Unfortunately, the trails are very overgrown with grass, which makes it very difficult to ride. The kickers aren’t even wide enough to jump off properly.
My second session didn’t last long because during the landing the battery flew away. I then slammed on the brakes and dragged it a few meters in front of me.
New day, new luck, new box!
I happened to find a slightly larger box and was able to use washers, which I couldn’t do with the old box due to lack of space.
Then I screwed on another box for the second battery. This box is so big that you can also fit a BMS on top of it but I don’t really like how it looks.
But what I really like about the replaceable battery system is that you can try out and develop new ideas at any time and that hardly costs any money. The new grey box including wood costs 3.4 €
That worked wonderfully. And what I’ve been surprised about since the beginning is that these 2 bolts don’t get loose. It just keeps. In the past I have mounted top cases with M4 bolts. Even with a lot of thread locker, they usually became loose, often after a short time.
On my dirt machine with the new Haero E-MTB deck I was very surprised that the M6 bolts didn’t loosen at all without thread locker. That’s why I’ve now used M6 instead of the planned M5 for the first time and I’m very happy about it.
I then have to cut out the rest with a spade. The kickers also have to be widened. But to do this I have to build a structure so that the new earth doesn’t slide sideways…
Anyway, I continued jumping. I tried the left line again for the first time in 3 years. After I jumped the first kicker a few times, I then tried the second one and fell while landing.
I got up early today at 5:00 a.m. to go to work. Afterwards I was in the dirt park and it was hard to believe that it was dry again because of the warm weather. It was so great and I had a lot of fun.
I shot my first video in over 3 years. I’m so excited. It will probably take me a while to finish this, but in the meantime here are a few screenshots.
Ordered orange shockblocks for the front truck. I want to switch between red and orange in the inner position. For riding e.g. on pumptracks the orange ones are for sure better for curves.
According to this chart the orange shockblocks in the inner position are even softer than the white ones in the outer position, I’m curious.
I’ve made some improvements. After the normal wood screws just didn’t hold the battery cases, I decided on a more stable solution. M4 bolts should do the job better.
Now I don’t have to be afraid that the battery will fly away, which happened to me more recently in the dirt park.
What really got on my nerves was the cumbersome loading with the external BMS. It was time to finally change that.
I have 2 tiny 12s BMS for charge only. They are without balancing, it just stops charging when the first cell is full. So I have to monitor the cell voltages from time to time and balance charge if necessary.
Apart from the problem that the fsescs regularly overheat, I now have a larger.
The last time I was in the dirt park it felt like the battery was empty towards the end, like if the soft cut-off kicked in. Then the motors began to vibrate and tremble. I stopped riding and decided to ignore it and blamed the empty battery.
Yesterday I went to a pump track and wanted to have some fun. Unfortunately the board had hardly any power as if a cut-off was active. I checked all connections, solder joints and also tried another battery but without success. Then I checked all settings in vesc-tool but everything seemed alright.
So it can only be due to either the fsescs or the remote.
I switched to a VX4 remote in UART mode but then only one motor turned. When I plugged the receiver into the other fsesc, the other motor had turned. The same happened with PPM remote.
My conclusion as a layman is that it must have shot some part of the can-bus on the PCB. But I have no idea what would have to be replaced.
As a temporary and quick solution, I have now come up with this
I have split the TX signal and go with it into the UART port of the second fsesc as well. I have no idea if this works but I think why not? Only downside is no traction control. Let’s see if and how it works, I’m going to test it today.
I haven’t seen anyone trying to split UART yet, don’t think that works, but since you already have the harness it’s don’t think there’s any harm in trying. The common thing is to run split PPM instead. You might be able to run the UART to one ESC and split PPM to both, I think the VX4 has a mode where it can read UART data but send PPM data. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Now you know at least one idiot
As you have already guessed, this unfortunately does not work.
So splitting the PPM signal works? That’s interesting, I’ll definitely try that!
In the meantime I’ve soldered new connectors of 2 old V4 fsescs laying around. Now I can use therm as replacement. Less power but better than no power. If the PPM splitting works then I have a quick replacement if the V6 should ever cause problems.
Tried the old vescs but they overheat after 10 minutes riding which sucks. Then I used split PPM on the V6 which works but riding without traction control is no fun at all. I hope I can find and replace the broken CAN bus part on the PCB.
This week I was 3 times in the dirt park and had a lot of fun. Today after a landing the right jump drive started to make strange noises and has resistance. Somnething happened to the gears, I hope it’s just loose bolts. Gonna open the drive tomorrow
Fortunately only a housing bolt came loose on the jump drive and touched the hub, therefore the noises ans resistance.
I lost a 12s battery, the voltage is 16V only, rest in peace. Not completely sure what happened.
When I wanted to charge the remaining battery it didn’t charge. Then I used another BMS and it didn’t charge as well. The third BMS worked but after 1 day no more charging. The LED stays green. I lost 3 working BMS within days. What is going on? I have no idea
