What's up visforvoltage forum? I've been away for several years now(since I popped something in zerogas), but I've recently decided to pull out the old electric scoot and see what I can do to get it going again.
It's in a million pieces at the moment and has been in the crawl space under our house for oh... 10 years or so. This should be fun, lol.
The first thing I did was hose it off and give it a good wash. It's looking almost like a new xb-600 now(except for all the fairings i have removed during my tinkering).
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Not too bad, especially if you had seen it before!
Next thing to do is see if the 12 year old batteries will charge.
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I'm not going to get excited yet, but the charging light is a good sign!
Next, I want to take the cover off of the speed controller and check the caps. I'm still not sure why the scooter died when I put 84v on it, but I dont think the controller is the problem, because if you guys remember, if any of you are still around, I put 100v mosfets and capacitors in this controller. At first glance it looks ok, a little bit of corrosion, but that will clean up. The caps look brand new. I really dont think my problem is in here.
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It's going to take a couple of days to get all the batteries charged(because I want to trickle charge them 1 at a time), but I will post updates to this project here. I hope some of you will find it interesting, and it will also serve as a resource for me for the future.
Thanks all!
- zerogas
I did some more checking on zerogas today after work. I noticed the rear wheel(motor) was stuck and wouldn't spin. After some fiddling, I figured out that it had just been sitting so long the bearings and such were a bit rusty. I tried to roll it back and forth until it freed up, but it still wasnt rolling very well. I checked the brake and it seemed like it was dragging, so I backed off the brake adjuster and voila! It rolls nice and easy again. I don't know who turned it, or why, but it was in way too far.
While I was fiddling with the motor, I disconnected the phase wires and put my multimeter in line and spun the wheel. Each phase was measuring around 2 volts when I spun the wheel, so I believe my motor is still good.
I then began to check circuits for continuity, starting at the beginning, the key switch. I should mention there are no batteries in the scooter, because they are all bad. I also took off all the extras I installed before(volt meter, amp meter, extra battery wiring) everything! I returned the scooter's wiring to bone stock. I can always add that stuff later, I'm just trying to minimize wiring that I have to check.
I took the battery out of my 150cc trike to see if i could get zerogas' lights or signals to work, but no dice. Then I started checking for continuity from the key switch + to battery +. That's good. Check key switch negative to ground... nope. ANY ground... nope.
Then it got dark on me, but I will continue checking things Wednesday. I'm now leaning towards a broken ground, but time will tell. It could still be the controller or DC-DC converter. I have lots more things to check.
Later everybody,
Keep the rubber side down and the shiny side up.
Today was fairly productive. I got the batteries back in the pack, and realized the port that the PC looking plug plugs into is broken. As a workaround, I cut the pc plug off and wired the pack's positive and negative leads straight in. Turn the key on, and still nothing works. The DC-DC converter needs at least 24v input, so I think the batteries are just too low. I plugged the old 48v charger in and... nothing. I think the batteries are too low for the charger to even work.
So, I have 0 chargers that will charge these batteries at the moment. I have another workaround though...
I connected the battery out of my 150cc(known good battery) trike up parallel to one of the scooter batteries. This should allow me to connect a 12v charger as these 2 batteries try to balance. The good battery will trick the charger into turning on, thus raising the voltage of the scooter battery.
Success! The first charge brought the old battery up from 5ish volts to 8v. A couple more cycles and it should come up enough to charge directly.
That's where I'm at right now. Charging 4 batteries rigged up to a known good battery. I will post again when there is more progress made. She's gonna run again!
Keep the rubber side down and the shiny side up.
Forgot to mention. I put both batteries in a big, old canner, you know... just in case.
Keep the rubber side down and the shiny side up.