5404/5403 The good The bad The ugly

[moonshine]

just connected it up again...when i plugged in the battery, i heard something click click inside the motor. When its powered up, the wheel moves in a cogwheel like fashion. I'm starting to understand thats a hall problem...right? Which one is effed?

Oh and i used a voltmeter to test each hall...i had the ground pin to the ground and i tested each hall wire coming from the motor. I also spun the wheel while getting a reading and it changed, for all three. Does that mean the halls are ok? GAH! Whenever i hook up power to it, i can hear inside the motor: a very rapid "click click click click"

[ZOMGVTEK]

Halls are easy to test. Just hook a volt meter between the halls power (+ or -) and then the other end to a hall wire. Slowly spin the motor by hand, you should see your meter toggle between roughly 0.xV to 4.xV. Bad halls won't toggle and just stick high or low (usually high). If all 3 check out good, its a phase issue. Could be a wire, connector, controller...

All the phase wires are solid and secure? No phase wires fell out of the PP75's?

[John in CR]

Moonshine,

Sorry to hear about your problems. A blown controller can create those symptoms Moonshine, especially the cogging when the failure occurred, and even the click when you tried it most recently. Commonly it can be verified with one easy test....ie With everything connected but off, turn the wheel. If it is more difficult to turn with the controller connected to the motor than with it disconnected, then some mosfets are blown and shorted in the controller.

Get yourself an ebike tester too. It takes the guesswork out of identifying most problems. eg Connect it to the motor, spin the wheel, and it tells you whether the halls and phases are healthy. Connect the throttle too it and twist...okay throttle is fine. If it's not the throttle or the motor and nothing else is connected to the controller other that the battery, then the problem is the controller or in the wiring going to it unless you have a battery problem.

John

[Evoforce]

Also having a short in your x l r connector can be troublesome and give you those kinds of results also.

[moonshine]

Moonshine,

Sorry to hear about your problems. A blown controller can create those symptoms Moonshine, especially the cogging when the failure occurred, and even the click when you tried it most recently. Commonly it can be verified with one easy test....ie With everything connected but off, turn the wheel. If it is more difficult to turn with the controller connected to the motor than with it disconnected, then some mosfets are blown and shorted in the controller.

Get yourself an ebike tester too. It takes the guesswork out of identifying most problems. eg Connect it to the motor, spin the wheel, and it tells you whether the halls and phases are healthy. Connect the throttle too it and twist...okay throttle is fine. If it's not the throttle or the motor and nothing else is connected to the controller other that the battery, then the problem is the controller or in the wiring going to it unless you have a battery problem.

John

Alright everyone, thanks for the input. First...i took of the mini xlrs and put andersons on (it was just easier for me). Lyen's tester says that all my halls are dead. The phase wires seem to be fine (the lights flash in/out when the wheel is turned). This doesn't happen at all for the halls, but the voltmeter showed a change in all the halls when the wheel was moved However, i disconnected the controller and the wheel moved more freely and as a cog when connected. I took the controller out of its casing (184115) and i can see no visible damage to anything! At least not like the other pictures i've seen of "blown" mosfets. Did i destroy both ALL THE HALLS AND MOSFETS?

[John in CR]

Blown fets aren't always visible. Controller failing and taking the halls with it would be a first that I've heard of, as would blowing all 3 at once. My guess on the tester result is a bad connection, maybe even a loose wire in the tester. Have you used the tester before to know that it works? I bought 2 and one of them came with the phase and throttle wires swapped. If you have another motor to test the tester, that would be easiest.

Let's hope for the optimum result and it's just a loose broken connection in the pos or neg for the extension you added to the hall wires. That would prevent anything from working, and an intermittent connection as it failed could cause the bad noise you heard at failure. Cross a few fingers (and toes) as you check that in hope that both the controller and motor are fine.

John

[moonshine]

john,

I ordered another one of Lyen's testers (the one im using is Gcindc's). I'm not really sure where to go at this point. I already spent a day opening up the 5404 examining all the wires inside (to see if they were cut and they were not) and to check the connections. I'm missing something. I extended all the phase and hall wires, but i doubt the solder there got messed up. I mean its just combining to wires and soldering it. Is that a likely possibility? It was running before just fine so it makes me think no. I covered each individual wire with heat shrink tubing to avoid any contact. As of right now, i have a dead 5404. the halls insides still had glue all over them. How do you check for a blown mosfet if its not visible?

[Andje]

you check for continuity between the controllers phase wires and the battery wires.

[John in CR]

...and while you have it open check for continuity of the hall wires from the connector to their termination inside the motor, especially the pos and neg hall wires. Yes sure that extension could be faulty for one the hall wires, since small wires break easily, especially when part is made stiff with solder. That just happened to my son a couple of days ago with his regen wire. He lost regen and it was a broken connection in a small wire right he soldered it.

