CA3 began not showing correct battery use

[bruce.nali]

Thank you all in advance...
I have an early Ezee front hub motor and controller which has worked great for many years including commuting. I added a CA3 about 7 years ago with a new battery and all was still good. Needed a new battery about 9 months ago and installed a EM3ev 36V (10S5P) Super Shark Ebike Battery - 36V 17Ah (10S5P 35E). All still good, I have a timer that turns on the charger about 4 hrs per day and that keeps the battery charged. Then last week even though the battery lights showed full charge the CA3 showed only 40% on the little battery graph and it went to 0 when riding even though the batter still showed all lights. Didn't change with a full charge either.

I checked the CA3 connectors and plugged and unplugged them, no help. From reading, I'm wondering if something in my old controller is worn out? or something in the CA3? Voltage is good and I am not sure what else to look at.
Big thanks in advance for any help.
bruce

 

[E-HP]

Thank you all in advance...
I have an early Ezee front hub motor and controller which has worked great for many years including commuting. I added a CA3 about 7 years ago with a new battery and all was still good. Needed a new battery about 9 months ago and installed a EM3ev 36V (10S5P) Super Shark Ebike Battery - 36V 17Ah (10S5P 35E). All still good, I have a timer that turns on the charger about 4 hrs per day and that keeps the battery charged. Then last week even though the battery lights showed full charge the CA3 showed only 40% on the little battery graph and it went to 0 when riding even though the batter still showed all lights. Didn't change with a full charge either.

I checked the CA3 connectors and plugged and unplugged them, no help. From reading, I'm wondering if something in my old controller is worn out? or something in the CA3? Voltage is good and I am not sure what else to look at.
Big thanks in advance for any help.
bruce





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I guess the first thing to verify is that the battery setup parameters (cell chemistry, series groups, etc.) are still in place or somehow were cleared out.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Does the bike shutdown when battery goes to 0?

I had an issue with my voltage readout on my CA. Going into “Setup Calibration” settings and adjusting the VScale worked. 31v is the default. IIRC my setting is at 30.6.

If you change this setting, know that small adjustments make changes. I when by .5v, then fine tuned with .2v, then made .1v adjustments.


If you can test/prove your battery has proper voltage, you can adjust the VScale. I’d recommend snapping a photo BEFORE making adjustments.

Strange that it just happened though. Sometimes an unrelated setting can be altered when making another change in the settings. Did you change any other settings?

 

[offGridDownUnder]

Didn't change with a full charge either.

You don't mention how you have checked what the state of the battery is. Do you have a voltmeter to verify the actual state? How do you know the above is true?

I would want to know this before I began changing settings that report the state of the battery. If the problem is in the battery, then the little lights might not be correct either, yes?

 

[bruce.nali]

Positive update.
I rechecked all the CA3 settings and did change the battery Ah to 17 (from18 I think). When I exited the setup screen I noticed the fuel gauge slowly starting to rise and it eventually went full. Also the voltage went from 38.1 which it had been since this started happening to eventually 40.8. I had checked the battery voltage directly before and it was 38.1. Also the %Regen went up to 99.9 but I don't know what that means...
Anyway wondering if maybe my charger was not working well or the small change to settings did the trick - I also realize I have very little understanding of the CA3 so any feedback on that would be appreciated.
So thank you all for the suggestions - something worked!
bruce

 

[amberwolf]

If hte regen percentage increases while just sitting there, no charger connected, etc., then you need to reset the shunt offset (don't recall the term they used) in the setup menu, advanced section I think. It means that right now it's calibrated such that the current flow is detected as negative instead of positive when nothing is happening, and you need to reset it so that is zero when nothing is happening.


If the voltage rises while sitting there doing nothing after having been lower before that, it may mean the battery has an issue recovering from a load. If it takes noticeable time to do this it may mean there is a heating issue, such taht the battery is heating up inside, causing an internal issue that makes the voltage drop, and as it cools the voltage rises again.

That's unlikely to be a cell issue, but it could be a connection fault, an interconnect between some cells in a parallel group of them, so that as the battery cools it allows reconnect but as it warms up one or more is disconnected (or excessive resistance), and the remaining cell(s) still connected in series with the rest of teh pack have a problem supporting even the tiny current the CA/etc requires when doing nothing, slightly dropping the voltage.

Alternately a fuseholder or other connector could have a heat-based resistance issue causing a voltage drop. But this would rpobably be pretty obvious at a normal operating current while riding, likely causing damage to the connector, etc.