Joined
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149 Posts
Zapino Zap - rebuild
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Hello I just bought two zapinos for 50$(including shipping to my door.
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One is exactly like yours with the blue motor, I was able to get it spinning with one controller, and figure out which hall is which, it runs good on the stand.
Sadly it doesn't have much torque currently with only one controller on 84v, although going downhill i found it promising. looking forward to getting second controller in. The rear tubeless tire was left sitting flat and doesnt hold air nowr, do you have any recommendations for tires for the stock rim?
The second zap scooter has horizontal dropouts, I have motor coming in soon, a qs motor 12in.
I dont have any of the plastics for the bikes, and no seats, and only one seat bucket.
Waiting on moped plates from the mvd, cool little scooters!
Will upload pics once i get more progress
)One is exactly like yours with the blue motor, I was able to get it spinning with one controller, and figure out which hall is which, it runs good on the stand.
Sadly it doesn't have much torque currently with only one controller on 84v, although going downhill i found it promising. looking forward to getting second controller in. The rear tubeless tire was left sitting flat and doesnt hold air nowr, do you have any recommendations for tires for the stock rim?
The second zap scooter has horizontal dropouts, I have motor coming in soon, a qs motor 12in.
I dont have any of the plastics for the bikes, and no seats, and only one seat bucket.
Waiting on moped plates from the mvd, cool little scooters!
Will upload pics once i get more progress
Joined
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149 Posts
The Zap is back together again.
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The wheel jack was not long enough after upgrading the rear shocks and torque arms. I added a section of steel to each one to extend them. Now that the solid steel section is done, I'll tap out a hole in the bottom of each one so that I can thread in an industrial rubber foot so that they don't mar the wood floor. There was oil up inside one of the tubes and after I painted, it started coming out and botched up the paint on the one foot extension. Oh well, they need to come back off anyway. These extensions are solid HRS. The narrow end is an interference fit with the ID of the steel tubing the wheel jacks are made from. There's a single 10-32 screw in each one just in case the interference fit doesn't hold...unlikely since they were driven on!
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I still need to replace these with beefier torque arms made from 4140 steel. I've been riding around a lot and not using regen so that these arms will hold.
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The wheel jack was not long enough after upgrading the rear shocks and torque arms. I added a section of steel to each one to extend them. Now that the solid steel section is done, I'll tap out a hole in the bottom of each one so that I can thread in an industrial rubber foot so that they don't mar the wood floor. There was oil up inside one of the tubes and after I painted, it started coming out and botched up the paint on the one foot extension. Oh well, they need to come back off anyway. These extensions are solid HRS. The narrow end is an interference fit with the ID of the steel tubing the wheel jacks are made from. There's a single 10-32 screw in each one just in case the interference fit doesn't hold...unlikely since they were driven on!
I still need to replace these with beefier torque arms made from 4140 steel. I've been riding around a lot and not using regen so that these arms will hold.
Joined
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149 Posts
A few finishing details...
1. I got bar end mirrors so I could delete the ugly factory mirrors. I think this is the final state for the console and handlebars.
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The end cap mirrors have a shoulder on them that is supposed to fit inside your grips and is the same diameter as the handlebar pipe. A detail about these throttles that I have never liked is that they don't fit very well on the handle bars and wobble at the ends. It just feels clunky and poorly sorted. I had to cut off the rubber ends of the grips to install the mirrors. I was able to use that shoulder on the mirrors inside the ends of the 2 throttles to support them. This got rid of 90% of that wobbling issue. They twist freely, but no longer flop around.
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I've been wanting to add audio to it for a while. With all the side covers off, there was no way to figure out the right place for the speakers. This isn't great, but at least they point at me and no where else would get them oriented any better than this. I found a small BT amplifier on Amazon for $20 and I was surprised at how well it works. The speakers are from a Logitech 5.1 speaker set. They are compact, sound great and handle a good bit of wattage. My phone on the handle bars is the music source.
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1. I got bar end mirrors so I could delete the ugly factory mirrors. I think this is the final state for the console and handlebars.
The end cap mirrors have a shoulder on them that is supposed to fit inside your grips and is the same diameter as the handlebar pipe. A detail about these throttles that I have never liked is that they don't fit very well on the handle bars and wobble at the ends. It just feels clunky and poorly sorted. I had to cut off the rubber ends of the grips to install the mirrors. I was able to use that shoulder on the mirrors inside the ends of the 2 throttles to support them. This got rid of 90% of that wobbling issue. They twist freely, but no longer flop around.
