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Another MSuper V3+ Wiring failure - Ug


Marty Backe

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After watching this Marketplace piece on cadmium in kids' jewelry, I wouldn't put it past someone in China to melt together some cheaper metals to form an inferior soldering alloy.  Remember the breaking Gotway case screws?  It's all about the money over there, and each penny counts.

Without well defined testing, quality controls, and specifications laid out by Gotway, I'm pretty certain there can be a variety of products being sourced to them.  I might be wrong, but it just strikes me as odd that these disconnects are happening at a fairly high rate if it's just a case of a cold solder joint not bonding to the wiring.  

That yellow wire had a blob of solder on it so that's another clue maybe.  You would think a cold joint would result with either solder on the wire or inside the connector but not both?  For testing, one would have to take the end of that blob and heat it in a oven with an accurate thermometer and see when it gets molten or maybe try melting the solder with an adjustable heat soldering iron if that's accurate enough.

I thought I recall seeing in Jason McNeil's FLIR video that the motor wiring and caps got pretty hot over time with the back and forth movements of a wheel.  Add to that EUC Extreme melting solder from a motor wire connector to his control board, and I think that's what led me to this melting solder theory.  I could be way off base of course.  :innocent1:

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3 minutes ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

After watching this Marketplace piece on cadmium in kids' jewelry, I wouldn't put it past someone in China to melt together some cheaper metals to form an inferior soldering alloy.  

Agreed. Shenzhen is the capital of re-purposing electronic junk.

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...and in some cases it can be fine, but sometimes the consequences of cost cutting ends up with these unexpected failures I'm thinking.  Should a case screw made of metal that joins plastic parts break that easily?  That's very weird.  Sure a one or two off defect why not, but it seemed to be a common problem.

I think I talked about the wiring that came with my cheap eBay power brick before, but no it was a weird fibrous copper coloured thing made up of these not so bendy strands.  I should have taken a photo.  I tried soldering to it, but it wouldn't take the solder.  I think it was not a very good conductor as the wiring itself would get warm IIRC.  The only reason I discovered it was that I had to cut off the one end to splice in a connector for a custom job.  After stripping the outside off I found what did not look like any wiring I've ever seen before.

I think Gotway's got some great products, but I think they need to ramp up their quality control levels up just a notch especially when it comes to ensuring rider safety.  The devil's in the details, and it can bite back at you when you least expect it.

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16 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I wouldn't put it past someone in China to melt together some cheaper metals to form an inferior soldering alloy.  Remember the breaking Gotway case screws?  It's all about the money over there, and each penny counts.

No doubt there's cost-cutting everywhere, but I'd think there's a whole lot more you can cut on before going to the solder-wire :P  In bulk, quarter- or half-a-kilo reel won't cost much anything, and you don't need but maybe a gram if that for the connectors. For cost-cutting, I'd look at replacing the components with cheaper similar ones, there's much more to be gained there cost-wise ;) Not to mention battery cells... :P  I'm not a "Gotway-fanboy", actually I'm still considering a King Song as my next wheel, but since they've managed to build some reputation as a "higher tier" manufacturer, I doubt they'd do something as stupid as to start cutting costs in stuff like that.

 

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Without well defined testing, quality controls, and specifications laid out by Gotway, I'm pretty certain there can be a variety of products being sourced to them.  I might be wrong, but it just strikes me as odd that these disconnects are happening at a fairly high rate if it's just a case of a cold solder joint not bonding to the wiring.

Maybe, but it wouldn't take but one bad iron / tip / soldering wire / worker at the manufacturing line, and many of the wheels soldered by that iron/tip/etc could share the same defect...

 

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That yellow wire had a blob of solder on it so that's another clue maybe.  You would think a cold joint would result with either solder on the wire or inside the connector but not both? 

The wires are likely pre-tinned before soldering (to prevent the ends from coming untangled when it's inserted), as well as more tin added during the soldering, which could then spread to the connector too, but still not make a good contact. Or the wire could have moved while the solder was cooling down... but it's all just guesswork. I'm not totally dismissing the overheating as cause, to me it just looks like a less likely option.

 

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For testing, one would have to take the end of that blob and heat it in a oven with an accurate thermometer and see when it gets molten or maybe try melting the solder with an adjustable heat soldering iron if that's accurate enough.

