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[guity]

Again, after using the temporary charger, bike was started 3 times without any "no-click" problem.   Again, the third attempt required a few extra beats.

Bike has passed the 1000 mile mark.  This thing is past due to get some credit for being a bit of a tough little thing.  It took a pretty good bashing against a couple of SUV's, went down twice, came back up twice, and kept on going.  I wouldn't call this GPR-S rugged, like the XL350R, but for some reason in the back of my mind I always kind of assumed that if that GPR-S ever came within 5 inches of the ground that it would be toast.  Not the case; the GPR-S has a little spunk to it!

[guity]

No click on the third start today.  Unscrewed the side panel and manually pushed the contactor button in.  Last night the temporary charger was used to provide the electricity.  This is the first time the "no-click" problem has occurred after using the temporary charger and is a good indication that the problem isn't something caused by the Elcon PFC 1500.  From now on, will go back to using the larger, faster, Elcon...

The temporary charger these past three nights has been consistent about providing an initial reading of 89.7 volts upon powering on the bike.

Can the impact of a crash affect a contactor?

[picasso]

contactor's fail, I cant tell what one you have but the fact you can touch and move the plunger for it I bet it got wet and thats why it sticks. Killovac unit is sealed and wont have that problem.

The contactor is just a big switch. When you give it power the part you are pushing the pluger should move on its own and complete the circuit.

[guity]

Picasso, this could be, but I think EM is taking the careful route on this to avoid unnecessarily replacing an $85 part.  (I am speculating that this particular contactor is the Albright SW180L.)  I asked Hollywood Electrics if they (in conjuction with EM) are considering replacing the contactor and they said they have another theory they want to look into first.  (I get the impression they are figuring that some part closer to the point of impact during the bike's accident may be the culprit).  They asked me to use the kill switch from now on to power the bike on and off.

The bike seems to have fallen into a pattern of starting the first two times in a row without problem, then missing a few beats before starting the third time, and then fairly regularly requiring a manually induced click after that.  Today it kind of fooled me on the fourth start-up (at the store) by delaying the click long enough so that I actually took the side cover off to press the plunger.  But by the time I got my hand in there the plunger had already clicked into place.  Just for an experiment I tried to start the bike up again (# 5) in my garage after I got home, and got no click.  This time I didn't touch the bike, but left it on, just the way it was, for about 5 or 10 minutes while I did some other stuff.  I wanted to see if the bike plunger click just gets so slow that it makes me impatient and I interfere with it before it can actually get around to clicking.  However, after 5 or 10 minutes of being left alone, the plunger still hadn't clicked into place.

I'm not desperate or anything as long as I have my trusty screwdriver in my tailbag ready to provide a work around, so I have no problem with waiting to see if EM's theory of what is wrong bears any fruit or not.  We'll see after all the new parts are brought down to LA and put onto the bike...

Regarding your wetness theory, I have one peice of supporting evidence and one piece that negates it.  Tending to negate your theory is the fact that the contactor looks pretty dry and protected in that little compartment down there at the middle of the bottom of the bike.  (I wonder how hard it will be to take it out and put a new one in.)  One piece of supporting evidence is that there were two days of rain down here and one of those days in particular I drove to work and the bike was parked out in the middle of a pretty continuous downpour.  In fact, I am going to go back over these blog entries and try to make out if the problem started happening after those rainy days or before...

*******
Nope the "no-click" problem first occurred on October 9, after the accident (September 30) but before the rain storm (October 15)...  Let's see what EM has in mind...

[guity]

The top speed has dropped about 3 mph again.  I checked the chain, and it again appears to be pretty loose.  I will try to tighten it today and see if the top speed gets back to normal again.  But I wonder why the damn thing picks up so much slack in such a short amount of time?

[picasso]

Should try a little blue loc-tight on the bolts/nutts that hold the chain tight.

[guity]

Looking at the manual again yesterday and saw a passage that appears to talk about what to do when no-click happens:

"If the GPR-S will not power on normally
after the ignition key and switch are
turned on, a 15a fuse between the
batteries and DC converter may need
replacing. A replacement is provided
with the fuses beneath the seat."

