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[most]

PS I tried to post below intro on the Brammoforum but the text was cropped after a few words. I guess most of you are active in both worlds, so  I will repeat it here as well - however I‘m active here already for my Energica…


Hi everyone here in this Brammo section,

my name is Matthias, 57. I have quite a longer history of motorbikes with BMW‘s Boxer being a reoccurring phenomenon. In 2018 I bought an older Vectrix VX2 scooter which was my entry into electric bikes. While waiting for BMS and LiFePo4 Batteries from China to swap with the stock lead batteries I was test riding a Zero DSR. BIG mistake. Sold the Vectrix immediately and bought a dealer‘s demo Zero DS in 2019.
Promised my wife that at riding seaons end either my BMW R1200GS or the Zero would be sold.
Well, I sold both and went for an Energica SS9+. That one I lost in a barn fire I (not caused by the bike), insurance paid right away and I went for a Enerigica Ribelle. Again sold the Ribelle late 2022 when Energica announced the Experia.
I still have the Experia, but again made some money with buy-polish/repair-sell of a series of other bikes, with brought me to my current second bike: R1250GS (again BMW).
Since my Zero DS days I have two friends riding Brammo Empulse, and actually I also have considered a Brammo when I was looking to by that Zero back in 2019. But the gearbox of the Empulse rather prevented me from buying it. I haven‘t had the Empulse on my radar those days - but set BRAMMO as a constant search in my „Kleinanzeigen“ (the German version of craigslist), where occasionally bikes would appear for sale. Nowadays much more rarely, though…

So it was a no-brainer when someone sold that Empulse Plus a week ago, non-riding as it would not accept any charge after standing for three years and advertised it as „for spare parts“. Picked it up yesterday. I will continue that story in the Enertia Plus section!
…and don‘t accuse me of following the reoccurring pattern of collecting electric motorcycles from bankrupted companies …

What I am looks for in particular is how to revive the batteries. The bike wouldn‘t fire up on its own, but initially the charging did start with errors „system fault C3“ and „severe undervoltage“ but charging seem to go on for 40mins. The bike shuts off afterwards. When I replug the charger, all I can see is again severe undervoltage and SOC 100% - but key-on does not work. Probably dead cells.

Any proposed next step?

[MVetter]

Dispose of the old pack and build a new one from scratch? There's no 'revive' on cells that old. They're done.

[most]

I was afraid you or someone else might say that. I am only digging into Enertia topics since a week or so, but I did not find a single one rebuild report that was successful. Also, Brammo battery BMS seem to communicate with the bike and a newly build battery would require a BMS that does that identically. Or reprogram the VCU?!
Anyway, I might be able to do relative simple stuff like I have built a 12V LiFePo4 with Daly BMS - but programming a controller or a BMS, that’s beyond my capabilities.

Did anyone here built a Enertia Plus battery from scratch?

[most]

Update:

I have built a battery diagnosis cable and inspected the batteries, only to find out that their BMSses has cut them off in due time. Lowest cell still had 2,5x volt. So an external power supply with CC=>CV did the trick. I started with 0.5 A and increased step-by-step to 3A.
At first I was charging both 44V batteries individually. During later trials I also charged both batteries in series. Unfortunately, the internal charger would not receive valid signals from the VCU, so the bike does not start charging with the internal charger. I have added an Anderson connector to the 2s batteries and since then am charging the bike „the hard way“ by excluding the VCU and going onto the poles directly. For whatever reason they are balancing even though the VCU is not active - the drift between the two blocks is less than 15mV. I will have to observe that for every charge as it might also be accidental that the batteries are so well balanced.

Finally, I have reassembled the bike and will register it soon. Tires already new, also brake fluid exchanged. Time to ride now!!!

[Curt]

Good going!

It sounds like the VCU may be the reason the bike was left for dead?

Does the range indicator work properly, and will you measure the range on a full charge to see how healthy the batteries are?