:D  Well, that could actually be interesting... I do have a homemade reflow-oven with a thermocouple (although its accuracy is probably debatable), you know, wanna send me a Gotway or two? ;) 

 

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I thought I recall seeing in Jason McNeil's FLIR video that the motor wiring and caps got pretty hot over time with the back and forth movements of a wheel.  Add to that EUC Extreme melting solder from a motor wire connector to his control board, and I think that's what led me to this melting solder theory.  I could be way off base of course.  :innocent1:

I've probably managed to miss the wire melting off of Vee's board or just forgotten about it, then again, he uses a pretty different battery setup on his wheels, where the current has been shown to be high enough to explode the legs off from the mosfets ;)

 

16 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

...and in some cases it can be fine, but sometimes the consequences of cost cutting ends up with these unexpected failures I'm thinking.  Should a case screw made of metal that joins plastic parts break that easily?  That's very weird.  Sure a one or two off defect why not, but it seemed to be a common problem.

The quality of some of the products I've got from China is pretty dubious (and there's tons of videos of downright lethally hazardous stuff online, like USB-ports referenced to mains-voltage, ie. things that can kill you by touch ;)), but like I said above, I don't think they'd be stupid enough to take a risk like that to save a few pennies here and there. More likely most of the defects come from not-so-well-tested choices made during design, rather than downright cost-cutting.

 

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I think I talked about the wiring that came with my cheap eBay power brick before, but no it was a weird fibrous copper coloured thing made up of these not so bendy strands.  I should have taken a photo.  I tried soldering to it, but it wouldn't take the solder.  I think it was not a very good conductor as the wiring itself would get warm IIRC.  The only reason I discovered it was that I had to cut off the one end to splice in a connector for a custom job.  After stripping the outside off I found what did not look like any wiring I've ever seen before.

That sounds pretty extreme, probably a good idea to toss that :D I try to avoid those cheapest wall-mounted power-adaptors, although I do have a few 5-12V ones (plus wheel chargers, of course). Most of the time I just rely on old laptop chargers, ATX-power supplies from well-known manufacturers and my programmable linear PSU (original HP6632A, not some chinese noname, mind you ;)). The downside is that apart from the wheel batteries and chargers, I don't have anything that could give out high enough voltage for testing "wheel stuff", ie. up to 67+ or 84+V. I've tried to hunt for something bigger, I saw a programmable 200W (100V / 2A, 40V / 5A) linear PSU on auction just recently, but it would have cost about 200€ which seemed a bit steep as I won't have that much use for it outside some special cases (nevermind that bough new, the prices start at four figures before tax... :P).

 

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I think Gotway's got some great products, but I think they need to ramp up their quality control levels up just a notch especially when it comes to ensuring rider safety.  The devil's in the details, and it can bite back at you when you least expect it.

Same probably goes for most, if not all manufacturers. The King Song video a while back was promising, the manufacturing was highly automated, the boards were inspected, the wheels test-driven and "broken in" in what they called an "aging"-setup, but I doubt even they can catch each and every defect all the time, especially the ones that won't manifest until later on.

As an example, Firewheel mainboards had issues with the buck-converter chips burning, and those boards were designed by a company specializing in industrial motor controllers and whatnot ("the company focused on intelligent logistics systems, intelligent lifting device (intelligent body-like electric Power machine), motor and its drive controller, automatic control board, embedded system program development and application. Since its inception, the company has provided a wide range of industrial automation equipment manufacturers, especially in the motor drive controller to achieve a breakthrough, to solve a number of key technical problems, the product reached the industry's leading level" blahbla), you'd kind of expect them to know what they were doing  (well, to be fair, it was fixed in later board revision) ;)

 

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Well I like Chinese products.  Just the other day I was trying to decide if I should ride my Chinese EUC or my European EUC, then I remembered, they don't make a European EUC, or an American one for that matter, and so the decision was made for me. I'm typing on my iPad (China) but sometimes I use my iPhone ( China) , or even my Moto G ( China?, I would bet on it). My wheeling music? iPod, and headphones (both China)

i know it's easy to bash China, I've done it too, but, the reality of world markets is the job goes where the price is cheapest, and China has 200 billion people to employ ( I may need to check that "fact"). Many of the quality products we use every day are made in China.  "Made in China" is not necessarily a bad thing, just like made somewhere else is not always a good thing.

i hope the many valued Chinese contributors to this board aren't too offended, by the steam we sometimes blow off here on the forum.  WE LOVE CHINA! Because without Chinese EUCs we would be a bit like this:

454c4be576.jpeg

That's right Walking zombies. (Zombies are still waiting for their non Chinese EUCs to arrive, thank God).But we're not like them, we ordered from China and so, we're like this:

.