There are like 3 fuses beneath the seat and I checked all of them but there wasn't any sign that any of them had any kind of damage going on.  There was no replacement fuse.  I guess I will buy some replacement fuses and replace them just for fun.

About 7 miles into a fresh charge I let the throttle out on a stretch of flat just before the big hill to my place, and got a couple mph of top speed back (57 mph).  The test where I was 3 mph low was 20 miles into the charge.  I guess I also have to factor the freshness of the charge in when I test top speed...

Picasso, thanks for the tip about the loc-tite.

[guity]

Wow, it is hard to find these fuses.  Been to 2 hardware stores and Radio Shack.  They have 15 amp fuses that are a little bit longer with filaments that are long straight and skinny compared to the 15 amp fuses that came with the bike.  Maybe Pep Boys will have something more similar to the fuses I am trying to replace.  To complicate matters, today when I disconnected the fuse that seems most likely to be sitting between the DC-DC converter and the batteries, I could see where the glasss of the fuse is cracked.  I'm pretty sure that it wasn't cracked yesterday so that therefore I cracked it when putting it back into its plastic casing yesterday.  The bike still seems to work with the fuse in place, so hopefully I can get some viable 15 amp replacement fuses before the fuse gets so bad that it keeps the bike from running at all...

[guity]

Stats for today are noteworthy because of the record mileage driven in one charge (60.21).   Thankfully the low voltage cutoff did not hit me until I got home.  I might not have even seen the low voltage cutoff, except that when I got home I still had 3 or 4 tenths of a mile to go to reach 60, so I continued up the hill for a few tenths of a mile.  That was when the cutoff hit hard and the bike was crawling up the hill at about 24 mph.  Ended up with 66 volts = 2.87 volts per battery.  The Vmin was 55.4 volts = 2.41 volts per battery (not supposed to go below 2.5).

For the first time the PFC 1500 charger blinked red when I hooked it up instead of showing a steady red light.  I don't know if this signifies a problem with charging or if it is the charger's way of saying, "Man you drained the heck of the batteries!"  The manual says the red light is supposed to blink -- but it never has until today.  Of course the manual also says that between the green light signifying 100% charged and the red light signifying under 80% charged, there is supposed to be a blinking yellow light signifying >80% charged.  I've never seen this light, though another PFC 1500 user, Djam has reported seeing it.  And, of course, until today, I haven't seen any of the lights blink except during initial diagnostics...

**************************

Note: about half an hour after hooking up the PFC 1500 charger, went down to check to see if red light still blinking.  It was, but what was worrisone was that the charger was barely even warm (under normal circumstances it runs quite hot, as it has no fan).  Figuring that the charger was declining to charge for some reason, I hooked up the old temporary charger.  It appears to be running normally so far.

*************************
11/1/9 Unhooked temporary charger (green light) this morning, turned on bike -- cycle analyst showed 89.7 volts -- the typical charge this charger delivers.  Looks hopeful that bike/batteries are OK...

[guity]

The latest stats are scary because they show a normal commute, which would almost always end up with around 76 volts remaining, ending up with 70.3 volts.  The two apparent variables at play here are:

1) The bike was charged Saturday night but not driven until Thursday morning (4 days sitting). 
2) The bike was driven for 60 miles/75 amp-hours Saturday, the PFC 1500 charger apparently refused to charge the bike, blinking red and not heating up.  The temporary charger charged the bike and signalled a complete charge Sunday morning and the cycle analyst showed 89.7 volts upon completion.

If the bike moves back up to normal voltage levels today, then maybe the voltage drop is an anomaly associated with 4 days between charge and use.  If the bike still drops to 70 volts after the 18-mile commute today, however, then perhaps the batteries got messed up by the 60-mile cycle...

[guity]

The stats for today show a continuation of the overall voltage drop problem.  Have to assume the batteries are messed up.  Emailed Hollywood Electrics.  They wanted me to stop riding it.  Hollywood Electrics is going to pick up the bike tomorrow afternoon. 

