Motorino XPn Chinese ebike (scooter)

A few words about the two battery warmers I installed in preparation for riding this winter. We had a cold night last weekend and the temp got down to around 15 degrees Celsius in the garage. The scooter battery temp showed 20 degrees Celsius so I plugged in the battery warmers to see how fast they would heat up the battery. After an hour, the battery temp was at 38 degrees Celsius. I unplugged the warmers and by the time the temp of the outside cells transferred heat to the middle cells, about 20 minutes, the temp gauge showed 42 degrees Celsius. I have no doubt that these warmers will keep all the cells of my battery very toasty when the scooter sits outside at 0 degrees Celsius. A bonus will be that the battery is under the seat so the seat should be toasty also :D If I could just transfer some of that heat to the handles.
 
hey guys!

i am new here, and fascinated with this thread!

i am about to get a motorino 2013...does anyone know if it's the same deal to remove the limiting plug as the 2011?

again, apologies if this has been answered somewhere before!

cheers and thanks,

star.
 
I don't even know if the 2013 has thew same controller as the 2011. You can ask the dealer you're buying the scooter from, they can't take it out for you maybe but they can tell you how. That's what my dealer did back in 2011, I asked the question and like a good dealer, they answered :lol:
 
I have the 2013 if you go for the 60v as I have and don't worry about it I get great performance with the 2 of us on it and I am not a light rider but my wife is very small
 
I'm glad you got your scooter laserman. Two of you riding on this scooter at 60V, good luck with that. :D

One thing I forgot to mention about the limiter plug. When you take it off, then you get a little more top speed. Not a lot, maybe up to 10 km/h more depending on many variables. But even a little more speed on these scooters is enough to blow a hall sensor or even do more serious damage on your motor or controller if those speeds are sustained for a couple kilometers on a very hot summer day. I speak from experience, it's a 500W motor on a 200 pound scooter, limiting the top speed to 32 km/h doesn't only obey Ontario law about e-bikes, it saves the motor and controller.

I upgraded to a much better programmable controller and 74V Li Ion battery which can make my scooter go 63 km/h on flat ground but I still have the top speed governed to 35 km/h so not to burn the motor which is still stock.
 
I haven't removed it my self it has enough get up and go for my needs and I will only do any mods once the warranty is up. My dealer has extended the warranty by 4 months as here in Ottawa we get rather bad winters here and he relizes that most people will park the bike for the winter so he has extended it. For peace of mind of him and the customers

jim
 
The counter shows a little over 7300 km, the scooter is still going strong. The battery I made a year ago is still going, I only had to change two cells at one point out of 400. I have no idea what the capacity is right now, I suspect it has gone down a bit, or maybe even a lot. I tried hooking the battery to a CBA II to test it but for some reason, it just won't work.
 
Battery warming, that is what it should be, not battery cooking. I was planning on taking a ride yesterday but we had a cold night and my battery temp was showing 18 degrees so I thought that warming it a little to between 25 and 30 degrees wouldn't hurt. It did hurt since I was called to do something else and forgot to unplug the two 80 watt warmers, the temp got up to 75 degrees Celsius. The fully charged 20S battery showed a voltage of only 75V.

I took the battery out of the scooter and let everything cool down for a few hours. I killed two 20P strings because of the heat. So I will be running on 18S for a while until I figure out if I want to fix this battery or not. I had to rework a balance plug for balancing, re-adjust the voltage of my bulk charger and reprogram the controller. I also changed the LVC and Shut Down Voltage on the CA.

I reinstalled only one battery warmer, not two. And the warmer is not in direct contact with the battery, there's a half inch thick foam between the surface of the battery and the warmer. Those warmers really work I have to admit, but this would not have happened if I had a device to shut down the warmers at a preset maximum temperature. I don't know how to make that.

Any advice or link to a ''how to'' will be appreciated.

EDIT: After a short ride today, I think I may have damaged a lot more cells than I thought since there is a huge difference in power with 2 cells less. Maybe the remaining 18 cells have damage and are not giving the power they did before. Sux 2 be me.
 
how's your pack doing were you able to get it fixed up? I had my charger go south on me and just got it replaced to day I was able to run for 4 days with no charging till I was able to get a ride out to get the replacement ,

but I have a buddy that has 2 older units that are not working and I will be seeing if I can fix them up and get them working and if I do I get one for me as a spare

jim
 
The battery is still going on 18S. A top speed of only 53 km/h at a setting of 100% on the controller. I brought the top speed setting down to a max speed of 37 km/h since it's getting very cold and I'd rather go slower in winter. If I slide on a patch of ice and fall, it's going to hurt a lot less. I received ten Makita packs from Docbass to make the fix but I am not in the mood to do it since I saw that Vectrix is suppose to come out with the VT-1 soon.
 
