The easiest on-bike replacement would be the Evtricity or DigiNow charging systems. Evtricity seems to ship quicker and support their product better, if they have some in stock, though you will want to verify that it can function without any stock chargers. The DigiNow system is possibly more weather resistant, but those claims of waterproof from Terry are his opinion. In any normal installation you're going to have fan modules which are definitely not waterproof. A fan failure due to debris damaged my own DigiNow SCv2 system to the point where a replacement fan was not sufficient and repair was not feasible. That module later failed completely and was not covered by DigiNow warranty. I think these water and dust ingress resistance claims are largely based on opinion and estimation not based on any kind of standard testing for the products as they are shipping to customers.
It is true that neither DigiNow or EVTricity can afford standardized independent testing of their configurations, but their upstream suppliers can and seem to have done so, and this is not ignorable.
While it's unfortunate (and we don't know all the details) that you lost a unit that way, and true that Terry's expectations and way of operating can't work for most of us, the component that EVTricity ships is not designed for being on a vehicle at all. They're stationary server power supplies for a clean controlled environment, and the vendor datasheets claim nothing about dust, moisture, water, or vibration, so I want to be clear that they are not a comparable option.
Maybe it's worth making an analogy to computer security where one considers the routes to failure and mitigation strategies to minimize the risks. An enclosure to deflect weathering and debris from the fan and 12V circuit wiring does seem in order for DigiNow equipment. This seems mainly addressed by their recommended tank installation, but could be improved.
Other routes include things like dampening vibrations using e.g. DigiNow's bracket fastening. For EVTricity's R48-2000e3, I'd want it fully enclosed in a watertight case while riding, wrapped in a large amount of padding, and then secured independently to avoid cable wear and motion. And even then, the equipment is not rated for the environment and could wear and fail on the primary components rather than secondary 12V circuits.
Basically, you'd have to do a lot of work to eliminate a class of vulnerabilities the R48 has just on its own that the Elcon does not.
Terry's installation for the belly pan location has not been certified for a rating against water and dust ingress; we do know that he's sprayed down the bare SCv2 charging modules with water while they are working to remove heat from that system. In that sense the SCv2 charging modules installed on Terry's DigiNow SCv2 system are known to be water resistant, but it should not be left omitted that the warranty from DigiNow is void in that configuration.
Yes, and DigiNow's recommended installation path is chosen to mitigate those risk vectors as I've mentioned above.
Growing tired of the claims that any of these systems are waterproof. They're not certified or tested in the configurations being shipped to customers to be waterproof, and to my knowledge no one has done standard testing against water and/or dust ingress.
Yeah, we could do with more careful language about all this; I wish I had the time and funding to develop some robust packaging for these vendors, but in the meantime we'll have to lay out risks honestly so we don't wind up with broken bikes.
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Topic: Yet another charger issue? 16 SR (Read 2126 times)