Motorino XPn Chinese ebike (scooter)

[mistercrash]

After upgrading the battery, it's good to keep on upgrading other stuff. Like the Lyen 18 FET controller I just ordered, and a CA to go with it.

 

[mistercrash]

I received the Lyen 18 Fet controller and the CA. I'm hoping to find time to install both on the scooter this weekend. I'll soon find out if I learned enough to plug this stuff in and have it work without asking too many questions. I also received the 300 mm PVC heat shrink for the battery. I ordered an extra under seat compartment from the Motorino dealer. When I get it, I'm hoping I can modify the existing compartment, which is in one piece, with the new one to have the compartment in two pieces. The battery is right underneath so if I can just take the bottom part of the compartment out, I can access the battery. Right now, the only way to access the battery is to take half the scooter apart. Not too convenient. I'm hoping to change that. Been thinking with this new controller that I should go up to 20S20P 8)

 

[mistercrash]

The Lyen controller is installed and operational. I had to trim some of the ABS from the body and re-position a couple things like the DC-DC converter. It ended up fitting nicely. It is quite a bit longer than the stock controller I had.



I also worked on a spot to put the CA. I had to fabricate a bracket to place on the handle bars, underneath the gauges. The bracket is done but the CA is not installed yet. I have to route the wire from the front to the rear so to do that on my scooter, I had to extend the CA wire by 12 inches.



Is a CA waterproof? It really doesn't look like it is which I seriously don't understand. Whoever made this thing doesn't want anyone to ride in the rain I guess. Totally useless for my scooter if it's not waterproof, I ride rain or shine and also in winter in the snow, if the scooter is sitting in the parking lot with slushy snow falling on it, water resistant won't cut it, it has to be waterproof. I searched these forums and the only thing that came out didn't bring much solutions for me. And does anyone have experience programming the Lyen 18 FET controller? I installed the driver and software but I can't seem to access the controller and its parameters.

 

[mistercrash]

I figured out how to re program the controller and getting some help from Edward Lyen to get some better performance out of it. Cool stuff. I love the CA. It makes my scooter look a bit more high tech.

 

[bcwrench]

How do mistercrash,

Been some time since I was here (August). Glad to see you got a good start on things. I just put mine back on the road beginning of March after the 3rd revision.

I have a new set of Winstons to replace the Thundersky's I damaged trying to follow the advise of some here but that's another story.

Here are a few pics (I have 620 and counting) of my ride. Nothing like having a photo album as all the mods take place.





When I got my CA LS (ver 2.2) they didn't come with an enclosure so I fashioned up the wood dash. As far as I know the new ones are water resistant but I would'nt want play submarine with it. Since mine sits behind a glass plate there are no issues. I live in an apartment and Scooty lives outside.

With bruised cells at 52.1V today I did a crouch at 58.6 Kph today. Cells were @ 8.6 degrees and sag was good for 6.2V and 74.3A.

 

[mistercrash]

Looking darn nice that scooter wrench, those cells are such a good choice for up here in Canada. The Konions are really good to me up to now but, in winter, I have to pay attention to the temp in the garage before I start charging. This winter I got lucky with the outside temps hovering above zero most of the times. Konions were designed to be charged down to -10 degrees. I'm at around 50V nominal which is good but I really want to go up to 72V. So I got it in my head to buy more cells and ad them to the pack to go 20S20P or 72V nominal and 30Ah. This should give me at least 60km/h and a range of at least 55 km at WOT.

