Qiewa QPower Scooter, fairly new, battery wont charge

[GiGaBaNEuk]

Ok so I had a small crash on my scooter. Basically the brakes failed and I had to fall on my side to slow down so I didnt go under a bus, lol

But since then the battery will not charge.
I checked the charge ports and everything is intact. I disconnected the battery from everything except the charge ports and it still wont charge.
Charger seems fine and there is no reason to suspect the charger is the issue.

I am sure it is something inside the blue shrinkwrapped battery box, but I do not know what to try next.

I am trying to get another battery sent to me as it is under warranty, but so far no response from the amazon seller.

anything I can do to get the current battery working/ confirm the exact issue?
I do not own any fancy electric meters or anything like that beyond standard bike tools.

That is a nice big pile of nearly new 18650s going to waste atm

 

[amberwolf]

To test the battery, you'll have to get a multimeter. They're cheap; harborfreigth and similar places have them for less than $10.

To find out where the problem is, if all connections and wires appear ok, checking things with a voltmeter, and if necessary an ohmmeter / continuity checker, is the next step. All those things are built into a multimeter, so getting one of those is your first step at this point.

BTW, if the charger was with you on the scooter at the time of the crash, it's easily possible that parts inside it have broken off and it's no longer working, even though it may light up an run it's fan, etc.

If the scooter still runs normally, and it's just charging that's the probem, it's less likely to be a battery problem than a charger or connection problem.


FWIW, a failure caused by a crash isn't covered by any warranty I know of, so I wouldn't expect them to respond. :/

 

[Voltron]

Def get a digital multimeter... Otherwise you'll just be guessing. Usually if you're at the blue wrapper already, you would have found a fuse if there was one in the wires from the charger port to the BMS. I have seen some batteries hit so hard that the BMS broke thru the shrink wrap on a cell and shorted itself out. But until you can check the output of the battery, and then the different groups once you cut it open, again, just guesswork without a meter.

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

If it doesn't charge or doesn't do anything when connected on the bike, then I doubt a multimeter will give you any useful information anyway. It will either read zero volt or some floating voltage, nothing really useful. Still, it's a nice and cheap tool to have so you should definitely get one, but it probably won't help much here.
I think it might be that the battery monitoring system disconnected somehow during the shock. Maybe it was a bit loose and the plugs moved. Or maybe the monitoring wires broke off, or the cells interconnexions. There are many possibilities unfortunately.
The only way to know what's going on will be to cut the heat shrink wrap.

If you have no idea what you are doing, which, and I mean no offense, seems to be the case, you might want to seek help from a friend who understands what's going on. Opening a lithium battery is no rocket science of course, but it's quite dangerous if you aren't a bit experienced. But I don't know how comfortable you are with DIY in general, so my assumption might be wrong, in which case forgive me. At least watch a bunch of video tutorials from youtube before attempting it.

The problem is likely easy to fix, but take some precautions

 

[GiGaBaNEuk]

Thanks guys. yeah it is certainly not the charger. that was at home.
I will pick up a meter at some point.
I am sure it is not the charge cables, i took it apart and inspected them as was mentioned. If it is those cables, the problem resides in the blue box end anyway.
oh and I did not tell the seller that it was caused by a crash, that would be silly of me at this point

It does indeed seem like the issues can be no where else except inside the battery wrap.

when I crashed, the battery was still half full. and it continued to operate as normal except for charging.
I have left it indoors since it had 20% power but it has been a few weeks now waiting for a response from the seller and now power level is critical.

I suspect loose controller is on the money. whilst this thing is very powerful and fast (3200w) the build quality is poor. in just 400 miles, the front lights have vibrated themselves off 3 times and the rear mudguard even snapped off just riding between work and home from vibration. as well as the brakes completely losing function within a few weeks (brake fluid fixed it, but im not sure yet if a leak or an air bubble)...So I would not be surprised to find the connections to be imperfect.

Guess there is nothing left but to crack open the battery, but I will have to wait until dealing with the seller is resolved in case I void my warranty.

 

[Voltron]

Don't take this the wrong way, but people crashing shit and breaking it, then covering it up to try to get someone else to pay for it just makes it harder for everybody that gets sent actually defective gear, and then has to convince the seller it came that way and they're not lying about it.

 

[fechter]

It won’t be legal to ship the battery back to the seller so you don’t have much to lose by opening the pack and taking a look.

Look for obvious loose wires, connectors or other damage.

 

[amberwolf]

when I crashed, the battery was still half full. and it continued to operate as normal except for charging.
I have left it indoors since it had 20% power but it has been a few weeks now waiting for a response from the seller and now power level is critical.

If it's been draining (wiht the scooter turned off and/or battery disconnected from it), then the BMS is still attached to the battery, and draining it a tiny bit all the time.

So it's unlikely that it's a loose connection inside the battery to the BMS cuasing the charging problem.

It's much more likly to be a broken wire betwen the charger and the battery (or rather the BMS) itself.

 

[GiGaBaNEuk]

Don't take this the wrong way, but people crashing shit and breaking it, then covering it up to try to get someone else to pay for it just makes it harder for everybody that gets sent actually defective gear, and then has to convince the seller it came that way and they're not lying about it.

I literally just fell to the side. the impact was no greater than if the scooter just fell over by itself sat in the porch. anything that claims to be an offroad vehicle that is that fragile deserves to lose a bit of profit for such a crap build quality.

It is brand new, just a few weeks old. it was brake failure that caused the crash in the first place, something that should not happen on something so new. they charged me thousands of pounds for a fragile defective piece of crap, they deserve it.