I think something is wrong with my battery!
The list of things that can actually go wrong with a battery pack is actually pretty short. While they are intimidating they are rather simple devices. I want to make a list and go through each of them with you. How dangerous each problem might be. How we can troubleshoot the problems, and what can be done to resolve the problems.
Battery Problems:
CONTROLLER WONT POWER ON/0 VOLTS ON XT-60:
The main fuse on the pack is blown.
You can test this by putting the Neg probe of your meter in the XT60 neg and testing for voltage on both sides of the fuse with the positive lead. If one side has voltage and the other does not then the fuse needs to be replaced. The most common cause for this is a blown ESC, usually the best way to test your motor controller is to probe the positive and negative on the controller for continuity. If there is continuity then an internal short in the controller is what blew your controller fuse, you will need to replace or repair the controller before plugging a battery into it again. This is the most common reason for this type of failure. We normally do not cover this under warranty unless the motor controller was purchased through us and is still under warranty.
The Battery has been drained completely dead
We don’t see this too often however there are a few cases where this can happen. We have found that the Floatwheel XRV kit, GTV kit, and PintV kit all have a parasitic drain of approximately 1.6ma when they are powered off. This is enough to kill basically any battery pack within about 2 months time. If you have one of these kits it is imperative that you maintain charging it even in the off season. The other common reason we have seen this happen is with the use of latching switches. Vesc has an automatic shutdown feature that usually defaults to 30 min. Latching/Toggle switches over ride this automatic shutdown. So if the board is accidently left powered on or if the button is accidently pressed then the board will remain powered on until the battery is drained to the point of no return. When testing for this you can meter the XT60 on the battery Its very rare to see a pack that is 0V usually you will see something there like 5v-30v or something. Anything that is under 2.5v/cell is a cooked battery. Usually local hardware stores can handle recycling these packs. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REVIVE PACKS THAT HAVE BEEN DRAINED BELOW 2.5V. While doing so may work There are dendrites that form inside the cells and the battery is permanantly a fire hazard even when not charging or in use. The only safe thing to do is to drain the pack as low as possible and recycle it. We normally do not cover this under warranty because We have no control of what you plug your battery into, how you manage the charging of your pack or your controller configuration.
Broken weld/bad cell
Lets be honest some of you ride the heck out of these boards. Hard riders are going off giant jumps and drops and even easy going riders subject the battery to nonstop vibration when they ride. It is very rare that welds break but they can and do happen. There are a couple ways to diagnose this depending on what battery pack you have, bad cells and failed welds have basically the same troubleshooting steps.
1P pack, Probing the Xt60 will either give 0 volts or a floating voltage bouncing around between 0v and expected pack voltage. If you stick your negetive probe into the XT60 neg and start probing the balance leads according to out Troubleshooting guide you will see the voltage increment up by approximately 3.6v if suddenly the readings go to 0v that indicates that there may be a broken weld. if the voltages simply plateau This maybe because of pack design or some cells have been drained to 0v which is an entirely different issue i’ll talk about later. If you suspect to have a 1P pack with a broken weld do NOT ride it, the board is extremly likely to cut out at any moment.
2P pack: Usually only 1 weld fails at a time so probing the XT60 will still give good results and the board will likely operate normally. You would notice this may be a problem because a single cell would be severly out of balance on the BMS app. To trouble shoot this we would monitor the app while either draining or charging the pack. if the Cell in question charges or discharges at a rate twice as fast as all of the other cells (meaning it would be the highest cell when charged and the lowest cell when discharged) then one of the cells in the particular group is either not connected or has failed. If the cell maintains the same amount of imbalance then it is possible the pack only needs to be balanced and there maybe another cause for the imbalance to have occured.
This happens to less than 1% of our packs.
We almost always cover this under warranty unless there is significant/obvious physical damage to the pack.
Incorrect voltage on the balance leads
Failed PTC/Self resetting fuse
Our battery packs have what is called PTC (Polymeric Positive Temperature Coefficient device) also know as self resetting fuses. We added these becasue we had several customer short their BMS to their rear LED bar and it would cause significant damage to the batteyr, bms , and LED bar. Our fuses are only rated for 50v so a short between 2 pins that have a relative voltage above 50v will permanantly trip the fuse. While this is inconvenient it is still better than not having them. You may wonder why we didn’t spec fuses that can handle the full pack voltage. The reason the fuses are not designed to handle full pack voltage is because of of the size of PTC that can handle both the voltage and current are not practical for the application. You can diagnose this issue by following along with our troubleshooting guide if a random cell is reading 0v and the rest are good this is possibly the issue. There is no safety concerns here. the cells themselves would be completly fine. The issue must be resolved before charging the battery. We normally cover this under warranty, subjecting them to voltage above the 50v can be identified because the traces on the PCB will have indications of overheating and this would void the warranty.
Broken Solder joint
It is possible for the solder joints to fail on the ends of the balance fingers on the pcb. It is generally hard to visually inspect this bease we glue these fingers down aswell. You can diagnose this issue by following along with our troubleshooting guide if a random cell is reading 0v and the rest are good this is possibly the issue. There is no safety concerns here, the cells themselves would be completly fine. The issue must be resolved before charging the battery. We normally cover this under warranty with the exception of significant/obvious damage.
Does not Charge even without BMS:
Main fuse on the pack is blown
see above.
Reversed charger polarity
Some of our packs have built in charge port protection. This does protect against reverse polarity. If you plug a charger into the battey XT30 and its reversed nothing will happen. Use a meter to verify you have the correct polarity on your charger.
Failed weld/bad cell
See above.
Physically Damaged:
This seems pretty obvious but figured I would throw it in here anyway. If any of the following happen to your battery the cells it will no longer work properly and is no long safe to use.
It has been dropped or crushed and there are visible dents in the cells.
It has been subjected to water and there are stains on the fishpaper or visible rust inside the pack.
A cell wall has been punctured likely by a screw or by a object breaching the battery enclosure.
Burn marks on the battery pack from heat or fire.
attempting to weld more cells onto the pack.
This type of damage will almost never be covered under warranty and all of this are a pretty immediate fire hazard.
SSBMS Problems:
2 or more cells are reading extremely high and or low values in the app:
Disconnected balance lead
This may look alarming seeing a cell at 10v and one at 0v but rest assured that is not the case. This is what the BMS reports when it doesn’t see a cell connected to one of its pins. This could be from a failed solder joint in the pack, a failed PTC, a damaged balance plug on the pack, not fully seated balance jumpers, or bad solder joints on the BMS itself. The best way to diagnose this issue is by following our troubleshooting guide and sending your results to support@indyspeedcontrol.com This way we can help you figure out where the issue lies. There is no safety concern here, it is physically impossible to charge a cell that high and the BMS will not allow charging until the issue is resolved. This depends on what the cause is that determines if it will be covered under warranty. No matter what the cause is working with us will help resolve the issue as fast as possible.
Everything looks normal but it refuses to charge:
Broken charge diode
On the V2 SSBMS (White PCB) There is a diode right next to the NTC input that can collide with the battery in most common OW installs. Vibration causes this diode to break off. The symptoms will be that the BMS connects via Bluetooth and all of the cells and everything looks normal in the app but it refuses to charge. You can vidually check the diode and see if it is loose using your finger. The problem has been solved with the V3 SSBMS. We almost always cover this under warranty.
