Begode Master 134V 2400WH Suspension

[CrabChampion]

New master images. Metal battery boxes, updated suspension linkage and better kickstand. Looks like they didnt bother with upgrading the headlight to the better EX30 headlight

[Magman116]

I wonder if they will make the metal battery boxes available for those with older Masters?

[Cerbera]

1 hour ago, Magman116 said:

I wonder if they will make the metal battery boxes available for those with older Masters?

I certainly hope so ! I think that is probably worth the investment, even though a part of me will always think they should be free because that's what they should've done in the first place !

[Magman116]

I tend to agree. I feel the plastic cases are prone to failure and should be replaced a the company's expense like a recall. They could at least provide a discount to existing Master owners. The plastic cases I saw on AE going for about $100 US each. That would be worth it to invest $400 if they were aluminum, but not for more of the plastic crap.

 

Just like the suspension linkage for the shock. Begode should have provided the corrected/fixed linkage to existing users. To me, the headlight would be considered an upgrade and not necessary for reliability like the battery boxes and the suspension linkage.

[Cerbera]

1 hour ago, Magman116 said:

They could at least provide a discount to existing Master owners.

That sounds like a reasonable compromise, and would make Begode look quite good in the PR department...

[TheNotoriousEUC]

Really interested in the linkage change…looking forward to this getting out into the wild and hearing what people say.

[Timwheel]

Another day as a begode daily driver..

 

I finally decided to change the thermal material between the mosfet plate and the heatsink. And boy did I find some horrendous stuff

 

My master is a V2 and only 4 screws are used to hold the motherboard in place. However, a screw hole is located in the middle and UNUSED ! You can check on your master, they left older srew holes and DIDNT fill it !!!

 

I found a whole lot of moisture under the thermal pad which was soaking wet. What the hell.. I put in some blu tack and made sure it went all the way through (I buy a screw to fill the hole from the heatsink side, the hole is tapered !) and then applied generously some thermal paste.

 

 

 

As you may see, I may have went overboard, however it isn't liquid metal so I wouldn't worry about it. The DC/DC feels like it has been damaged by water ingress too...

 

Overall a bad design, with insane performance. I wanted to put some good thermal paste because even by 8° outside I can make it go above 50°C. I've done some heavy pendulum tests, and I can't make it go above 35°C even when my room is at 20°c. It also drops down in temperature very fast, like 0.5°C per second, more when it climbed higher (as heat transfers better with a higher gradient).

It's a begode, I've touched it, I hope it won't burn my house down or kill me by cutting out  at 80 km/h.

At least it will now run cooler.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Timwheel

[Rawnei]

1 hour ago, Timwheel said:

Another day as a begode daily driver..

 

I finally decided to change the thermal material between the mosfet plate and the heatsink. And boy did I find some horrendous stuff

 

My master is a V2 and only 4 screws are used to hold the motherboard in place. However, a screw hole is located in the middle and UNUSED ! You can check on your master, they left older srew holes and DIDNT fill it !!!

 

I found a whole lot of moisture under the thermal pad which was soaking wet. What the hell.. I put in some blu tack and made sure it went all the way through (I buy a screw to fill the hole from the heatsink side, the hole is tapered !) and then applied generously some thermal paste.

 

 

 

As you may see, I may have went overboard, however it isn't liquid metal so I wouldn't worry about it. The DC/DC feels like it has been damaged by water ingress too...

 

Overall a bad design, with insane performance. I wanted to put some good thermal paste because even by 8° outside I can make it go above 50°C. I've done some heavy pendulum tests, and I can't make it go above 35°C even when my room is at 20°c. It also drops down in temperature very fast, like 0.5°C per second, more when it climbed higher (as heat transfers better with a higher gradient).

It's a begode, I've touched it, I hope it won't burn my house down or kill me by cutting out  at 80 km/h.

At least it will now run cooler.

Images in your post doesn't work unfortunately!