[moonshine]

I checked inside the motor and everything looks brand new. I mean, i would have to completely take off all the glue on top of the halls, but the wires going into them are solid and not movable (slight tug and they're solid). My question is...what is the rapid clickin sound inside the motor? If its clickin...doesn't that mean the halls/phase wires are continuous? as in...if they were cut, i shouldn't get any sounds right? My next step is to undo the heat shrinks...and see if the wires are messed up there. Isn't there a way to check the continuity of a wire with a voltmeter? My connections themselves (the andersons) are fine so its not a crimping problem. The wires are good even where the wires exit out of the axle. So i understand that getting ALL THREE halls cut is less probable than having the red/black wires cut. i'll check those...at the extension portion...I must add that i was throttling close to WOT and then cutting back to zero throttle. Could the regen have messed up my controller? Lyen's 18fet is supposed to be pretty beefy and i had him do extra work on it to except more current...

Wire path from motor to controller
Motor: Wires good
Leaving motor: wires good
Soldered extension connection: Maybe a problem?
Anderson connectors to controller: wires good

oh and would the CA still work if the controller was dead? My CA still works when i plug it into the controller. Im still confused as to where my problem is.

1. Lyen's tester says phase wires are ok, but when the wheel spins in a cogwheel like fashion with the controller plugged in, which people are saying=phase problem.
2. Tester says all halls are dead, but when i use the voltmeter, i get changing voltages when i spin the wheel on all halls.
3. Am i doing something wrong? Jeez...

[ZOMGVTEK]

If you get changing voltages on all 3 halls when you spin the wheel, the halls are fine.

It sounds like you blew a FET in the controller. Generally you can't tell by visually inspecting it, unless you're going fast when it blows, and the FET is slightly resistive, locking up the rear wheel, and taking a ton of energy with it. Those times the FET basically explodes and its easy to see one thats bad.

Determine what phase has the shorted FET, get replacements, and replace the bad ones. Sometimes only one FET blows, sometimes many or even all of them can. If the wheel isn't REALLY hard to turn, its probably just one or two. No way to tell unless you remove them.

[moonshine]

Yea...when the controller is connected, the wheel isn't ridiculously hard to turn, but it does feel like im going against a magnet. But like i said, its a cog wheel like fashion. What i don't get is why lyen's tester is saying they're all good. I'm confused with all of the contradictions i've come across in the troubleshooting process. I'm gonna send my controller to lyen and see what he says.... Hopefully the motor is just fine...it should be. Thanks for the help everyone.

[John in CR]

Yea...when the controller is connected, the wheel isn't ridiculously hard to turn, but it does feel like im going against a magnet. But like i said, its a cog wheel like fashion. What i don't get is why lyen's tester is saying they're all good. I'm confused with all of the contradictions i've come across in the troubleshooting process. I'm gonna send my controller to lyen and see what he says.... Hopefully the motor is just fine...it should be. Thanks for the help everyone.

The phase wires of the motor are good. The short of a phase is in the controller, which commonly happens with a blown FET. The notched sensation while turning is because it's just one phase, like if you shorted the ends of 2 phase wires of the motor together and turned the wheel. If you short all 3 together it gets smoother but harder to turn. Depending upon how much resistance there is in the pathway of the shorted FET(s) determines how strong the resistance to turn, so if you try shorting the motor phases directly, don't be surprised if that plug braking force is stronger.

John

[moonshine]

John and everyone,

Thank you all for the info. It seems as though i just received a crash course in debugging motors, halls, phases, and controllers. I spent the day ripping my hair out with all of the different avenues of approach. The resistance in my motor is slight. But it seems everyone is telling me its the controller, with a non visible blown fet. I understand now that the phases are ok in the motor, but not from the controller. I don't know how i messed it up, but i think its because i went from WOT to zero throttle and the regen must've done damage to my controller. Admittedly, i was a little reckless when programming my controller (shown below). Now go easy on me. I feel as though i may have tinkered with something i didn't quite understand...

lyen 18fet controller setting before death.png

(72.58 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

Either way, i'm sending my controller back to lyen for repair...i might just buy a 24fet controller. I'm currently using a 12fet sensorless controller from GCinDC. I haven't hooked it up yet, but i'm hoping my motor is gtg and that the controller was the main issue.

[ZOMGVTEK]

115% throttle on ALL speeds? That's not a good idea at all. You can use >100% throttle, but don't ride in it 24/7, just for brief periods. You should be able to run WOT, into regen, without lifting the throttle. Don't overheat the controller, use a sane current limit, and keep the connections tight, you should be able to do anything without damaging the controller. That's one thing thats great about electric stuff, you can generally run it however you want without worry, just keep it cool. 115% 'overdrives' the FETs and is considered hard on them. It also tends to be rather inefficient. Change it to 99 from now on.