I've been wanting to add audio to it for a while. With all the side covers off, there was no way to figure out the right place for the speakers. This isn't great, but at least they point at me and no where else would get them oriented any better than this. I found a small BT amplifier on Amazon for $20 and I was surprised at how well it works. The speakers are from a Logitech 5.1 speaker set. They are compact, sound great and handle a good bit of wattage. My phone on the handle bars is the music source.
Joined
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149 Posts
$50 for both?! The motors are worth like $600 each. There's a guy in Costa Rica trying to sell them for $1400.Hello I just bought two zapinos for 50$(including shipping to my door.
One is exactly like yours with the blue motor, I was able to get it spinning with one controller, and figure out which hall is which, it runs good on the stand.
Sadly it doesn't have much torque currently with only one controller on 84v, although going downhill i found it promising. looking forward to getting second controller in. The rear tubeless tire was left sitting flat and doesnt hold air nowr, do you have any recommendations for tires for the stock rim?
The second zap scooter has horizontal dropouts, I have motor coming in soon, a qs motor 12in.
I dont have any of the plastics for the bikes, and no seats, and only one seat bucket.
Waiting on moped plates from the mvd, cool little scooters!
Will upload pics once i get more progress
My motor is blue because I painted it. I have never seen them any other color than silver.
The factory controllers are not very strong...3000 watts. On a scooter this large, that's pretty weak. Inside the controller box is 2 little 12 fet controllers. They are quite basic. No programming, just brake and throttle inputs. To get it rolling, they are marginally "good enough". I'm glad to see you running them at 82v. The mosfets and caps are 100v parts. There is no reason why the controllers can't run at this voltage. If you ever need more of those controllers or parts for them, I have 10 or 12 of them. Just PM me. However, you will do sooooo much better on FOC controllers. I'd recommend something VESC based. There are options at 100v max that are pretty good. I've got a line on a soon to be released 150v VESC controller good for 22kw. My next build will hopefully use 2 of them.
Tires...if you are going to stay at 60mph or less the Kenda 3.50-10 or 3.00-10 K413 will serve you well. I've used them on 3 EV's so far. The only reason I now use Dunlop D604 is because my Zap is much faster than 60 mph and much more powerful. I started with K413's on it and the back tire was wearing rapidly at peaks of 20kw. I needed a tire that could hold the speed, power and loading they get on my scooter. If you are staying close to factory power and not much more than 60mph the K413 will do fine.
QS260 12" 70H v3 or v4? If that's what you are getting, it's a good motor. Same for the slightly smaller 50H version. I've wanted to get one jsut to mess with. Not as good as the 6 phase hub motors on the Zap, but still pretty good. As good as the QS260 series is, I have 7 of the the 6 phase motors found on Zaps. I'll be using them for a while! I just found a guy in California that had 5 and he sold them to me for $275 each. I bought ALL he had!
No plastics...that's how you got them so cheap! All the cowlings got sold on ebay or whatever since they get broken. I have had 3 Zaps. The first one was a wreck! Not much was not broken in many places. I stripped it down, kept lights, brakes, suspension, electrical stuff and tossed the rest. You have a decent frame. This Zap build is my second one. I recently found another for $400 and it's mostly wrecked too. LOL...plastic cowlings!
Start your own build thread. If you want help or suggestions, hit me up. In this thread, you'll find most things I'd tell you to do for yours.
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149 Posts
The Nucular controllers and LCD will be going away. I'm tired of the bullshit I keep getting from them and will NOT be using their products in the future! 10 months of ZERO progress on their controller issues!!! Enough is ENOUGH! I don't recommend using Nucular! If you have issues, good luck getting support! I'm actively looking for other FOC options so I can get rid of the severely limiting Nucular controllers that don't work right. I should be doing 0-60 in sub 5 seconds and seeing peaks of 40kw. Instead I do 0-60 in 6.7 seconds and never get above 20kw. The controllers can do it, but they won't run the motor right. FEH!
I needed better USB charging. QC 3.0 charging is now on board. It won't deliver the 65 watts my phone can handle, but it will do 9v and 2a and that's the basic QC 3.0 spec.
