Back from the dead and Izip Question

Hey Everybody!

Back after a 6 year hiatus, during which time I traded my ebike for a gas powered scooter, then bought 2 bigger scooters and rode them for several years. After making it over 5 years without killing myself I decided it was time to stop tempting fate. That bug, as you know never really goes away.

So... I am considering buying a used Izip e3 Path from 2014 with dead batteries. The model reviewed is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hcxnNnzSw4

Does anybody know how hard it is to wire a new aftermarket battery to this bike? It seems the original currie batteries are nowhere to be found.

Thanks!

Should be just a matter of changing the plug on the bike, so that it matches what you put on the battery. Good bike worth bringing back from the dead.

What scoot did you have? I loved my Yamaha majesty, then tried the 400cc burgman. I actually feel safer on the motorcycle, since I keep up with traffic. Much of my riding is not city riding though, no work, no commute. Out here in the west, lots of space on the open roads. I do a lot of rides to the mountains, to enjoy the corners. Just upgraded to a serious touring motorcycle. Same kind of great fairing, but a lot faster when I need it on the interstate highway to the mts. Kinda miss the the 70 mpg though.

Still ride e bikes, but somehow, the obsession with them waned when one burned my house, and it took almost a year to rebuild. I tend to go for straight pedal bikes now when I want a bike ride.

The early Izips used a 24V brushed controller and battery. If you can verify that this is the most recent 36V version, then many owners of these have successfully upgraded to a 36V 10S battery.

The 36V version seems to be adequate on fairly flat land. If your up hills are mild and short, the motor and controller should not get dangerously hot.

If you have the 24V version, upgrading the power potential would require a new battery, controller and motor, so you are left with a bicycle frame that is roughly equal to those found in the big box stores. For an adult, it would not be worth it for me.

If you have a lot of time on your hands, the drivetrain on a 24V version could be re-laced to a 20-inch rim, and swapped to a child's bicycle. You could even switch to a 24V cordless tool battery.

The torque improvement gained from using a smaller diameter rim would reduce the heat in the brushless controller. Just an option...

Looks like Izip made changes from year to year. Specs from the 2014 indicate a 48 V, 8.8 Ah battery Lion type. 48 V, Lion is a very standard battery. A new one could be mounted on the rack or in the triangle. 8.8 Ah is a pretty low capacity, higher capacity would be somewhat larger and heavier but more useful because of increased range, or the same range and easier on the battery. I bought the last two batteries from Amazon, that was easy and reliable. One came from China, so it took around 30 days to get it. A battery from Amazon should come with a bike side connector and a charger.

Pics don't show where the controller is, but it's probably in the battery box. A new battery may not fit in the battery box, but the controller has to be reused. Chances are the controller can be removed from the box and mounted on the rack, then it's just a matter of mounting a new battery on the rack too.

If there are two wires from the controller to the battery, you just use those through the connector set that comes with the new battery. Some soldering may be involved, but it's easy to do. If there are three wires, in the wiring diagrams for another Izip bike there were 3, then they may be trying to lock the bike into using a non standard type battery from Izip. In this case the controller could be changed to a standard type, maybe it wouldn't need to b changed.

https://electricbikereview.com/izip/2014-e3-path-plus/

Anyway, this looks like a very good ebike design. No suspension but specs are for a 27.2 mm seatpost, thus a suspension seatpost would be inexpensive and would take the edge off shocks through the seat.

Let us know what you do and how it works out.

Those bikes in general can be problematic. The controller is in the motor, and some of the wiring harnesses had problems that were hard to diagnose and fix as it's integrated to where has to be completely replaced if part of it fails.
Unless you've actually checked with a volt meter, it's hard to tell if the battery is actually dead, or the on button is stuck. Or maybe you get lucky and the battery is low, and it's just a bad charger.

Thanks everybody. I just brought the bikes home. Two of them in fact. Screaming deal. Anybody in Maryland need one?

I can confirm its the Currie 48v 500 watt hub motor. Letting the battery charge for a while now, then I'll check with a volt meter.

Hard to tell about the controller. I see two wires going to a small black box, mounted to the rear rack. It has 2 contacts. Then the removable battery box slides into the rack and into those 2 contact points. Could the controller be in that small rack mounted box?

