Hi everyone,
My sad Vectrix (ok, I'm the sad one) has been sitting in the garage for about 6 months now, unable to charge. I think it has a temp sensor malfunction. I've been in and out of touch with Dana DeCosta, who keeps promising he'll be out to fix it, but so far nothing. My questions:
1) Does anyone have secret info on how to get a Vectrix repaired on the west coast, specifically the Bay Area? It seems they have dumped all of their former dealers.
2) Do you think the battery is being damaged by sitting so long? It's now completely discharged.
Thanks!
Silas
Hi Silas!
Your battery is completely discharged and the onboard charger doesn´t start charging from lower than 80 Volt :(
The only way is to charge with an offboard charger up to 100Volt and then with the onboard charger.
But...
Your battery is partially damaged, thats clear :(
Best wishes
Mario
P:S: Sorry about my very bad english....
-------- http://www.vectrix-forum.de --------
THE FIRST german VECTRIX Forum
SILAS, you MUST raise the voltage of the charger immediately.
Use an offboard charger to raise it avobe 100v. If you don't have access to any charger, maybe you can make a small device to estabilize the 110v AC voltage of an outlet to make it seem DC (big diode bridge?). Or you can join 7-8 small 12v solar panels to raise the voltage of the battery.
Please describe a little further the problem .You suspect there was a tempboard problem, therefore you were able to turn on the bike. The main fuse is OK.
Consider:
sometimes the charger program gets frozen. Have you tried to reset the charger?
Sometimes there's a problem in the plug. Have you checked that the charger receives energy?
Let's don't send the man panicking. The batteries are fine. Nimh batteries love to be discharged. They come back to life without harm. it is true that you will have to raise the voltage by connecting an off board charger. I bought a 150v regulated power supply on EBAY. You can connect that directly to your battery (preferentially via a diode). your voltage will come back to a serviceable level within a half hour. Disconnect and have the on board charger take over.
And if I remember correctly from some other post, you can connect it directly to the charger - above the front wheel (on the left side, if you're looking from the front of the bike) without having to take off the battery cover.
Thanks for your replies!
I guess I should outline the problem a little better. Basically the bike was working fine, except for intermittent episodes of simultaneously flashing temp and battery sensor lights, at which times it would refuse to charge. THIS ONLY OCCURRED DURING COOL WET WEATHER INITIALLY. When it was happening, I would plug it in, the lights as noted would be flashing, and the charge cycle would start, but then shut down after about ten seconds.
For months, this problem would resolve by keeping the bike indoors in a warm environment overnight. However, eventually the problem arose and would not resolve. As I said, all other aspects of the scooter worked fine, including range.
So, I suspect temp sensors from others who have had this "rainy day" problem. I even had the hole behind the front wheel sealed at one point, which seemed to help for a while.
Current condition: unable to charge with onboard charger, and now the battery is discharged completely from sitting for so long.
I am hopeful this has not damaged the battery. If anyone can give me more detailed advice about getting an appropriate (safe) external charger, and how to use it without damaging anything, that would be great. And of course my initial question, how/where can I get this fixed?
Thanks!
Silas
The battery container of your vectrix is not waterproof. Every time it rains some water gets to the temp sensors. Normally when the sensors get dry they work again, but the temp board will finally get corrossion / permanent damage.
Ones question: if he unplugs the boards from the charger (by using the connector, will the charger work (I believe yes)?
If answer is yes:
How to recover:
1-Unplug the tempboards from the charger
2-Raise the battery voltage with external charger
3-plug the vectrix and charge
How to prevent:
1- seal the front holes of the battery compartment with tape (behind the front wheel)
2- Seal the temp boards with silicone (remember, there are 3 layers of cells. You'll have to dismantle the battery, that's a lot of work. Danger of electric shock, must be very carefull). Check for damaged tempboard and clean it, and test it. If it does not work, replace it.
3- After finding the damaged board, guess how the hell the water gets there, find the holes. Seal these holes.
more ideas?
I also have that moisture problem sometimes. The front holes on my bike were sealed with tape from day one but we have a very wet climate here it still occurs.
My workaround is to unplug and re-plug the bike a few times. The charge sequence will start with powering up the fans each time the bike is plugged in. The fans then run half a minute or so before the software quits due to the false temperature readings. But because the fans have been spinning shortly they have removed some moisture.
Usually it takes one or two tries to get the fans to remove all moisture and it will charge again.
So if you have this problem just keep trying a few times.
I have another issue by the way that I think is related but so far is no problem. Every time I plug in the bike the dashboard boots twice. I think it is because it receives some false temperature readings.
Also most of the times I want to do a temperature reading with the left brake the dash will reboot before it shows me the temperature. It then takes e few attempts again before the reading will work.
Once you go EV, Gas is history!
Use a silicone like RTV162 that is made for electronics, household silicone is acidic and can destroy electronics.