WARNING: Gotway Nikola production (assembly) issue [Solved]

[meepmeepmayer]

Sorry I meant those mica insulators, not actual thermal pads. How exactly is that mica stuff called?

[Chriull]

31 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

Sorry I meant those mica insulators, not actual thermal pads. How exactly is that mica stuff called?

In german glimmerscheibe/plättchen.

With google "glimmerscheibe für kühlkörper" or "glimmerscheibe to220" you'll find all of them....

[Lucas Alexander Oliver]

On 6/26/2019 at 9:47 AM, Marty Backe said:

The replacement boards the EWheels is getting have the new MOSFETs. EWheels customers won't have to spend any $$$

They are being sent out this week from Gotway, so we may have something the following week.

It may be a couple of weeks before I go back to the testing grounds 

So will we be able to send our wheel in again to have the board switched.    I’m not tech enough to want to try that repair.   It was hard enough for me to fix my v8.  And I never got the lights back on correctly. So I’m not risking messing up my beautiful nikola. 

[Marty Backe]

11 minutes ago, Lucas Alexander Oliver said:

So will we be able to send our wheel in again to have the board switched.    I’m not tech enough to want to try that repair.   It was hard enough for me to fix my v8.  And I never got the lights back on correctly. So I’m not risking messing up my beautiful nikola. 

Best to reach out to EWheels directly for questions like this.

[Marty Backe]

20 hours ago, Phil McLaughlin said:

Here is the second part of my video discussing the Gotway Nikola control board inspection and rebuild. This includes one more lab test and a detailed reassembly using thermal paste coupled with electrical insulation techniques. @Nils nailed it; I ended up publishing the director's cut.

Most importantly, now that I have finished documenting this thermal issue and its solutions... I HAVE MY NIKOLA BACK.

 

Thoroughly enjoyed Part 2. You now probably own the best thermally controlled EUC on the planet 

This is great evergreen content that will make great viewing years from now.

Thanks for the science experiment, and now enjoy your wheel in peace 

[Anagnorisis]

Hey guys I am new to EUC and I just purchased the Nikola from Jason over at Ewheels as my first EUC. Before I purchased I did some research and also watched Marty's overheat hill video and subsequent post mortem. Then, after watching Phil's video and looking at the assembly of the product it seems like it is a substandard assembly job from an electronics perspective. Since many of you are veterans of this activity do you guys find these types of quality issues with say, Kingsong or Inmotion? If so, is there not a major concern on face planting during a ride?

By the way, I chose the Nikola as my first wheel because I just didn't want to spend $1200 - $2000 for another and then another EUC as I progressed. It seemed like the Nikola was going to be my one and done.

In any case, I plan on learning to ride the Nikola for a couple of days next week when I get it and then cracking it open to perform the adjustments for heat dissipation that Phil shows in his video. 

(Thanks for the video's it was very educational. I wish I found this forum earlier, I may have decided on a different model, then again I may not have).

[Rywokast]

14 minutes ago, Anagnorisis said:

Hey guys I am new to EUC and I just purchased the Nikola from Jason over at Ewheels as my first EUC. Before I purchased I did some research and also watched Marty's overheat hill video and subsequent post mortem. Then, after watching Phil's video and looking at the assembly of the product it seems like it is a substandard assembly job from an electronics perspective. Since many of you are veterans of this activity do you guys find these types of quality issues with say, Kingsong or Inmotion? If so, is there not a major concern on face planting during a ride?

By the way, I chose the Nikola as my first wheel because I just didn't want to spend $1200 - $2000 for another and then another EUC as I progressed. It seemed like the Nikola was going to be my one and done.

In any case, I plan on learning to ride the Nikola for a couple of days next week when I get it and then cracking it open to perform the adjustments for heat dissipation that Phil shows in his video. 