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The old magnetic phone base was too weak and I've had phones come off several times now...so I got larger and stronger magnets. My phone will not pull away without tearing off the back cover. I know because that is exactly what happened and I had to glue it back on! Slide the phone off and even that is not easy.
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I needed better USB charging. QC 3.0 charging is now on board. It won't deliver the 65 watts my phone can handle, but it will do 9v and 2a and that's the basic QC 3.0 spec.
The old magnetic phone base was too weak and I've had phones come off several times now...so I got larger and stronger magnets. My phone will not pull away without tearing off the back cover. I know because that is exactly what happened and I had to glue it back on! Slide the phone off and even that is not easy.
Joined
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149 Posts
The new v4 torque arms are made from 4140 steel instead of hot rolled steel (HRS) like the v3 arms. The steel is definitely tougher to machine and I'm making the v4 arms larger to beef up where the v3 arms were weakest.
I did this work last weekend. Both arms are super glued together for these steps since all the work done is duplicated in both. The bolt hole pattern is identical between the v3 and v4 arms. In the v4 arms, the location of the axle clamp has moved down 1/2" and there is an extra 1/2" of steel behind the clamping section. This is a v3 arm next to the rough shape of the new v4 arms.
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A single new arm getting laid out for milling. Breaking apart the super glue is pretty easy with a chizel in the joint between the 2 pieces of steel.
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The shape got refined more to account for the brake caliper and of course thinned down to 1/4" thick where it is needed. They are shaped a little differently than the V3 arms to try and beef up the weaker areas. small woopsie on the right one...started to mill the wrong spot!
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I used M6 screws in the new ones and they are pretty deeply inset into the steel. The holes for the bolt heads have fairly thin walls. I hope I didn't just shoot myself in the foot by taking away steel that I need!
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Looking good so far! I can trim off some weight if needed. There's extra steel here that isn't doing anything to help.
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It's hard to see, but the clamping of the 3 screws has closed up the small gap around the shaft flats. This is the top of the shaft which is the hardest spot to clamp up.
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Right side:
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Left side:
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I did this work last weekend. Both arms are super glued together for these steps since all the work done is duplicated in both. The bolt hole pattern is identical between the v3 and v4 arms. In the v4 arms, the location of the axle clamp has moved down 1/2" and there is an extra 1/2" of steel behind the clamping section. This is a v3 arm next to the rough shape of the new v4 arms.
A single new arm getting laid out for milling. Breaking apart the super glue is pretty easy with a chizel in the joint between the 2 pieces of steel.
The shape got refined more to account for the brake caliper and of course thinned down to 1/4" thick where it is needed. They are shaped a little differently than the V3 arms to try and beef up the weaker areas. small woopsie on the right one...started to mill the wrong spot!
I used M6 screws in the new ones and they are pretty deeply inset into the steel. The holes for the bolt heads have fairly thin walls. I hope I didn't just shoot myself in the foot by taking away steel that I need!
Looking good so far! I can trim off some weight if needed. There's extra steel here that isn't doing anything to help.
It's hard to see, but the clamping of the 3 screws has closed up the small gap around the shaft flats. This is the top of the shaft which is the hardest spot to clamp up.
Right side:
Left side:
Joined
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149 Posts
AVOID NUCULAR!!!
Vasilly and Dimitry at Nucular are 100% useless and have NOT provided even BAD ideas on how to fix the motor stuttering issues. I'm seriously pissed off at them and they called me a dickhead for getting mad about the LACK of support after 10 months! I have bought 11 controllers from them for myself and others. The best they can do is call me "dickhead"! I sent back 2 when they died mysteriously for no reason I could have caused. They tried to charge me for warranty repairs!!! Just yesterday they sent out an email to everyone stating they have redesigned their controllers to fix the design problem that caused those controllers to die!!! GRRR! I'm the dickhead? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!
Nucular is seriously behind the cadence they set for new firmware releases. 2018 to 2020, every couple of months was a new firmware release. The last new firmware was August 2020...a year ago. I've reported 10-15 bugs to them since August 2020...no new firmware! Never mind no firmware fix for the stuttering issues!
