Motorino XPn 2011

[granolaboy]

(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

yep that's me alright

[mistercrash]

I meant me Granolaboy.

I sent a PM to Lyen about this but I'm hoping that someone can help me with this so I can maybe fix the problem tomorrow instead of next weekend. I have kill switches on the brake levers. I apply the brakes and it kills the power to the motor. That's the way it was with the old controller. I can't find the way to make this work with my 18 fet Lyen controller. I really want these kill switches to work because it's the law up here, power to the motor has to be shut off when the brakes are applied. The plug that went into the old controller is a single wire plug. After some investigating off the scooter's wiring harness, this is how I saw those kill switches were wired. Here's a drawing.

There is an E-Brake plug that comes out of the Lyen controller but I don't know if it has the wires I should use. My first attempt blew a fuse lol

[mistercrash]

The solution was found by Sacman in another thread, Sacman said to use a 12V automotive relay. I ordered one from ebay but couldn't wait so I just went to get one at Canadian Tire. The one from ebay comes with its own connector so I will install that one to replace the Canadian Tire one. Sacman walked me through the process of wiring everything and this is how it ended up wired on my scooter. It works perfectly. Thanks Sacman.

[granolaboy]

mistercrash: maybe you meant you, but I'm definitely a newb...

and yah, I did the same thing with a relay...yay regen! The extra braking force is a huge plus on the moto's...

[timhellsten]

Hello

I have a motorino XPR. I have already disabled the speed limiter (put a switch in so I can actually re limit the scoot if needed...

I have installed 2 48v 35AH LiFeP04 batteries and removed the SLA.... saving about 25 LBS in the process


anyway...

I am looking to get a different controller (nothing wrong with mine) but I am hoping to perhaps get a little more speed out of it. currently I get about 42-43KPH....

I would like another controller so that i can also take advantage of the full capabilities of the Cycle Analyst (if I can)

I am not adverse to changing the controller, and Motor if someone can recommend a combo that will work... I would like to get to about 50KPH if needed... would not use it all the time but if I had the ability for things like lane changes and such that would be perfect..


does anyone know how the Motorino XPR controller is wired (what does what)
can I hook up a cycle Analyst to it ?

anywho any help is appreciated thanks very much... this is my daily driver I put a few thousand K on this every season (and for manitoba that is from April to Oct) roughly

[marooner]

mistercrash: Thank you for your excellent contributions, written and in photos, on this forum. They were very educational. I have a Motorino XPh. Steve Miloshev said that the controller is made for 72 V, but they used 48 V since it would exceed 32 km/h. I bought the ERide 48 V 26 AH Lithium (I upgraded from my 48 V 20+14 AH SLAs, one being on floor and one being under the seat). This made a big difference compared to the under-performing two sets of SLAs.

I bought an eBay 48 V 20 AH duct tape style battery which I place under the seat, and soldered the power plug to make it work with the XPh (I regret doing so, I should have bought 25 or 30 AH; it cuts out now and then, which I presume to be a result of overdischarge, unless the circuit breaker is faulty).

Here is a question I would like to ask you, and others on this forum:
However, without changing the controller (I do not have that much skill, as you and others, electrically), I would like to try 60 V (72 V might be too much), as that could mean that it would be 65-68 V when hot off the charger. I would do this with a Ping battery (it'll be expensive), possibly 60 V 30 AH. Why did you change to a Lyen controller? Could you have used the stock controller for 60 V operation? Is there damage to the 48 V to 12 V converter for lights/circuitry?
Thank you in advance.

[mistercrash]

First off, I'm glad some like this little ''blog'' but don't forget that I'm a newb and anything I did to my scooter is with the great advice of the people of this forum. From what I know and experienced, replacing the controller did not get me much more speed. But I was able to get a lot more torque, the scooter weighs 205 pounds and I weigh 245 so a lot of torque is needed to get that weight of the line and up hills. To get more speed you'll need more volts or a stronger motor me thinks. The advantages in changing was that it was easy to plug in a CA. Yes just ''PLUG IN'' and it works. It is fairly easy to reprogram to your liking, just a couple weeks of trying different things and you'll find the settings you prefer and then leave at that. The rest was pretty straight forward, I just needed to move the wires around in the hall sensors connector if I remember correctly. Then I had the kill switches I couldn't figure out, this was fixed with the use of a 12V automotive relay, again a good idea from a member of this forum.