.

.

.

456111d087.jpeg

i choose option two. How about you? ?

 

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55 minutes ago, Smoother said:

Well I like Chinese products.  Just the other day I was trying to decide if I should ride my Chinese EUC or my European EUC, then I remembered, they don't make a European EUC, or an American one for that matter, and so the decision was made for me. I'm typing on my iPad (China) but sometimes I use my iPhone ( China) , or even my Moto G ( China?, I would bet on it). My wheeling music? iPod, and headphones (both China)

i know it's easy to bash China, I've done it too, but, the reality of world markets is the job goes where the price is cheapest, and China has 200 billion people to employ ( I may need to check that "fact"). Many of the quality products we use every day are made in China.  "Made in China" is not necessarily a bad thing, just like made somewhere else is not always a good thing.

i hope the many valued Chinese contributors to this board aren't too offended, by the steam we sometimes blow off here on the forum.

Never meant to bash China or Chinese products, there are good and bad ones, no matter where they were made. With the population of the country, there has to be a lot of very qualified people in China who really know what they're doing, I just don't expect that they were the ones who designed the cheapest of the cheap wallwart ordered off Ebay or Aliexpress ;)  More likely, those are done by the companies with the high-school dropout electronics designer from parts they found in the dumpster of another electronics factory :P. The highly skilled people aren't cheap, and although high price doesn't always mean high quality, you can still be pretty sure that (suspiciously) low price almost guarantees bad quality or some rather extreme cost-cutting. Yet another thing are the extreme margins some (*cough* Apple... *cough*) companies make on their products, which keeps prices (and their profits) artificially high compared to the actual quality/price of the product (yet apparently many people still can afford these), but they (probably) have very strict QA for their products, which weeds out the (badly) defect ones.

If you watch videos from people like Louis Rossmann (who runs and owns a company fixing Apple laptops) or Jessa Jones (a stay-at-home mom who learned micro-soldering and now owns and runs a company that fixes iPhones and iPads), you can learn a lot about how bad design flaws there are even in those products and how hard the products are made to repair on purpose... So again, high price does not equal high quality, and even less high lifetime/repairability :P  Plus theyre "just" manufactured in China, the design with all its faults is all done by Apple Inc. in USA (it says so right on the phones etc.)...

I order a lot of stuff from Aliexpress (mostly electronics components), and I know full well that at the prices I get them, some of them are bound to be cheap knock-offs/clones, from factory rejected batches or stripped from a broken down device. I've personally never hit anything that's certainly a fraud (although I suspect my NE5532's are just something like LM358's with different markings ;)), and I've also got clearly genuine components (ie. they live up to their specs) or at the very least, very good clones, but there's lots of reports of downright scams in the components (ie. you order a bunch of dual op-amps, the chips get there, the markings are right, but after testing you notice they are in fact single-channel op-amps with totally different pin-out than what it should be, rebranded power-mosfets with vastly lower specs than what they're supposed to be etc. :D)...

Western countries have very high standardization and other bureaucratic hurdles, strict laws protecting consumers, higher costs, company liabilities etc, so the prices would skyrocket compared to current if the manufacturing was done here. Would it mean higher quality? Maybe, but the wheels wouldn't sell too well, imagine paying something like $5000-10000 (just a number I pulled out of my ass) for a wheel vs. something like $500-1000, just as an example. We've become accustomed that phones, computers etc. don't cost much anything (relatively speaking). These are not exact numbers, but a new high-end 486 in the early 90's cost something like about two months average salary here, now you can get a very high-end computer at less than half-a months' salary (here, in Finland, with our 24% VAT etc). TVs, mobile phones, tablets, stereos, even cars, everything has come down in price a lot, and mostly it has to do with the manufacturing being moved into countries with cheap labor (and of course very large scale mass-manufacturing in general).