[Timwheel]

UPDATE: I went for a ride, I know that on the insane incline I have before my street (which is San Francisco-Level steep) it went up to 55°C by 10°C when riding 60+km/h. It now barely grazes 31°C even though it is 15°C outside. The Delta Thas been reduced from 45°C to 16°C: it means that the thermal resistance is about a third of what it was (or that the conductance is THREE TIMES BETTER !).

 

No strange behavior, I think everything went fine

[Timwheel]

5 minutes ago, Rawnei said:

Images in your post doesn't work unfortunately!

It should be fixed

[Paul A]

2 hours ago, Timwheel said:

It's a begode, I've touched it, I hope it won't burn my house down or kill me by cutting out  at 80 km/h.

That belongs on a T-shirt.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Paul A

[Rawnei]

2 hours ago, Timwheel said:

I found a whole lot of moisture under the thermal pad which was soaking wet. What the hell.. I put in some blu tack and made sure it went all the way through (I buy a screw to fill the hole from the heatsink side, the hole is tapered !) and then applied generously some thermal paste.

 

Just a small note here, that's most likely not moisture, it's oily substance left from the thermal pad so no cause for alarm, water most likely did not get in there but it's good to put some silicone on the other end below the controller housing.

Also white residue on PCB board is not from water, it's just some substance they put on there from factory, perhaps some sort of moisture protection in fact.

Unless you have a bunch of dirt in your controller there is no reason to believe there was water in there!

Edited March 16, 2023 by Rawnei

[Cerbera]

Thank you for this comprehensive report and pics - always very grateful to Master owners who share their daily horrors with the rest of us !

Mine has just passed the 1000 mile mark, and is due for its regular service in which I am considering doing this also, having seen Roger and Dawn both consider it important.

However, what I found interesting about your report is that your temperatures were WAAAY high to start with. Since unboxing, and no matter how hard I push it in terms of acceleration or gradient, my one never goes more than 10 degrees above ambient temperature, which I have previously taken as a good sign that my heat pad might be contacting OK. 

Since thinking about it a bit more though I suspect I should probably re-thermal it anyway, because it only takes one mosfet to not be transferring heat away to put the machine at massive risk. But then again - I have been caning this machine for a while, and surely if that was the case one would have blown by now right ?

My service tech guy at speedyfeet says we shouldn't need a centre screw to hold the mainboard down in the middle because they started including a gel pad that apparently sits on the board above and apparently exerts some gentle pressure on the centre of the lower board - does yours have that I wonder ? Pretty sure mine doesn't, which is also a V2.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Cerbera

[Cerbera]

On a different note found this, which can't be right can it ?

FREE recursive metal battery boxes for existing V1 Master owners ?!!

That's definitely what he said ! Am checking with my dealer now !!!

Begode have been very good with providing upgraded parts so far (I've had 3) but if true, this would be a truly spectacular new level of support and fair play that I'm sure would make a lot of us very happy and would go a long way to restoring our faith in them !

Edited March 16, 2023 by Cerbera

[Rawnei]

39 minutes ago, Cerbera said:

On a different note found this, which can't be right can it ?

FREE recursive metal battery boxes for existing V1 Master owners ?!!

That's definitely what he said ! Am checking with my dealer now !!!

Begode have been very good with providing upgraded parts so far (I've had 3) but if true, this would be a truly spectacular new level of support and fair play that I'm sure would make a lot of us very happy and would go a long way to restoring our faith in them !

Master Pro Owners, same as Begode said before, I haven't seen Begode say the same thing about regular Master, there's information about upcoming Master batches with metal cases but no promises for previous batch buyers.

[Cerbera]

Damn it - I misheard him, and I listened twice !! Brain must be hearing what it wants to hear !

Edited March 16, 2023 by Cerbera

[Aztek]

1 hour ago, Cerbera said:

Brain must be hearing what it wants to hear

That's what it does

[Timwheel]

6 hours ago, Cerbera said:

However, what I found interesting about your report is that your temperatures were WAAAY high to start with. Since unboxing, and no matter how hard I push it in terms of acceleration or gradient, my one never goes more than 10 degrees above ambient temperature, which I have previously taken as a good sign that my heat pad might be contacting OK. 

