GT i-drive 2.0 Build

[chroot]

Strange, How did Doc's controller blew when he gently turn the street corner and accelerate from there? I don't understand
why even you mentioned Doc didn't stress his controller. Can you explain me how did the Doc's fets blew up. I am
try to make a picture and understand how did it happen so I can more aware and avoid in future.

I mean GCinDC reckless his ebike for long time finally blew his fets. My 18 fets controller have not blow up yet. :knock the wood:

@ Chroot,

Doc start gently from street corner, he didn't stress the controller (I was flowing him) but a Mosfets is blowing again only (2) corner from the start. I don't thing that 5303 with 25" rear wheel or bigger is good watch for any 18 Mosfets controller but like you said is your money and your time.

Black Arrow

 

[Ariane]

Strange, How did Doc's controller blew when he gently turn the street corner and accelerate from there? I don't understand
why even you mentioned Doc didn't stress his controller. Can you explain me how did the Doc's fets blew up. I am
try to make a picture and understand how did it happen so I can more aware and avoid in future.

Hi Chroot,

I like to tell you but I can't, why its happening is some sort of stress fatigue from the fets, may be, may be not. The controller for Doc was working fine for (2) corner and lost power from a dead stop when he trying to start gently.

I don't know if the Guru's we have here has an explanation for this kind of behaviour. GC make really great videos and love to see them and every times his ebike was working great until this incident and suddenly its happened, I never blown a Mosfets with my Lyen 18 fets 4310 but I was using a X5304.

I hope we can find the cause, because everybody needs a reliable ebike.

Good day!
Black Arrow

 

[GCinDC]

his ebike was working great until this incident and suddenly its happened

i have to think that i shortened the controller's life by programming the Rated Amps to 45A (instead of 'default' 30A). perhaps i could have beefed it up in other ways, who knows, but bottom line: i pushed it beyond its rating. this offers no explanation for doc. but for myself, the failure was not sudden! a week or so prior to burnout, i started noticing a strange shuddering on regen. everytime regen engaged. i now suspect that ONE fet was blown and led to the others failing.

lyen suggested that keeping it programmed to 30A would improve the life of the controller and batteries. not to mention the andersons! i think i'll follow the advice for a while, although i do miss the acceleration i used to have at 30mph... to dig deep. and you know i used it.

 

[GCinDC]

Freaking awesome vid. so you officially going 20s2p at 10Ah right?

Thanks, man! Yep, 20s2p. Each day I can feel capacity shrinking... It's alarming and over at the testing forum 500 cycles was just mentioned as the regular lipo lifespan.

Before the switch-out, I'm going to graph some voltage/amp curves of the old ones from 0 to X Ah. And then plot the freshies... should be interesting. Also do some more testing of the old ones...

 

[veloman]

Making a battery pack to fit in a small 'backpack' (you the type that a tourist would wear), except just wearing it on your lower back - might be a good idea for ease of charging, and keeping great bike handling.

This is actually a really good concept for a road ebike because the #1 problem on a road bike is that the weight of batteries is too much whenever you hit a bump on such a lightweight bike with narrow high pressure tires. Suspended weight, while on your body, is still much better. I think.

If I end up doing a road ebike commuter in the future I will keep that in mind.

How many cycles do you have on your dying lipo?

 

[GCinDC]

over 600 cycles on the lipos. hold on. i just checked hobby city. i bought them 8/09! for some reason, i thought i bought them last march... now i feel better about them lasting over a year... i commuted with them all but a couple days of the year, min 4Ah out of 10Ah each way, 9Ah maybe 1x/wk...

fanny pack! better not ride around white house w/ that! i like the idea though...

hot off the press, with a polka soundtrack.. :lol: :lol:
[youtube]y6hYdNs5oKE[/youtube]

 

[knoxie]

Hi G

Another couple of great videos!! you seem to be getting faster as the batteries are sagging :lol: sure there will be enough life left in those old cells to make an electric kart for the kids or speed up your sons tractor a little more 8)

I have had my batts for nearly 6 months now and charge them 2-3 times a week, I havent noticed any increase in sag or loss of capacity yet, they are amazing batteries arent they. My girlfriend has to have a car as we have a baby, she does walk a lot to be fair but needs the car for out of town stuff getting the gorceries etc, we use 40 pounds @ $65 worth of petrol a month...that soon adds up doesnt it, so in 3 months I use as much petrol as it costs for a full set of batteries on my e-bike! crazy eh! and with my failry conservative charge pattern I think I should see at least 2 years out of them... if all goes well, by that time my son will be ready for his electric go kart!!

Thanks for sharing the vids, oh I also got myself an Adroid phone now! what a great operating system it is!! I spent all night last night messing about with it, launching street view in compass mode is amazing, I got myself a HTC wildfire, pretty nice little phone, nice and small and cheap! just 15 a month with loads of free mins and net use and the handset was free! Will have to get round to doing a bit more with in on the bike, i got the mytraks app down, are there any other apps that you can recommend? free ones preferably 8)

Have a good weekend G its looking nice here this weekend reckon I may go out and get some fresh air.

Knoxie

 

[GCinDC]

charge 2-3x per week?

what is your commute, anyway? i know you've got your choice of ride. :lol: do you always use the lipos now? backpack?

yes, the android is amazing. little laptop! you'll never be bored again. as for apps, i haven't tried others but there's a discussion here.

