bike went full throttle riding in the wet

N

nechaus

100 kW
Joined
Oct 11, 2011
Messages
1,876
Location
Brisbane > AUSTRALIA
This has never happened to me b4, only heard about it happening to mostly brushed setups or hall throttles playing up.


Last night i was riding in the rain, was moderately heavy..
Anyway, i was riding, my bike all the sudden it stopped, so i reset it, started working again..
All the sudden the thing went into full throttle and a moment later i was doing 80kmh and had to reach to pull my battery cables out as i have no safety features on my bike.


So today im going to install a standard switch for my controller..
I am just thankfull i wasn't so stupid and had no switch on 20/40kws... Would have been real freaky

Because it did it again after i tried resetting it (full throttle once i accelerated ) i had to walk my bike home... not tested it since
I wonder if it was caused by water in my throttle? or connections...

Have not tested it since last night, so when i go home, i hope its a lose wire and not anything blown
 
Yes, thats a myth that it is only on brushed setups. My only full throttle incident occured on a brushless setup because of a short in the throttle wires.

Because my rig is not so high power, I can override the motor with the brakes. Plus, I have a controller switch I can reach.

Your system will probably be okay when it dries out. Good luck.
 
I have never had it happen to me, but it has happened to a friend locally on a cyclone 500w with a regular hall throttle installed ( replaced the provided one ) .. and the throttle was faulty when removed ( not caused by water ) and replaced with a new one.

Was yours the type with LED lights on it ? ( i've heard of with and without led throttles having this happen, rarely thank god )

Most of my bikes are powerfull enough that i should e-brakes enabled .. but i dont... :oops:
 
Yeah im actually using a cheap full twist throttle from BMSBATTERY no lights
I changed from a thumbthrottle and power button.. to this full twist


The one day i didnt have my regen brake throttle on this happens :| that would of cut the power...
When i get home ill rewire the thing up and try to find the problem..
I always end up buying a cheap throttle, i should invest in a magura throttle.


But i tell you what it scared me yesterday because i tried to slam brakes on and the front tyre just locked up ( it was raining) so i almost crashed.

When i yanked the powercord from my battery pack the first time, i ripped it so hard out of panic, it got thrown like 30 meters, spent 10 mins looking for it. lol...
 
nechaus said:
Yeah im actually using a cheap full twist throttle from BMSBATTERY no lights
I changed from a thumbthrottle and power button.. to this full twist


The one day i didnt have my regen brake throttle on this happens :| that would of cut the power...
When i get home ill rewire the thing up and try to find the problem..
I always end up buying a cheap throttle, i should invest in a magura throttle.


But i tell you what it scared me yesterday because i tried to slam brakes on and the front tyre just locked up ( it was raining) so i almost crashed.

When i yanked the powercord from my battery pack the first time, i ripped it so hard out of panic, it got thrown like 30 meters, spent 10 mins looking for it. lol...
Click to expand...


lol ,after hearing that I'm glad I've got a kill switch. mines just a RCA plug, using the 'power on' wire for the controller. That way I can have a large grab loop right by my hand on the bars, and if anything happens I can yank it out and kill the motor instantly.

I'd say it was a water short. I was riding in the rain/through creeks the other day, and my throttle kept cutting out from time to time. Only for a second or two, but I'm guessing my 'water resistant' home made connectors arn't as water resistant as I hopped. No harm done though, works fine now its dry.

The other interesting thing is my CA was displaying 5km when i got home... weird since I've never had the little magnet reed switch hooked up, I put a plug on the end of the 'sense' wire a while back and then forgot about it, so clearly some water got in there and started giving false positives lol.
 
happened to mmabye 20 times. every time its a real shitshow. In winter slush once i was either full on, or pull plugs out of battery to turn off. . went 20k in high traffic, foot of slush. WOT .. WORST RIDE EVER in MEMORY.

That damn salt really plays havok with unwaterproofed connections. eg cycle analyst plug, has a throttle wire in it, and possibly over a hundred volts beside it. pretty dangerous.

