Bike battery will only charge off bike

[DaveJ99]

Specialized Vado 4.0 1.5 years old. When my battery charger is plugged into my bike, the charger light won't change from green to red (indicating a load) and I can't charge my battery. If I remove the battery from the bike, I can charge it. I have 2 bikes and 2 chargers, so I know that the chargers are good (both will charge my wife's bike when plugged into her bike and neither will charge my bike when plugged into my bike). If I remove my battery from the bike, either charger will charge the battery. The bike runs normally and uses battery at normal rate. I assume there's some sort of short or loose wire within the bike frame that is preventing charging. Looking for any help on this. Thanks, Dave

 

[Chalo]

Have you considered having a look at the plug and wires connecting the charge port to the battery? Nine times out of ten, it seems, any e-bike functional problem is a wire or plug.

 

[amberwolf]

Specialized Vado 4.0 1.5 years old. When my battery charger is plugged into my bike, the charger light won't change from green to red (indicating a load) and I can't charge my battery. If I remove the battery from the bike, I can charge it. I have 2 bikes and 2 chargers, so I know that the chargers are good (both will charge my wife's bike when plugged into her bike and neither will charge my bike when plugged into my bike). If I remove my battery from the bike, either charger will charge the battery. The bike runs normally and uses battery at normal rate. I assume there's some sort of short or loose wire within the bike frame that is preventing charging.

Does this happen with both batteries? Or just the one from your bike?

Do both batteries work correctly on her bike, but not yours?

Does the on-bike charging use the same connector on the battery as the off-bike charging?

If so, the most likely issue is that something on the bike is causing the battery to shut off it's BMS input/output, or something has changed with the BMS so it disables the charge port when the discharge port is enabled.

If it uses a different connector to charge on-bike than off, then something is wrong at that connector, or between it and the battery's charging port, and you'd need to check those parts.

 

[amberwolf]

Nine times out of ten, it seems, any e-bike functional problem is a wire or plug.

That's true of every kind of thing electrical or electronic I have ever worked on (though it's more like 99.99999% overall).

My general rule of thumb is: If it's got plugs and a problem, it's probably something wrong with one of those. If it's not the plugs, it's the wires between them and whatever they're for.

 

[The Bike Buff]

It sounds like your first instinct is probably correct. Where/when you plug into the frame,, that puts some stress at the connection point. Often laptops get a cracked board at that point. In your case the pressure of plugging in is probably causing the problem, otherwise a charged battery might short in there. you need to open it and put a meter on it, to see what happens.
till then, I would stop trying to charge on the bike, so as to not exasperate the problem