The current state of things might change in the coming years. EU (as in European Union) is currently working on removing the minimum amounts below which you don't have to pay custom rates or VATs, starting 2021, I think. That means it won't be "economical" for me to order the small things anymore. Trump is hell-bent on bringing manufacturing back to USA and threatening companies with high import taxes. Some countries are complaining of the volume of small packages that arrives from China, with all the free-shipping stuff (yeah, I use that too :P)...

Well, this is going way off topic. The bottom line is:

  • Just because it's made in China doesn't mean it's bad (or good, for that matter), vast majority of entertainment electronics/computers/etc "high-tech" is done in China today, has been for years and years
  • Mostly the bad rap just comes down to people buying the very cheapest stuff, you can't make high-end products cheaply without cutting a lot of corners
  • I order the cheap stuff on purpose, I know it's likely not very high quality, but usually "good enough" for my intents and purposes (ie. components, my mini-CNC, of which the latter actually has very high price/quality -ratio in my opinion)
  • If I need more "high end" equipment, I either buy used/refurbished industry-equipment locally or at least order from an European reseller (the device will still most likely be made in China, if it's new, but at least I get a warranty without the need to ship heavy equipment across the globe)

 

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1 hour ago, Smoother said:

Well I like Chinese products.  Just the other day I was trying to decide if I should ride my Chinese EUC or my European EUC, then I remembered, they don't make a European EUC, or an American one for that matter, and so the decision was made for me. I'm typing on my iPad (China) but sometimes I use my iPhone ( China) , or even my Moto G ( China?, I would bet on it). My wheeling music? iPod, and headphones (both China)

i know it's easy to bash China, I've done it too, but, the reality of world markets is the job goes where the price is cheapest, and China has 200 billion people to employ ( I may need to check that "fact"). Many of the quality products we use every day are made in China.  "Made in China" is not necessarily a bad thing, just like made somewhere else is not always a good thing.

i hope the many valued Chinese contributors to this board aren't too offended, by the steam we sometimes blow off here on the forum.  WE LOVE CHINA! Because without Chinese EUCs we would be a bit like this:

 

choose option two. How about you? ?

 

There's Made in China and Designed in China.  The Chinese are obviously capable of manufacturing to a high standard, but generally that only occurs for Western designed products with strict quality control oversight. I believe that we don't have any Western designed and built enthusiast EUCs (non-Solowheel) because Western companies adhere to patent and copyright laws. The Chinese don't so they can rip off Solowheel all day long.

Trust me, I don't want to be limited to Solowheel designs but I have to be honest and recognize that they're getting a raw deal by the Chinese.

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59 minutes ago, Marty Backe said:

There's Made in China and Designed in China.  The Chinese are obviously capable of manufacturing to a high standard, but generally that only occurs for Western designed products with strict quality control oversight. I believe that we don't have any Western designed and built enthusiast EUCs (non-Solowheel) because Western companies adhere to patent and copyright laws. The Chinese don't so they can rip off Solowheel all day long.

Trust me, I don't want to be limited to Solowheel designs but I have to be honest and recognize that they're getting a raw deal by the Chinese.

Well, copying is pretty rampant in China, but it's not all bad design-wise, check out Rigol Technologies's products for example, although they still probably don't compete in the very high-end professional equipment, but they have at least very decent low- and middle-end stuff with excellent price/quality -ratio. Not that I can really tell, precision circuitry and RF-stuff is still mostly just black magic to me, but I've seen enough teardowns and comments that they can't be all bad design-wise.

"A 4 channel, 12 Mpts memory, 30 000 waveforms/second, intensity graded scope of this quality for around 399 USD/299 EUR/235 GBP (plus tax) is nothing short of astounding, even before the hacking possibilities are considered. "

Probably other similar "high-tech" companies exist in China, of course there's also lots of the "not-so-good" or just plain awful -variety. But probably it's the same elsewhere too...

