Help! Tilting trike - getting it going again (newbie questions)

[beanisboy]

Hi All,

First off, what a great forum, I am so glad I found you.

I just bought a second hand tilting trike and have some newbie questions which people here may be able to help with. I want to get it up and running for Christmas for my elderly father, so he can get about. He lives in quite a hilly place.



The main issue with the trike is it barely seems to have any power. I have a battery but it doesn't seem to be charging. WHen I put full throttle on I can go about 7 or 8 miles an hour, but it's very very underpowered. I am assuming the motor is 250w - surely this should be pulling me along quite comfotably? Also, the controller seems to be bodged, I am not sure what's going on. I will list questions with photos here.

1. Battery - it's a xh370-10j pylion battery and I think is very old, it says it is 37v. Is that normal? I thought they were 36v normally. When i use the charger nothing happens, the light stays green. Maybe the charger or battery is faulty? Can i exchange it for a new 36v battery?










2. Controller - two blue wires have been cut on the controller, what would these be for - perhaps a speed restrictor? Also, there is a spare other couple of wires, would they be for attaching the LCD? Could lack of lcd be causing power to be set on low hence slow speed? AND there are two wires (yellow and green) that come down from the throttle, I assume these are for the horn as the throttle has a red button on it that does nothing.












3. Motor Wheel. It seems to turn ok when lifted, and it even seems to apply a brake to the motor wheel when the rear brake is pulled. I *think* this means it's ok, but is there any way to test it? I am hoping it's underpowered because of the motor being faulty. It is just black and has no marking on it at all.


Any suggestions of what I should do first would be great - I am not sure if buy a new charger first, or to replace the battery AND charger, or maybe the controller or LCD if it is slowing things down, or what about the wheel?

 

[beanisboy]

probably too many questions, but can anyone tell me how to test the battery?

 

[Nealh]

You need a multi meter to check the battery voltage and to check the chargers output voltage, battery should be about 41.5v - 42v and the charger needs to be 42v.
36v is nominal for lithium ion (cylindrical cells), 37v is nominal for Lithium polymer (pouch cells).

For charger very carefully probe the chargers outlet pins without shorting together, the charger shows the + & -- pins , charger output needs to read 42v when plugged in to the mains and switched on.

On the battery without charger connected poke the multi meter probes on the battery discharge pins or measure the voltage off the Red/Black wiring from battery to controller, you are looking for 41.5 - 42v .


Once you know the battery voltage and it's charge you can use the multi meter to determine if the battery is knackered by applying power and watching what happens to the voltage, if voltage crashes battery is knackered.

 

[Nealh]

The blue wires might be for speed restriction join them back together and test, if they are likely they were cut due to stability at speed/cornering.
The controller looks to be very basic and single speed only as no display control or 3 spd switch can be seen, lcd (5 wires) or led (4 wires) require a 5 or 4 pin flat connector. The spare 3 pin connector could be for a simple PAS system, with little control except the throttle the bike is unstable at speed and is illegal as it has no PAS option.
For about £70 you can replace the electrics with a good KT keunteng kit with lcd and pas as well as throttle and lights/horn etc.
BUT FIRST you need to check out the battery and charger.

 

[vfr400]

The battery is knackered. Don't waste any time on it. Measuring anything in it won't help.

The controller doesn't have the current written on it, but the markings 3615 normally mean 36v 15A. The motor looks hefty enough to turn up the current a bit, so I'd be looking at a battery that can give at least 20 amps, with 25 amps being better. The battery is a standard "silver fish" type. you can get them from Ebay, Aliexpress or any Chinese supplier. A decent one would be about £200, though if you're any good at electrics, you can swap just the cell-pack that you can buy from Aliexpress. You have to check the dimensions to make sure it fits in the case. This one looks good if it fits.

AERDU 36V 10S4P 12.8Ah 18650 3200mah 13ah 12ah with 25A BMS 42V Lithium Battery Pack Ebike Electric Car Bicycle Motor Scooter

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

 

[beanisboy]

The blue wires might be for speed restriction join them back together and test, if they are likely they were cut due to stability at speed/cornering.
The controller looks to be very basic and single speed only as no display control or 3 spd switch can be seen, lcd (5 wires) or led (4 wires) require a 5 or 4 pin flat connector. The spare 3 pin connector could be for a simple PAS system, with little control except the throttle the bike is unstable at speed and is illegal as it has no PAS option.
For about £70 you can replace the electrics with a good KT keunteng kit with lcd and pas as well as throttle and lights/horn etc.
BUT FIRST you need to check out the battery and charger.