 

[knoxie]

Hi mate ha ha yes not a long commute for me andI stil/ use a normal bike for exercise. Don't use back pack any more even on bmx racks are on all bikes. Typing this on the phone love the Google shopping app scans in pictures or bar codes and gets product info amazing to see it work.

 

[GCinDC]

so the pack is hurting. very glad i placed the order. did some tests yesterday and posted to the lipo testing thread (fyi):

i hooked up the trailer and went for a 5 mile ride, and tried to make sure at every 1Ah that i captured video of the CA displaying Voltage at 0A and 33A.
[youtube]jvz_9kMjQKQ[/youtube]
my slowly dying pack seems to be dying a lot faster!

i've probably got some dead cells. how else can a 20s pack drop to 52V like that? when i hook up at 5s to charge, the low 'cell' (2.85) jumped way up to 3.3 and then it was the first one charged to 4.16 while the others were much lower...

more details, and some tests on individual packs/cells coming up.

 

[dbaker]

When you charge them wired parallel don't you end up with 4 cells in parallel? So the 2.85v is the voltage across 4 cells in parallel?

 

[chroot]

Yeah, it appear your battery dying. wow over 600+ cycle so far? That's darn good batteries and LiPo usually dying start at
500 cycles minimum.

 

[GCinDC]

yep, i'm about to pull apart the pack and cycle each 10ah pack.

if you noticed how fast the one cell rose once i plugged in the charger, it makes me think that it's one or two bad cells getting quickly balanced by the other two or three its paralleled with...

 

[dbaker]

When do the new ones arrive?

 

[GCinDC]

hopefully tomorrow!

 

[chroot]

Don't forget more vids when your going disassemble and put new battery assemble. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[grindz145]

Off topic a little: how do you like that gopro camera? It took some great shots on your commute videos.

 

[toft]

how many miles are you doing up to now on this lipo??

 

[GCinDC]

Off topic a little: how do you like that gopro camera? It took some great shots on your commute videos.

love it. i was a huge fan of the extreme fish-eye before, but the 170 degree gopro is a good common ground. i tried a fisheye on an hd cam, but it was too big. gopro is small, but not tiny, and the various mounts offer a wide variety of perspectives, some very bizarre, but i think that adds interest. awesome in bright light, not so good in low light. very tinny audio and picks up slightest vibrations. no lcd, and hard to press buttons, but hard to imagine more rugged case. seems like they're everywhere now. oh, also, for good 1080 widescreen, it has to be leveled well, otherwise it's easy to miss the horizon and ruin the shot. i usually use the letterbox mode, and lose some resolution, because i prefer to see more above and below.

how many miles are you doing up to now on this lipo??

around 4000 miles, i'd say. probably more.

in other news, went to lbs (hudson trail) to get new disc brake pads. @#$!@#$. new guy there, in training? pawed my rotor, greased it up. the guy who replaced it looked like he had no idea what he was doing. made me extremely nervous. shoulda done it myself but the wheel was already apart. waited close to an hour, got all late, so couldn't go back when i left and CAN'T lock the wheel. brakes are now totally insufficient. not to mention that my rear vbrakes are so low that they're rubbing the tire....

 

[beast775]

is there a easy way to get a seperate reading from your icharger and the power leads from each cell? im guessing no .but i would like to see the readings if at all possible.maybe once its taken apart?

 

[chroot]

GCinDC,

what kind brake caliper? Avid bb7? I just installed Avid BB7 caliper with 160mm disc. Hope these good quality and I read other forums said better off getting a 4 piston caliper more power stoppable like Method sell these kind 4 piston caliper.

Just wanted check with your experience relate power stop with your front disc brake.

 

[GCinDC]

from eBay, it's: Juicy 7 Seven Front Disc Brake 160mm Rotor. no idea about the pistons. used to be great. i never thought i could endo, considering how heavy the bike is but did. so it's done the job. squeaks like a she-goat in pain when wet tho. the bigger rotor the better, but is this one compatible w/ 180mm? bike shop guy said it was w/o modification, but that didn't make sense to me...

 

[bandaro]

should be, but by w/o mod he meant a bigger adapter. all the calipers are the same, as far as i know, but the thing that bolts between your forks and the caliper itself determines how big a disk can fit, so a bigger one will move the caliper out, letting you use a bigger disk. its the same i did with my juicy brakes, i did have 185mm hayes nine, they broke so i got a juicy 160mm and used the niner adaption plate thing to space the juicy out a bit. works normally, a 185mm juicy would have been exactly the same (plus a few bucks) and had the bigger fitting, but i already had the fitting from the nine so it was all good.

so to bump up/down the disk size you just need that bit that is bolted between the caliper mounts and the fork itself, and the disk, naturally... the guys at the bike shop should know the size you need. 5 minute job if you know how to adjust disk brakes.

 

[toft]

Iwas asking about mileage because want to now how is a real cost of using e bike like thisone.
So if it was 4000 miles (or something like this) and you buy 8 lipo packs (probably cost it was about 400$) so its mean that the average cost per 100 miles its 10$. Much? or not? What is typical cost 100 miles in US by using a car? Yes i now that ebikas are realy fun commuters and good in traffics, I ask only because People think: electric riding is cheap... But it is true?

 

[GCinDC]

People think: electric riding is cheap... But it is true?

Great points. But I would answer No!, it's not cheap above, say 1000 watts. Good lord, I've been pouring money into this on a regular basis! The batteries are high priced items, but it all adds up. I'm sure it can be done cheaply, and most of us do seem to be cheap, but it is cheap? NO!