(Thanks for the video's it was very educational. I wish I found this forum earlier, I may have decided on a different model, then again I may not have).

you will not find this type of build quality on kingsong or inmotion, they are impeccable.. hence why they are also more expensive.. there is no concern with face planting with normal usage on any modern wheel.. the msx, which is a gotway, has the best record for any euc ever made.. yet if you open it up, you will see the same thing, what appears to be some sort of experiment done by a 12 year old  your choice was a good one, and i think the nikola will be a great ride for years to come

[Marty Backe]

21 minutes ago, Anagnorisis said:

Hey guys I am new to EUC and I just purchased the Nikola from Jason over at Ewheels as my first EUC. Before I purchased I did some research and also watched Marty's overheat hill video and subsequent post mortem. Then, after watching Phil's video and looking at the assembly of the product it seems like it is a substandard assembly job from an electronics perspective. Since many of you are veterans of this activity do you guys find these types of quality issues with say, Kingsong or Inmotion? If so, is there not a major concern on face planting during a ride?

By the way, I chose the Nikola as my first wheel because I just didn't want to spend $1200 - $2000 for another and then another EUC as I progressed. It seemed like the Nikola was going to be my one and done.

In any case, I plan on learning to ride the Nikola for a couple of days next week when I get it and then cracking it open to perform the adjustments for heat dissipation that Phil shows in his video. 

(Thanks for the video's it was very educational. I wish I found this forum earlier, I may have decided on a different model, then again I may not have).

Modern performance wheels do not fail suddenly, out-of-the-blue. To be just riding along and have it shutoff on you because of a board failure is extremely rare. I can't even remember a case, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

Where they fail is when the wheel is being used under extreme conditions. This can include KingSong too btw, except in their case a fuse will blow instead of the control board. But the result is the same - faceplant. But just as what happened with me, you typically aren't riding very fast in these scenarios.

My test is a stress test. It takes the wheels to their limits. It's not meant to be representative riding although sometimes I will ride hills like that for pleasure. But it's rare.

I believe any circa 2019 performance wheel should survive. Think of my test as a means of exposing the weaknesses of wheels (whether they fail or just overheat). If a wheel passes with no issues it's a good indication that the wheel can take any kind of riding.

No, what you will have to worry about is poor judgement (riding too fast, no protection, etc) or more often, the lowly hidden pothole in the road 

[meepmeepmayer]

52 minutes ago, Anagnorisis said:

Since many of you are veterans of this activity do you guys find these types of quality issues with say, Kingsong or Inmotion? If so, is there not a major concern on face planting during a ride?

Hi.

All EUCs are badly built (in terms of build quality) from a Western standard.

This particular issue is an extremely rare occasion where safety is actually affected. There's maybe one issue like this per year in the entire market (on average). I'm thinking of stuff like this glue disaster, the Inmotion V10F fires, or the Gotway oscillation problem back in 2017. Naturally they tend to crop up in the first batch of a new wheel and only affect a small number of units and get quickly fixed due to their obvious impact. Just like this issue.

But modern/current EUCs are extremely safe in terms of the electronics suddenly failing. That virtually never happens.

Do not confuse safety (very good) with build quality (which is questionable). Firmware bugs, app bugs, freezing wheels, shoddy or messy build where you're wondering how some quite obvious possible failures (like water ingress) don't happen more often (but they don't!), etc. all are not safety-relevant. If they were, the manufacturers had to fix them, no way around it, exactly because a self-balancing vehicle has to work reliably all the time. By the way, wheels are getting better in the build quality department very fast, these examples are from the past already (but they still have quite some way to go).

So don't worry about unexpected (as in: one could not have expected it in a particular situation) faceplants, these simply don't happen.

The Nikola is a very fine wheel (and a sweet choice for a forever wheel!), as soon as it has a safe board. Judging from the MSX board and barring something completely unexpected, with the bigger mosfet Nikola board (essentially the same as the MSX board) that Jason will apparently ship out to all his Nikola customers and the huge heatsink and board space, you will have the new best/strongest board in existence (it will be matched by the upcoming 16X board). No worries

Edited June 29, 2019 by meepmeepmayer

[NYC_Frutips]

Would it still be okay to order a Nikola right now (as a beginner) to learn on and get the new board when Gotway supplies them> 

[wheelr]

45 minutes ago, NYC_Frutips said:

Would it still be okay to order a Nikola right now (as a beginner) to learn on and get the new board when Gotway supplies them> 

You don't want to buy a compromised (glued MOSFETs) Nikola as it could fail at any time. Get one you know has been fixed, ask your seller.