When I ordered the Lyen controller, I forgot to get the three speed switch option so I'm going to have to get inside and install one with instructions from Edward Lyen. Then figure out what percentage of power to each position of the switch. I'm thinking 100% power on 2 and 3 and position one would get whatever gets me below 33 km/h. If I see cops, I flick the thumb switch and I'm legal. Once their gone, I flick again and bye bye

I would love for my scooter to be like this, but the cost of doing it would probably be close to buying that scooter.

http://youtu.be/-P21JeehYZA

 

[bcwrench]

Looking darn nice that scooter wrench, those cells are such a good choice for up here in Canada. The Konions are really good to me up to now but, in winter, I have to pay attention to the temp in the garage before I start charging. This winter I got lucky with the outside temps hovering above zero most of the times. Konions were designed to be charged down to -10 degrees. I'm at around 50V nominal which is good but I really want to go up to 72V. So I got it in my head to buy more cells and ad them to the pack to go 20S20P or 72V nominal and 30Ah. This should give me at least 60km/h and a range of at least 55 km at WOT.

When I ordered the Lyen controller, I forgot to get the three speed switch option so I'm going to have to get inside and install one with instructions from Edward Lyen. Then figure out what percentage of power to each position of the switch. I'm thinking 100% power on 2 and 3 and position one would get whatever gets me below 33 km/h. If I see cops, I flick the thumb switch and I'm legal. Once their gone, I flick again and bye bye

I would love for my scooter to be like this, but the cost of doing it would probably be close to buying that scooter.

http://youtu.be/-P21JeehYZA

Love the vid. They sort of fudged the zero emissions thing though when he was doing the burnout. :wink:

55km @ WOT, don't think so but maybe if it was all down hill. :wink:

I overcame the cold weather issue by using pancake battery warmers (http://www.dieselproducts.com) installed in a cookie pan that secure to the bottom of the battery box with bungie straps. When I go to the Winstons, I will be installing them inside the box and control them through a thermal switch setup. Where I live, it is up hill first kick of the day for just under a 1.5k's. I find heating the pack gives a very noticeable decrease in sag. Cells are stressed the hardest during discharge not when charging but I find too many worry incessantly about the charging power end. I use a Kill-A-Watt meter to monitor my draw from the grid. The heaters draw less than a penny of power per hour. Cheap insurance for an expensive battery pack. Most battery specs are usually taken around 25C.

Tesla is being put in the lime light lately because they can be turned into a $41,000 brick if they are left unconnected to a charging station of to long of a period. Their BMS has a heating program that uses pack power to keep the cells (A123 I believe) at a certain temperature. Pack goes dead and there is no way of reviving it. Ouch!

FWIW, you can configure the CA for a cruise control function which is far better than using a power switch. Using a power switch works by doing just what it says, limiting power. Using the cruise function of the CA restricts the speed only. This allows you to have maximum battery and motor power at all times. It interfaces with your throttle and sinks the signal when it sees a configured speed. I am still playing with the hysteresis points. You can then hold the throttle wide open and never go over a set point. If you need max ouput you just install a SPST switch to disengage the CA control.

If you are planing to increase your battery power, you should really look a swapping out the motor. Trying to squeeze big speed and power out of the OE motor will put it in melt down. With my 1.5kw Kelly I ordered it with thermal control and the controller has shut it down on 2 occasssions. That's running at 48v with a 40Ah pack. I have knocked on the door of 80A.

The problem with increasing the motor size is that most of the motors over 800W don't have provision for a sprocket. I will be adapting mine to a cogged belt drive once I have finished with personalizing my scoot. I had to remove the crank mounts on my frame to allow install of my cells. So far I haven't been bothered by the constabulary.

BTW, you will have to change your shunt for the CA. It can only handle 40-45A before it becomes unreliable (from the boys @ ebikes.ca). It will handle 100A in short bursts but it introduces a substantial V-drop at those rates. You have to remember a lot of the stuff we see on ES is based on testing done on converted bicycles or extremely light combos. They don't require the amount of power scooters require.

This is the one reason I increased the wire size on my power circuits. I have seen many comments about sucking "X" amounts of amps over a certain wire size but have never seen anyone mention what the V-Drop was across the circuit. From what I have seen most rely on what a voltmeter across the pack tells them. The problem there is that you can be seeing decent voltage and good current but some of it is going up as heat in the wires. The consensus is that the higher the voltage the higher the speed. This is correct, but if you are losing some through the wiring, you don't go much faster. When I finally get my new Winstons in, I will be able to to top 60kph because I did with the TS's before I bruised them and that is @ 48V.