Wired released a pretty interesting document on the Shenzhen "hardware scene", it's not only copying but (at least in part) more like "open source" approach to hardware  (although, to be honest, yes, they do copy a lot of stuff that they shouldn't be :P):

 

We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has emerged, gaining access to the world’s leading hardware-prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from the west. The film looks at how the evolution of “Shanzhai” – or copycat manufacturing – has transformed traditional models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called “Silicon Valley of hardware".

Also, it's not always just that it's "bad design", it's cheap design. The designers' hands can be tied by demands that the product must be "economical" to manufacture, meaning they have to pick cheaper and lower quality components and make compromises in quality vs. price, or that the product must be designed fast, leaving less time for prototyping and working out the quirks.

 

 

 

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I don't think anyone at Gotway intentionally purchased breaking screws and low melting solder (if that's even the case here as it's just conjecture at this point), but it could be more a matter of someone accidentally selecting some inferior quality items from other manufacturers at a certain price point without realizing the specifications of the components.  A lot of these wheel components are outsourced to different specialized companies.

I bet Gotway orders the boards from MicroWorks who might be the ones who are soldering leads onto their boards and passing them to Gotway to add on their end connectors.  That might explain why the solder could be melting at the connector side rather than the board end as it could be different solders they are each using. I'm sure someone at Gotway could do some simple checking of the solder, but the disconnect problem could be rare enough for them not to look too deeply into the problem but instead to just adopt crimped connectors which hopefully will nix things in the bud.

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On 2/23/2017 at 5:54 AM, Pingouin said:

Hi,

I will be testing my new gotway in extreme situations (high speed and stiff climb in the rocks), I have put some hot glue on it, after the ride I will look at it and check if it has deformed, if it has it means the connectors are getting really hot, if they didn't move I would probably conclude that on my unit at least the solder isn't getting that hot, I'll keep you guys updated ;)

Yes connectors indeed get really hot I had common accident on my v3+ a month ago, soldered wires but EUC failed again few days ago. I had used electrical wire last time after soldering and now after opening found electrical wire basically melted. So visual inspection won't help, you might open up V3+ insure wires are connected and even pull the wires and they might hold then on the next ride it will fail and it's all cause they get really really hot. Even now in still position after turning on EUC i can barely touch green/yellow wires coming out of PCB so hot they get. For now waiting on Gotway to send replacement PCB

 

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1 hour ago, lkopv21 said:

Yes connectors indeed get really hot I had common accident on my v3+ a month ago, soldered wires but EUC failed again few days ago. I had used electrical wire last time after soldering and now after opening found electrical wire basically melted. So visual inspection won't help, you might open up V3+ insure wires are connected and even pull the wires and they might hold then on the next ride it will fail and it's all cause they get really really hot. Even now in still position after turning on EUC i can barely touch green/yellow wires coming out of PCB so hot they get. For now waiting on Gotway to send replacement PCB

 

Wires to long and to enough thick?

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So.... has Gotway given any official feedback on this and if they are making sure to fix it? Even if its a supplier thing, they still need to sure they still have quality parts. I find this situation similar to the bad quality rubber on their old ACM pedals when the MCM4 pedals were fine. Having to rely on the customer to check for melted solder is not an option especially if we ever want these to be used by more and more people. 

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On 2/27/2017 at 0:21 PM, esaj said:

Wired released a pretty interesting document on the Shenzhen "hardware scene", it's not only copying but (at least in part) more like "open source" approach to hardware  (although, to be honest, yes, they do copy a lot of stuff that they shouldn't be :P):

 

That documentary is a good watch!  I've been trying to watch the entire program at work, but work is getting in the way... :furious:

On 3/1/2017 at 0:12 AM, lkopv21 said:

Yes connectors indeed get really hot I had common accident on my v3+ a month ago, soldered wires but EUC failed again few days ago. I had used electrical wire last time after soldering and now after opening found electrical wire basically melted. So visual inspection won't help, you might open up V3+ insure wires are connected and even pull the wires and they might hold then on the next ride it will fail and it's all cause they get really really hot. Even now in still position after turning on EUC i can barely touch green/yellow wires coming out of PCB so hot they get. For now waiting on Gotway to send replacement PCB

 

 I suspect though that most solder isn't normally an issue as usually it needs to be heated quite hot before it will get molten.  With the Gotways they may have sourced a bad batch of solder or were supplied inferior solder that melts lower than expected so the problems maybe be appearing only with heavy riders or extreme climbing situations where heat can build up.  This is just my theory of course.  Or certainly a bad solder joint could be at fault.  I think @EUC Extreme swaps out his wiring for heavier gauge wire that can handle higher current situations.

