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[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Early last year (April 2018), my 2016 DSR's onboard charger (Calex / GreenWattPower EVC 1300), after 31000 miles. Prior to that, my DC-DC converter failed and I replaced it myself.

I had the money at the time to upgrade my DigiNow V1 tank installation to a V2 pan installation, and took the opportunity to disassemble the onboard charger for the benefit of the community, to understand the nature of at least one onboard failure, and hopefully shed light on other instances of this vexing problem.

I've published my findings to the unofficial manual wiki as a separate page. It is currently unlinked, because it's a touchy topic. https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Calex_Charger_Teardown

For what it's worth, I decided to disclose this because I hope (and predict without any confirmation other than inference from the teasers) that the coming SR/F model and its platform will no longer equip this Calex model. Also, I wanted to get this information out of my extensive private notes so that the knowledge would not go stale.

[NEW2elec]

I was going to ask if anyone had an idea of what exactly has been going wrong with these chargers but I didn't think anyone had torn one down.

So where is the biggest flaw or is it just a weak backed camel with too many straws?

Too much heat build up? 
Not sturdy enough to take the vibrations of riding?
Bad or cheap components?
A combination of all of it?

I've also wondered if using an aux quick charger would help carry enough of the load to increase it's life?

[Curt]

Very interesting! Rubber potting seems like too much weight to be purely structural. I'd vote waterproofing and/or fireproofing, or maybe heat sinking.

[MVetter]

Very interesting! Rubber potting seems like too much weight to be purely structural. I'd vote waterproofing and/or fireproofing, or maybe heat sinking.

It currently uses the battery as a heat sink.

[ashnazg]

Brian, are you interested in other failed onboards to autopsy?  I just got my onboard removed from my '15 SR on Saturday.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

No, I'm not. I'd rather see a pre-failure instance. Also, my tiny garage space can't deal with more Zero parts right now, especially ones which are totally unusable.

The work to de-pot the board took a few hours of painstaking work. It was like an archaeological dig, trying to avoid damaging intact components that I couldn't see nor had direct evidence of their location.

You could use my final photos to de-pot a board faster than I did, though.

[togo]

> ... I've published my findings to the unofficial manual wiki as a separate page
> https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Calex_Charger_Teardown

Thanks for doing that.  Hopefully it will help others repair theirs.

[alpha1511]

I showed Brian's charger photo to one of Zero rider in Taiwan early today.
He also had tear down his broken charger last year.
He told me that it looks like Brian's charger was burned all the way from PFC part to LLC part.
Since I am not an electronic technician, I have no idea what he was saying at all...

Anyway, different failure charger have different symptoms.
Looks like there are many reason why these chargers keep broken...
My friends charger was broken due to a burned IC.

The attachment is a photo of each parts' functions of this charger.
However, this charger seems have different board layout to Brian's charger.

I am not familiar with forum posting, so I upload the tear down photos to my blog with some descriptions.
https://zeromotorcyclenotes.blogspot.com/2019/02/stock-charger-teardown.html

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Thank you! I agree with their assessment and appreciate that you published it where I can cite it.

It happens that I try to say the absolute minimum statement I can support at all times, and wait for independent confirmation so there's more communication going on and cross-checking of findings and perspectives.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

I find that this URL works (.html vs .htm):
https://zeromotorcyclenotes.blogspot.com/2019/02/stock-charger-teardown.html

[alpha1511]

haha, I must accidently delete that "l"

Almost all the Zero in Taiwan are  MY15 bikes.
These charger problems are really annoying...
I bought a used charger after my first one broken.
And I even bought another used charger as spare part... 

I find that this URL works (.html vs .htm):
https://zeromotorcyclenotes.blogspot.com/2019/02/stock-charger-teardown.html

[Doug S]

That's some excellent work, Brian.

I'm curious about how it was potted up. Was it a silicone-based sort of thing or something harder? How did you get it out?

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

That's some excellent work, Brian.

I'm curious about how it was potted up. Was it a silicone-based sort of thing or something harder? How did you get it out?

Thanks. It's a rubbery potting (pencil eraser texture) and relatively soft. A box-cutter knife was sufficient to work on it but I had some small wood-carving implements for the detail work.

The primary concern was incrementally discovering the layout of the board while avoiding damaging anything, without a guide. Of course, I was less careful once I figured out that the level of damage ensured I wouldn't get a good board trace.

I could speculate about the potting, but I really am unpracticed in this area and the engineering talk I've heard around this is often sort of meandering and discursive, which often leaves me without hypotheses I can test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potting_(electronics)

[KrazyEd]

My 2016 SR had several replaced under warranty.
A few of them happened at the same outlet at the same percentage of charge.
It dawned on me that where other chargers on other vehicles would just give up
and NOT charge, causing no problems. It seems that the Zero will continue trying
to work even if the voltage is too low. My Volt defaults to an 8 amp draw and has
to be manually set to 12 amps whenever plugged in to 110. I would imagine that
if Zero implemented something like this, the problem would disappear.

[caza]

One of the big differences I noticed on my replacement charger VS my failed 2015 charger is waterproofing.

The new charger had silicone on all the the seams, and clear adhesive strips over the rubber.

I would not be surprised if water damage was causing shorts in older chargers and damaging components over the long term.

My bike had over 21k miles on it when the charger failed. I'll eventually tear mine down as well.