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I guess I'm the V11's worst nightmare


madhatt

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Historic Info

 

So, I'm a semi fast rider with 3300 miles on my V11.

No Jumps, I try to avoid rain and puddles, but I do enjoy a nice mountain Bike trail so long as I don't have to walk my wheel too much.

 

Which is why I'm surprised by the amount of issues I've had with my wheel.

I'm not on my 6th set of bearings ( i admit, I'm a bit sensitive to rough sounding bearings).

I've also had replaced under warranty (by the shipping the wheel to the vendor) the following.

2X Motors, Controller board, Motherboard, tail light, and 2 shocks.

Today's issue

Finally, after 3300miles I took my wheel apart to swap out a new tire, and I found this gem on the motherboard.

Cap.png

 

I've already reached out to the vendor asking for another Motherboard replacement, and will replace it myself If they don't honor the warranty.

 

I'm curios if anyone else has had this issue, what the possible cause could be, and to understand the risk if any if I continue to ride with this defect this coming weekend (seeing how they have not invented transporters yet, and Fedex/UPS sucks.)

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I don’t think that anyone can tell you what exactly the capacitor in question does. But being on the top board, it could one day affect the core functionality of the wheel, and even mess up the running firmware processes.

 It’s sad that you have had so many issues with your V11! If it’s from the earlier batches, we already know that Inmotion has improved on most of the aspects you’ve had issues with. So newer V11 units should provide much less issues.

 That said, the V11 does have so many first offs, both for Inmotion and in general, that I don’t think Inmotion simply knew how to make them in a way that riders in the western world require. Unfortunately it is left for us who buy the new releases to show it to them.

 Now that the first round of suspension wheels has been out for a full year, the manufacturers have a huge amount of data on the aspects that require improvements for the second round. I’m sure the upcoming “V13” will be one wonderful beast of a wheel!

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1 hour ago, madhatt said:

 

I'm not on my 6th set of bearings ( i admit, I'm a bit sensitive to rough sounding bearings).

 

Just wondering are you replacing the bearings with units supplied by Inmotion?  My first set started making a noise at around the 200 km mark and I replaced them at about the 500 km mark.  Now over 800 km and the new ones are still totally silent (like you I'm sensitive to the sound of worn bearings since it's the only thing that ever makes any noise on the wheel).  I use my wheel in the wet (if I didn't I'd never take it out in Auckland) though I do try and avoid the deeper puddles.  Also I do a fair bit of riding on grass/gravel/mud.  I'm hoping the Japanese bearings I fitted will have more resilience than the Inmotion ones.

Totally love my V11 - has a lovely balance of speed/acceleration/range and comfort for the varied riding surfaces both on my daily commute and random adventures.

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35 minutes ago, Lex Smith said:

Just wondering are you replacing the bearings with units supplied by Inmotion?  My first set started making a noise at around the 200 km mark and I replaced them at about the 500 km mark.  Now over 800 km and the new ones are still totally silent (like you I'm sensitive to the sound of worn bearings since it's the only thing that ever makes any noise on the wheel).  I use my wheel in the wet (if I didn't I'd never take it out in Auckland) though I do try and avoid the deeper puddles.  Also I do a fair bit of riding on grass/gravel/mud.  I'm hoping the Japanese bearings I fitted will have more resilience than the Inmotion ones.

Totally love my V11 - has a lovely balance of speed/acceleration/range and comfort for the varied riding surfaces both on my daily commute and random adventures.

I have never replaced them with bearings from Inmotion.

 

The first set of bearings I purchased were the 6916-rs2  But those failed along with the motor so i sent in my wheel at the vendor's request.

They then replaced the wheel with (I'm guessing) a 1st gen wheel because it came with 6816-rs2 bearing.  After a few hundred miles I then replaced the bearings with what I thought was a mid-grade bearing but they failed after 200 or so miles.  So then I replaced them with cheaper bearings which lasted about 500 miles.

I then replaced those with the mid-grade bearings, and tonight I've installed a round of the cheaper bearings again.