Also, Your 'volt tolerance' should be much lower than 5. I'd run 1V or less. This is simply how much the voltage must rise above the LVC before the controller works again. If your LVC is well below your pack voltage, it wont matter.

[remf]

Blown fets aren't always visible. Controller failing and taking the halls with it would be a first that I've heard of, as would blowing all 3 at once.

Seems that my controller failed & took the halls with it or visa versa on my 5404 a while ago. I didn't think it was that rare. Lucky me.

[moonshine]

John,

Alright, i def didn't understand what volt tolerance was. And i'll dial it down. I just used lyen's 12fet sensorless controller that i got from GC and it RUNS!!!! I don't know what the stock settings are, but i was pulling up to 3kw and wasn't going that fast, which is at this point 100% OK with me. I just wanted to know if it was the controller or the motor. It's a frickin miracle that it was the controller. At this point, i don't know if i should just go ahead and buy a 24fet monster of a controller just in case...or just stick with my 18fet. This motor is back to being cool...but...still getting a hubzilla. you know...just in case?

Remf, sorry to hear that man!!! I was super pissed...but i guess i didn't actually destroy the halls. But i guarantee you i will destroy something in the near future...

Thanks for the help. If i could get all you guys in one spot...pizza and beer on me man...seriously.

[MadRhino]

The big 5404 twisted 3/4 inch of steel dropout like it was lead.
This was jumping UP 4 ft stairs. 100v, 150A batt current

Building stronger now, and replacing phase wires

Building a skid plate too, my 72 pounds V-10 can climb 3 ft vertical like a trial bike

Got to build it strong enough to stand that kind of abuse, and find my old trial kit.
The Demo is having a complete rebuild with the Cro-motor, trying to make it able to compete the V-10 that did set my new standard of performance in the last few days.

[ZOMGVTEK]

I have a touch over 1.25" of steel dropouts, and the forces at play still make me worried about my dropouts well being. Drilling the hole to make them clamp was also way easier than anticipated. I'm used to drilling stainless, and the standard steel drilled like butter. Marginally concerning.

I had to push Farfle into welding two dropout plates onto it, and now I wish it had 3... Lulz

[megacycle]

The big 5404 twisted 3/4 inch of steel dropout like it was lead.
This was jumping UP 4 ft stairs. 100v, 150A batt current

Building stronger now, and replacing phase wires

Building a skid plate too, my 72 pounds V-10 can climb 3 ft vertical like a trial bike

Got to build it strong enough to stand that kind of abuse, and find my old trial kit.
.

Sorry to hear that but you got any photo or video of the bike up the stairs .

[megacycle]

That's pushing me to get going on this fella'

43508ln_23.jpg (30.86 KiB) Viewed 286 times

.
Good old 26"iron horse, manitou fronts and fox vanilla rear.
It's seen some full on downhill action in it's 10 years, time for an upgrade.

[MadRhino]

That's pushing me to get going on this fella'

Good old 26"iron horse, manitou fronts and fox vanilla rear.

I believe the Vanilla won't like the weight of the X54, but that is a minor detail.
Go ahead, those older freeride bikes are making wonderful Ebikes.

Sorry to hear that but you got any photo or video of the bike up the stairs .

I should take pics of all the bruises I got in a week taming this beast.
Pics and vids of my bikes are planned for this summer.

As a preview, you can see my V 10 in a few shots of this vid, where I was the one behind the cam.

[megacycle]

Yeh i like the older bomb proof style.

Looking forwrd to those video's

[Floont]

I've successfully mounted my 5404 to a Mongoose Blackcomb after some modifications to the rear spacing and disc brake mounts. I use a Doctorbass "torquearm" on the brake side and an ebikes.ca torquearm rev4 for the freewheel side. I have two packs in parallel of 125VDC Turnigy Lipo for 10 AH. All wiring is 10 gauge throughout.

The acceleration is impressive, although it is not a "stair climber" yet. I run it at 125VDC with a Lyen 24FET controller set with the following parameters:

My problem is that I cannot exceed 15 amps at WOT with the switch setting at 99% or even 120%. Don't get me wrong... It's an impressive beast but I was expecting more.

Does anyone have an idea why I can't pull any more amps? Is my controller limiting me?

[MadRhino]

My problem is that I cannot exceed 15 amps at WOT with the switch setting at 99% or even 120%. Don't get me wrong... It's an impressive beast but I was expecting more.

Obviously, something is wrong. 15 Amps is peanuts for a 24 fet controller, and for that big motor.