I can't prove it since I have no evidence or even heard a rumor. I'm in the USA and they are in Russia. I readily admit I have observed some patterns and am making conclusions that may be wrong. I think behind the scenes they had a really smart guy working for them. I think he wrote all the firmware and did the major hardware design work. From 2018 to 2020 there was rapid development in their controllers. I think probably something like August 2020, he left Nucular for whatever reason. This would totally explain the lack of further firmware updates and lack of further controller development. It would explain why their BMS development has come to a total stand still! It would explain why Vasilly and Dimitry are so useless! They are the "front men" and not the brains of the company who is no longer there.
Vasilly and Dimitry at Nucular are 100% useless and have NOT provided even BAD ideas on how to fix the motor stuttering issues. I'm seriously pissed off at them and they called me a dickhead for getting mad about the LACK of support after 10 months! I have bought 11 controllers from them for myself and others. The best they can do is call me "dickhead"! I sent back 2 when they died mysteriously for no reason I could have caused. They tried to charge me for warranty repairs!!! Just yesterday they sent out an email to everyone stating they have redesigned their controllers to fix the design problem that caused those controllers to die!!! GRRR! I'm the dickhead? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!
Nucular is seriously behind the cadence they set for new firmware releases. 2018 to 2020, every couple of months was a new firmware release. The last new firmware was August 2020...a year ago. I've reported 10-15 bugs to them since August 2020...no new firmware! Never mind no firmware fix for the stuttering issues!
I can't prove it since I have no evidence or even heard a rumor. I'm in the USA and they are in Russia. I readily admit I have observed some patterns and am making conclusions that may be wrong. I think behind the scenes they had a really smart guy working for them. I think he wrote all the firmware and did the major hardware design work. From 2018 to 2020 there was rapid development in their controllers. I think probably something like August 2020, he left Nucular for whatever reason. This would totally explain the lack of further firmware updates and lack of further controller development. It would explain why their BMS development has come to a total stand still! It would explain why Vasilly and Dimitry are so useless! They are the "front men" and not the brains of the company who is no longer there.
Joined
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149 Posts
Last night...
The Zap scooter is 100% done except for the Nucular controller issues. I mostly tooled around my neighborhood starting and stopping over and over again. The idea was to tweak the controller PIDs to get better motor performance from the Nucular controllers.
Not much progress or improvement last night. I tweaked and fiddled with PIDs and got 20 more phase amps that didn't stutter too badly. I have to stay at 160 phase amps to avoid all stuttering. 300+ phase amps is what I should be doing!
I think since I have fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with the PIDs and other settings that it is time to go back to factory defaults, start over from scratch and see if my changes are really better or not. It's been a couple of months of fiddling with controller PIDs and I no longer know. Did I really gain 20 more phase amps last night? Am I improving motor performance at all? LOL! I know more what stuff does now so there will be less guessing and fiddling.
The Zap scooter is 100% done except for the Nucular controller issues. I mostly tooled around my neighborhood starting and stopping over and over again. The idea was to tweak the controller PIDs to get better motor performance from the Nucular controllers.
Not much progress or improvement last night. I tweaked and fiddled with PIDs and got 20 more phase amps that didn't stutter too badly. I have to stay at 160 phase amps to avoid all stuttering. 300+ phase amps is what I should be doing!
I think since I have fiddled and fiddled and fiddled with the PIDs and other settings that it is time to go back to factory defaults, start over from scratch and see if my changes are really better or not. It's been a couple of months of fiddling with controller PIDs and I no longer know. Did I really gain 20 more phase amps last night? Am I improving motor performance at all? LOL! I know more what stuff does now so there will be less guessing and fiddling.
Joined
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149 Posts
Defaulting and setting up the dual Nucular controllers again after rediscovering the motor changed nothing. The stuttering is the same, power is the same. I put back my last PIDS...that was as good as it gets. What else is there? These controllers are jacked up!
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149 Posts
My friend in California and I have been doing the Nucular song and dance together for the past year. Tonight we were talking about other options like VESC since it's pretty clear that Nucular will never pan out. That digressed into new names for them...
Vasilly is now Vasdickly
Dmitry is now Dickmeatry
Nucular is now Fuckular
We had a good laugh! I hope you do too. I'm seriously tired of the Fuckular BS! The arrogance and ignoring valid questions is ridiculous! I cant tell you how many times I was told "I'm spamming" when I ask questions and get ignored over and over again! GRRR!
Vasilly is now Vasdickly
Dmitry is now Dickmeatry
Nucular is now Fuckular
We had a good laugh! I hope you do too. I'm seriously tired of the Fuckular BS! The arrogance and ignoring valid questions is ridiculous! I cant tell you how many times I was told "I'm spamming" when I ask questions and get ignored over and over again! GRRR!
