NoPhart

Guess I should have looked at the post date. Moving past 20,000 now... That's impressive!

powell

Yours must be clean and nice inside also.
All is in engineering and manufacturing which we paid for.
EPLUS drive was designed and manufactured in USA to Western standards.
You see in pictures precision casts with groove for rubber gasket all around cover and when groove is 2mm it is exactly 2mm not approx.
If it comes to quality precision , devil is in details.
ZERO silicone used on EPLUS motor/controller, no serious manufacturer would use silicone for sealing motor.
As you can see real power connectors used on EPLUS - locked and sealed , no need for "pushing" lose, cheap shoddy ones.

powell

I pulled my EPLUS BIRIA from winter storage.
During winter I installed new additions to my EPLUS BIRIA namely end bars.
Recently 14,241 kilometers on it.
Everything works OK after winter storage, battery built from A123 20Ah cells did not need any charging in winter months, very little voltage drop.

Metal Man

I think this is the end of the line for my E Plus on my Big Dummy. I think it will move to another bike so it should get some use. I have about 20,500 miles on it. Never had a single issue with the motor, but some of the rest is getting finicky. I ordered all new Falco parts for it.

powell

Dennis,
I would be extremaly interested in your FALCO purchase.
For those who dont know:
FALCO is electric drive/kit designed by the same company - STG and leading engineer who designed legendary TIDAL FORCE and EPLUS systems.
It is only kit I would recommend to everybody who wants to move fast , in silence with wonderfully linear throttle, thermally protected /cannot burn FALCO motor/controller - impossible/,
being 5-phase motor is incredible smooth with well designed regen.
Believe me I tried 2 FALCO drives /500W and 750W/ .
It is important to get FALCO with latest software version.
What I dont like is FALCO wireless console.

Metal Man

Powell, I am having an issue with the electronics we moved from the spare hub last year. Last week it cut out on me and would turn back on. I plugged in my other hub and it worked. I then took everything apart and when I pugged it in again it all worked fine. I put over 100 miles on it with no issues then it shut off again. I tried the old front hub and again it will work with that. If I pull the electronics from the hub I can make it work the way I have it now without the front hub. So I'll have to find another bike to use this on. I commonly do 20 plus mile trips with cargo and need this to be dependable, I'm hoping the Falco does that for me.

powell

by cut out you mean flashing battery symbol on display/controller?
You see front battery electronics /BMS/ were designed to monitor 30 Nickel cells in group of 5 .
So BMS monitored 6 voltages of 6 modules/5 cells each/.
If any of those voltages fell below programmed treshold main chip PIC18 ordered LVC
tell me, reading from Cycle Analyst - what is your Ah use, Whours use on those average 20 miles ?
Have you seen 37V on CA ?
20 miles can be a lot of or it can be not much.
We monitor in our conversions only 2 voltages , 2 inputs into BMS not 6 , you might have weak cell, even weakest cell monitored by BMS.
You see this one weak cell can trigger LVC.
I am pretty sure your EPLUS BMS works fine.
There is another thing, we know that BMS does Columb count to display very accurate SOCharge.
I suspected this count is used for LVC trigger once say 9Ah registered.
But it cannot be the case , I used over 10Ah many times - never more than 15Ah.
So it is all about monitoring cell voltages.
tell me what was your Ah use?

powell

there is one big difference between our packs.
Both use 12S 20Ah pouches,
BUT
I do not use any BMS on mine. Only high voltage cut off for charging and low voltage cut off on discharge.
NO BALANCING , NO TOP BALANCING.
I bottom balanced them only once and even after slight current draw they come to exactely same voltage by themselves.
Came from trip today 25kms - all 12 cells read exactely 3.29V

wrandyr

Are you still using the factory controller/display? Keep an eye on your connectors. One of the two connectors to the controller on my system lost one of the little pieces of plastic that latch onto the controller. It would come loose and everything would suddenly go dead. I have to hold it on with a rubber band.

Metal Man

The display totally went blank both times. I can make it work with my spare hub battery so the issue is in my relocated boards. I've drawn this down to 32 - 33 volts before and it didn't shut off. I was nowhere near that when this happened. We removed the BMS on my battery pack last year when we relocated the boards.
I removed all of the E plus items yesterday, now waiting on my Falco parts. I may go to the office in VA and pick it up there.

powell

The problems is I guess with comm or power wires or sense wires connected to relocated boards not boards themselves. you were going through rough terrain, bumping ????
Spare hub battery has Nickel cells not your A123 battery, yes your spare BMS works fine with display/controller of course.
or shorts ,not necessary well , depends how nice are those BMS relocated, no shorts, connectors power and comm nicely isolated?
Boards no shaking, well secure, all this incorporation of EPLUS BMS into your battery is very important.
light rider and pumped tires.

EDIT:
As I found out later EPLUS display/controller going blank can be caused by switches on display/controller, tactile switches made cheap, shoddy membrane falling causing shorts. try pressing power button while riding for long enough and what happens???

powell

UPDATE
I still hope there are other EPLUS owners out there reading this.
I have ridden past 16,000 kilometers on my EPLUS.
Unfortunately I had to completely rebuild display/controller.

ALL RANDOM CUT OFFS WHEN DISPLAY WENT BLANK EXPLAINED!!