[picasso]

Any word yet? How many cells are getting replaced? As for waiting 4 days after you charged/road. After on the charger for my Zero I drop about .2-.4 volts a day for the first 3 days. Not sure what happens, It has no balance so Im unsure what happens to the charge i have a loss of.

I wish I had a real active BMS and even a cycle analyst. And again thanks for the stats.

[guity]

Picasso no word yet, mainly because everything is on hold until Martin drives down to LA with a bunch of parts and equipment (mainly for fixing accident damage but also for chacking/balancing the batteries).  I think Hollywood Electric was desperate to get the bike away from me as quickly as possible before I damaged more batteries.

I'm kind of thinking this is an opportunity -- since I have no BMS and no on-board charger, the only factors I have to worry about as far as throwing extra batteries on the bike is the controller and the motor.  The batteries cost $120 apiece, and I am hoping this will be a matter of replacing one or two, and then I have this secret hope to add one or 2 more batteries to get up to 24 or 25.  Probably would need a new controller to do that, since 24 X 3.8 = 91.2 volts and the 7234 alltrax is supposed to refuse to turn on if it sees more than 90 volts...

[guity]

Looks like I painted myself into a corner with the GPR-S.  The good news is there are apparently only 2 bad batteries (this is GOOD because I feel that is a relatively mild amount of destruction), and further good news is that there were always 24 batteries in the GPR-S, but EM only hooked up 23 of them.    The bad news is that all the batteries swelled so much that the Hollywood Electrics technician couldn't get the bad batteries out of the fixed metal trays they sit in.  It was so difficult to remove the bad batteries that HE/EM decided that the bike should just run on 22 batteries from now on.   They hooked up the one battery that was unused before, and unhooked the two bad ones.  Furthermore, to make sure I didn't abuse the batteries any more, they set the controller to have a higher Low Voltage Cutoff (LVC).  Tonight, coming up the last 3-mile hill to my house, I was in the 30-37 mph range, ending at 32 mph.  This is not safe because large SUV's on that road have a history of cruising at 60-80 mph up that 4-lane hill road and running over smaller vehicles that might otherwise slow them down.

So I'm in a bit of a corner.  The bike isn't much good to me in its present state.  Today's back and forth commute, 18 miles, which ended up in the 32 mph limp, was all of the riding I did today.  So at this point the bike can't even do my commute effectively, pretty much negating its primary purpose.  I am paying the price for being a battery abuser.  I think what I need to do is take the maintenance of the GPR-S into my own hands and get all 24 batteries hooked up and running.  However, EM/HE is letting me know that to do so will void my warranty.  I'm not fond of voiding the warranty, but I think the big mistake I made was abusing the batteries in the first place, and now there aren't a lot of better options available.

It might be for the best at any rate.  I am beginning to see that a few decisions that EM made when putting the bike together are just not compatible with what I would have wanted if I had been consulted about them, and if I had known what I know now, after so much reading in some of these EV forums.  The three main examples of this is that EM decided not to mount an onboard charger on the bike, not to put a BMS on the bike, and placed 24 batteries on the bike but only hooked up 23.  I don't necessarily disagree with any of these decisions, but I think that with a little more discussion and perhaps a few more bucks forked out on my part, the bike could have turned out to be a more appropriate bike for my particular needs.

[picasso]

Odd that it will void your warranty to hook up the unused one. Did the warranty cover replacement of the two bad cells? I would guess those guys will since it was them who set the low voltage cutoff? It will take some more cells till you get a good and matched pack with discharge and charge since you have no BMS.

But again Zero still dosnt have one on any of its bikes, just low voltage and over charge. It also records when its been taken down low to tell zero if you abused it or not. But all the Zero bikes pre-dongle that was sent out might have tripped it because the pack was still allowing discharge.

As for the swelling this has me worried. Im sorry if it was stated but what cells are in your bike now? What color? Not compressed in the holders?