How to tell if I’ve fried my controller.

[Jwcarmo]

Hello All,
I’ve been riding the ProdecoTech Phantom X2 for seven years. It has a 36V system with a 500W hub motor. Now that ProdecoTech is hard to contact (what’s going on with them?), I need some advise. How can I tell if I’ve fried my controller? I‘m having a throttle issue (power button broke) had to replace but new one had six wires versus four wires on the original throttle. I had to try different wire combinations and l’m now thinking that I may have shorted the controller. So how do I test this thing to make sure it is OK?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jwcarmo

 

[harryS]

I take it this was your 4 wire throttle. It would be 4 wires. Ground, signal, 36V and +5V. The 5 volts runs the throttle. The 36V is used to light the LED's to show battery level. The red button turns the throttle function on/off.


Did you get something like this? Usually these are 5 wires. You still have 36v, ground, signal, +5V, and the 4th wire returns 36V to the controller when the red button is pressed. If there are 6 wires, maybe they added a negative lead to the battery, although that is usually ground.


Pressing the red button on this type would start the controller. That sends 36V to the appropriate input on a 6 wire controller.

If you connected the six wire model to a 4 wire plug, the risk is that you miswired it and had the 36V return connected to the +5 output of the controller or the throttle input. Or even to ground. All not good for your controller.

I would disconnect the throttle completely. Put a meter on the connector. You should be able to identify ground. Probably a black wire. Turn on the bike and see if you still get 36V or +5V on two of the other three leads. The thrird lead will also be around 4V.

Disclaimer. Never seen a Prodeco, but have wired a half dozen three wire throttles, Just making an educated guess here.

 

[Jwcarmo]

Good on you HarryS. Let me try those tips and I'll report back. it seems I may have burnt out an in-line fuse of some sort and I cut that out and installed a new on-line fuse. So I'm ready to try the throttle again. Thanks for the support.

 

[Jwcarmo]

OK, I've put a multimeter on the four throttle wires coming out of the controller: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue. When I read volts between the red and blue its 4.5V, between yellow and blue it's 40V. I can't seem to find any wires that connect to "ground", not even the blue wire. Not getting any connectivity on the blue wire to the frame. Does that sound right to you HarryS?