E-Bike Specialized Battery Not Charging After Spark Incident

[Khalil87]

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue with my Specialized e-bike battery turbo Vado 3.0 . It suddenly doesn’t want to charge anymore. I think I may have caused the problem by accident—while trying to connect the charger, I mistakenly put a key inside the charger plug on the battery, which caused a spark. Since then, the battery hasn’t been charging at all.

Has anyone experienced something similar, or do you have any advice on what I should do next? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

 

[indianajo]

That is unfortunate. I am age 74 and no longer have perfect near vision. I do not wear reading glasses to ride my bicycle. You have probably blown the internal fuse. Perhaps if it is under warrenty the dealer will replace it. Specialized gave you a stupid design to make the keyhole and charge port similar size and vulnerable to shorts. Majority of ebike riders are seniors.
With a generic battery, you could buy some 300 mm shrink wrap, cut the wrapper off the battery, replace the fuse, put a new wrapper on, and motor on.
With a branded battery with a patented connector and case, there is probably no such option. No warrenty replacement, you would have to buy a new battery. Perhaps a dealer is authorized to repair the battery. Probably not for liability reasons.
You could ask on specialized brand forum https://forums.electricbikereview.com/forum/specialized/ if somebody has a better idea.
I ride a converted bike with a generic battery in a mount I built myself from aluminum & plastic. There is no specialized dealer closer than 160 miles anyway. With an XT60 or andersn charge connector, the design makes it difficult to bridge the pins with metal junk. The luna battery has insulated .250 flag terminals crimped on unterminated charge wires, which is just as difficult to short. Female for plus, male for minus. If I have battery problems, I examine it myself or buy another one for $700. I bought a bad battery at first from ebay, determined it had bad welds inside, and threw it away. My luna battery at twice the price of ebay is 6 1/2 years old. Works great. I installed an external fuse in the wire to the controller, which at 30 amps might be smaller than the internal one.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

I have no answers for you, but thanks for the heads up. About to buy a Specialized ebike, and at 76, I do have my senior moments.

 

[gromike]

Does the bike turn the motor? The bms (battery management system) in the battery probably tripped, and the charger won't charge because it doesn't see the voltage it wants to and won't start charging. I've had luck with a forced start of the charger, but that's using a Grin Satiator charger. The chargers' voltage output turned on the bms.

 

[fooferdoggie]

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue with my Specialized e-bike battery turbo Vado 3.0 . It suddenly doesn’t want to charge anymore. I think I may have caused the problem by accident—while trying to connect the charger, I mistakenly put a key inside the charger plug on the battery, which caused a spark. Since then, the battery hasn’t been charging at all.

Has anyone experienced something similar, or do you have any advice on what I should do next? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

You are not the first one to do this.

 

[fooferdoggie]

I have no answers for you, but thanks for the heads up. About to buy a Specialized ebike, and at 76, I do have my senior moments.

you do not need to be that old to have these moments.

 

[PCeBiker]

you do not need to be that old to have these moments.

I'll be 60 next month, but I've been having stoner moments since I was 16, so it's probably the same?

I remember finding my Ryobi battery in the fridge.
I couldn't figure out why the Hell I put my battery in the fridge?
Then I remembered that I wanted to cool it off before charging it.

I was using it in my grass trimmer. I know better that to use my circular saw when I'm stoned.

 

[PCeBiker]

You are not the first one to do this.

Specialized knows this and they do it on purpose.

Then they get to sell you a new battery or e-bike because everything is proprietary and your ebike is old enough to be outdated.

It's just pre-planned obsolescence.

How hard or expensive would it be for Specialized to fix this.

I know,...
A $100 proprietary non- conductive ceramic key??!!

I've got ceramic screwdrivers to work on live electronics,..

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue with my Specialized e-bike battery turbo Vado 3.0 . It suddenly doesn’t want to charge anymore. I think I may have caused the problem by accident—while trying to connect the charger, I mistakenly put a key inside the charger plug on the battery, which caused a spark. Since then, the battery hasn’t been charging at all.

Has anyone experienced something similar, or do you have any advice on what I should do next? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Instead of giving you DIY advices (which will simply not work), I just recommend you seeing a qualified Specialized store for the diagnosis of the e-bike, battery, and the charger.

 

[PCeBiker]

Instead of giving you DIY advices (which will simply not work), I just recommend you seeing a qualified Specialized store for the diagnosis of the e-bike, battery, and the charger.

What sucks is how there is nothing special about what needs to be done.

Either a fuse or some kind of secret programming reset that only the "qualified Specialized" technicians know about.

The $2 fuse or 2 minute reset will probably still cost over $100?

Maybe the technicians don't even know how to do it?
They might have to relinquish control to mission headquarters, where they get to connect to the battery remotely to find out exactly what battery it is, who it was sold to, where the battery and bike have been, what your best freinds name was when you were a kid, and what your favorite color is.

If Specialized doesn't like you or your friends or where you've been, then your battery isn't fixable.

I HATE AI

I Don't want some robotic permission to ride my ebike.

I owned a 1985 Mazda 626 that I bought in the mid 90's.

I went to the Mazda dealership to purchase the Mazda service manual that cost me over $100 at the time.
The guy at the dealership said that I was lucky that they could sell it to me. It was not available for sale to the public until a year earlier.

It was FULL of all kinds of secret proprietary information.
It saved me thousands of dollars in repair costs.

There was a car out years ago, a Ford I think? Where there was a "special" electronic box somewhere on the car.
Technicians would call headquarters asking what the box was. They were told "None of your business. Don't touch it"

Eventually there was huge car crash where somebody was killed.
The offending driver claimed to be driving 30 mph.

The car company was forced by the courts to reveal the speed of the vehicle at the time of the crash.
The car was going WAY Over the speed limit at the time of impact.

The little black box was recording Everywhere the vehicle had been along with all the speeds the vehicle had ever been driven.


It's almost 4:20,...

I need to smoke another Vado.