Merry Christmas to all.
Today I am so satisfied, just has to share it.
Have been studying Leaf conversions on this forum for a long time, and have been looking for a scrapped Leaf.
Finally I found one, and bought the battery at once. NOK 12500,- is about 1400 Euros. Shared battery with Martin in Stavanger, Norway.
Mounting battery went well, but I had some issues about charging With Runke Charger. Ended up buying Vectrix BMS and new mainboard for charger from Vectrix Parts. (Have not seen this version on the forum.?)
(My Runke charger was an early version, if it had was newer, a simple download would make it work.)
BMS was placed where fans used to be, and connected through original Leaf busbar.
Downloaded original Li firmware for MC and ICM. BMS and charger mainboard was delivered with upgraded software for 60 Ah.
Quite some work doing this for the first time, but today I drove for 110 km in cold weather. The bike is as new, and all functions are working together.
Guess it is normal on Li Vectrix, but I like the menu where you can see battery Voltage, Amps, Hi/low cell Voltage, and temperatures.
Guess conversion can be done cheaper, but so far I am really satisfied.
Only downside so far is that Scooterdiag do crash when communicating with upgraded charger. I had to disconnect Canbus from charger to check BMS function and download firmware to MC/ICM. So if an error occurs I have to do the same again. - Do anyone have know why this happens? Scooter is working fine.
Max Cell voltage was set to 4.15, and minimum to 3.0. Think I got red light at 3.1 V. Wonder if scooter will stop at 3V..?
Well, wrong time of year, so will store bike until spring. - Do anyone know how to store Leaf cells? Think someone wrote they should not be full..?
Regards, Johan
Greetings to Norge, the only country in Europe that will have a generally white Christmas this year :-)
Half full (or half empty, however your personal perception may be) tends to be the most healthy state for storing lithium-ion-based rechargable batteries. And if possible at around room temperature, not in a freezing cold place like outside. And it might be good to disconnect the cells from the BMS, those tend to leak current in varying doses even when off (if it actually turns off at all...).
My rides:
2017 Zero S ZF6.5 11kW, erider Thunder 5kW
Thanks, but I think you have to go further north for white Christmas this year. - But I have skied once this year :)
Good to know about storage, lets call it "half full.." :) Disconnecting BMS.. Think I rather drive it once a month or so, when roads are not frozen. Storage is seldom below zero, hope that is warm enough. - Or I might have to find a better place. - If room temperature is the best, I wonder about range in summer. Today was like 5 C.
Switzerland..? Great country :)
I only ride a Swiss product, in green and warm southern Germany :-) But said scoot also has to spend these few winter break weeks out in the open, so not ideal. I could of course turn down the battery heating temp. to 17...20°C (for riding I prefer to have battery temp at 20...23°C) and let it heat for three weeks, but that would wear out my thermostat relay way before its time, and would use a fair amount of kWh that I am not willing to invest...
And yes, your range in summer should be considerably more. The 20-cell LiPo battery in my vR one has an internal resistance of 19..21 milli-Ohms at 20°C but already 41 at 5°C, which efectively more than doubles voltage drop at a given current, thus reducing usefuly range considerably.
My rides:
2017 Zero S ZF6.5 11kW, erider Thunder 5kW
Congrulation Vectrix99!
I want to install like you vectrix BMS box 3.0. Now I am riding without bms box but I have installed 18 modules leaf with last MC software and new ESD software for litio (I have send esd charger for modification to work at 1A with bms) and I have changed 2210 harmes. Last software I like too with "menu" (amp, volt, temp, etc...). I am riding from 130-144 without bms and all ok.
Could you said me steps to install bms 3.0 box? I think:
1. Disconnect battery (I have and anderson connection like you with positive cable)
2. Install harness from battery to bms box (Any precaution with the temperature sensor?)
3. I think connect batery again and then turn on from 1 to 10 each bms (what order? Bms box have 4 board..)
For curiosity, when you are riding Does volt come down a lot? My leaf at 170 A come down about 7-8 volt...At 40-80 about 3-4 volt... Temp ambient about 15 ºC. When you ride are the battery temp up? (I don´t have temp sensor yet installed).
Thanks and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everybody!!!!!
Had to look up the VR one. Seems like a fun ride :)
Hope range will improve in summer. If it could go 150 Km it will not be so far behind the Leaf car.. As to internal resistance: - Had a testride in october, with improvised charging. I think acceleration was better then. Anyway, it is way better than my old NIMH.