Hi Mistercash,
At the beginning of this forum you were saying that you took out the limiter plug, and you were satisfied with it.
Now, from your latest post, I see that you don't recommend it anymore.
Why is that? Do you have some experience to share?
I use my Motorino XPN on a daily basis with the limiter unplug. Is it unsafe? Is it asking too much out of the motor/controller/sensors? I haven't made any modifications on it but unplugging this limiter.
Is it bad, doctor?? :p
Thanks.
 
Where did I say that it's bad to take off the limiter plug on a bone stock XPn? I'm way too lazy to re-read my posts to find it. Taking off the limiter plug is perfectly safe on a stock XPn.

You joined today and you honor me with your very first post ever on ES. I don't know what to say.
 
Thanks for your fast answer!
You said that in August, a few post earlier:

One thing I forgot to mention about the limiter plug. When you take it off, then you get a little more top speed. Not a lot, maybe up to 10 km/h more depending on many variables. But even a little more speed on these scooters is enough to blow a hall sensor or even do more serious damage on your motor or controller if those speeds are sustained for a couple kilometers on a very hot summer day. I speak from experience, it's a 500W motor on a 200 pound scooter, limiting the top speed to 32 km/h doesn't only obey Ontario law about e-bikes, it saves the motor and controller.
Click to expand...

That's why it worried me a bit, as you seem very experienced and active on this forum, as well as on your motorino.

Anyway, thank you again for your response, and for welcoming me, I'm gonna be able to sleep at peace tonight :)
 
I forgot about that post, if you weigh 260+ pounds, go up a lot of steep hills and all that on a 25 km ride in Summer when it's 40 degrees Celsius then yes, it can damage the motor running without the limiter plug. :lol: That was my experience one Summer, I fried the hall sensors in the motor doing what I described above and that is why I posted that post before, simply as a warning.
 
Hello,

I have an issue with my Motorino XPN (purchased 6 months ago), and I would like to share it with you guys, hoping that some of you may be familiar with my problem.

This is, what happened to me:

I use my bike for my work commute (15 kms there, 15kms back). The bike sleeps indoor at my place and at work. I recharge the bike at home and at work.
November 19th, on my way back from work, 5 kms after leaving my work place, the bike suddenly started being all jerky (it would stop and go). When braking, this jerky feeling felt even worse. To the point where, 1km later, it would totally stop.
I called my Motorino dealer who picked up the bike. Then, he gave it back to me, thinking it was probably a loose connection, so he hard-wired some connections.
It went fine for about 150kms. Then, December 2nd, the exact same behaviour started happening again.

I took a video of this behaviour, hoping you may be familiar with it:
http://goo.gl/afZ2an
 
It can be a number of things and it's very difficult to diagnose it just looking at a vid. I had a similar problem and it was a total of three things, a loose wire was cutting the power intermittently so I had to find where and fix it. It was a wire on the front of the scooter, while I was in there, I got rid of many cheap connectors in there and soldered the wires together and covered with heat shrink. But it was still happening so I found another loose connection underneath the foot panel so I went to work in there also and re-did a lot of the connections. But I still had problems with power cutting out, the last thing happened to be at the cut-off switches on the brake handles, they would slide out a bit and shut the power off, I fixed that by drilling and tapping small holes to keep the switches in place with set screws.

So you will need to take the scooter back to the dealer and asked them to find the problems and fix them.
 
Yeah, I called my dealer, he's going to pick it up today.

Weird thing though: yesterday after it happened, I brought it back home, plugged it for like 3mins, then tried it again. And the symptoms were gone, and it seemed to be working just fine again.
The battery was fully charged when I took for the ride though, and had it checked by the dealer 3 weeks ago, who said it's still in a good shape (92% capacity).
It's probably a loose connection with the battery, like you said.

Hopefully my dealer will figure it out.
 
