Hello,
My ESD charger died. Second time this happens on 2 different Vectrix. I took it out and unlike the previous one, this one did not show any signs of burnt components. I could measure mains voltage all the way to the main board, after the bridge rectifier, but no sign of life after that. I was about to bin it but finally decided to go through the highly entertaining process of removing the main board. Again, nothing looked damaged there. So I started measuring a few things and came across this 220 Ohms power resistor that was simply open. This is just very odd as it does not show any sign of heat or mechanical damage. I had a couple of 470 Ohms ones laying around. Put them in and bingo, the charger is back in action. I hope this can help some of you out there with a dead charger.
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Evening! I know this post is from quite a while ago now but I've just had one of my ESD chargers stop working. After pulling it from the bike and starting to disassemble it, I thought I'd just have a quick look to see what has been said here about them failing and to see if anyone has ever attempted their own repairs.
Gosh, they're difficult to disassemble!
Amd then... I read your post. Rushing back out to the shed to go and check, I have one early type ESD pulled from a crashed bike (heavy damage to everything) where the two series 220 ohm resistors are visible and my daily-use one where they are buried beneath the PCB. Sure enough though, carefully scraping at the solder points shows they have gone open circuit. I'll have to obtain some spares and see if I can get then out and replaced. Fingers crossed...
If anyone has any tips on how to release the potted components, that'd be fab. Can't find much on here about it.
Thanks all,
Drew
Drew
Hello
It's been a while. I just know that you have to be patient!. The large caps are potted in a white silicon which actually does not stick to the components. You just need top pry open the whole thing very gradually with constant force and you will see the lid sliding out. Just be gentle and it come apart!
Not to throw cold water on your hopes for a simple fix, but I had what looks like that same resistor burn on my ESD charger. Replacing it did not bring the charger to life. Something else is the problem with mine. In my case, the resistor did have heat damage visible (and was open circuit). The red capacitor next to the bad resistor was likely damaged from the heat too. And I think I had one more little IC look like it was burned, which I replaced but that was not it either. The new resistor starts to heat up quickly and too much after I plug the charger in, but the charger does not work otherwise - I unplugged it quickly as to prevent the resistor from burning again and doing further damage elsewhere.
Hope yours would just work with a new resistor.
On a separate note, I was able to replace the bad resistor without removing the main board: unsolder it from above, take it out with tweezers: gently lifting the edge of the board while pulling out the resistor. The new resistor I just soldered on the accessible side of the board - there is plenty of space there, plus I wanted to quickly test if that was all that was wrong with mine...
Kocho,
Oh dear, your comments were very valid in this case. Thank you Stanzeman for your suggestions and quick reply too.
To start with, after identifying that the series pair of resistors were open circuit, I removed both of them (220 Ohm each) from the underside of the board using Kocho's tweezer technique and found just one of them to be open circuit, the other seemed fine (perhaps to be expected!) and neither seemed heat damaged. On my earlier pig-tail version of the charger, these same resistors were mounted on the visible side of the main PCB. They are rated at 4W with high inrush current capability. I had some 5W versions available and so popped those in on the top (visible) side of the PCB. After re-assembly, I tried fitting it to the bike with everything still open - no cover fitted and nothing untoward happened until I applied the mains supply. Within a second, the same two resistors started smoking and so I turned it off straight away for fear of doing more damage elsewhere. Clearly there is a short or failed device elsewhere in the circuit, even though there is no visible damage to any of the other components. I didn't get long enough to see if anything else got hot! It occurred to me as well that it could perhaps be some of the control logic has failed, perhaps locking some part of the switching in a latched condition, just a theory. I'd love to know!
With the resistor swap clearly being only part of the fault, I set about removing the main board. With your words of encouragement, it was actually easier than I had expected and as I was prepared for the unit to be scrap, it was less of a concern if I irreparably damaged it. Thankfully it came out in one piece (photos to follow later). Nothing was obviously burned or damaged. The trouble is without some sort of schematics, it will be very difficult to diagnose the fault. It's the sort of equipment that you have to start removing all of the major components in order to test them individually.
So I'm stuck now with two damaged chargers. As a result, my attention has moved to the crash-damaged earlier type pig-tail ESD charger.
See the photo...
This is what happens when a bike is ridden into a lamppost at speed (plus a lot of other damage besides!). Ouch.
Amazingly, most of the major components inside the charger, despite the HUGE wallop, are at least physically intact. Upon disassembly, one surface mount cap and a diode had be forcibly removed by the external case coming into contact with the components on impact. It's a long shot but now I wonder whether I might be able to resurrect this beast instead? The first problem I have is that I have no way of identifying the correct orientation of the 'removed' diode as the layout of this PCB is different between the two chargers. At the moment, I have assumed convention and placed it in the same direction as the one next door to it but I'm not willing to apply any power until I can confirm that this is actually correct! See below; diode in question arrowed...
So, does anyone have photographs of the inside of an early charger please? I realise I'll be taking a bit of a risk with this one as well but it's probably worth a shot.
Thanks again for your help
Drew
Drew
I have a couple of dead esd's about to start the search for a good one if anyone has one knows of one. But I guess I might as well disasymbol one the these, with nothing to loose. Isaturday I bought a 08 with only 24 miles on it, how can the charger be bad, I took the charger off my 07 and put it on the new cream puff and she is working perfect. BTW I paid $200 for the 08 with 24 miles but it needs a charger.
Kocho,
Just noticed that your photographs show that you have the earlier type of charger too - do any of your photos show correct orientation of the diode as per below?
Thanks
Drew
Drew
Looks the same as on yours. The photo is from my dead charger that came off my bike. I have a second dead charger disassembled in pieces, so I could possibly take photos of the insides of that one, if you need something more specific.
Did you tak it completly out of its case. It is smarter than than me, I cannot get it out
Nah, someone else took it apart and when he could not fix it, mailed the insides to me without the heavy aluminum case. I have not taken mine apart, other than the thin cover, which is glued to the thick aluminum cover with some silicone caulk, so a knife and patience are needed to take off.