reducer stops

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The Sei
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reducer stops

I am the proud owner of two Aprilia Enjoys. A few weeks ago a received the Ping battery I ordered to replace the old (6 years) and bad battery which gives 24V and 12V to the controller. Since Ping's battery is 24V, I put a 24V to 12V reducer in my bike, in order to feed the controller both 24V and 12V. This works GREAT for about 30 seconds. Then the reducer stops giving 12V. When I take the current of completely and reconnect, it starts giving 12V again, but when I start riding my bike, the 12V stops after about 30 seconds, and so on........

Has anyone got any idea how to solve this problem?

The controller needs 12V 5Ah. The reducer has a maximum of 10Ah. The same problems occur with a smaller 5Ah reducer. When I earth the 12V from the reducer as well as from the battery, the motor starts when I switch on and then everything is dead, so earth does not go from the 12V to the bike.

dogman
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Re: reducer stops

you may be drawing more amps of current than the bms on the ping can deliver. the ping batts of smaller capacity, amp hours, cut out to protect the cells from overdischarge. that is amps, or ammount of current. over at the endless sphere, there is a pic somewhere in the ping thread of how to modify the bms to supply a few more amps of current. or you could sell the batt and get another if you don't allready have the 20 ah size. i've had no problems with my ping 36 volt, 20 ah cutting out. but first i'd be real curious about how the bike behaved wired the same way using lead 24 volt. if it works fine that way, i'd say its the ping bms cutting out, not the controller. i'm definitely not an electronics expert, but if you need the 12 volt to run lights etc, just rewire that stuff to run on a litte sla or a 12 volt radio controlled hobby battery or whatever. maybe if it only powers the motor and you don't climb big hills the ping will do it if it doesn't have to power the motor and the 12 volt stuff at the same time. and finally there are lots of 24 volt scooter controllers out there for cheap. maybe you could ebay the old controllers and dc converters for enough to pay for new controllers once that is in and working. if cutout is the problem, the key thing is to get your ride to draw less current than the battery cuts out at, one way or another. talk to ping and he'll try to help you, he can at least tell you what test to do on the battery. if your bms is cutting out too low you might get a new bms that cuts out higher.

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The Sei
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Re: reducer stops

Thanks for the reply.

I use the same battery with my other Enjoy using a 24V Controller (Model CT-302S9) I bought at TNC Scooters (Chris is a very helpful guy). This bike uses the Ping pack and I can ride about 30 miles with it. The reducer has to produce less than 5A (the fuse is 5A), so I can hardly imagine the BMS cannot cope.
When I contacted Ping some time ago, he told me not to get the 12V from the pack, but "You could add a simple circuit like 2 same resistance in series to get 12V from the 24V output of the battery."
So I thought I'd use the reducer.

dogman
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Re: reducer stops

what is the 12 volt supply for? i still think that extra draw is causing the battery to cut out. it seems like a lot of 24 volt systems are real close to the threshold for cut out since they need more amps to get x number of watts than a higher voltage needs to get the same watts. do you have the 10 ah pack?

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The Sei
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Re: reducer stops

The 12V is for the controller. It uses both 24V and 12V.

Yes, it's the 10 ah pack.

dogman
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Re: reducer stops

thats a new one for me, but i've only been lurking on the ev websites for about six months. i'm guessing , but with a different controller it might work fine with the ping battery. the key is to find a controller that will not send more juice to the motor than the battery likes to deliver. if the controller needs two voltages for power, it sounds a bit like the 60's golf carts that had no controller and used a speed control that just switched from 12v to 24v and high speed was 36v. they worked, but they sure drove jerky!

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andrew
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Re: reducer stops

The controller needs 12V 5Ah.

Assuming you mean amps (not amp-hours), how do you know it only needs 5 amps? Dogman made a good point---if this is used to power the motor then it's likely going to use a lot more than 5 amps. That's only 60 watts.

You could do a test, and measure the amperage out of the "reducer" (which I'm assuming is a DC-DC converter) when connected to the bike.

