Making a Quazzar E-Divine go a bit faster?

[marqueemoon]

I have two of these Chinese retro-styled scooters, and I'm trying to make one of them useful as a commuter bike. Here's a picture of a similar one from eBay, all the ones that turn up seem to be ex-Pizza Express in this black and white colour scheme.



I settled on one of these because I like - and own - classic scooters, so the idea of a daily ride that looked a bit like one, as opposed to a generic Chinese ped appealed. The vast majority of the information I have gleaned on these machines is from a thread on here, and I've been posting in there but it seems like a good idea to start my own thread now I actually have a working machine.

So, here's where I am: the bike is now on the road and de-restricted, courtesy of the info posted by the OP in the thread mentioned above. It can manage 40mph on the flat but is severely affected by hills, of which there are many round here, so I'd like more go! In order to de-restrict it, I had to program the controller via a bit of Windows software; this software offers the opportunity to change all sorts of parameters, many of which I have absolutely no idea about! I've screen grabbed them all:














The one thing that stood out to me was the boost function; my Dawes e-bike has one of these, and it would be very useful... unfortunately, I can't find any way of activating it manually, and nothing seems to happen when I set it to 'Auto' either. Maybe this feature is in the software but not offered by my exact model of controller?

I suppose my question is (probably the first of many!) is this - is there anything amongst the parameters listed above that I can change to unleash a bit more power? Or am I in the market for a new controller? I'm not averse to trying experimental stuff as I do have a spares bike I can plunder for the controller, motor etc. Battery-wise, I have three of the 60V 20Ah packs that come with these machines (it can carry two).

Thanks in advance!

 

[amberwolf]

So, here's where I am: the bike is now on the road and de-restricted, courtesy of the info posted by the OP in the thread mentioned above. It can manage 40mph on the flat but is severely affected by hills, of which there are many round here, so I'd like more go! In order to de-restrict it, I had to program the controller via a bit of Windows software; this software offers the opportunity to change all sorts of parameters, many of which I have absolutely no idea about! I've screen grabbed them all:

For better hill climbing (and/or quicker acceleration) it requires more torque, which means more phase current (amps) to the motor from the controller. That means more total power (watts) from the battery, too.

So...do you get any more voltage sag on the battery when hill climbing vs just riding on the flats at lower speeds (like 20mph)? If there's a lot more then you'll probably need a new bigger and more powerful battery to get more power out of the system.

You'll also need a bigger battery to keep the same range you had before at the slower speed, as the faster speed eats up power a lot faster. (and hill climbing at faster speeds will eat it up much faster).

The one thing that stood out to me was the boost function; my Dawes e-bike has one of these, and it would be very useful... unfortunately, I can't find any way of activating it manually, and nothing seems to happen when I set it to 'Auto' either. Maybe this feature is in the software but not offered by my exact model of controller?

It's common for the same software to be used for a whole range of models of controller taht don't all have the same features or limits. So if the controller doesn't respond to a setting, it probably simply doesn't have that. It'd be a much better software design to hide all features a controller can't respond to (not just gray them out but don't show them at all), but that's not usually how companies make their stuff. (true of much more than just EV-stuff).

Hopefully they also made the system so you can't change other settings like current and voltage limits in it to something beyond what the controller can handle. Some do, and some don't, which means if you don't know the limits of the controller you can exceed them and blow it up.


Settings that will get you better hill performance, assuming they can be changed, from Picture1:
--Maximum Phase Current (A) (this is motor current)
--Average Current (A) (this is probably battery current)
What to change them to depends on what your battery, controller, and motor can actually handle, and how steep the hills are for how much extra they require. Probably safest to try small incremental changes and test to see how much things heat up, and how much worse battery voltage sag is, etc.

 

[marqueemoon]

Thanks for this... I haven't noticed any appreciable voltage sag when going up hills, so I'm going to see if I can modify the parameters you mention (cautiously!) and see what occurs. I don't really know the state of the three batteries; haven't had the bike roadworthy long enough to make any judgement, but I do plan to do some tests one day when my OH is home and she can pick me up in the van in the event that I run out of sparks!

One thing I can confirm is that the UGBest controller has no boost circuit... I found a Chinese specifications PDF for it; the text I can't read without recourse to OCR and translation, but the schematic diagram is pretty clear! So that's one possibility eliminated.

 

[marqueemoon]

A very quick update - you can modify those two parameters, but they're already maxed out. So it looks like new controller time.

OP in the other thread seemed to know what he was doing, he bought a Sabvoton 72150 but it doesn't appear that he got round to fitting it before selling his Quazzar. That would give me the option of going to a 72V battery, and from a spec sheet I've found, it supports a maximum phase current of 450A, which would be way in excess of anything I need? Does this sound like a reasonable move?

Meanwhile, the same search threw up a fair few threads on here regarding this controller, so I'm off for a read! Cheers.

 

[hipur]

I was also on the other thread and I own the same scooter. Mine came with another controller and I've installed a LingBo 72352. The first issue you will encounter is making the speedometer work with your new controller if it's from another brand. I ended up having to program my own speedometer with an ESP32 and a 3.12" OLED. There are some Chinese sellers that sell a model that fits to the housing.