[most]

Hi - the range indicator at least shows a range that seems to be not to far off: 56km on a full charge. Within a week, the batteries did not loose any charge and you can be pretty sure that I will observe range to get an idea about battery health.
Yes, I also suspect the VCU. Not sure how deep you are involved into this subject; these are the levels that I have measured between VCU and charger at the connector C-04:

Pin C-04	Key-Off	Key-On	Charging
1 - NC	.	.	.
2 - FanPWR_Out	+1.15V	+1.1V	+1.15V
3 - FanPWR_in	GND	+12V	+12.5V
4 - AC_SENSE	+1.44V	+1.45V	+9.4V
5 - WARNING	+1.5V	+1.5V	+1.5V
6 - NC	.	.	.
7 - BATT -	.	closed	.
8 - NC	.	.	.
9 - C2	open	open	+0.6V
10 - FAULT	+1.5V	+1.5V	+1.5V
11 - C1	open	open	+0.6V
12 - NC	.	.	.

I am in contact of someone here in Germany that has measured the level of C1 to be 2,5V when the bike is charging correctly. I will add the wiring diagram of reference.

[Specter]

You CAN revive dead cells, sometimes you have to hot shot them  because they fell below the limit that the BMS will allow them to take a charge.

The main problem is, as they are sitting there in a low state of charge, things are happening chemically and physically inside them.  Dendrites are growing and all sorts of evil.

You may successfully bring it back to life but there is a chance it may be a very short lived life as with the big currents that are now going thru them since they are being used again, things start expanding, contracting with heat and moving around.  Dendrites break off and / or touch and then it's fire time.

You've read this countless times already i am sure, pleas be VERY careful.   The ion chems just do NOT play nice when they touch off, and are very suceptable to bad things once they've been depleted badly especially if allowed to set.

The ferro chemistries you find in home storage units bla bla are a lot safer of course, but, the li Ion.   please just be careful or have a fire blanket ready if it does go off or keep it outside for a bit until you know they are stable.

good luck

[most]

Thanks! Yes I am aware of the danger of LiIon cell chemistry.
Initially, I was assuming that I have to bring cells back from the dead - however cells that are above 2.5V should not have developed excessive dendrites yet. So hopefully there are no dead corpses .

Also, the bike records a CSV log file onto a memory stick - I am reviewing the data after each ride and before & after charging. Last, I am charging outside away from my Experia and my garden shed under a bike garage (tent). It still can lead to a thermal runaway, but I think I am a little bit prepared and aware . Let´s hope for the best.

Will keep you posted…

[Specter]

It's not only the voltage but the time sitting there as well.  partially charged or discharged, just sitting in a low state is bad.  You have to remember that with lith, the voltage pretty much falls off a cliff, so even though a  4 volt battery may still be reading 2 volts, it's still like 99.4 percent totally discharged.  At that point whether it's 0.5 volts or 2 volts is a small difference, the damage is been done.

I hear if you throw them on the ground it will break the dendrites off, then stick them in the washing machine on the spin cycle it will fling them to the outsides of the cell where they won't touch any of the innards    and they should be safe then.

Aaron

[most]

Aaron I know. What shall I say?

There is a capacity chart under load in the battery spec sheet - I will attach it. That cliff you mention starts at about 38V, maybe 36V - under at least 1C load. For this 12s pack it means 3V under load at best. The cells were between 2,5x and 3V - without load though, but without question already below depleted. A few days/weeks more… 3 months at best, and they would have been beyond saving. I am fully aware of that!

The batteries also demonstrated the bad shape they’re in as with 500mA charge current for one hour in the voltage already „recovered“ to 3.xxV already. 500mA for an hour is next to nothing in recharged capacity!!

I have to live with what I’ve got. Just need to be super careful.

[most]

Fast forward 8 weeks later…
My apologies upfront for the long message - maybe this helps someone in a similar situation.