I used to work in the marine industry where V-drop is a VERY large factor in systems operation. There are formulas (not charts) that you can use to calculate wire size required but it is commonly known you can't have too big of a conductor. Well maybe OOOO cable might be pushing it. :wink:

I pull a trailer with my scoot so I do require a goodly amount of power. This is why I went with large cells instead of the many small cells which many suggest. Every connection in a circuit has some sort of resistance. Put enough connections in the circuit and there will eventually be a problem. The only advange I see using small form factor cells is high discharge rates. Like a race horse, they are fast but finnicky and require lots of attention.

 

[mistercrash]

I read in here that someone had great success in bringing his hub motor temp way down just by sealing the end caps, drilling a small hole in one of the end caps near the axle and putting ATF inside the motor. I am thinking of doing the same thing to help cool down the motor better than just with air. This might help run this motor even with 72V. I don't know about any shunt for my CA as I have the direct plug in model. The speed limit option of the CA, I read a bit about it in the instruction book but I'm not sure exactly how it works. I suspect that you have to access the setting and then change the values to reduce the speed and set it. I don't see how this can help when you want to quickly reduce your top speed on the fly. With the thumb switch, I flick it and it's done, the top speed is reduced to whatever I set it to in the controller. With the CA, from what I understand about it, I have to start pushing buttons many times to reset the top speed. If I figured this out correctly, it's not very convenient to do while riding.
The CA shows me that when riding I consistently use around 38 Wh/Km. I always am at WOT. So I figured I could have a range of 55 km with a 72V 30Ah battery. Maybe I'm calculating this wrong but this just made sense to me. I chose the Konion cells for a few reasons. First, the price. The battery itself is 50.4V nominal and 24Ah and it cost $480 to build. And it is well suited for the cold climate of where I live. I agree that there are a multitude of connections but another reason I chose them is they don't need a BMS and I can balance charge them at up to 20 amps with the Hyperion 1420i charger. Also the weight, the whole pack weighs only 24 pounds. The SLAs weighed 95 I don't need to tell you what a difference it makes to loose 70 pounds on these scooters.
I'm not arguing with you Just telling you what the reasons are for what I did on my scooter. I would love the have 72V and 40Ah of those Winston cells, they just seem to be the best option for the large differences in temperatures we get up here in Canada, but I would need to build a bigger battery box to house them in my XPn. And they are expensive.

 

[mistercrash]

I tried the ATF in the motor this afternoon. I took a ride to a gas station and bought a liter of ATF and came back home. As soon as I got in the garage I measured the temp of the motor on the aluminum end caps. 80.5 degrees farenheit. Outside temp was 13.5 degrees. I drilled a tiny hole and put ATF in using a 10 ml syringe. The people I read about in here that did it were putting 300 ml of ATF, The Motorino hub motor is bigger and wider than motors used on bicycles so it took 600 ml of ATF. Once that was done, I took the same ride as before to the gas station and measured the the temp of the motor at the same spot as before. 95.7 degrees Farenheit, outside temp was the same at 13.5 degrees. So I figure if the aluminum end caps are warmer, this means that they are dissipating heat better so the inside is cooler than before. I can't say by how much but I guess it is significant.

 

[bcwrench]

I read in here that someone had great success in bringing his hub motor temp way down just by sealing the end caps, drilling a small hole in one of the end caps near the axle and putting ATF inside the motor. I am thinking of doing the same thing to help cool down the motor better than just with air. This might help run this motor even with 72V.