One question: is handling on your model awful? Mine didn't come with the front swing arm, instead it uses a cheap shock absorber that barely absorbs anything, and the rear shock is also inexistent, as I just bounce with help from the springs. It looks that handling is very bad because the center of mass being completely different from a regular scooter, and also it only weights 60kg.. I'm looking for ways to improve this and would love suggestions.

 

[marqueemoon]

I ordered a Fardriver controller with a matching speedo from Aliexpress which I'm just awaiting the arrival of:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005445002203.html

It comes with a matching instrument panel just in case, but the speedo on mine is old school; driven by a cable, so I'm guessing yours is different in that respect.

Mine has trailing link suspension on the front, granted as a system it's a bit archaic, but then I've ridden Honda Helixes for years (they also have it) so it seems OK to me! The rear shock on mine failed the MOT as there was no damping left. I got the one from the 1500-mile spares bike but that was shot too! I bought an identical unbranded replacement off eBay for £25:

Rear Shock Absorber Damper 275mm Pin+Fork Mopeds Scooters YQ50 NH125 LEAD | eBay

Shock 275mm Pin+Fork Mopeds Scooters YQ50 NH125 LEAD.

www.ebay.co.uk

which has made it a lot better, but how long it will last is anyone's guess. When I have time, I'll probably just look for something with the same length/eye/fork configuration from a bigger bike and use that.

 

[marqueemoon]

Bit of progress on this... the controller arrived, and was fitted up to the point that would allow it to do the self-learning thing with the motor, save for the wire to the ignition key, because I have no wiring diagram for the Quazzar. In the end I hit on the idea of removing the bodywork from the spare bike and tracing the wires manually using a multi-meter.



This done, I powered up the scooter and the motor does its repeated 2 short and 1 long beep to indicate self-learning mode... I crack open the throttle - nothing. OP in the old thread about these scooters found a pin-out for a Lingbo controller he reckoned was the same as the UGbest one fitted as OE to the Quazzar, but using my meter on the spares bike revealed a difference - diagram says solid red wire when the one I really wanted was red/white! Also the diagram shows black/white as signal and green/white as ground when the reverse is true. Powered up again, whack the throttle on and off it went: forwards, stop, then reverse, stop and beep... all done I had a quick spin up the drive, it took off like a stabbed rat!

So... I have a runner, albeit in the most basic form. It is jumpered to have no gears, just high speed at the mo, and there's no boost and I still have brake hi/lo (are these to do with regen braking? More reading needed!) to wire up. Plus there's some other stuff to do with alarms etc. that I won't bother with. Also I haven't even looked at the new instruments, so I have no voltmeter yet. There's another job in chopping the headset about to allow it to fit as it's a completely different shape from the original binnacle.

Next thing was to try and set some parameters via the Android app, but the app threw up a permissions error when I tried to connect with the controller's BT dongle. And that's where we are... watch this space, as they say!

 

[hipur]

Brake-lo is used for motor cutoff and Brake-hi is used for regen. But you have to activate it inside the programmer.

If your scooter is still disassembled, would you mind sharing a picture that shows the front wheel trail? Mine doesn't have that swing arm front suspension and handling it is just horrible. Shipping fees for buying that whole suspension system from UK or China are impeditive, so I'll try to replicate it's trail angle with local sourced parts.

Can't wait to see your new dashboard, I need to find a solution for mine also.

 

[marqueemoon]

Yep, the spare one in still in bits... will post some pics of the front fork at the weekend.

I've got the instruments working, the speedo is one that came with the controller (from Aliexpress - link further up this thread)

https://imgur.com/CBlXkqQ

EDIT: The app is talking to the controller happily now, it needed to have location access at all times (!)

 

[marqueemoon]

As promised @hipur, here's a pic of the suspension setup. It is pretty archaic, being based on what classic Vespas use, but I find it OK... depends on what you're used to I guess. I've removed the shiny chrome guard thing off the bottom link so you can see it better.

So is yours much different to this then?

 

[hipur]

Thanks for sharing. Is the brake caliper bracket just floating from onde side?

This is mine. It is AWFUL. No dampening, just springs. Bottoms out every time. With a shorter wheelbase and less trail distance, it's very hard to handle the scooter in slow speeds.

 

[hipur]

BTW, there is a nice speedo you can purchase in the UK, from 2Twenty scooters. Don't know if it is plug and play, but here's the link.

S3 digital counter

S3 digital counter for 2Twenty Roma model

www.2twentyscooters.com

 

[marqueemoon]

BTW, there is a nice speedo you can purchase in the UK, from 2Twenty scooters. Don't know if it is plug and play, but here's the link.

Thanks, that looks like it would fit straight in. Unfortunately I've already chopped the headset up to make the other one fit, so it's staying like that now.

Yeah, in the pic above the caliper bracket should be bolted up behind the shock... that is the spares bike and the caliper is seized, so I just removed it so I can push the scooter around.

My favoured battery builder has been in touch, he's been ill but is taking orders again, so hopefully I'll have a 72V battery before very much longer.