It does have pedal assist but seems very basic. it just kicks in at same speed a the throttle but because its so weak i cant tell really how much power it gives.

i will try thise blue wires once i sort batteyr. will buy a multimeter as been meaning too for ages anyway!

 

[beanisboy]

The battery is knackered. Don't waste any time on it. Measuring anything in it won't help.

The controller doesn't have the current written on it, but the markings 3615 normally mean 36v 15A. The motor looks hefty enough to turn up the current a bit, so I'd be looking at a battery that can give at least 20 amps, with 25 amps being better. The battery is a standard "silver fish" type. you can get them from Ebay, Aliexpress or any Chinese supplier. A decent one would be about £200, though if you're any good at electrics, you can swap just the cell-pack that you can buy from Aliexpress. You have to check the dimensions to make sure it fits in the case. This one looks good if it fits.

AERDU 36V 10S4P 12.8Ah 18650 3200mah 13ah 12ah with 25A BMS 42V Lithium Battery Pack Ebike Electric Car Bicycle Motor Scooter

Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com

www.aliexpress.com

i am ok at electrics and mechanics generally, just have zero experience with electic bikes.
this replacement cell looks great! is it a simple soldering job? and what is that black round pin like wire for?
and ideas on controllers cut blue wires?

 

[vfr400]

It's very simple to swap the cell-pack. There are two wires for power that go to the main terminals and two wires that go to the charge socket. The black thing is a charging jack that you'll cut off to wire to your charge socket, the same as the power connector. They're for people that want to make their own case for it. The only important things are to get the wires the right way round and not to try and cut both together.

Your present battery has Phylion cells in it, which behave in a slightly different way to a modern one. If you do all the normal measurements, the results will indicate that it's good, but when the cells are knackered, they just give up all their capacity, so the only test you can do is to see how far you can go or use a battery capacity tester.

I have to say again that I've never actually fitted one of those cell-packs in standard silver fish case, which is 95 x 72mm internal and however long it is. The cell pack is 70 x 85 mm and 190 long, so should fit as long as those measurements include the BMS at the end that seems to stick out a bit. In the worst case, you might have to relocate the BMS a bit, which just means lengthening a couple of wires.

 

[beanisboy]

thanks! on the site someone has put photos from real measurements and it looks good.
i think ill buy and give it a go.
is it worth me wiring in the key/on switch and fuse thing? looks to just be an inline switch on the positive red wire at top of the battery

 

[vfr400]

You need to get rid of that connector block. You need to figure out the wiring. Draw it out on a piece of paper. Normally, the black main power wire from the cell-pack goes directly to the battery terminal, and the red goes to the key-switch, then out to the main fuse, then down to the battery terminal, though it makes no difference, whether the fuse or the key-switch comes first. Yours appears to be the other way round. The black charge wire goes straight to the charge socket and the red one goes through a fuse to the socket.

If you want to use the charge indicator at the top, you take a positive wire from the keys-witch output side and a negative from any black wire joint. It looks like your has a separate connector from the BMS for the charge state indicator.

Yours has a thick red wire that goes up into the top, where the fuse and switch are, then back out again down the battery to the terminal. Are the orange wires negative? That's unusual colouring. what wires are attached to the charge socket and where do those thin red and orange wires go? do they go to the charge socket or the indicator panel?

To completely remove your cell-pack, unscrew the bottom piece, push the cell-pack down, then orientate the bottom piece so that it can pass through the case, and push everything up through the case.

 

[beanisboy]

the cell pack is realy hard to remove. it needs hammering out and im concerned it might explode!

here are more photos of the wiring - i hope this helps figure it out?
by the way is there anywhere else to buy internal batteries? that site ships from china i think. wondering if any uk sellers exist?

 

[beanisboy]

battery ordered - If I can figure out the wiring i'll try and make it the same with the key and the fuse etc. If I can't I guess I can just wire it in direct without the key/on/off switch?