Merry christmas to you to :)
You have done quite a lot, with battery and engineering. As to general questions first: Temperatures seemed to rise like 3-5 degrees through riding to empty and charging/ equalizing. - With fans removed. Guess there are some heat from motor controller and BMS. Voltage drop seem to be less than Leaf, possible 3-4V at full throttle in cold weather, 4 degrees. (Impressions after first ride)
1: I was pretty happy with use of Andrson connector, good solution. I do use a light bulb with crocodille connectors, and two spikes for charging capacitors before reconnecting.
But I did work on BMS without disconnecting battery after the first test connection. Can not see any risk, except short-circuit through wrong wiring.
2: Yes, harness was easy to connect. I took it in through opening in front of battery, where temp-sensors were connected. Guess i should have removed the old harness and wiring for old temp-sensors, but I left plugs and wires until further. Did you remove those?
3: I had a problem with scooter drag, so I could not use it with my home-rebuilt charger. Therefore i disconnected can bus from charger, and was able to check all voltages ant temps. And upgrade firmwares. After that I connected charger and switched on all switches at once. Did not feel like full control, but felt pretty safe with no alarms, and hi/low readouts on display.
I do not think you can do anything wrong, as long as wiring is correct. I spent quite some time to double-check wiring to the two d-subs. Guess/ hope short-circuit simply will burn off wires, like a fuse..
An other possible error is to use wrong 0-volt on each board. Guess you know that the second board V0 is same point as first boards V9.
I had a little annulment because i did prepare d-subs before i got the BMS. Turned out there were screws coming out of both plugs and BMS. I did replace those on BMS with parts from an PC. - But would be easier to use plugs with opening for screws, and just secure those with nuts.
Was a little surprised with charging a totally quiet bike. - Turns out charger and BMS fans only start when cooling is needed. Not often at this temperature, or if I select lower charging current.
Hope this made sense, please feel free to ask :)
Well, I gave some erratic infos.. See below.
This s actually what I did, but i have disconnected and reconnected plugs without doing so.
3. To enable the BMS activate each DIP from 1 to 10 as show on picture
4. To disable the BMS deactivate each DIP from 10 to 1 as show on picture
Be careful. If you ever turn on the vectrix with CAN cable plugged, but DIPs off, the BMS Board get permanent damage!
Thanks, R.
Really useful information, wish it was given together with BMS. Information did only show pinout, and how to enable/ disable BMS.
I have unplugged BMS without disabling switches, but always with ignition off. Of course there is voltage between cells. BMS seems to work fine, so hope I did no harm. -11 C below today, more testing in spring.
The problem about Scooterdiag crashing did disappear after riding/ charging. But I got a new, strange error message. - HS Hot. This shall indicate hot heat shield at motor controller. But message do occur before enabling bike, and it disappear after riding 10 metres. I also believe this only happen at low temperatures, close to zero. - Hope it is some kind of bug, not an error on MC. Can not see any connection to battery project. - Except of the possibility of collateral damage. Time will show...
V99
This is a SW bug. When it is really cold the thermal sensor underflows and it appears as a very high positive value to the SW. I was riding in 10 deg F weather the other day and the bike was bucking for 20 or 30 seconds till the heatsink warned up a little.
Thanks a lot XVectrix, just what I was hoping for :) Have not seen this before, but guess it is related to new firmware.
R - no, it's not true. You can power up the VX-1 BMS without connecting it to battery. No risk of damage.
All boards we ship are programmed on the bench, just 12V supply and CANBus.
DIP switches are used because we are still selling the BMS boards produced by Vectrix which have no protection circuit between the legs of LTC chip (measuring the voltage of cells). The maximum Voltage between the legs this module can handle is 9V. If during instalation / removal there would be a gap of 2 cells or more (for example Cell 1 and 4 connected, cells 2 and 3 already disconnected) the voltage difference will be above 10V (3 x 3,5V) and board will suffer damage.
In fact the old the boards are already running out, and all future BMS will have build in protection from connection mistake - no more dip switches.
Regards
Piotr
vectrixparts.com
Good to See you here, Piotr!
Thank you for your correction.
Two BMS boards died in front of us after accidentally turning on the vectrix without the DIPS enabled, and the only explanation we found is that the BMS cannot be turned on without the dips... after your detailed explanation, now we have no Clue why these 2 boards died...
Glad to know the BMS are improved!