There is some validity to this practice but it has a flaw. It is the viscous friction of the fluid. This friction wastes power used to turn the motor against the fluid. This is why automatic transmissions get hot. The cooling medium actually consumes large amounts of power power as it warms. During operation it mixes with air which reduces its cooling transfer ability. It heats up a little more. When it reaches the outer hub it transfers this heat which is seen as a higher temp than was seem with no coolant, however it is not a direct indication of how well the coolant is reducing the internal temperature. To know this you require an internal temp probe situated in the windings.

In our case (small diameter wheel) the motor turns at a much higher RPM than those in a bicycle running at the same road speed. Since our motors are, for the most part, larger in diameter than bicycle hubs the rim speed of the motor is also higher per RPM. This increases the sheer action working against the fluid and theoretically adds more heat per equivalent RPM. For the fluid to work its best theoretically the system should be 100% full. This adds more weight to the vehicle which requires more power to move it. It also increases the total sheer. A full hub would also consume more power as it warms up. Eventually it would stabilize somewhat but how long that would take is anyones guess.

Another factor that comes into play here is that one does not know what the actual temperature of the fluid is. If it goes over a certain temperature and mixes with oxygen its properties start changing. This may lead to erosion of the winding insulation.

Just trying to point out here that there is more happening inside the motor than one knows. I am not trying to start an argument. If it appears so, I apologize.

I don't know about any shunt for my CA as I have the direct plug in model. The speed limit option of the CA, I read a bit about it in the instruction book but I'm not sure exactly how it works. I suspect that you have to access the setting and then change the values to reduce the speed and set it. I don't see how this can help when you want to quickly reduce your top speed on the fly. With the thumb switch, I flick it and it's done, the top speed is reduced to whatever I set it to in the controller. With the CA, from what I understand about it, I have to start pushing buttons many times to reset the top speed. If I figured this out correctly, it's not very convenient to do while riding.

Oooops, my bad on not noting the plugin version. As to the speed control, one would simply install a SPST switch in the wire that connects the CA to your throttle. You would program in the speed you want and play the switching limits (hysteresis) to smooth things out. With the switch in the one position the throttle signal is pulled down when the set speed is attained independent of where you are holding the throttle. Turn the switch off and the CA cannot draw the signal down, you have max speed. No need to constantly push buttons. As Ron Popeel on TV would say, "set it and forget it".

When the the CA speed limit is turned on it only limits the speed by throttling back the power at the configured speed. It allows full pack amperage to be used at anything under the limit allowing max torque for the hills. The speed switch limits the power across the board by limiting amperage. Another nice thing about using the CA speed setting is that you could adapt a multi position switch to allow limiting at different speed by using dropping resistors in the circuitry.

One thing just occurred to me. Since you have the plug in CA does the CA speedo signal interface with the controller or does the controller use speed sense via the hall switches inside the motor? If it uses hall signal and a SW configured tire diameter to calculate road speed then it could well be doing the same function. If this is so then the CA is redundant for this function and I have been rambling on.

The CA shows me that when riding I consistently use around 38 Wh/Km. I always am at WOT. So I figured I could have a range of 55 km with a 72V 30Ah battery.

Geez, I just came back from a 38k ride and ran only 20wh/km. My take here is that because of the make up of the internals of your motor you are having to use higher voltage to try and push more amperage through the windings for more power. The problem here is that the power is being converted to heat rather than torque to move the vehicle. To get a certain level of power with a given wire size you have to have a certain number of turns. The more turns the more magnetic field developed with X amount of current. The problem here is higher winding count introduces a higher back EMF as speed rises. All this stuff fights itself and many just keep upping the voltage trying to pump more current through. This just just raises temperatures. Without thermal protection for the motor a big controller can kill the motor because it has no idea what that temperature is. In a future upgrade I am going to tap into my thermal sensor inside the motor and mount a display to show temps. Another thing I am going to do is glass bead the motor housing and paint it flat black. Flat black can have up to 10 times the radiating affect as a white or polished surface. When you see anything used in racing that generates heat, it is never polished, chromed or painted white.