Joined
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149 Posts
I tried ooooone more time with the dip shits at Fuckular...
Same story...don't respond to questions, are condescending and arrogant all the time, won't address problems and can't be bothered to address anything I tell them! Bow and worship, bow and worship...that's about all they respect! I can't tell you how many times Vasdickly has said I'm a spammer! Seriously dude?!
Here's a clever idea for you:
1. BE LESS CONDESCENDING!
2. BE LESS ARROGANT!
3. WHEN YOU TELL ME TO DO SOMETHING, I WILL ASK QUESTIONS. ANSWER THEM!
4. WHEN I GIVE YOU NEW DATA, RESPOND TO WHAT I PRESENT TO YOU!!!
5. A YEAR SINCE THE LAST FIRMWARE RELEASE? THAT'S A BIT MUCH!
6. FIX YOUR CONTROLLER ISSUES ALREADY!!!
I'm sooo done with those arrogant assholes! This was the LAST attempt at trying with them!
Same story...don't respond to questions, are condescending and arrogant all the time, won't address problems and can't be bothered to address anything I tell them! Bow and worship, bow and worship...that's about all they respect! I can't tell you how many times Vasdickly has said I'm a spammer! Seriously dude?!
Here's a clever idea for you:
1. BE LESS CONDESCENDING!
2. BE LESS ARROGANT!
3. WHEN YOU TELL ME TO DO SOMETHING, I WILL ASK QUESTIONS. ANSWER THEM!
4. WHEN I GIVE YOU NEW DATA, RESPOND TO WHAT I PRESENT TO YOU!!!
5. A YEAR SINCE THE LAST FIRMWARE RELEASE? THAT'S A BIT MUCH!
6. FIX YOUR CONTROLLER ISSUES ALREADY!!!
I'm sooo done with those arrogant assholes! This was the LAST attempt at trying with them!
Joined
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149 Posts
On Saturday, I took a 70ish mile ride in the mountains on the Zap. Much of the roads were twisty and fairly steep to climb. There were quite a lot of motor cycles on the roads and I had no trouble keeping up with them or taking the tight turns at the speeds they rode them. It was rather cool to do! Coming back down, I recovered a fair bit of charge with regen. I came back a different way so that I had to ride on a state highway where everyone was driving at 60-75 mph. In my medium setting, I have no field weakening and 160 phase amps is my limit. I was able to maintain 63 mph. I wanted to see how long I could sustain the real top speed of the scooter so I switched to my high setting and then kept the throttle under the point where stuttering occurs. This allowed me to use some amount of field weakening to get to the same speeds as the faster traffic. I guess I spent 4 or 5 miles in the fast lane at 70-75 mph. I was near the end of my charge so I needed to slow down to 60 so that I had enough charge to make it home. 66v is the realistic bottom voltage for full power riding and that forced me to get over into the right lane where I could ride at 60 mph and conserve charge. I rode at 60 mph for another 5 miles on the highway and then got onto a major local road where the speed limit is 55 and road that at speed for another 4 or 5 miles. And then the final 2 miles at 45 to my house. I never got lower than my medium setting.
I can discharge down to 60v since that is 3v per cell. I noticed some time ago that I can only realistically do this in my low setting. Medium or high uses too much current. In high, 66v is the bottom pack voltage before sagging becomes significant. In medium, I can go to 64v. I just assume that 66v is my lower limit and this leaves a nice buffer in case I need it for low power riding to get me home. A cool detail is that even at 66v, I can still do 70+.
It rained a little as I was coming back down. I was grateful for having bought a motor cycle jacket made for this. My pants got wet, but my body stayed dry and I never got cold. I was glad I was wearing sunglasses! The rain hitting my face really stung! The scooter handled the wet roads fine and I didn't notice any water incursion that was going to create problems. It started to come down pretty heavily in the last 4 or 5 miles back to my house. The rain pelting my face was really uncomfortable with the bigger and denser rain. Those last few miles were not exactly fun or pleasant. I rode slower just so the rain hit me less hard. Might be time for some kind of face shield or helmet. OUCH!
