Experience with Fazua

[jonton]

I thought I'd share a positive experience I've recently had with Fazua.

It all started when I saw an unused frame and fork set for a Focus Paralane2 for sale at a very good price. It was the right size and carbon, so I was intrigued whether I could buy a donor bike with a Fazua unit and build it up myself. After a month or two going down the rabbit hole of searching for components I had a cheap donor and set about disassembling it.

Unfortunately the wiring connectors at the bottom bracket transmission were set in quite tightly and when I pulled out the plug to the remote on the handlebars, one of the pins in the socket snapped off. (See picture). "Uhg", I thought, "that's going to be expensive." I expected that I'd have to get another transmission, which are expensive to find as replacements. So after a month or so of inaction and feeling sorry for myself I finally decided to contacted the support at Fazua. I pleaded stupidity and asking for help. They got right back to me the next day and explained that I could use the other black socket on the transmission, which is normally used for the optional lighting connector, to plug in the remote.

Which I did and the bike started up first time, allowed me to update the firmware and I was away. Amazing.

It was a great experience at customer care and the bike is amazing. Just the right level of assistance and still beautiful to ride without the motor clipped in.

 

[Waynemarlow]

There is indeed a lot to like about the Fazua system, lightweight, reasonable power and good backup largely. But the minute you sidetrack at all from factory settings or you want to create your own battery / charging system, forget it.

For example I ended up with a battery that had gone below 1V on the first two sets of cells ( evidently the BMS will continue to draw current until the cells die unless you charge the main unit regularly. Fitted two sets of same brand and type cells only to find that if you drop the BMS voltage too low, its game over for the whole pack. 36 volt chargers are cheap as chips, Fazua's are expensive as you can get but the battery will only charge after a CanBus command from the charger to battery.

Upper limit speed control is a pain in the proverbial, Fazua will change online your speed limit by 0.1Kph if they see its set to high. Equally every max speed and max speed under motor power is recorded and available to the factory when hooked up to their diagnostics. Equally that diagnostics is not that great, it couldn't find a speed sensor fault on my unit and only by luck of changing the speed sensor were my problems sorted.

Yes I like my Fazua system but after having the Bafang motors and all the available mods and repair parts, unless you want factory fit and forget with warranty, Fazua is somewhat a pain.

 

[jonton]

That's a great insight Wayne, very good points.

A lot of the joy of this setup for me is that (apart from just being a beautiful looking bike) I can whip off the motor after my commute and then enjoy the bike as an acoustic gravel bike on the trails around home. And I've got that satisfaction of having built it up myself out of parts.

Have you got any tips on how to crack open the battery pack? I have a spare broken one and I'd like to see the internals. I've got quite a lot of professional experience with microcontrollers and CANBUS and it'd be interesting to see if I could debug any of it.

 

[Waynemarlow]

My battery was the early version and simply a series of screws holding the cases together.

Have a look at the thread

Fazua Battery Mystery how do you get 36V from 17 Batteries

I'm the first owner of it and I have the bike less than 6 month so it is a warranty issue I created a support ticket on their website, with a video and pictures how the battery fails to charge and log file of their diagnose software. it is really strange that the BMS has a STM32L4 chip on it...

endless-sphere.com

 

[jonton]

Ah, unfortunately I have the later 250x version that appears to be clipped together in a way that if you try to prise it apart it will break the plastic tabs. I'll give it a go one evening, with a bucket of sand close by just incase it all goes horribly wrong.

Thanks for the quick reply.