TAIL LIGHT / BRAKE LIGHT FAIL
Hi there,
owning my N-Class for some weeks I can report an issue to maybe save you some hassle there.
The N-Class comes with fat tires and very low mounted fenders, which looks great. Also the cables for the tail light are routed neatly inside the fender.
But - and this is a big BUT - while the cables live in their own little tube on the side of the fender for most of the time, they cross to the middle fully exposed before they penetrate the fender to connect to the light unit.
And this is where seemingly a small rock picked up by the tire thread was cutting the wires and shorting them out.
Result was a completely dead tail light unit which did not come to life even after the wires were fixed. Doing my homework I tested the tail light/brake light unit on a 6V battery, as the connectors are clearly labelled "positive" and "negative" stating they expect 6V AC/DC. The light fired up, so the problem was elsewhere.
As the light cable only has two wires, but can produce a permanent tail light as well as a brake light, I assumed this is done by different voltages, say 6V or 7V being sent to the same positive terminal on the light. The 2 light wires connect to a little black box under the "tank" cover, which is connected to the main controller by 3 wires and fed with 36V. So that little black box (light controller?) may do the conversion from 36V down and produce different voltages for brake/tail light, depending on the controller wire input.
And it was definitely shot.
To prevent that I recommend moving the fender further away from the tire where the tail light lives, and maybe protect the wires with some extra heat shrink tube.
As the damage was already done and I did not have spare light controller, I found the following fix:
The front LED headlight has 4 connectors of which 2 still were free (unused). Knowing from other bicycle contraptions these two were for connecting a standard tail light. So I just routed a new 2 wire cable from the headlight to the tail light unit and connected it there. Tail light now works as expected, I only lost the brake light (which I did not like anyway). This was a cheap fix. The main work was to get that new cable into the frame and back out, at least to down where the cranks live. From there I chose to route the cable along the rear frame and fender struts, so it is not exposed to wear inside the fender.
For removing that old cable from inside the fender I had to take the wheel out. I then removed the little stainless steel brackets holding the cable, noting that one rivet was already loose and one clip was gone, so the rivets seem to eat through the plastic fenders over time. I drilled them out and closed up the holes with some black tape.
FRONT CABLE ROUTING
While I was at connecting that new light cable I also corrected one major design flaw (IMHO): the front cable routing ist just plain awful, as all the cables come down on one side of the light and right beside it as seen here:
https://electricbikereview.com/ariel-rider/n-class/
I had to temporarily undo one of the switch/lever units from the handlebar and cut the harness a bit wider open to correct that. Only some black cable ties were used to bring the cables closer to the handlebar.
The cables are now routed motorcycle style left AND right BEHIND that light. Which complements the motorbikish look of it
This was a lot of text - I try upload some pictures later on.
Andy