I started buying more Makita packs from DocBass lately in hopes that I can make myself a new 84V 30Ah battery. I plan on making it differently than the last one. I want to use these spacers http://www.ebay.com/itm/32111423304...l?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=321114233041&_rdc=1, to assemble four 5S20P units encassed in boxes made of black 0.125'' Lexan glued together with Weld-ON glue http://www.eplastics.com/Plastic/Lexan_Polycarbonate_Glue/PLEXIGLASS-GLUE-ADHESIVE-IPS-3-PINT.
I don't have a spot welder and don't have the means to make a good one or buy a good one so I'll be soldering again with 10 gauge tinned copper wire http://www.wesbellwireandcable.com/BareCopper/10awgTin.html. These four units will fit snugly in the battery compartment of my scooter, pretty much like putting in four 12V SLAs.
I'm not going to use any BMS, I've been using these Konions for almost two years and they do very well with a daily bulk charge and a quick balance charge once a week.
I bought battery warmers which didn't work as expected, they actually boiled my battery ( my fault ) but I still want to use them to keep the battery warm in winter so I bought one a 110V Digital LCD aquarium Thermostat which should help regulate the temperature and prevent over heating. http://www.ebay.com/itm/330776516211?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649


84v_30ah_konion3_zps0c9980d4.jpg


84v_30ah_konion4_zpse5ff8d11.jpg



Edit: If someone has a better material to use as bus bars, please post your ideas.

Edit II: The top pick shows wires not supported, this does not represent what I plan to do.
 
The more I think about this new battery, the more I want to NOT do it like the first batteries I ever made. No cells held together with glue and tape, no cells all bunched up close together like sardines, no soldering, and even maybe no used cells.

I want to build myself a spot welder following the instructions of this man. http://www.avdweb.nl/tech-tips/spot-welder.html


But I have no idea of what I'm doing since I know nothing about electronics so it will be a challenge to get it done. I also received the spacers for 18650 cells bought cheap from ebay. They are very well made, the cells fit very well in them and the spacers all key into each other fairly easily to form a nice block of cells that will be pretty darn solid once encased in a Lexan box. Here's a pic of a 5S20P block. There is a 1 mm gap around each cell, very nice. And there's room at either ends to weld a nickel strip up to 7 mm wide.

new_konion1_zps08d4498d.jpg


Now I'm thinking that going through all this trouble to make ''factory made'' looking batteries out of 18650 cells, should I do it with used Makita cells from Docbass? My bank account says yes... but my heart says to get brand new Sony US18650VTC4 2100mah cells.

EDIT: I'm thinking that the Sony US18650NC1 would be a good option also, building 20S20P would give more than 4 kwh, for the same volume and weight. Or stay at the same power as the VTC4 and go 20S14P and have a battery that is almost 17 pounds lighter
 
Well it looks like it will be Docbass used konions for me. At 1.5Ah per cell, that's 30Ah in a 20P string. I just can't afford or even justify paying twice as much as I paid for the scooter for Sony NC1 or VTC4 cells.

Since I live in Canada, I have to heat the battery in the winter, which means in that battery box of the scooter, I have to leave room for insulation and heating pads. A 20S20P battery will fit snuggly in the box but there's no room for the heating and insulating components. So I'm thinking I will need to build two batteries. One 20S20P for when the weather is nice and above 60 degrees, and a 16S20P battery for the rest of the year. A 16S20P battery would be small enough to wrap it in heating pads and plenty of insulation.

EDIT: I just tested the 110V Digital LCD aquarium Thermostat I bought by wrapping an 80 watt car battery warmer around a 5S20P block of cells with only thick cardboard to close both ends of the block. I put the whole thing outside and set the thermostat to 20 degrees Celsius. The temp sensor was placed one row inside the block. The outside temp was -10 degrees Celsius. I left everything to sit outside for 3 hours. When I brought the 5S20P block inside I quickly unwrapped it from the cardboard and warmer and measured the outside rows of cells and the cells in the middle of the block. The outside cells were at 22 degrees Celsius and the middle was at 18 degrees Celsius. I am very satisfied with that, once the four blocks I want to build are nicely insulated inside the scooter with styrofoam, they should stay at a very constant temperature.
 
Hey mr. Crash been a while for me to post here I have a question on the sla's my brother is able to get me a deal on some sla's but as my bike is away for the winter and being to cold to work on it do you have the dimension of the battery I just need the L x H x W on a single unit so I can see about getting some higher capacity in same size

Jim
 
Thanks for the info we just need to get out a big magnifier glass to melt the snow :mrgreen:
Jim
 
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