Kill switch hells yeah soon i will do dat :mrgreen: :mrgreen:


One thing i found is if your "auto regen" starts not regening, means your throttle is about to go high,,,,,,,,lol early warning system
 
lol holy crap!!

Its funny but so damm annoying and dangerous hey.
its bad when its 100% unexpected, i often ride with one hand cruising at low speed haha

that connection on the ca for the light has shocked me once or twice..
 
oh yeah thats where u plug ur taser in!!!! :lol: im hoping the kids wont play with that little dongle
 
Glad you're ok, dude! ebrake handle is a definite must for setups like this.

Yeah, i did have a sticking throttle in below freezing conditions this winter.. :|
 
nechaus said:
This has never happened to me b4, only heard about it happening to mostly brushed setups or hall throttles playing up.

Last night i was riding in the rain, was moderately heavy..
Anyway, i was riding, my bike all the sudden it stopped, so i reset it, started working again..
All the sudden the thing went into full throttle and a moment later i was doing 80kmh and had to reach to pull my battery cables out as i have no safety features on my bike.
Click to expand...

That was a known failure mode for some systems with LED battery indicator Hall throttles back when I started fooling around with these things. Folks in rainy places like the PNW learned to use non-lighted throttles, so the power leads for the LED wouldn't spoof the Hall circuit in the throttle.

I had a Hall throttle fail-on after a crash once, in the rain, in the mud. I didn't like that a bit.

Chalo
 
I keep a pair of switches on the handle bar, one that opens the main battery contactor, and one that puts the controller in disable mode. I also keep a loose-ish loop of the little 16awg wire that feeds power to the controller's control power hanging just a bit off the tube. So far the switches have always worked fine, but in a pinch, I will be happy to rip that wire out. :)

Well, come to think of it, if it were to actually fail WOT (Wide Open Throttle), unless I was all ready going over 70-80mph, I would just flip over backwards before I could react. The wheel comes up very very quickly if you dare use WOT.
 
We need dual transducer hall throttle With integrated gyro
If the two signals dont match (compare)
Something is wrong
 
I have used the ghetto method of a plastic shopping bag secured wit a rubber band to keep the rain out of my throttle lol.
 
There is no use for a dedicated kill switch in your handle bar in a situation like that, you ll never be able to reach it before losing control.
You need to cut the power with your brake levers!
 
I just wired in a new throttle,
Lol just another cheap $1 throttle, this one came with my magicpie kit, and the switch i think it meant to be for a horn.
But it works well..
At first i was riding it around with my finger hovering the button, just incase it was a controller issue.

After burning through 10 ah, @ 25s, no problems.
 
gensem said:
There is no use for a dedicated kill switch in your handle bar in a situation like that, you ll never be able to reach it before losing control.
You need to cut the power with your brake levers!
Click to expand...

I can attest that this is the only thing with any possibility of sufficient reaction time on an extreme power bike. On my 30kw bike I use the 3 speed switch with one at 50% for smooth take-offs. I had my switch in the wrong position, and while cruising at about 15mph (about half throttle position), my knee hit the 3 speed switch making it 100%. At the 100% setting at 15mph suddenly going to half throttle means the wheel is coming up. My reaction was to hit the brake, cutting the power before going over and regen kicked in bringing the wheel back down from a near vertical position. It must have looked nice because there were quite a few people around on the nearby sidewalks, and the only ones laughing were those in front who could see the expression on my face.

It's good to have multiple backups though. My only other safety is my key switch to cut the controller power, but that's down near the saddle and harder to reach in an emergency. I need to add another cutoff switch on the bars for extra redundancy without having to let go of the bars with one hand.

