This has been a long time coming. Figure I'd take advantage of everyone here first before attempting to contact my friendly, neighborhood chopper shop.
I had my bike plugged into an outlet in my friend's garage a month or so ago. When we got back, she attempted to open the garage door. It wouldn't open.
Found out that the GFCI protecting the garage circuit had tripped. This same circuit went to the garage door opener and the outlet that I had the bike plugged into.
Once power was back on the circuit, I heard the contactor on the Clipper Creek EVSE click on but I saw the dash display indicate there was no current being drawn.
The four hours or so that the bike was plugged in was commensurate with the SoC on the pack once the garage door attempted to open. Obviously, I have no way to confirm that the garage door opener caused the GFCI to trip once it attempted to open or if something else in the bike had gone awry shortly before that. A mystery, still.
All I know is I had enough charge to get the bike back to my house and begin investigations. I first checked the blade-type fuses on the HV fuse box to find they were all good. I looked around a bit further and saw a fuse holder with a 20A Bussmann MDA fuse on the L1 line of the J1772 connector. Ohmmed it out and saw it was blown. Success!
I got a replacement fuse a few days later, installed it and plugged the bike back in. The EVSE contactor closed, I waited for the typical sound of the charger to start pumping electrons in the battery pack but instead heard silence again as the dash display indicated no current.
After having the bike plugged in for about seven seconds, I saw a jet of smoke come out of one of the cable glands on the charger. Needless to say, I expedited the removal of the charge cord from the bike.
Right now, the line running out the d.c. side of the charger (with the Anderson connector) shows 104 V and the motor controller still functions fine. I.e., the bike will drive with the remaining ~54 % SoC.
If I had to posit, I'd say that either:
(1) the charger CAN bus caused some weird condition with the Eltek charger that resulted in some massive overcurrent spike that fried the electronics (unlikely)
-or that-
(2) when the bike was plugged into the garage outlet, the GFCI tripped due to the opener's inrush but before the rotor of the garage motor had a chance to spin, causing a massive inductive spike on the circuit that blew a hole into the charger's rectifiers (more believable).
So, with all that, I've found that Eltek doesn't make the charger that looks like originally went with the bike:
P/N 241121.110 EV Power Charger 110/3000 HE IP67 G2
I also don't know that even if I managed to get my hands on a replacement charger if it requires some initial configuration prior to use or if the CAN communications is entirely application-dependent. Basically, if every charger is the same and I could just slap on some new heatsink paste and wire the sucker in and be golden.
Any ideas? Thoughts on parts? Is there some sort of available drop-in replacement? Should I just capitulate and take the bike to the local Victory dealership and expect a three-month wait on parts and troubleshooting coupled with (what I'm sure will be) a multi-thousand dollar bill?
Sincerely,
Resigned in Raleigh