The batteries are what I would call successfully revived. Every time I recharge I have put the bike outside under a separate roof where a fire cannot cause further damage. The diagnostic tool shows a good balance and the bike does not loose an awful lot of charge over time (circa 2-3% SOC over 3 weeks).
The bike is registered so I can ride it on public streets - which I do. And found a strange misbehavior:
It appears to have *VERY* little power from start. Hard to guess, but I would say probably not even 1kW. On a traffic light stop, even 50cc scooters are much faster. I am slowing down ALL other traffic. But as it gains speed it also gains power and at the end it does reach about a 100kmph - just as advertised. The dashboard also indicates current power and it supports what I observe.
Also, the diag file (the bike has a USB drive where it constantly records all sorts of variables) shows high motor temps up to 110degC and high controller temps up to 85degC. This leads to a thermal throttling message on the dash board and the bike is limited to 65kmph.
When I stop & measure both parts with an IR thermometer they are below 40degC.

So this indicates something‘s wrong between batteries, VCU, controller and motor. Maybe SW, maybe HW/electronics.

The batteries still have errors in the diagnostic tool, but I assume this is not the reason as the errors are about battery block imbalance (30mV allowed, my bike as 45-50mV) and temp sensors sometimes being off (4degC allowed, my bike has 4.2gedC). Also, the errors only show in the diagnostic laptop SW and not on the bike dashboard I again I assume they are not super critical.

I have started with the controller. I got my hands on a spare bike with one of two batterie blocks still present, the controller, a DC-DC and the motor. Not to mention the mechanical parts like fork springs, wheels, brakes… But no VCU.
I swapped the controller - no effect at all. Temps still go up and the VCU itself is still below 40degC - same for motor.

Next, I was luck to get my hands on a spare VCU. I was almost super certain that the error is with the VCU as the bike wiring diagrams do not show any temp sensors so when there is a too high controller temp reported it compels from a sensor on the VCU PCB. Conntected it and besides error codes indicating that the real time clock is not working (backup battery was dead, meanwhile replaced) the bike again works just as before  - apart from changed ODO.
Obviously the VCU was not the root cause. Guys I can‘t express how demotivated I was after that experience…

This leaves me with swapping the motor as last chance. There is a very small chance that the encoder is misaligned which triggers all sorts of strange behavior. I can‘t see the connection to high VCU but I do have the imagination that low power at low RPMs might be in connection to the encoder.

And this is the status of today. I do have a little time over this weekend but it is also a hell lot of screws to dismantle and definitively not done in an hour.

[most]

The skinny: Swapping the motor closed the issue of no power.

It took a couple of hours to dismantle the bike, taking out the rear support frame, the rear swing arm and wheel and only after that I was able to access the motor. I can't really say what was wrong with it - my best guess is as already stated the encoder being misaligned. So Sunday after an afgternoon locked in my garden shed and away from my family I replaced it and put all back together. Time was progressing so I decided to make a test ride without all plastic covers and the acceleration was already great from the start. Previously there was thermal throttling already after a few kilometers, now the bike managed 10kms with most of it highway speeds and a couple of 0-100 accelerations. Controller and motor temps both stayed within reasonal values (controller aroud 40degC, motor um to 65degC).
So this project is *almost* completed... one thing missing is the charger. So guys, if anyone here has a spare charger for a Brammo Enertia PLUS please contact me! Even if it is only for lending it for a charge test, that already would be great. The charger is rated with 100-240VAC input, so also 110V US chargers would do it!

So please reach out to me if you have any hints where I could get a charger!

ALl thanks for reading! My best regards to Karel and Robert who supported me all the way!!

[Curt]

Very impressive to say the least, going from a parts bike to a high-performing machine!

I'm curious about the health of the battery. If you charge it to full then ride, does the range estimate go down slowly, or does it plummet before leveling off?

[most]

The range estimate jumps happily up and down between 40 and 160km and is no use at all. I can‘t even see any systematics.
Yesterday, I started fully charged and got a range of 86km in mixed riding until the bike suddenly went from 12%SOC to complete stop. Had to wait a couple of mins until it would ride the last 3kms back home.
The only thing that still worries me is the motor temperature. But probably it is normal? Can anybody comment?

[Specter]

what's the temperature outside.  that's not sounding too bad if you are doing 60 to 70 mph.  bright sunny days, the sun beating down on stuff, especially in tropix / desert areas will add a lot of heat too.

Aaron