John
 
Those cheap Chinese full-width throttles without LEDs are only made of thin plastic. I've broken two of them on normal roads when pedalling up steep hills at full throttle and then hit a bump. The end-stop has virtually no strength so it breaks when you hit the bump, which lets one of the magnets loose and then anything can happen. I was lucky: The first time I got no throttle and the second time I got about 30% throttle all the time. I was able to get home by using the brakes to switch it on/off because I had brake switches. The throttles with LEDs are much stronger, and this type of failure isn't so easy to do on a thumb throttle or half-width throttle
In summary, here's my advice: DO NOT USE THIS TYPE OF THROTTLE WUTHOUT BREAK CUT-OFFs. Available from many suppliers, but here's one:
 
Yep, happened to me about a month ago as well, I had to ditch off the bike cause there was no way to get the bastard to slow down! It was either into a deep stormdrain or a tree, so I chose the grass. :roll:

Had V brakes on the rear, and 8" hydros on the front, with holly rollers and all this did was lock up the front wheel - at 3+ Kw getting dumped into it there was no chance of stopping. Normal style (non-led) half-twist throttle, water got into the throttle connectors, thats all it took.

Regretted not hooking up the damn EBRAKES. Do so - it bypasses the throttle.
 
Wait a minute, what's this $1 throttle?

So water is an insulator. Before you say that getting wet did it, consider that clean water itself cannot conduct electricity. Rain water isn't clean, so there can be all sorts of junk in there that's conductive. The original rheostat/pot/etc. was a bucket of water with cables stuck in there on opposite sides, so let's just adjust the amount of salt in here until it's conducting the way we want.

What you really want to ponder is what would have to be in there to conduct enough electricity to cause a full power short. First it didn't work at all, then full power. Hmmmm. Just can't get the chaos theory out of my head, you might be distracted from the real source of the problem by the fact it happened to be wet. It's not ALWAYS the simplest explanation that's correct, only MOST ALWAYS.
 
heathyoung said:
Yep, happened to me about a month ago as well, I had to ditch off the bike cause there was no way to get the bastard to slow down! It was either into a deep stormdrain or a tree, so I chose the grass. :roll:

Had V brakes on the rear, and 8" hydros on the front, with holly rollers and all this did was lock up the front wheel - at 3+ Kw getting dumped into it there was no chance of stopping. Normal style (non-led) half-twist throttle, water got into the throttle connectors, thats all it took.

Regretted not hooking up the damn EBRAKES. Do so - it bypasses the throttle.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't rely on just an ebrake switch. You should also have a switch on the controller power wire, not the main battery lead, which is only necessary on brushed motors, on the thinner wire from battery positive to the controller. Put the switch somewhere you can reach to shut the controller down in the event of a runaway condition. A brushless motor can't work with the controller off, while a brushed motor needs only a connection to the battery. I always suggest the added security of a keyswitch instead of a simple switch.

John
 
Odd thread - I don't use brake switches but the brake on my powered wheel can stop the 2kW motor wheel from turning in a controlled manner. IMO if your brakes can't stop/stall a hub motor your brakes aren't adequate. If you don't have a brake on the motor wheel and/or running some insane power level then brake switches and emergency kill switch are your friend.
 
With brushed setups it is more common though, its more to do with when the controllers fail as the fets often fail to a dead short and bridge the battery volts to the motor and being brushed thats all it needs to get your ass moving to the scene of the accident :lol: , this is not likely to happen on a brushless setup however as you have seen throttle failures will, ebrakes are a very good idea although they are always make to break which is no good if the cable is broken or the switch stops working, they should be normally closed in a loop to prevent any problems.

I have a cheap bar mounted pit bike kill switch on all my rides, I can switch it in a second, never had to use it though as I run quality Resistive Magura throttles on all my bikes, would never use a hall throttle on anything high powered, seen far too many fail.

It cracks me up people spend $1000 + more on ebike stuff and spend no money on any safety and then connect a 1 dollar throttle to it? fine if you are running 250W but not 2500W :roll:
 
:shock: oh yeah . im gonna go put a brake switch on my juciy's!!. got a nice switch from an old microwave oven interlock. i forgot all about the ebrake function. had that auto regen for too long....

Mabye ill make a thread.
 
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