I really like my Lyen controller, it just works and it is powerful enough to upgrade to up to 100V and a 6 kw motor if I want to. If you go with a Lyen just make sure you clearly ask for the CA connector and the three speed switch connector to be installed on the controller. Maybe you can work out something about the kill switches and not have to install a relay for them to work.

As for getting info from Motorino that their controller can run on 72V, I don't know how that can be done with 63V caps in their controllers, at least that is what I had in my stock XPn controller, maybe they use stronger controllers now IDK. I know more than one person went with 60V with no problems, I think they just take it easy on the throttle for the first 2 kilometers so to not blow the caps.

Now to update what's going on with my XPn, I have a problem with my motor. Maybe shooting close to 4000 watts in it for the past few months didn't help, especially since the weather has been so hot lately. It's making an awful sound when going from a dead start or when I apply the brakes. I opepened it up but couldn't find anything wrong, it still works fine but the noise is very annoying. I'll have to open it up again and look closer at what is making that sound. I'll post a small movie later today so that maybe a veteran can see it and make a diagnostic.

[mistercrash]

I also put this in the E-vehicle general discussion forum to try to get a solution for this problem. Can someone tell me what's wrong with my motor? It's a 500 motor from Greenwit Technologies. The noise started all of a sudden last week. The motor still runs but the noise is annoying. The noise stops when I get up to around 38 km/h, then it fades away. It starts back up if I apply the brakes. I opened the motor but couldn't see any damage. Can someone tell what is causing this noise? Here's a short movie with the noise. Thanks.

[mistercrash]

Well after discussing this a bit in the other thread and after opening the motor a second time today, I noticed that a magnet was missing a few tiny chunks on the edge and those were floating around inside the motor. I disassembled the motor completely and cleaned any tiny piece I was able to find. That magnet is also cracked close to the middle. The noise from the video is now gone but I now have a ''thunk thunk thunk'' noise going on probably because of that broken magnet.
Those magnets were not glued, this is not normal. This shows extremely poor quality. I am going to address this with the dealer in a couple weeks when I get back from vacation. I don't think they will do anything about it but I want them to know what kind of product they're selling because I don't think they know exactly what goes into these Chinese scooters made supposedly in Vancouver, Canada. I don't really wish for them to give me a new motor of theirs just to have one with huge defects like the one I have now. I will bite the bullet and buy a Kelly Controls hub motor. I'll go with the 10'' 48V 2kw motor for now.

[timhellsten]

Motorino has a 2 year warantee on the motor I believe
1 year on the Scooter
60 days - 90 days on the batteries..

something like that... so in theory if you bought your scoot in 2011 then you should be covered till 2013

[mistercrash]

I'm pretty sure that the scooter has to stay original for the warranty to be valid. I pretty much voided my warranty when I started changing batteries and controllers on this thing. And I don't think they would like the fact that I opened the motor to have a look inside.

[timhellsten]

Hmmmm Probably not... but you can try.
don't tell them you opened it up...
a cracked magnet is not caused by your controller unless you can spin up that motor to get 80kph then I can see parts failing

worth a try

worst they can say is no.. and you have lost nothing

[marooner]

mistercrash: It is reasonable that you should be able to bring in the damaged magnet and get a replacement under warranty (unless you think the damage is due to speed in excess of 32 km/h). Or just bring in the magnet (or the whole set of parts to which it is attached) and see what they can do for you; if it is removable, that is.

If I can ask you further: How many more than one upgraded to 60V using the same controller and everything else the same? I would feel more at ease if there were more successful people I admit I am a novice. Did they have to upgrade anything else, other than the battery? When you say "with 63V caps in their controllers", are these capacitors, and are they the cylindrical things (typically with metal at the flat-circle-shaped side, and wrapped in plastic on round sides)?, and what happens when that 63V voltage is exceeded? They are essentially charged plates with dielectric in between, based on what I know (and I am hoping there is some reasonable tolerance above 63V, because a hot-off-charger 60V Ping battery is probably several volts more than that, I am guessing). Since there is no reset of course (not being like a circuit breaker) or easy replacement (unlike a fuse) are they irreparably damaged, what kind of damage could it be...Melted?
Thank you for your thoughts.

[mistercrash]

I couldn't tell you what kind of damage blowing the caps would do. if it's just the caps that pop, I suspect that they can be replaced by new ones. but don't just take my word for it, like I said, I'm still a newb at this.
the other people I heard about that went 60 volts are from the "Toronto electric riders association" forum. AFAIK, all they did was upgrade to a lithium 60 volts battery.