In regards to the battery pack, I too was stating my reasons for going the TS route not to argue the point. Again I apologize if I gave that impression. Yes my pack comes in at just under $1k and I ruined a few cells by going with the mainstream thinking. So my investment in cells alone comes in at the price of the scooter.

 

[mistercrash]

I don't have a way of measuring temp from inside the motor but the big difference in the end caps temperature shows that the oil is doing its job of transferring heat from the windings to the caps. What convinced me to try it was reports from people who did test this with temp probes inside their motors and reported significant temperature drops. I haven't found a negative report on this yet but maybe I didn't search hard enough
Yes my CA is direct plug in and I did have to enter the wheel's circumference in the settings.
I don't know what to think about that 38Wh/Km I got that day, maybe it's because I am pulling a lot of amps through that 500 watt motor in order to have a decent acceleration and climbing ability. Also I remember that day I was riding to test the new controller and I spent a bit of time going up the steepest hills of Guelph. I went up Grove street a few times, from the data I got from Google altitude finder to find the elevation from the bottom to the top of the hill (87 feet) and Mapquest to find the total distance from the bottom to the top (164 feet), I calculated the slope to be 27.9°. Every street in Guelph seems to have it's hill and Grove street is the worst of them all. Since I go up so many hills all the time, maybe that is why I use so many Wh/Km. With a 1500watt motor like yours, I would think that it would make that number go down but it would make the scooter illegal. In Guelph, I have to watch out for that. If I do go up in voltage in the future, might as well upgrade the motor and just license and register the scooter as a LSM. But I would loose my place in the bike lane which is very convenient lots of times.

 

[bcwrench]

I don't have a way of measuring temp from inside the motor but the big difference in the end caps temperature shows that the oil is doing its job of transferring heat from the windings to the caps. What convinced me to try it was reports from people who did test this with temp probes inside their motors and reported significant temperature drops. I haven't found a negative report on this yet but maybe I didn't search hard enough

I guess I'm getting old :wink: I don't really see pumping so much power through something and then having to find ways to make it live.
Guess I've seen too many winding up the boost on forced induction apps only to find the more it goes up the lesser the gains until it eventually goes ....... pooooof!

Yes my CA is direct plug in and I did have to enter the wheel's circumference in the settings.

Did you enter that value in the controller software as well? The only way the controller has of knowing what the road speed is if it knows the circumference. Without this parameter I would think the controller just cuts power across the board.

I don't know what to think about that 38Wh/Km I got that day, maybe it's because I am pulling a lot of amps through that 500 watt motor in order to have a decent acceleration and climbing ability. Also I remember that day I was riding to test the new controller and I spent a bit of time going up the steepest hills of Guelph. I went up Grove street a few times, from the data I got from Google altitude finder to find the elevation from the bottom to the top of the hill (87 feet) and Mapquest to find the total distance from the bottom to the top (164 feet), I calculated the slope to be 27.9°.

Yikes!!! Using the figures above gives a 53% grade. There is no a road vehicle in existence that can climb that without a good long high speed run at it and huge HP. In general most roads do not go over 22% max. We have a hill here that is 26% and my scoot will NOT go up it. I can barely walk up it.

If the length were 1164' that would work out at 7.5% which is more in line. Unfortunately most scooters get to a crawl when they get close to 10% and for many the pedals come into play.

With a 1500watt motor like yours, I would think that it would make that number go down but it would make the scooter illegal. In Guelph, I have to watch out for that.

Isn't pumping more power throught stock one doing the same thing? :lol: I did a 38K run last night. Went into the area the Arlo1 has his shop. 3 times I got tailed by the boys but never did get pulled over. Just did the limit on level ground and followed the rest of the rules. For the most part they look for a tailpipe and if it makes put-put sounds when it sits a stops.

If I do go up in voltage in the future, might as well upgrade the motor and just license and register the scooter as a LSM. But I would loose my place in the bike lane which is very convenient lots of times.

I looked at doing that and it is a real PITA. Gotta have a 17 digit VIN, legal lights. Might as well buy a legal LSM.