Either way - excited to see if the new battery makes the trike go! If it doesn;t at least I;ve eliminated that problem and can move onto the controller and throttle

 

[vfr400]

It looks like they're using orange for the negative, so the thicker orange at the top is the charge negative that goes to the charge socket. The black runs from the dame solder point on the BMS down to the terminal on the bottom. The thin red and orange are for the charge state indicator. they've taken them from the output terminals and run them all the way back up the battery, which is a bit weird when they could have taken them from points at the top. Basicall, you have 4 connections to make:
Thick red to thick red
Thick black to terminal at bottom
Charge positive to positive side of charge socket
Charge negative to negative side of charge socket

Everything else can stay the same.

To get the cell-pack out, stand the bottom part of the battery on its narrow edge and pull the case down onto it so that it pushes the contents up. Normally, that start is enough to get the rest out, but if it's still too tight, find something longer that fits in the case and pull down onto it in the same way. I have a block of wood specially for that.

 

[beanisboy]

Thank you SO MUCH for your help! I will get new battery and re-wire and report back!

 

[vfr400]

Please keep us informed whether you are successful or not because other people would like to know if this is a good solution.

 

[beanisboy]

will do

 

[beanisboy]

Right - I have fitted the battery and it powering the trike. Here is a photo before I put it in the case. Fits very well with wiggle room.



Now, although the power is now constant, I still have a problem of it being basically under-powered.

On the flat the trike gets to 8mph and that's it.
On slight hills it is pretty poor and slower.
When i lift the wheel up and throttle it, it doesn't really go any faster by the looks of the wheel turning.

So what would be stopping the trike from going faster, or having more power?

When i connect the two blue wires together - the ones that have been cut on the controller - the power cuts out. So I have no clue what they are.

It has pedal assist but as I said before this is just very basic, it just switches on when you pedal and doesnt get you any faster than 8mph either.

The motor sounds quite loud, could it be broken? I have no idea what they sound like. It just whirs a lot and you can feel vibration from it on the handlebars a bit.

Is this just an underpowered hub? Or is it the controller? Or am I missing something simple?
The bike is for my dad who is elderly, he wont be doing hard pedalling, and he needs to get up some Cornish hills - hence i need some more power

 

[vfr400]

It's possible that it's just a slow motor, but 8 mph seems very slow. The way you determine that is to measure the speed of the wheel off the ground at full throttle with a fully-charged battery, then run down the battery to around 34V. If it runs around 10% or more slower, then the motor is what's determining the speed. say you got 8 mph with a full battery, at 34V, it would be 6.6 mph.

There's one thing that is wrong and needs sorting. The 13 amp mains wire from the battery to the controller isn't thick enough. you should replace it with 14g wire.

Pardon our interruption...

One thing you could try is to disconnect the throttle, make a bridge out of a paper clip and short the 5v pin to the throttle signal pin with the wheel off the ground. I'd need to see details of your throttle , its connectors and the colour of the wires to say which pins they are. That will show whether your throttle is faulty. If you lose a magnet in one, you can end up with a 50% speed throttle, though that shouldn't affect the pedal sensor.

If your motor is noisy and down on power, it can be a sign that you have what's known as a false positive on the connection sequence. With older controllers, they don't always connect colour to colour. There are 36 combinations of phase and hall wires. Three of those will give the correct forward motion, and sometimes one or more of the others will give noisy low power at the same time drawing much higher current than you'd expect. If the controller was replaced or removed at some time, that becomes a higher possibility.

Here's a sheet that is useful for those tests, which i lifted from this ES thread.

How to Determine the Wiring for a Brushless Motor

When experimenting or using parts from different sources, we frequently find the color codes on brushless motors and controllers do not correspond correctly. Just because the right colors are present does not mean they will match correctly, though that would be a good first guess. Most...

endless-sphere.com

 

[beanisboy]

Cheers for this. I've tried both things but still the same.

First i bridged the gap with a paper clip, when i got the right gap it ran exactly the same as the throttle.

Then i tried all 36 combinations. I can see what you mean when it shorts, it sounds much worse and is vibrating alot. Sometimes it ran backwards, sometimes not at all. It's certainly the right connection as it is, as runs best.

Here is a quick video of the wheel running:

Maybe it's just normal? It just seems slow to me and as I said, once on the ground it runs about that rpm but its like, 8mph.
Perhaps its just a slow hub?

 

[beanisboy]

If I was to buy a new hub/wheel and controller, which would be best?

The wheel is 20". I can rebuild the wheel if necessary.