Zerogas - Resurrection!

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zerogas
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Zerogas - Resurrection!

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

zerogas
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Re: Zerogas - Resurrection!

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.

zerogas
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Last seen: 4 years 5 months ago
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Re: Zerogas - Resurrection!

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...

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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.

//i172.photobucket.com/albums/w7/warren1977/Mobile%20Uploads/20191002_180329_zpsv4fevlxq.jpg)" />

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.

zerogas
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Re: Zerogas - Resurrection!

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.

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