 

[Gordo]

Since I go up so many hills all the time, maybe that is why I use so many Wh/Km. With a 1500watt motor like yours, I would think that it would make that number go down but it would make the scooter illegal. In Guelph, I have to watch out for that. If I do go up in voltage in the future, might as well upgrade the motor and just license and register the scooter as a LSM. But I would loose my place in the bike lane which is very convenient lots of times.

Have you explored the possibility of licensing your scooter as a LSM? According to our insurance company we need Transport Canada approval. When I inquired at TC, I was told no, as all welds, brakes, lights, etc, had to be certified. That is why I only use it off road.... :lol:

 

[mistercrash]

I didn't go to the ministry of transport outlet to ask what I need to do to license my scooter as a LSM. I just did some research on the net about it but it's like wrench said, a 17 digit VIN is needed and the VIN on my scooter has only 14 digits IIRC. I heard that the Motorino XPn is built using the Japanese or Chinese version of the Yamaha Vino 125, so maybe they have a different VIN with only 14 digits. So again like wrench said, because of that, it's probably much easier to just get a LSM that is already recognized by the MTO. Motorino makes a nice one, looking much like a Vespa 150 S, but it costs much less than a Vespa. And it is already recognized as a LSM by the MTO. I would like to try one but it is not a big seller, I don't even think that E-Ride Guelph as even sold one so they never have one in stock to try out.

Did you enter that value in the controller software as well? The only way the controller has of knowing what the road speed is if it knows the circumference. Without this parameter I would think the controller just cuts power across the board.

No I didn't, there's no setting for wheel circumference in the controller.

Yikes!!! Using the figures above gives a 53% grade. There is no a road vehicle in existence that can climb that without a good long high speed run at it and huge HP. In general most roads do not go over 22% max. We have a hill here that is 26% and my scoot will NOT go up it. I can barely walk up it.

If the length were 1164' that would work out at 7.5% which is more in line. Unfortunately most scooters get to a crawl when they get close to 10% and for many the pedals come into play.

You make me realize that the numbers I wrote about Grove street just don't make sense, I redid the search for altitudes and distance and I see where I made my mistake, I only looked at the altitudes in meters and not in feet. So I took the difference of the two altitudes and converted from meters to feet, but they were already in feet. So it's really a rise of 28' (not 87 ) for a distance of 164' which is a slope of 9.68°. Sorry for the confusion.

With a 1500watt motor like yours, I would think that it would make that number go down but it would make the scooter illegal. In Guelph, I have to watch out for that.

Isn't pumping more power throught stock one doing the same thing? :lol:

I have the stock 500 watt motor and a battery that is "around" 48V. Not my fault if it goes up tp 57V when fresh off the charger :lol: And it's hard for them to check how much power the controller is sending to the motor. As far as I'm concerned, I'm legal Except for the locked pedals.

 

[Arlo1]

I have the stock 500 watt motor and a battery that is "around" 48V. Not my fault if it goes up tp 57V when fresh off the charger :lol: And it's hard for them to check how much power the controller is sending to the motor. As far as I'm concerned, I'm legal Except for the locked pedals.

The last time I checked it was legal based on the motors "continious rating" so you might be able to push 10x that through the motor for a ride.... But keep that on the DL :wink:

 

[mistercrash]

The last time I checked it was legal based on the motors "continious rating" so you might be able to push 10x that through the motor for a ride.... But keep that on the DL :wink:

Well I think I'm close to that already, when I'm riding, I see readings on the CA that show well over 4 kw. The highest I've seen was over 4.8 kw. Unless there's something that is set incorrectly giving me false readings, I think that is pretty much it for that motor. After seeing those readings, that is when I thought it might be good to cool the motor with oil. Right now it doesn't really matter because the outside temps are still close to 0° C lately. But I don't know what would happen to a 500 W motor getting 4 kw + of power every day when it's 30° C in the shade.

