by Beatriz Robeson on Sat, 03/17/2012 - 20:49.

Hello,
I recently bought a BE500 and it wont move at all. It might go like 3mph when I use the crank pedals but only for few feet. I would really appreciate any help you can give me. Thank you so much

Submitted by BRB in Minnesota on Sun, 03/18/2012 - 18:01.

Re 3 MPH top speed: I would first try disconnecting the gray cable that is under the plastic housing near the right handlebar. It is only a plastic connector that you pull apart to disconnect. If that doesn't work, I would try to make sure that a small transistor-looking electronic device is pushed all that way into the handlebar compartment. As I recall, I had to pop open a small cover near the handlebar grip. Use something made out of wood or plastic to push this in so you do not short circuit the device. I hope this helps.


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