[marooner]

mr c: Thanks. I'm checking out that forum now....

[mistercrash]

I,m exchanging emails with the main dealer of Motorino in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. I don't know if they will be willing to help me with my defective motor. If not, I have been looking at the Kelly Controls hub motors. I'm not sure which one would be best, stay conservative and get the 10'' 60V 2Kw http://kellycontroller.com/hub-motor-60v-2kwdisc-brake-p-153.html or go for the 10'' 72V 6kw http://kellycontroller.com/hub-motor-72v-6kwdisc-brake10-inch-p-41.html

Or are there better hub motors out there with 10'' rims?

Thanks

[Bluefang]

There is a much better hub that John in CR is selling in the new items forum have a read of his thread

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=40859

[mistercrash]

Thank you much bluefang, I sent him a PM.

[mistercrash]

Well it doesn't seem like John in CR's motors will do for my scooter so I just went to the dealer and bought a new Motorino Greenwit Technologies motor. They didn't have any in stock and said it would take a week to get one. I showed the owner that there was 20 new scooters in the showroom so she could take a motor out of one of them and sell it to me now. She accepted.

[mistercrash]

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42250

[mistercrash]

Today I took off the new motor and opened it to put some 12 gauge Turnigy phase wires, I put holes in the end caps and I sprayed the rotor and stator with red dielectric urethane varnish. I also installed a 36/72V to 13.5V DC/DC converter because I have some more 18650 cells that I am working on and I will upgrade the scooter to 72V or 20S20P. I am presently equalizing groups of 10 cells and gluing them together with silicon beads. Pairs of 10P strings will then be matched together and equalized together before they are soldered as 20P strings. Then to charge every string and finally join them in series and complete the pack. How it will be charged is still to be determined.

Edit: These 18650 cells from tool packs are a hell of a lot of work to get terrible voltage sag and around only 1ah per cell. It is a cheap option to go lithium but I wish I had the money to build a pack out of A123 20amp pouches. 24S3P would fill my battery compartment nicely and give good power and long range. Now that would be money and time well spent.

[mistercrash]

Work is going on this long weekend to try to get this 74V 30Ah konion battery done. All the cells have been tested, matched, equalized, fully charged and put together with Goop in 10 cell strings. Two strings will be paralleled to get my 20P. I ordered a 600 watt BMS Battery alloy charger to bulk charge this pack at 82V. I plan on bulk charging all week and balance charge on the weekend. To balance charge I looked at the chargers I have been using. I have a CellPro 10S charger from Revolectrix good for 10S but in a two 5S format, I have a 1420i Hyperion charger good for 14S and a Thunder Power 1430C good for 14S but the max Ah that you can set it is 9900 mah. I don't like the Thunder power because of the max mah setting and the balance wires are reversed, I don't trust the Hyperion because it's been doing some squirrely thing with misreading the voltage of one cell on channel B. The CellPro 10S is my favorite, I have been using this one for many years for RC lipos with absolutely no problem and it is the most accurate and safe charger I have used and seen compared to many others. But I will have to wire my 20S battery as four separate 5S packs because the Cellpro 10S doesn't charge batteries plugged in series. I will also have to get a second one, they are pretty cheap at $130 for such a safe, no fuss, no problems and accurate charger.
I also found a universal windscreen that fit nicely on the scooter. It is small but should help shield me from the cold wind this winter. I'll post pics later of all this stuff.

[mistercrash]

I was on a roll today and finished the battery and manage to take a short ride with the scooter. I didn't take much pics but I'll post what I have later. For now all I can say is it's pretty cool to ride at a top speed of 65 km/h on flat ground. I still have a lot of finishing up to do like reprogramming the controller, cleaning up the wiring and such.

Does more voltage make a motor run cooler? Because after the ride I was surprised at how cool the motor was. I am used to it running hotter than it was tonight running on 82V compared to 50V before.

[amberwolf]

It depends--if incresing the voltage reduces the phase currents becuase back-emf is reduced, then it can certainly make it run cooler. That's assuming you ride at the same speed as at the lower voltage.

If you increase the voltage *and* increase the speed you ride atby the same ratio, then the motor would probably get hotter instead.

[mistercrash]

I see, well I wasn't riding at the speeds I'm used to It was much faster but the ride was short, 4 or 5 km at the most. So maybe the motor will get hotter when I go out for a real ride so I'll have to keep an eye on it at first.