[url=/forum-topic/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/587-my-kz750-electric-motorcycle-project]KZ750 Motorcycle Conversion[/url]
[url=/forum-topic/motorcycles-and-large-scooters/588-fixing-my-chinese-scooter]900 watt scooter[/url]
Pic from http://www.electri

dogman
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Re: reducer stops

Yeah the 10 ah pings have a pretty low cut out threshold. I really needed the range of the 20 just to get home. I have been hanging out at the endless shpere all day. Interesting the difference between responses to esentially the same post. Definitely you need to track down whether it is the battery cutting out or the controller or the voltage reducer that is acting up. Its way over my head, all i can do is buy magic boxes untill i get one that doesn't leak smoke. My solution would be to make the bike that don't work just like the one that does.

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36 volt lifepo4 mongoose mtb
24 volt sla + nicad EV Global

The Sei
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Re: reducer stops

I assume the controller needs 5 amps at most, because there is a 5 amp fuse in the 12V connection. The 12V part is only used for the speed sensor and torque sensor. The 24V part goes to the 250W motor. Yesterday during testing, I found out that if I connected every wire as it is supposed to be, i.e. 24V+, 24V-, 12V+ and 12V-, the motor would start full power when I switch on and the system goes dead within a second. Then, if I disconnect the 12V-, I can switch on and everything is normal (as long as I don't ride the bike). Then I connect the 12V- (with the switch still on), everything remains stable. Then, when I start riding the bike and the sensors switch the motor on, the battery indicator gives a "low battery" warning.

dogman
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Re: reducer stops

I hope somebody more knowledgeable is following this, but that sounds more like an issue with the bikes electronics. When the ping cuts out it just ends, it doesn't fade or voltage sag. If something in the bike, maybe in the controller or motor, is overusing the avaliable amperage that the battery can send, it could leave the 12 volt side underpowered since the 24 volt side is hogging all the juice. Like the guys over at shphere, i'm curious what would happen if the 24 volt was powered by one battery and the 12 volt by a separate battery. Reading your last post again, it sounds like you might be describing just that. Have you done any test that does not include the voltage reducer? I smell a rat there just since it didn't come with the bike. I've installed many defective, brand new parts in cars. You can spin your wheels quite a while till you realize the new part is also nonfunctional. Aonother thing could be you have something wrong with the sensors and stuff, maybe even just a scuffed wire touching frame. I hope you can figure this out,it really makes me appreciate having a simple pimple brushed hub conversion. But then if it rains my bike will short out in several places. Good luck.

Be the pack leader.
36 volt sla schwinn beach cruiser
36 volt lifepo4 mongoose mtb
24 volt sla + nicad EV Global

The Sei
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Re: reducer stops

The first thing I did today, was putting the old battery pack in (24v/12v), with the 24v disconnected and the Ping pack for 24v. Same thing happened as with the reducer in place.

Then I put the old battery pack in place, in the old-fashioned way. Everything was perfect! Then I also connected the Ping pack to 24v (so now both the NIMH 24v/12v and the 24v Ping are connected) and everything remained perfect.

My idea is that (unfortunately) the controller cannot handle the Ping's higher current, i.e. I checked it with a voltmeter and the readings were higher than 24v. This also goes for the 12v of the reducer.

For now I will try to make a box for the Ping, so that I can leave the old pack in its place and that I can attach the Ping to the bike somewhere.

Thanks for all your help. For the summer I want to enjoy my Aprilia, in the autumn I will start trying the other solutions.

dogman
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Re: reducer stops

Hooray! It never occured to me that too high a voltage could be the problem. As light as the ping is, it shouldn't be such a big problem to carry both batteries. Still, after all that money too bad it didn't work right away. If you are disgusted with the ping battery, they seem to be easy to resell to us.

Be the pack leader.
36 volt sla schwinn beach cruiser
36 volt lifepo4 mongoose mtb
24 volt sla + nicad EV Global

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