I think it would be a difficult situation for Gotway to fix as they would need to mail out a bunch of heat shrink tubing out to everyone and get them to safeguard the connections.  The occurrence rate might be so low that say 10 out of 1000 riders experiences a connection failure that they don't see it as a big problem.  More likely though they are just learning from these incidents and have decided to switch to a physical retentive connector instead and hope they don't get too much flack from random failures popping up.  If I were a heavier rider with a Gotway, I'd do some intervention with the connectors especially if climbing through mountains where heat build up could be an issue.  It isn't that difficult to do with either heatshrink or a good epoxy maybe just for the peace of mind.  I'd probably do it anyways just for good measure.  Who ever wants their wheel to fail unexpectedly?

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In the electrical trade in England there is a phrase, "cable is King" this means that the cable should able to handle more amps than the devices on it.  If not it becomes a toaster wire (like the red glowing wires in a bread toaster) and houses burn down.  Because of this ( as in every country) there are charts and tables and lots of words to determine what size cable goes where. Differences are created by what the cable is running through; a cable that can handle 50 amps clipped to a wall (free to dissipate heat), may only be able to handle 35 amps buried in 100mm or more insulation, etc.  Also the longer the cable the more voltage drop due to losses due to resistance.  Distance is not a problem for an EUC, but thickness is clearly causing a problem.  It would only add a dollar or two to each wheel to bump up to the correct size cable.  Maybe the problem is the terminals at the CB and BMS.  These tabs look to be the same size for every wheel regardless of motor power or battery size.  If this is the case then that becomes the restriction point, and hot spot.  However, a hot cable is generally hot because of the cable, not the terminal, unless the terminal is SO hot that massive amounts of heat are conducting along the cable. If that were the case there would be signs of burning around the effected terminals.

@EUC Extreme s advice seems to have fallen on deaf ears. I don't think they like taking advice from westerners. After all, he didn't suggest a comple redesign, just swap some cables, and connectors, parts bin stuff.

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On 22/02/2017 at 3:53 AM, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I'm not certain a tug test would assure the wire doesn't come undone from the solder joint.  Looking at that video there is a good amount of solder still on the wire and solder in the connector which makes me wonder if Gotway is using a too low of a melting point solder.  There are different solders on the market with varying melting points.

My working theory is that under load those wires heat up with the current draw possibly melting the solder joint and at that point the wire is free to detach.

If I had one of these wheels I would proactively either epoxy the wire to the connector to make a physical joint to resist detachment or splice in new connectors with crimped and soldered wire joints or just solder the wires together with a smaller wire tied around the joint and the works gripped with heat shrink tubing.  How many times does one need to disconnect things?  If it's often then a connector makes sense.  If it's once in a blue moon, cutting wires isn't the end of the world if accidents can be avoided.

It would be nice if someone had a temperature probe that could measure some real world temperature values to see how hot these connections are getting.

Gotway France did some testing by sending 40A current in the cables and noticed almost no increase in temperature at the connectors where failure happens.

Seems it is not temp related. It just breaks from vibrations. At least from preliminary testing.

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Did they test that wire with a motor connected to it under load?  With a free spinning motor there wouldn't be as much resistance to current flow, but in a hill climb with a heavy rider, that additional resistance that the motor encounters requires more amps to drive the motor at speed.  I would think that likely would heat up the wiring more.  

In Jason McNeil's FLIR video, I think I recall seeing the motor wiring getting warm under back and forth wheel motions which draw a lot of current to stop the motor and change direction.  They have to recreate similar conditions under which the wheel is failing to get a better idea.  On a bench test all may appear fine, but they might not be factoring real world work load conditions.  Just my guess of course - I'm no electrical engineer...

 

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On 2/27/2017 at 2:21 PM, esaj said:

Wired released a pretty interesting document on the Shenzhen "hardware scene"

Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware

That was very interesting! I wonder if this concept will ever be possible in the USA.