I can discharge down to 60v since that is 3v per cell. I noticed some time ago that I can only realistically do this in my low setting. Medium or high uses too much current. In high, 66v is the bottom pack voltage before sagging becomes significant. In medium, I can go to 64v. I just assume that 66v is my lower limit and this leaves a nice buffer in case I need it for low power riding to get me home. A cool detail is that even at 66v, I can still do 70+.
It rained a little as I was coming back down. I was grateful for having bought a motor cycle jacket made for this. My pants got wet, but my body stayed dry and I never got cold. I was glad I was wearing sunglasses! The rain hitting my face really stung! The scooter handled the wet roads fine and I didn't notice any water incursion that was going to create problems. It started to come down pretty heavily in the last 4 or 5 miles back to my house. The rain pelting my face was really uncomfortable with the bigger and denser rain. Those last few miles were not exactly fun or pleasant. I rode slower just so the rain hit me less hard. Might be time for some kind of face shield or helmet. OUCH!
I saw this bike on Saturday also at the EV meetup and I have to say I was really impressed. It's a totally useful bike with tons of range and speed. Really you just need to get the controllers working properly. I forgot to ask, do you have a J1772 plug or have you thought about adding public charge capability beyond just 110V?
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149 Posts
Thanks!
On Saturday, I brought a small charger with me in case my ride into the mountains was too much for the pack. It charges at 9 amps and this is rather sloooow. It takes 13 hours to go from discharged to almost full charge at this rate. That's maybe 6 amps at the wall outlet. I should be able to push a lot closer to the 15 amp limit for a standard 110v outlet and not blow breakers.
I have spent no time at all looking at J1772 charging until just now. My understanding is pretty basic, but I think I have the important details now.
I have been looking at weather proof chargers so I can have charging on board. 110v/220v wall charging is ubiquitous. Every house has 110v outlets through out. A long cord from the laundry room and I have 220v where ever I need it. I found several weather proof chargers that run on 110v or 220v and charge at 15 - 40 amps. Adding public charging doesnt look too hard. There's a small control module in the EV and then the charging station turns on 220v AC. I think adding this would be pretty easy!
Where to put the charging connector so it is concealed. I do like the stealth look...
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149 Posts
I bought one of the 30 amp chargers found here.
www.aliexpress.com
Since it is 110v or 220v, I can use it for J1772, 220v drier outlets or 110v outlets. Assuming it is a reasonably good charger, this will let me have onboard charging with a high degree of flexability. I looked around to see if anyone was using them and didn't find anything. I don't know, maybe I'm an early adopter? Maybe they have been explored already and they are a steaming turd? I've dropped $255 on a 30 amp version and it will be here in a couple of weeks. I'll know more soon...
178.0US $ 11% OFF|GTK intelligent 72V 15A 20A 25A 30A faster Charger for72V 20S Li ion 24S Lifepo4 30S LTO battery pack output 84v 87.6V|Chargers| - AliExpress
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www.aliexpress.com
Since it is 110v or 220v, I can use it for J1772, 220v drier outlets or 110v outlets. Assuming it is a reasonably good charger, this will let me have onboard charging with a high degree of flexability. I looked around to see if anyone was using them and didn't find anything. I don't know, maybe I'm an early adopter? Maybe they have been explored already and they are a steaming turd? I've dropped $255 on a 30 amp version and it will be here in a couple of weeks. I'll know more soon...
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149 Posts
The water proof charger is in Nebraska now. Supposedly it will be here tomorrow. The seller told me they set it to 82.9v, not 82v like a specified. I've been asking for a month for the information on how to adjust the charger and they refuse to give it to me. I guess I'll have to figure it out for myself and then post that in my DIY charger thread.
The Zap has been running great! There is a niggling issue that I originally thought I could live with, but as time passes, I see that I want this detail resolved correctly. I'm using the original key switch to turn on the DC-DC converter. That's all it does. Inline with the key switch is a 15 amp DC breaker. I have the battery wire and the enable wire to the DC-DC both going to the key switch. What I really need is to leave the battery wire connected all the time and just apply enable to it via the key switch. As is, the precharge resistor across the key switch charges the DC-DC about once a second. It powers up momentarily and then loses power again. The watt meters and anything else on the 12v system will get momentary power about once a second. To stop this for now, I open the breaker contacts.