Appearently my EPLUS display used rather low quality tactile switches with poor qualities membranes , maybe later EMS manufacturer improved on this switches.
It is amazing that cents worth of parts can make excellent edrive like EPLUS dead after thousends of kms.
Anyway quite a job on replacing those switches. I replaced them with quality tactile switches.
Now it works perfectly , no occasional cut offs, etc.
Here are the pictures.

2old

Metal Man --- any update?

wrandyr

[QUOTE=powell;18880960]UPDATE
I still hope there are other EPLUS owners out there reading this.
There are. I'm just shy of 16,000 miles on mine.

powell

Wrandyr,
thank you for contributing,
tell me , any problems with your Eplus? Any problem with switches on display/controller?
Yours is 1000W if I remember correctly?
so you are approaching 16,000 miles!!
I remember you have problem with data connector.
You see problem with display/controller tactile switches is the nasty one,because it starts gradually.

wrandyr

Yes, the latches on the data connector broke, so it comes loose if I don't secure it some other way. A rubber band works. I have a spare connector, but I'm not sure my soldering skills are up to the assembly task. My main concerns are with the charger. I have three chargers, but only one actually works properly. I have a spare system, and the controller on that one requires a lot of force on the power button to turn on. The rear wheel comes out of true about once a year, but other than that, everything works well. Mine is a 750 watt system.

powell

which data connector exactly broke, at the display/contr., at the motor ,etc??
Our problems with EPLUSes seem minor,
Just read about this guy on ES:
on his Alibaba DD motor order they shipped his motor rotor and covers separately on his request and what?
cover on his run of the mill , cheap DD motor does not fit over rotor! how radiculous is it.
there is whole discussion how to solve the problem.
I took apart EPLUS motor once and you should see how precise alu casts are done.

Metal Man

Wrandyr, I have two good chargers here if you end up needing one.

powell

since I repaired display/controller switches
no more random cut offs when display went blank.
I am sure those cut offs were caused by sticky, faulty, tactile switches.
Now my switches are crisp with distinct click.

wrandyr

It was the wire side of the data connector at the controller.

wrandyr

Thank you Metal Man! I would be interested in one or both.

powell

wrandyr,
EPLUS uses HIROSE brand for communication connectors, good news is there are crimp version and there are solder version of such connector, so no crimp tool is necessary. It should be not so difficult job if you have soldering skills.
But is the comm wire long enough ?
I presume you damaged upper connector - thats throttle.
for sure DigyKey sell them.

Firedog91902

I inherited a 1000watt E+ bike. It was unused for years and would not charge. I opened the battery hub and charged the cells manually until all were above 1.0V. It then charged normally and has worked well since. I think the NiMH cells have lost a good bit of their original 10AH capacity but I don't have a good way to test. I mounted a volt meter to the bike to monitor the 30 cells. Interestingly, there is miles of power after the E+ battery icon shows none. I keep the voltage under load to 33v (1.1v/cell) and stop using the battery if it goes to 30V (1.0v/cell). So far the safety circuits have not cut in. I checked that none of the cells reversed polarity after a full discharge (30v).

This bike has connectors for a 2nd battery near the seat. Does anyone have a circuit diagram of the wiring harness that connects the battery(s), motor, controller and brake sensors?

I have a couple crazy ideas I'd like to try.

Idea 1. I have a Santana Rio tandem with 26" wheels. I has a 140mm rear axle which about the same as the E+. I'd like to be able to move the wheels and controller from the tandem frame and then back to the E+ in 30 minutes. The Rio is built to carry the weight but it would need a minor modification to the rear forks to handle the thrust of the motor. I'd also need to create a long wiring harness for the tandem. Thanks for providing the source of the Hirose connectors. I found them at Mouser.

Idea 2. I am considering adding a 10S Li battery, connected in parallel with the NiMH battery in the hub. It sounds crazy, but the voltages seem to work. The Li battery would be charged off the bike. The open circuit voltage of a 10cell Li battery is 42V; the OCV of a fully charged 30 NiMH battery is 42.7v. A discharge cut off 30V works for both battery types. I'd avoid directly connecting a discharged battery of either type to a charged battery since the resulting current might be considerable.

I plan to use 2, 18V Makita 4ah batteries in series. I'll use the mounting connectors from 2 Makita tools and a bracket screwed to the bike's bottle mount. I've re-built the batteries using 18650 cells and cases from non working Makita batteries. Sharing the motor's load should extend the bike's range considerably and improve performance.

Anyone see a serious flaw in the ideas?

powell

Firedog,
welcome to forums and especially welcome to this thread , I knew it was just matter of time, another Eplus owner.
In general I like your ideas, but, but...
Before doing any conversions...
I would make sure my Eplus drive/kit/ works perfectly, if you have any issues like random cut offs, intermittent problems, loose, broken hardware , I would take care of it and try to fix.
First time I hear about it - Eplus display/controller doesnt show battery SOC /bars/ , you mean completely blank ,no bars shown????
Eplus SOC meter is a REAL meter of battery capacity, no voltage based meter/you saw those cheap useless throttles with 3 lights?/ . Eplus SOC meter uses Columb count to measure charge with precision. Before my conversion it showed remaining charge exactly .
So any problems with your Eplus drive as it is now?

powell

WRANDYR.
power button is the first to malfunction , because its the most used.
Sooner or later you will experience random cut offs with display going blank.