Need help identifying wires on Zapino 3kW hub motor

Hi everyone - I'm the original owner of a 2008 (or 2007?) Zapino scooter, and I am having what I think are controller problems. With new, charged batteries, upon even mild acceleration the controller/motor appears to jump into the "protective" mode - that is, the maximum power draw is about half of normal, and of course so is the speed. It has always done this when the battery voltage gets low, as a protection against too much current draw I suppose. But now it does it even with new batteries fresh off the charger. I'm monitoring the voltage of each battery and all looks good.

I tore things apart and found two 3-phase controllers connected to the motor. The motor is reported to be a 3 kW, 6-phase motor. Each controller feeds 3 phases. I'm willing to buy a pair of new controllers such as ( https://electricscooterparts.com/hookup/SPD-602000BLDC.pdf ), but the problem is trying to figure out which Hall-effect sensor wire corresponds to which power wire on the motor.

The thin wires going from the controller to the motor are labeled "HA", "HB", and "HC", which I'm guessing mean the Hall-effect sensors for phases A, B, and C. The thin wires going into the motor are two each of the colors (at the motor) yellow, blue, and brown. The 6 power wires to the motor are yellow, blue, green, red, white, and black. So there are 6 Hall-effect wires (2 yellow, 2 blue, and 2 brown) and 6 uniquely-colored power wires. I was hoping that I would find 6 uniquely-colored Hall-effect wires which corresponded to the 6 uniquely-colored power wires, but no such luck.

My question is this: does anyone know a way of determining which Hall-effect sensor wire corresponds to which power wire? I don't see how I'm going to be able to replace the controllers without knowing this.

You should be able to tell which halls go to which set of phases by looking inside the original controller.

That said, I have done it by trial and error after grinding my motor wires at the axle in a crash, and I had to replace them resulting in no way to tell which were which. The motor will actually run with the halls and phases crossed, but it runs a little hotter, with less torque at launch, a higher unloaded rpm, and a bit more noise on takeoff. I actually ran mine at 103mph on the highway with the hall/phase wires crossed. I had a year of running the bike with the wires right, so I could tell things weren't quite right, but at the same time I did the rewire job, I did major heat dissipation mods, so I wasn't risking a meltdown. Having them crossed results in a 3° timing advance, which causes extra heat and a loss of some low end torque.

Take a closeup pic of the end of the 10 wire hall connector. If it's the same factory original as the motors I have, then I can tell you which are which.

The best thing you can do, is get that great motor off of the heavy pig scooter and build a high power high speed ebike with it.

Sorry, I just realized you have a MidMonster, not a HubMonster. The same applies, except that it's slightly smaller and lower Kv. I run one at 115V nominal with the smallest 10" tire I could find, and the result with 75A battery side per controller is my ebike with the most brutal acceleration of any of my bikes and a top speed of about 70mph. That's 150A max input at a minimum voltage on a fresh charge of about 120V, so 18kw peak input into the motor. It is so fun to ride I commuted for over a year daily with 20mi each way. The way in was a net altitude gain of about 250m and always a headwind, so especially when I showed snacking on motorcycles it would get a bit hotter than I liked, so I hit it with some cold water with the hose most days upon arrival. It ran much cooler on the way home and never felt the need to hose it down.

John - there is no "connector" between the motor and the controller; just an ugly wire harness in which there are various splices. I had to slit the shrink tube off this bundle to see which wires from the controller go to which wires from the motor.

Looking at the original pair of controllers, there is extremely hard-to-read printing next to each point at which each power wire is attached. There are two green wires each labeled, I think, "MA" . These two join together and feed the BLACK power wire entering the motor. There is a green wire and a yellow wire, labeled "MC3" and "MC", respectively. These two join together and go to the WHITE power wire entering the motor. Finally, and weirdly, there is a single, fatter, yellow wire labeled "MB" which joins the RED power wire. The pattern is repeated for the second controller, only the wires are spliced to the GREEN, BLUE, and YELLOW power wires of the controller.

So I can take a guess and assume that "MA" and "MA" correspond to the Hall sensor labeled "HA", "MB" corresponds to "HB", and "MC3" and "MC" correspond to "HC" . But given the hard-to-read cryptic labels, I'd like to see if there is a way to test with a volt meter or oscilloscope if my guesses are right. I'm afraid that if I guess wrong I will blow up the controllers and/or the motor.

I'm also not sure what you mean by having the wires "crossed". Since this is a 6-phase motor, there are 6 Hall-effect sensors and 6 power wires and I could come up with dozens of combinations, not just two. It also seems weird that the motor seems to have 3 pairs of Hall-effect sensor wires: one pair BROWN, one pair BLUE, one pair YELLOW. Wouldn't you expect there to be six unique colors for these to correspond to the 6 colors of the power wires? Is there some principle in a 6-phase motor that there are 3 pairs of Hall sensors which are interchangeable?

The phase wires are easily identifiable by measuring continuity to determine the two sets. The halls you said you have 2 sets of YBG. All of my 6 phase motors have 2 separately sheathed bundles of hall wires coming out of the axle. If you don't have even that, then you'd have to power up one set of halls with 5V and see which YBG halls get a signal when you spin the wheel. That will give you your two sets of halls.

If you have cut your harness somewhere between the controller and motor, then you're SOL as far as easy identification, though if you strip it open back past the splice closest to the motor, you may find something grouping and identifying the two sets of halls. Mine generally have a blue or green piece of heat shrink on the bundle for the YGB set of phase wires.

To avoid ever blowing a controller during wire identification I use alligator jumper wires to connect power to the controller and to the phases. Just be careful to avoid shorts, and the small gauge wire will act like a fuse and prevent high current from blowing anything. Get the wiring correct for one controller at a time, since it runs fine on half the motor. It's actually not a true 6 phase, but a double 3 phase motor wound on alternating teeth of the stator.

great thread for future reference.