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On 06/03/2017 at 8:59 PM, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Did they test that wire with a motor connected to it under load?  With a free spinning motor there wouldn't be as much resistance to current flow, but in a hill climb with a heavy rider, that additional resistance that the motor encounters requires more amps to drive the motor at speed.  I would think that likely would heat up the wiring more.  

In Jason McNeil's FLIR video, I think I recall seeing the motor wiring getting warm under back and forth wheel motions which draw a lot of current to stop the motor and change direction.  They have to recreate similar conditions under which the wheel is failing to get a better idea.  On a bench test all may appear fine, but they might not be factoring real world work load conditions.  Just my guess of course - I'm no electrical engineer...

 

You know what, as I have a CAT S60 phone with a FLIR camera, I'm going to open the side cover and film the connectors and board while doing back and forth motion in my living room ! Great idea ! I'm so curious to see the results from the Monster... will keep you guys informed.

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On 03/03/2017 at 11:33 PM, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

If I were a heavier rider with a Gotway, I'd do some intervention with the connectors especially if climbing through mountains where heat build up could be an issue.  It isn't that difficult to do with either heatshrink or a good epoxy maybe just for the peace of mind.  I'd probably do it anyways just for good measure.  Who ever wants their wheel to fail unexpectedly?

Hi,

I have applied some epoxy to the connectors, and like I've reported in my acm topic, I have tested it in very stressful conditions (steep climb & high speed) and nothing seemed to have heated up (at least not enough so that the epoxy would melt), so you think the epoxy solution is enough ? (I am not a heavy rider though getting up 15° roads at 35kph should have done something)

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10 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

Be careful though as those back and forth motions tend to stress the control board and heat things up.  People have developed issues (burning out the control board/MOSFETs) from doing it too much.

Oh yes I'll be careful, I may even wear my full face helmet in my living room when doing it... ;)

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To all interested....

 

On the French Forum there has been an Analysis by a Technican of urban360(reseller GW France) which indicates that this wiring failure could happen to ALL Msuper's Versions, ACM and Monsters(First Batch Monsters) because all this wheels use the same Kind of connector....

So my advice would be (in a short) to check this Connection by optics and pulling, and/or if there is just a bit oxidization to see, or there is the slightest doubt in the connection to Change(repair) it!

I guess this evening i will do it myself for my V3....

 

Original thread here, translated by Google:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.espritroue.fr%2Ftopic%2F2074-rappel-monoroues-gotway-pour-contrôle-et-correctif%2F%3Fpage%3D5

The technican also made a Video how to fix the failure....

 

 

For me absolutly annoying is that GW itself has not needed it to say just one word to the defect...not here, not on the FB Gotway Group, None!

 

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1 hour ago, KingSong69 said:

On the French Forum there has been an Analysis by a Technican of urban360(reseller GW France) which indicates that this wiring failure could happen to ALL Msuper's Versions, ACM and Monsters(First Batch Monsters) because all this wheels use the same Kind of connector....

Do we have any idea what manufacturing dates that includes?  My Monster was completed on 1/12/17.

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2 hours ago, KingSong69 said:

To all interested....

 

On the French Forum there has been an Analysis by a Technican of urban360(reseller GW France) which indicates that this wiring failure could happen to ALL Msuper's Versions, ACM and Monsters(First Batch Monsters) because all this wheels use the same Kind of connector....

So my advice would be (in a short) to check this Connection by optics and pulling, and/or if there is just a bit oxidization to see, or there is the slightest doubt in the connection to Change(repair) it!

I guess this evening i will do it myself for my V3....

 

Original thread here, translated by Google:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.espritroue.fr%2Ftopic%2F2074-rappel-monoroues-gotway-pour-contrôle-et-correctif%2F%3Fpage%3D5

The technican also made a Video how to fix the failure....

 

 

For me absolutly annoying is that GW itself has not needed it to say just one word to the defect...not here, not on the FB Gotway Group, None!

 

Fantastic post. Agreed, it really bothers me that Gotway contributes nothing to the discussion. I just don't get it, unless the Western market for their products is so small relative to their Asian sales that they don't care about us.

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