 

As quickly as I seem to go through them, I find the $15 bearings work as good as the $40 ones do.   Tonights experiment is to fit these suckers on the wheel and see if they help keep the dirt out.

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2 hours ago, madhatt said:

They then replaced the wheel with (I'm guessing) a 1st gen wheel because it came with 6816-rs2 bearing. 

Sounds like batch 2 or 3a. Batch 1 came with permanent thread locker on the motor bracket bolts and 6816-Z bearings.

 The 3D printed seals could be a very good thing for you. But if you ever decide to change the bearings again, look for a stainless steel variant (S6816-2RS). They seem to last much longer even under harsher conditions.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is that capacitor anywhere near where the power cables from the battery go into the motherboard? If so its purpose is to smooth out induced voltage spikes from the battery cables. Very long cables between battery and speed controller have that issue and the spikes tend to blow up the electronics if there are no capacitors to smooth them out, or if the capacitors are too small or a have a too high internal resistance. I blew up a speed controller for a 1/8th scale RC car once by using too long battery cables. All three parallel wired capacitors blew with a loud pop and a puff of smoke.

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I’ve now owned a V11 for almost a year. During this time the wheel has been broken three months. Right now I’m almost two months in waiting for latest spare part from Inmotion. I’m on my third motor. During the year I also rode three months with a very noisy bearing while waiting for a new one to arrive. That also took two months. 

That’s very little riding for the money. I had to buy a spare wheel. The V11 is the worst and best wheel I’ve owned. 

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On 7/23/2021 at 4:08 AM, madhatt said:

I'm curios if anyone else has had this issue, what the possible cause could be, and to understand the risk if any if I continue to ride with this defect this coming weekend (seeing how they have not invented transporters yet, and Fedex/UPS sucks.)

As this is a "medium" sized capacitor near some inductances it seems to be part of the dc/dc converters - power supply. With 25V rating for the 12V rail? And maybe the first step down before the 5/3.3V rail - if they are not seperately stepped down directly from battery voltage.

Direct cause of the defect is overpressure of the electrolyte.  Maybe some parts of the electrolyte evaporated? Don't know how a capacitor behaves in such cases - if its just loosing capacity and this is really solely for 12V for ?leds, fans,...? this could not matter too much - as this would mean just a bit less smoothening? Or lighting stops...

If capacitors without/with less electrolyte could cause short circuits or other serious changes this could lead to total failure or even thermal disposal.

If it still gets overpressure the rest of the electrolyte could disperse on the pcb - this has some coating, but could be affected by the acidic fluid.

Some capacitors are just of bad quality/came wrongly through quality control/got overheated in the wheel and "open their hat"... :(

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On 7/22/2021 at 11:37 PM, mrelwood said:

Now that the first round of suspension wheels has been out for a full year, the manufacturers have a huge amount of data on the aspects that require improvements for the second round. I’m sure the upcoming “V13” will be one wonderful beast of a wheel!

Hope springs eternal and helps keep the sales moving along. We won't pay any mind to the fact that so many 'new' wheels are failing in areas that aren't exactly 'new' in what s being asked of the part in question.

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  • 5 months later...
On 7/22/2021 at 7:08 PM, madhatt said:

I've already reached out to the vendor asking for another Motherboard replacement, and will replace it myself If they don't honor the warranty.

Bummer. But you're on the right track. The bean counters are pretty hinky about allowing engineers to keep parts that aren't really needed, so I'd expect you do want to take care of that.

A burst electrolytic cap happens either because the cap itself was defective (and the electrolyte boiled) or what's feeding the cap has a problem and there's more ripple current than the cap was designed to handle (so the electrolyte boiled). In my book, a replacement board is in order but you could always try replacing just the cap. NOTE: the fact that they glued it to the board so it wouldn't vibrate loose implies they really wanted that cap for something important.

(they glued the little button cell battery in? It probably only provides power to the on-board clock and NVRAM, but it's gonna be fun to replace in a few years)

Edited by Tawpie
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