My Torq has died

I was cycling home Monday night when my bike died, or at least the electric bits of it. All lights went off and I had to peddle all the way home, and it's not the best bike for straightforward peddling, I can tell you.

I did try reseating the battery, and turning it on and off a few times, but the red light would come on and then fade out almost immediately, and sometimes not even that would happen.

However it was pouring down and this has happened once before, and once it was home and dry everything was okay. In this case it's still dead. If I push down hard on the battery the green light comes on, but I can also hear fizzing electrical sounds.

I have a call in with 50 Cycles, but am still waiting for a reply.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Aron

Aron, for your own safety, get the battery outside well away from you right NOW! (I'm assuming it's the lithium one).

Don't use it again until you ascertain what's wrong. A cell could have burnt out like my battery. Also DO NOT charge it either.

Are you able to open the case to see if the batteries inside are ok?

I think it may just be water in the controller which can be stubborn to get out, especially at this time of the year. I had the same total failure on the Quando after a careless hosing and storage.

I've found this is the best way of dealing with it if you have the facilities:

Bring the bike indoors into a small room. Place a fan heater about 2 feet away from the likely electrical area affected, running on 1 kilowatt. Two feet away on the other side, place a dehumidifier drawing air away from the bike. Then close the door on it. That sets up a loop of warm air which is progressively getting more and more dry, and I've found about half to one hour usually does the trick. It tends to come back into life gradually, at first with the odd big single bang as you twist the throtle, then a few firings, and eventually running smoothly again.

If you haven't got a dehumidifier it could be worth you hiring one from a hire centre.

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By all means take the battery out if you wish, but it's a manganese based one, so please don't worry about the type of fire that the cobalt based one's have suffered. The battery can fail, but in a safe manner, not it did with allotmenteer's. That type's construction and chemistry causes those fires.

The crackling sounds could be shorting through damp in the controller area, or a fault there or the battery.

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Thanks guys, I suspect Flecc is correct there's some water somewhere. I have charged the battery with no problem (lucky it didn't cause any problems). I have the li-ion type of battery. I t seems to me there's no problems with the battery as it charged as normal, so it must be something else.

However, having said the above, why pushing down on the battery makes the light go green doesn't seem right if it's a water issue.

I'll see if I can dry it out some more as Flecc said, and hopefully 50 Cycles will get back to me soon.

Thanks for your ideas.

Aron.

Since pushing down makes the contact, and you're hearing some arcing, it could be failure of the connections at the foot of the battery, That wouldn't affect it's ability to charge correctly.

If you go to my Torq Talk site to the following link, you'll see how to slide off the battery base plate and check the security of the wired connections to the clips:

Connection problems

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Once done on the above, if still no reliable connection, turn to the battery platform posts connections. With the bike upside down and tiewraps cut, if you lift out the wiring harness from the bottom bracket area, you'll see the sleeved wires to the post terminals. If damp has got in there and set up corrosion, you'll get intermittent connection and arcing. The sleeving will have to peeled off to check those out and clean up if necessary, and insulating with the self amalgamating tape shown on my site at the above link is best afterwards.

These bikes very rarely suffer an electronic failure, this sort of fault is almost always due to damp ingress and connection corrosion.

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