 

Edited June 29, 2019 by wheelr

[Nils]

1 hour ago, wheelr said:

You don't want to buy a compromised (glued MOSFETs) Nikola as it could fail at any time. Get one you know has been fixed, ask your seller.

Unfortunately no seller will be able to tell you whether a particular board has glue between the MOSFETs and the thermal pads or not (since Gotway has not acknowledged this particular problem to begin with as far as I know, we don't know about any changes to their manufacturing process). But your general advice is still a good one, but when buying a new wheel instead ask for the new motherboard with the TO-247 MOSFETs.  Those might still possibly have some glue on them, but presumably that would be the same for the MSX and no one has reported any problem with those. Even if the glue was introduced with the Nikola, then Gotway is more likely to have been paying attention to the issue since the production of the new boards, so that would still hold I'd say.

Edited June 29, 2019 by Nils

[meepmeepmayer]

19 minutes ago, Nils said:

(since Gotway has not acknowledged this particular problem to begin with as far as I know, we don't know about any changes to their manufacturing process)

I think they know. They're not stupid, just trying to coast by without what they should do (recall of the first batch or sending out replacement boards). The fact that @Jason McNeil got them to ship him replacement boards for all his Nikolas alone should have alerted them.

Also that Jason hasn't given an update here yet makes me believe the situation is still developing. I wonder what the French dealers are doing.

What I would do is wait if I wanted a Nikola. All boards from now on (maybe production date 20190627... and later?) should be good and glue-free. Waiting should also give a better TO-247 board on the 84V Nikola, I hope they will have those on all new Nikolas from now on, not just Jasons. So I'd just wait long enough until one gets such a wheel (also with the all-black new Plus design).

Of course if you buy from a source you know will have an eye on this issue, you can buy right now. So @NYC_Frutips if you buy from ewheels right now you're guaranteed to be good. Jason won't ship out Nikolas with bad boards anyways.

Edited June 29, 2019 by meepmeepmayer

[Nils]

10 minutes ago, meepmeepmayer said:

I think they know. They're not stupid, just trying to coast by without what they should do (recall of the first batch or sending out replacement boards). The fact that @Jason McNeil got them to ship him replacement boards for all his Nikolas alone should have alerted them.

Also that Jason hasn't given an update here yet makes me believe the situation is still developing. I wonder what the French dealers are doing.

What I would do is wait if I wanted a Nikola. All boards from now on (maybe production date 20190627... and later?) should be good and glue-free. Waiting should also give a better TO-247 board on the 84V Nikola, I hope they will have those on all new Nikolas from now on, not just Jasons. So I'd just wait long enough until one gets such a wheel (also with the all-black new Plus design).

Of course if you buy from a source you know will have an eye on this issue, you can buy right now. So @NYC_Frutips if you buy from ewheels right now you're guaranteed to be good. Jason won't ship out Nikolas with bad boards anyways.

I agree with them knowing (I assume they just don't want any admission of guilt), but I'd expect them to ship out the forthcoming wheels with new board with TO-247 MOSFETs, hence the suggestion it'd be a good tell-tale marker of what a good new wheel would have. Of course, they could and should have tightened the QA supervision even prior to that, but how would how a presumptive buyer know without any official acknowledgement?

Edited June 29, 2019 by Nils

[Phil McLaughlin]

12 hours ago, Anagnorisis said:

In any case, I plan on learning to ride the Nikola for a couple of days next week when I get it and then cracking it open to perform the adjustments for heat dissipation that Phil shows in his video. 

(Thanks for the video's it was very educational. I wish I found this forum earlier, I may have decided on a different model, then again I may not have).

Congratulations on the new wheel! Personally I love the Nikola and feel that the overall riding experience is probably the best that I have experienced.

I would probably not recommend that owners rebuild the current Nikola board at this point until we find out more about the situation with availability of the new board. Although we have a good DIY solution, it seems that Gotway’s response to this problem has been very strong and quick.

On a side note, I think that the rapid response to this quality issue is an example of the power of this forum. Knowledgable people working together can really move the dial!

