Water Issues...

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

I have a little bit of a problem at the moment. See if you can spot the issue. Brammo and my dealer have already been notified, but I hope I make it home from work.

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[Gavin]

how is it even on without the key??

hope you make it home too...



Gavin

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

how is it even on without the key??

hope you make it home too...



Gavin

That was the issue. It would move even without the key. I had 7 coworkers stop by to tell me I left my lights on. I guess someone went over and flipped the high-beam switch a few times, and it turned off. After maintenance told me it had turned off, I went out and flipped it on and off, and it seems to be working for now. We are supposed to get more rain before my ride home, though. I think the bike turning off by flipping the high beam switch was more of a coincidence since this wasn't a headlight issue - it was a "the bike is still ON" issue. This is the first time my bike has seen more than a sprinkle. Being stuck on is not so much of an issue for me going to work since I work in a secure federal laboratory and I know most of the folks in my building, but I would be a little afraid to ride it to a mall or other public place.

BTW, my SOC dropped 2% while it was sitting for an hour and a half while on.

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

Adam called me first thing when he got in. They're going to work with my dealer to have them take a look at it while the do the firmware upgrade.

Phone diagnostics aren't perfect, but Adam thought the culprit might be a wire hardness under the headlight that the ignition plugs into. I'll update the thread once the problem is found.

[7racer]

Wouldn't the issue have to be somewhere in the ignition key to turn the bike "on"?!  So weird.

[protomech]

Electric vehicles are pretty much always on.. the displays and controls may be disabled, but  the main EV computer "brain" should be able to run continuously.

Obviously invisibly running in the background and enabling traction motor and headlights with key out are very different things. Expect Brammo will get this fixed quickly.

[travel4nutin]

Wow.  I almost rode it today.  Now I wish I had just to get 2 data points.

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

Brammo is being very good. Dealer called me back, and it sounds like Brammo might do a house call since they'll be in the area for something else soon. The bike has given me service required and turned off on me twice while in motion, too, but it always worked after cycling the ignition. I'll be pulling the data tomorrow after work (yesterday it game me B040, BMS in Idle; on my way home today I was in too much of a panic to notice what error popped up). I'm just too busy today to do any disassembly.

I don't mind the EV-specific glitches. I hope I uncover them all! That's part of the fun of being an early adopter. I am almost at 1,000 miles, and will be doing my second oil change sometime this week so I'm changing oil on even X,000s. I did my first change at ~450 miles because there had been oil under my bike and no oil came out of the check hole when the bike was strait up and down. More than a liter of oil came out, so I'm assuming there is no issue and don't mind being extra cautious.

[7racer]

wow!  great to hear about the house call.  Speaks loud about there service.  I hope it all gets fixed soon.

[ttxgpfan]

Wouldn't the issue have to be somewhere in the ignition key to turn the bike "on"?!  So weird.

Nope, ignition key is nothing more than a multi-position switch, and the likelihood of a brand new switch shorting across is small.  Wires are much more likely to be the culprit in this case.

[00049 (AKA SopFu)]

The problem happened again last night. Adam and I talked, and he sent me a picture of the suspect plug and said I should get some dielectric grease and gaffer tape. His suggestion was to go to town on the plug with the grease, and then wrap it up with the gaffer tape. Finding gaffer tape was a bit more challenging than I would have thought, and I wasn't able to find any until this afternoon. (Unfortunately the bike wouldn't turn off again when I got to work this morning. But it was off when I checked on it an hour and a half after I pulled the key.) the tape is not carried at hardware stores, but the local art supply store had it in five different colors. Black suited me.

Adam sent me this pic:
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Here's what the wiring looks like right after the shroud is removed. It's pretty tight under there.
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I'm filling up all the terminal holes with the dielectric grease. Notice the empty terminal on the lower right side. When plugged in, that hole is right next to the shroud. Adam's guess was water was flowing down the shroud, right into that hole, and then filling up the plug like a bucket. That hole is filled up with grease now, too.
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I filled up the back side of the plug, too. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have done that because the water was probably draining out of the back.
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Here we are all taped up. It's really humid out right now, and I was having trouble getting the tape to stick. I might try to clean it up the tape job once the temperature goes up and humidity drops. Hopefully this will get me by for a little while.
[smg id=400]

I'll be riding my ICE bike to Indiana tomorrow, and we don't have any rain in the forecast, so I may not get to try out the fix for a little while. My fingers are crossed that this works!

[skuzzle]

You wouldn't think a bike designed in Oregon would have water issues    I wonder if this should become a standard FAQ item.  My old SV650 use to lose one cylinder in hard rain.  Wasn't an issue until the cylinder would selectively come back, usually in the middle of a turn.
I think I will be getting my Empulse in the next month.  I might have to waterproof it as I live in Portland, Oregon.  I haven't heard any water issues from Frodus who lives nearby.

[Shinysideup]

I had this happen to me also. Pouring rain and I was on the freeway when the truck next to me hit a fairly deep puddle, sending a wall of water onto the Empulse.

When I got to work, the bike wouldn't turn off. Same symptoms. Fiddling with things in the dry parking garage, I found that very same connector and pulled it apart. Sure enough, there was a click and the bike turned off. I plugged it back in and the bike ran fine the rest of the day.

When I got home, I hit the plug halves with compressed air, sprayed everything with contact enhancer, and taped it all up with, you guessed it, gaffer's tape. (Great minds think alike!)

I figured the glitch was due to user error, since I had moved the connector down quite a bit from the factory position when I installed my LED lights, HID bulb with ballast, and garage door opener. I thought the new position exposed the connector more to the tsunami on the freeway than if it were tucked higher under the CF shroud.

After reading your post, I'm not so sure and I'll definitely pull it apart and add the dielectric grease, but I've had good look with sealing connectors with tape on other projects. I think you're good to go!

EDIT: I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone_grease#Dielectric_grease

"Another common use of dielectric grease is on the rubber mating surfaces or gaskets of multi-pin electrical connectors used in automotive and marine engines. The grease again acts as a lubricant and a sealant on the nonconductive mating surfaces of the connector. It is not recommended to be applied to the actual electrical conductive contacts of the connector because it could interfere with the electrical signals passing through the connector in cases where the contact pressure is very low.Products designed as electronic connector lubricants, on the other hand, should be applied to such connector contacts and can dramatically extend their useful life. Polyphenyl Ether, rather than silicone grease, is the active ingredient in some such connector lubricants."

Emphasis added.

But then, I also found this, which describes properties of the product I used on the connector:

http://store.caig.com/s.nl/ctype.KB/it.I/id.2014/KB.218/.f

Maybe Adam or Protomech would like to weigh in...

[flar]

If that's the 6 connector plug, it has the lines from the on/off switch and the ignition switch in it.  I tapped into that for my garage door opener and I was worried about water getting to it so I briefly thought about covering it, but figured that they must have known what they were doing.

And, I also moved mine below the headlight housing since I figured it would be less exposed to rain there (the headlight shroud has a gap between the instrument panel so it didn't look like it would keep rain out at all, but splashes are probably more of a problem underneath the headlight...)

[Richard230]

Isn't "gaffer tape" another term for duct tape"?  If that is the case, I would think that just about any hardware store should carry the tape.  My Ace Hardware store has lots of duct tape in both the original silver and now many other colors, including cameo (?).