Does it have this control pad?

Yes, that control pad

Oh and Dogman, I had a Honda Metropolitan, then a Yamaha Vino 125 and a Kymco People 150. Took the Kymco on the highway a few times at 80mph and that was the max of my risk tolerance!

Welcome back from the dark side btw, and good luck with the battery charging

After 4 hours of charging, battery looks dead as a doornail. I put a multimeter to it and the needle jumped a bit, but then went back to zero.

Bikes came with a 2nd charger, I'm trying that overnight.

Yeah, highway on my 150 roketta was scary. It only did about 50, speedo would say 70 though.

The burgman and majesty did legit 70, but here out west still a bit scary on the freeway if it got crowded. I 25 ok, but not I 10. I had to hunt down the secondary roads when possible.

I bought the bmw so I could stand it on I 10, where currently the semi trucks are running 80 to 85, on the cheap diesel. two years ago they were all doing 65. I can clear past a gaggle of them now at 110 pretty quick. Then settle in at 85 in front of them all. Definitely too scary to ride right next to a semi very long. Behind them, you get a face full of rocks. On the freeway, you do need the speed to hunt down some free space.
Riding like that is impossible of course, in California, bigger cities, or anywhere west of the Mississippi. No free space to hunt there ever.

Maybe it sucks I went to the dark side. But having your house burn down is pretty dark too.

I have an old currie ezip frame with a brushless motor kit. The original was 24 v brushed rear motor. I am currently using 40v greenworks batteries that can do double duty in my lawn tools.
After using ping batteries and dangerous lipo I really like the easy design of using plug and play tool type battery. I found a place that makes printed design for many different types of tool battery designs. I buy the greenworks 40v knock off batteries. The last one I bought was 79 bucks delivered 36v 6ah. 2 of these would make a decent ebike battery.

Ooh, do you have any pictures of how you wired it? My biggest concern is keeping the controller in play to use the original throttle with PAS modes. Mine is the 48v version, however so not sure it's exactly the same. Looks like this https://images.app.goo.gl/qnwK4aDbxysh7qgg8

Ugh, after 20 hours the battery now is completely dead. At least no response from a multimeter on the leads on the outside of the case. Time to open her up I guess.

Have you checked the voltage output from the charger yet?

No but I tried 2 different. Charges. Unlikely both are bad?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rDc62BiiUkc5RBip9

Here's what the pack looks like opened up. Any idea if there's a controller shoved in there?

stiffi said:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rDc62BiiUkc5RBip9

Here's what the pack looks like opened up. Any idea if there's a controller shoved in there?

Click to expand...

The PCB in your pictures looks to be a battery management board. Now that you’ve got it open, take that multimeter and check the voltage at the battery main terminals, before the BMS. Report back with the number you get, and we can tell you whether this battery is worth your time to mess with.

There aren’t enough contacts coming out of the battery for there to be a sensored controller inside. It’s unlikely that an OEM used a sensorless controller, which costs more and has rougher power delivery. It will be inside the hub, like Voltron says.

I can't even tell him where the main terminals are it's so buried in tape. One of the cells is noticeably hot right now.

What I really want to do is get a whole new battery pack. You think I could connect it to the red and black leads that are at the top of the pack? Would I be better off pulling the wires out of the mount that connected to the original battery case connecting it to a separate pack?

Yours is the TransX motor under the Currie branding I think...



And a hot cell is bad... Really bad... That's how the fires usually start.
It's self discharging internally and turning itself into a tiny exploding heater.

But you can probably get lots of batteries to hook up to the power leads, even if you have to do some connector splicing.
Maybe even a triangle battery instead of rear rack mount, which will radically improve the handling.
There's a circuit board inside the black box on the rack mount, it might be looking for some signal data that would stop it from working with aftermarket batteries, so open question how much bypassing you might have to do

Yeah, I put the pack in the garage and keep checking on it. The cell seems to have cooled down. No more messing around with this pack!

As for the aftermarket battery. Maybe I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Fyi, that how that first guy that responded, Dogman Dan, had his house burn.

Yeah I get it. Thanks.