I got confirmation by someone else that 40 wh/km is impressive for a 205 pound scooter with a 240 pound guy sitting on it going up hills all the time. Especially since I run with settings that give me acceleration, torque and maximum speed.

 

[mistercrash]

With instructions from Edward Lyen, I installed the plug in the controller to be able to use the 3 speed switch on my scooter. I programmed the controller to have 70% speed on #1 and 120 on #2 and 3. I came up with the 70% verifying the speed with a GPS and when I flick the switch to #1, I'm limited to 32.8 km/h which is perfect. Exactly what I wanted.
This might be useful to another Motorino XPn scooter user (although I think I'm the only one in here) I made sure that the speed on my CA was accurate using the GPS. In the advanced settings of the CA, I set the wheel circumference to 1320 mm and the number of poles to 24. This gave me a speed accurate to within 0.2 km/h to the GPS. My motor actually has 17 poles per phase or 51 total. But when I tried these numbers in the CA, the speeds were not right.

 

[mistercrash]

Finally took the pack out of its plastic bag and put some proper heat shrink on it. Kinda looks like a Ping.

 

[mistercrash]

Might be a stupid question here, in order to not stress the pack I made, is it better to charge at a max of 4.05V per cell (which I'm doing now) or set the charger to put 4.2V per cell but charge only up to 95% full charge? Is there a difference?

 

[mistercrash]

Something that can help Motorino XPn and I think XPr owners also. Been thinking about it and decided to do it. I wanted an easy access to the battery. Before, I had to take apart the rear of the scooter to get to the battery. So I decided to cut the bottom of the under seat compartment.

Now the battery is easily accessible, I can inspect it, take it out, swap it for another one and so on. This is basically what I took off the compartment.

Then I took a new under seat compartment piece and cut the bottom a bit larger than the one I cut out of the scooter. The notch is to get around the circuit breaker.

With a bit of trimming and adjusting, the new bottom slips in nicely so I made a couple holes on the back, took out the new bottom and made notches in the seat compartment to accept these clips for screws to go into.

The front of the new bottom piece is secured using the stock bolts. Now it takes just 5 minutes to access the battery.

 

[mistercrash]

Yesterday I had to spend a couple hours fixing my motor. It suddenly sounded like wires were shorting, much like this winter when three of the hall wires got damaged and lost some insulation. This time it was because of the seal around the shaft. Inside the seal there's a tiny spring that goes around from inside the rubber, acting like shall I say a sphincter to keep water out. Well half of the spring poked out and was rubbing on the phase wires and after some time, it went through the insulation which caused the short. No other damage to the motor, I yanked the spring out and repaired the insulation of the wires and the motor is now working fine. In the process, I had to drain the oil I put in it. After two months of running with oil in the motor, there was a lot left in it despite the little bit of dripping (seepage). The inside of the motor looks really good. I didn't put oil back in the motor but I did reseal the cap just in case I decide to put oil back in there. But I want to try it without oil for a while, I won't miss the dripping, the bad smell and the motor sounds a bit quieter without the oil.

 

[granolaboy]

mistercrash,

do you remember the phase and hall wire hookups for your motorino motor?

I have mine R->R G->G B->B for both phase and hall wires. It seems to be a bit grumbly (but works fine, and is hella fast at 72v!).

I'm just wondering what you did before I spend the time iterating through all the combinations.

I haven't programmed it yet, so I'm also thinking maybe the phase angle is set to auto-detect, and should be set to 120...

 

[mistercrash]

I answered your PM, hope it helps.

 

[granolaboy]

yes that helps, thanks.

I'm now suspecting a faulty hall sensor

but yes, thanks for verifying that it's a direct colour->colour for the phase/hall wires (in case anyone else reads this thread and is wondering).

 

[mistercrash]

(in case anyone else reads this thread and is wondering).

It looks like a few read this thread, but most of them might be veterans of this forum coming here to have a good laugh at the antics of the newb