[Marty Backe]

My gut tells me that most people who buy a Nikola will have no problems. According to Gotway, they have produced 600 Nikola's and we have not seen wide spread failures.

I will personally recommend that people only buy a Nikola that contains the new board. There are plenty of people in the world that will continue to be ignorant of the issue, and they can be the ones that deplete the existing stock. 

[Marty Backe]

4 hours ago, NYC_Frutips said:

Would it still be okay to order a Nikola right now (as a beginner) to learn on and get the new board when Gotway supplies them> 

If you want one, buy from EWheels but only with the condition that it has the new board. I'm sure they will accommodate you.

The Nikola will serve you for a long time. But please, wrap the hell out of your wheel so that it survives the learning experience. Go to a store like Home Depot and buy what's called a Low Residue Duct tape (3M makes it). This tape is a super cheap equivalent of Gaffers Tape, which leave zero residue when removed within ~6-months. Please don't use regular duct tape.

Then wrap the wheel in duct tape to prevent scratches and also tape rubber padding over the various parts that will hit the ground when the wheel falls.

Good luck, and have great fun learning 

[LucasD]

51 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

My gut tells me that most people who buy a Nikola will have no problems. According to Gotway, they have produced 600 Nikola's and we have not seen wide spread failures.

I will personally recommend that people only buy a Nikola that contains the new board. There are plenty of people in the world that will continue to be ignorant of the issue, and they can be the ones that deplete the existing stock. 

New board for sure is better, yet if they have still mosfet  hot glue, it most likely would fail the same...

[Marty Backe]

1 hour ago, LucasD said:

New board for sure is better, yet if they have still mosfet  hot glue, it most likely would fail the same...

I don't agree, but that's me.

Also, this is a new board and Gotway is now using a different type of thermal transfer sheet that would preclude the need for any adhesive.

[Heyzeus]

I really wish we could get a company like Honda or Toyota, that follows or atleast attempts to follow industry best practices when it comes to manufacturing/assembly, quality control, software/app development and has ISO standards as part of their normal routine, developing EUCs

Not that there wouldn't still be qc issues or potentially recalls and other problems, but I would just love to see their take on the vehicle and how their development compares to gotway and kingsong.

Unfortunately, i imagine besides not being popular enough there are too many liability issues for Honda/Toyota/etc to get into this business right now

[Chriull]

2 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

I don't agree, but that's me.

Also, this is a new board and Gotway is now using a different type of thermal transfer sheet that would preclude the need for any adhesive.

+1. GW takes this serious - they are putting much effort in their wheels. Imo that was just some thoughtless assembly simplification, someone without knowledge invented. They know now and the issue is solved!

Just some of these ?600? wheels already produced could have the issue.

[wheelr]

20 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

I don't agree, but that's me.

Also, this is a new board and Gotway is now using a different type of thermal transfer sheet that would preclude the need for any adhesive.

Didn't one of the Glued Nikolas burnt a MOSFET under very little stress? I could be wrong, but I remember reading that.

[Marty Backe]

1 minute ago, wheelr said:

Didn't one of the Glued Nikolas burnt a MOSFET under very little stress? I could be wrong, but I remember reading that.

Yes. It had been ridden up a hill, but apparently not a super steep hill.

However, you are responding to my comment made to @LucasD, where he believes that boards with the bigger MOSFETs will probably fail if glue is used. So I'm not sure what your point/question is 

[wheelr]

21 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

Yes. It had been ridden up a hill, but apparently not a super steep hill.

However, you are responding to my comment made to @LucasD, where he believes that boards with the bigger MOSFETs will probably fail if glue is used. So I'm not sure what your point/question is 

My point/question is: If a smaller glued MOSFET could burn under little stress, couldn't a larger glued MOSFET burn under slightly greater stress? 

[Chriull]

9 minutes ago, wheelr said:

couldn't a larger glued MOSFET burn under slightly greater stress? 

Yes - he would, too. As there is no sane reason to do so. GW got it, that some assembly faults happened - so there should not be any reason for them to repeat this.

Most likely the smaller mosfets properly mounted should make it fine, too.