Need help with an "As-Is" e-Scooter

okrobie

100 mW
Joined
Oct 11, 2019
Messages
35
Location
Jacksonville Florida
Hi all thanks for having this forum. I recently purchased a Tao Tao ATE-501 48V 500 Watt scooter from a teenager (with parental supervision) Who said that she had it for 3 years, never rode it but now it didn't run and she didn't know why. She did say several times that she thought it needed to be re-wired. When I went to look at it, I brought one of those new pocket sized microprocessor based battery testers and a little Schumacher trickle charger. The batteries showed a little bit of sulphation but acceptable. I chose one of the batteries and hooked up the charger. To my surprise it charged up within 10 minutes. So, I bought it (dirt cheap BTW)

When I got it home, I was surprised to find that someone had hooked up the batteries in parallel and disconnected a few important looking wires. I think that she had received some help from her brothers who, based on their trucks were auto mechanics. Never the less, I wired the batteries in series and they seem to be taking a charge very well and keeping it. I still had these disconnected wires however, one of which was the fat red wire from the 48V positive lead of the top battery. After searching the internet for a schematic of this scooter, and not finding one, I noticed that most of the drawings I found had the fat red wire from the battery connected to the fat red wire on the controller. So I got my alligator clip leads and connected the two. Well to my surprise, I got a very big powerful spark that welded my clip lead to the terminal.

So here I am needing help to proceed further. Does this indicate that my controller is toast? BTW as you might have guessed, with the positive 48V battery terminal not connected to anything, nothing works. No horn, lights or anything else.

What's next? Any and all help and suggestions are accepted gladly. Thanks, Jim

P.S. I would like recommendations for an intelligent Pulse 48V charger (this rig didn't come with one)
 
That's probably just from the normal inrush current. Did it power up when you got the spark? Try again if the wire didn't get hot or blow up. Make sure the polarity is correct.
 
Thank you flat tire for your input. I forgot to mention that it did melt the clip lead wire. It wasn't an ordinary clip lead that comes in a plastic bag. It was one that I made myself out of heavier wire. (about 18 ga.) It happened instantly so I didn't have any chance to see if anything powered up.

I don't know what the input impedance of the controller should be, but I'm measuring 0.7 Ohms between the fat red wire and the fat black wire. I'm pretty sure that means that my controller is toast. What do y'all think? Thanks, Jim

EDIT: I see that there are two different kinds of controllers; square wave and sine wave. Which should I be shopping for?

I don't know if my motor is brushed. It is located in the rear wheel hub.
 
Well, I got a new controller. I can now connect the B+ to the controller without the huge spark. I currently have the motor and the input voltage connected. Now all of the lights and the horns work. Only problem is that the connectors from the new controller don't match up with the connectors on the scooter. All the markings on the controller are in Chinese so I took it over to my favorite Chinese Restaurant and the owner and her son translated it for me. They say things like door lock brake lights and there is one three wire connector which I'm sure is the throttle. If anyone has a link to a good wiring diagram please post it. Thanks, Jim
 
Sine wave is better. Smoother and almost silent.

Post a picture of new controller and all the connectors on the scooter, then someone will tell you how to hook it up and get things spinning.
 
 

Attachments

  • yk31c-brush-electric-scooter-controller-24v500w-with-24v-twist-throttle-grip-set-led-battery-d...jpg
    yk31c-brush-electric-scooter-controller-24v500w-with-24v-twist-throttle-grip-set-led-battery-d...jpg
    43 KB · Views: 1,443
One step forward and two steps back.

Thanks armandd, the picture you posted is my exact same unit. Somewhere else I found a photo which shows the Red & Blue (at the bottom of your picture) needing to be jumpered together for the controller function. I tried it and I heard the rear wheel try to spin for a split second and then quit. I bought this generic controller thinking that it would work, but it doesn't seem to. I think that my motor is three phase because my old controller had 3 motor wires, whereas this one only has 2 motor wires so its probably single phase. I may have to try to get an OEM replacement controller. There are none on eBay at present, but I did find one on Bangood. I'll let y'all know how it works out.

EDIT: I ordered one from Amazon Prime. It will be here Friday.
 
Search engine (bing/google/etc) query of "Taotao schematic ATE-501" brought up a lot of info.
 
Well... it's running with the new controller, but the throttle connector is different so I ran a test drive without throttle control. It was kind of exciting because it quickly accelerated to full speed and stayed there. The brakes will bring it to a stop and the ignition switch, of course is the emergency stop. I'll do some research to figure out the color codes of the throttle circuit.

I'll let you know how it works out. Regards, Jim
 
The batteries are not as robust as I first thought and I will soon need a set of batteries. Original equipment are 12V 18AH SLA's.I know that I should be getting a Li-ion battery pack, but the budget just won't support that at this time. There are several choices among the SLA's. Deep Cycle, AGM and Internal thread. These are all in the same price range (at Amazon)

Is there any significant advantage to either of these technologies?

Thanks, Jim
 
I found some throttle schematics and I now have the scooter running well, except for the low batteries.

I have been using a 12V trickle charger on each battery individually, but now through the miracle of the junk box, I have come up with 4, 12V 3Amp power supplies which I am hooking up in series to create a 48V charger. If that doesn't work, I have 3, 19V units that will generate 57V. That should get the job done. Well, back to work. I'll let you know how it works out. Regards, Jim
 
Well friends, we can declare victory. The scooter is fully running and I installed a new set of batteries today and it's capable of 23 mph. Only there was a mystery occurrence this evening when I took it out to test the new batteries. All of a sudden for no apparent reason, it started to bog down and then stopped. Everything seemed normal, but when I gave it throttle, it tried to go backwards. After a few minutes of confusion, I decided to try swapping 2 motor leads and Viola it ran forward again. After this incident it began to run at 23 mph whereas prior it was maxing out at 16.

Can anyone explain this occurrence?
 
Back
Top