It's not a huge thing to fix, but there are details:
1. Several cowlings need to be removed to get access to the wiring.
2. I need to remove the precharge resistor from the key switch.
3. The DC-DC battery wire needs to be rerouted to be connected directly to the breaker.
4. The precharge resistor for the DC-DC needs to be placed at the breaker.
5. The DC-DC enable wire needs to be the only thing connected to the key switch.
Since the water proof charger needs to be mounted somewhere and I need access to the wiring, I'll probably mount it at the same time as I fix the DC-DC issue.
The Zap has been running great! There is a niggling issue that I originally thought I could live with, but as time passes, I see that I want this detail resolved correctly. I'm using the original key switch to turn on the DC-DC converter. That's all it does. Inline with the key switch is a 15 amp DC breaker. I have the battery wire and the enable wire to the DC-DC both going to the key switch. What I really need is to leave the battery wire connected all the time and just apply enable to it via the key switch. As is, the precharge resistor across the key switch charges the DC-DC about once a second. It powers up momentarily and then loses power again. The watt meters and anything else on the 12v system will get momentary power about once a second. To stop this for now, I open the breaker contacts.
It's not a huge thing to fix, but there are details:
1. Several cowlings need to be removed to get access to the wiring.
2. I need to remove the precharge resistor from the key switch.
3. The DC-DC battery wire needs to be rerouted to be connected directly to the breaker.
4. The precharge resistor for the DC-DC needs to be placed at the breaker.
5. The DC-DC enable wire needs to be the only thing connected to the key switch.
Since the water proof charger needs to be mounted somewhere and I need access to the wiring, I'll probably mount it at the same time as I fix the DC-DC issue.
Joined
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149 Posts
The charger arrived! It's making 82.3v, not 82.9v. This puts each cell at 4.11v...so just barely high.
I believe I found the manufacturer of this charger. The seller was NOT remotely helpful in this regard and insisted that the charger could not be set to some other voltage. I disagree...they got it set "somehow" and these chargers can be set for use at all sorts of voltages. OF COURSE they can be adjusted!
unistechnology.en.alibaba.com
It's a bit larger than I imagined. I'm not sure how I'll mount it onboard the Zap. I don't think I have a space that is large enough. Losing the handle will help, but not a lot. I've bought parts so I can make up a Y cable for plugging into my drier outlet. This will give me easy access to 30 amp 220v power for the charger. I'll see about setting up J1227 on the Zap once I have the charger mounting worked out.
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What we all want to see...the guts! The 2 JST connectors are for external options I opted to NOT get. I thought they were stupid and poorly executed so I didn't ask for them.
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PIC16F1936 micro controller. The 7 pin connector is the programming port. I've never messed with PIC programming, but I bought a PICKit3 so I can give it a shot. This is the only way that I see of changing the output voltage. I'm pretty sure it can be adjusted down to about 60v and up to about 90v. Maybe it uses a voltage divider to set the output voltage? I haven't spent any time analyzing the IC's on the control board to determine if this is the case or not. I really think output settings are programmed in the PIC.
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I believe I found the manufacturer of this charger. The seller was NOT remotely helpful in this regard and insisted that the charger could not be set to some other voltage. I disagree...they got it set "somehow" and these chargers can be set for use at all sorts of voltages. OF COURSE they can be adjusted!
Shenzhen UNIS Technology Co., Ltd. - Li-ion battery, Battery charger
Shenzhen UNIS Technology Co., Ltd., Experts in Manufacturing and Exporting Li-ion battery, Battery charger and 458 more Products.
unistechnology.en.alibaba.com
It's a bit larger than I imagined. I'm not sure how I'll mount it onboard the Zap. I don't think I have a space that is large enough. Losing the handle will help, but not a lot. I've bought parts so I can make up a Y cable for plugging into my drier outlet. This will give me easy access to 30 amp 220v power for the charger. I'll see about setting up J1227 on the Zap once I have the charger mounting worked out.
What we all want to see...the guts! The 2 JST connectors are for external options I opted to NOT get. I thought they were stupid and poorly executed so I didn't ask for them.
PIC16F1936 micro controller. The 7 pin connector is the programming port. I've never messed with PIC programming, but I bought a PICKit3 so I can give it a shot. This is the only way that I see of changing the output voltage. I'm pretty sure it can be adjusted down to about 60v and up to about 90v. Maybe it uses a voltage divider to set the output voltage? I haven't spent any time analyzing the IC's on the control board to determine if this is the case or not. I really think output settings are programmed in the PIC.
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