 

I don't tink it is a risk : What you would be doing is making the heat transfert between the plate and the heatsink better, you wouldn't solve a potential issue with a single mosfet attached to said plate. If you are only 10° above ambient, don't touch it, it would what my target was

[Paul A]

6 hours ago, Cerbera said:

it only takes one mosfet to not be transferring heat away to put the machine at massive risk.

 

Install a Heat Mod........made by God Mod, guaranteed effective.

[Rawnei]

I present my latest free invention, the Atheist Mod:

[Cerbera]

2 hours ago, Timwheel said:

I don't tink it is a risk : What you would be doing is making the heat transfert between the plate and the heatsink better, you wouldn't solve a potential issue with a single mosfet attached to said plate. If you are only 10° above ambient, don't touch it, it would what my target was

I would LOVE to take that advice and not have the stress or the bother ! But I worry about where that temperature is being read from, and if that may not be able to show or detect areas where the thermal pad has an air gap between any single component (but particularly mosfets) and the case. So people have pointed out that temps could report really cool like mine do, and yet there could still be mosfets getting hot and risk of burnout. The ONLY way to be sure there aren't any air gaps is to do what you did, which is why I think that ultimately I have to join you and do it too !

[Tawpie]

One thing interesting about the pads, they're a bit compliant (squishy) so as you tighten down the 4 corners and squish the pad, the center will want to lift up (because the board+thermal plane is bending). Perhaps if the hold down screws were just tight enough but not too tight, you'd still get good pad contact?

Paste should make all that moot though. Other than being messy (looking at you dear oompaloompa), or not having enough or having too much, paste seems like a reasonable change to make. I don't think the cure is worse than the disease—it is dang messy though.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Tawpie

[Timwheel]

15 hours ago, Cerbera said:

I would LOVE to take that advice and not have the stress or the bother ! But I worry about where that temperature is being read from, and if that may not be able to show or detect areas where the thermal pad has an air gap between any single component (but particularly mosfets) and the case. So people have pointed out that temps could report really cool like mine do, and yet there could still be mosfets getting hot and risk of burnout. The ONLY way to be sure there aren't any air gaps is to do what you did, which is why I think that ultimately I have to join you and do it too !

I still stand by my explanation.

What you want is to make sure that there is no hot spot on the overall board if I understood correctly. However, ensuring that the board is well thermally connected to the heatsink does not achieve that. There is no "hot spot" on the aluminium board itself, you can consider that overall the temperature distribution in the board is pretty much homogenous.

What you want to achieve necessitates to check the thermal conductivity of the interface between individual mosfets and the aluminium board. This would be very long as you'll need to unscrew and bend every mosfets. Also, thermal paste won't cut it there ! You'll need to put some form of electrical isolation between the back of the mosfet and the aluminium bord.

If you are afraid of hotspots, the easier and safer way would be to throw in a fan. I know some masters have one from the factory, however I don't know where the connector is. You could maybe plug it in the rear light cables so that it runs constantly. Put in a slow moving fan, with little noise, that should do the trick

 

Tim

[Cerbera]

I see, I see.... Hmm. No, the hotspots I was afraid of were potential little air gaps between the centre of the mosfet board (as a whole) and the metal bottom of the tray it is meant to be thermal matted to. There were reports that because it was only 4 corner screws used to hold mainboard down that this caused a rise / bow in the centre, beyond what the thermal mat could bridge and therefore an air gap.

Some of those people who had fires reported that their fires started in burnt out mosfets over those areas where the air gap was likely to have been. So that is what your procedure addresses, if we're on the same page ?!

But I also accept what you are saying re contact between individual FETs and the board as an additional problem / consideration, but that is one is a bridge too far for me to try and address myself !

Edited March 17, 2023 by Cerbera

[Timwheel]

As I said before, the temperature of the aluminium board should be homogenous. The air gap between the aluminium board and the heatsink affects every mosfet in the same way, as heat transfers extemely fast in the aluminium plate itself.