VOILAMART CONTROLLER

[CHARLES PORRETTO SR]

I have a two-year-old VOILAMART front wheel kit on a three-wheel bike because I am disabled, I'm also 87 years old. I need to replace the controller. The company doesn't. sell the parts separately. There are a lot of controllers on the market but I need to replace it with the right one. It is 36 volts, Does anyone have such a front wheel setup? Or what controller has the same wiring? Any suggestions will help

Thanks for the help.

Charlie

 

[harryS]

hi Charlie, while the functions are always the same, you can pretty much assume that the connectors will change a little bit, making these types of changes a little bit of work.

Looking at the current picture of a Voilamart controller, it looks typical to me. A replacement box might differ in the throttle connector and PAS connector. Might have eiher different type of throttle with less wires or a different gender on the PAS and no guarantee the wire order is the same on either.

Did the old controller cook itself in that bag they give you? They should be clamped to the frame and use that to draw off heat.

You want a 36V 22A controller to have the same power as the Voilamart. You have to be prepared to do some wire splicing if connectors don't match.

You might be better off spending the extra money for a PAS sensor and the throttle that fits the new controller just to avoid having mismatched connectors. Can't be much more than 15-20 dollars.

Perhaps Thomas Jaszewski will see this and have an idea where to get what you need. He does support for parts vendors.

 

[CHARLES PORRETTO SR]

Harry,

Thanks so much for the reply. I don't use peddle assist. Yes, the old controller would get hot so I made slits in the bag then by the time I mounted it to the bike to make a heat sink the damage was gone. It also won't light the first, the top led of the battery indicator. Then when it goes uphill it will cut off. Nothing will make it function again unless I hook up the battery charger and then it shows the bottom two lights.
Where did you get the picture of the controller you sent. I'd like to go to their web site and get one. Not knowing what I'm getting makes it hard to shop on eBay or Amazon. So any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[harryS]

The pic is a from a screen capture of the Voliamart ad on amazon.

Your battery may have been too small for this motor as that behavior sounds like it's wearing out or getting unbalanced. Not getting full lights when charged, and cutting out on hills is a sign of that.

Maybe if you let it charge a while in a safe place, it might rebalance. I don't like to leave batteies charge a long time with no oversight. That's why I said a safe place outside where it won't get rained on..

 

[CHARLES PORRETTO SR]

Thanks again.

When I put the battery on the charger the two lights come on. The power light and the charge light. When it's done they cut off. When it's charged the charge time is short. I don't know how to keep it on charge for a long time. The battery is a little over two years old.

Last night VOILAMART wrote to me asking for my eBay name so they could look up the sale. Let's see what happens.

Charlie

 

[harryS]

Let's hope they sell you a controller or maybe give you one. The whole kits go for $150. Controller like theirs are like $30 from China.

As for the battery, when the light turns green, let it stay on the charger.

A little education. Your battery is probably 30 or 40 small round cells, arranged 10x3 or 10 x4. The put three or four cells in parallel, Than they put ten of these parallel groups in series. It's like two 1,5 V flashlight batteries adding to made 3 volts.

Difference is that instead of 1.5V, these cells charge up to 4.2 volts. At full charge your 36V pack is really at 42 volts. When discharged, these have little power at 3.0V, so your battery shuts down around 30 volts,

Lithium batteries get in trouble if charged above 4.2 volts or discharged below 2.7 volts, By trouble, they can catch on fire, So the battery has voltage monitors inside to watcj the voltage.

With ten series groups, sometimes the voltage between them gets out of whack. One might be at 4.2V. Another might be at 3.8V. That's called unbalanced. When you charge an unbalanced battery, it stops charging when the first group hits 4.2V. If other groups are low, them they cannot get to full charge and you get less power out of the battery. If you leave it it charge though, most batteries will eventually equalize that imbalance. Takes a while. Hours.

The only risk is that batteries are most at risk of catching fire when being charged, so I don't like doing that indoors. Leave the trike outside, make sure it get rained on, and give it a longer charge.

 

[CHARLES PORRETTO SR]

Thanks for the advice. But let me mention, and I think I'm correct, my charger shuts off when the battery is full or appears to be full. AAll the lights go off. I left it on all last night. This morning I hooked up the battery and once again it lit up the two bottom led lights. VOILAMART said they would ask their supplier if they would sell me a controller. So I'm waiting. I'd buy one off eBay or Amazon but I don't know which one to buy. Since I am going to do some soldering and splicing, would any 36 volts 500 watts controller work. Thanks for all the advice. I'll keep in touch.

Charlie

 

[harryS]

If you can solder/splice, you got this.

36V brushless 500W controllers are similar but they differ in the user interface. SOme use displays and these have to be designed for that controller. Some use a throttle with a display panel like what you have, and those differ a bit too. Well I think you have a display on your throttle.

Ideally you find one with the 5(?) wire connector that matches your throttle/panel. I dIdn't see anything right away on amazon with a brief search that matches yours.

 

[CHARLES PORRETTO SR]

OK, here we go again. And by the way, thanks to all who comment in the past.

I received the very same controller fromVOILAMART, in China. It is a duplicate to the one I was using. I installed it, no problem. Soldered all the wires, no loss there. I took it out, having ridden it last week for about a mile on a full charge. When I approached the hill at my home it stopped. Now let me say again, when it stopped the LEDs on the throttle goes off, and won't turn on until I put it on the charger, for a second, then they work. So, a brand new controller, the same problem. Anybody have a guess what's going on? Could my battery be going bad? If I were to ride it flat, with no hills I believe it would go on for miles.

 

[rich c]

Time to buy a multimeter and measure charger output and battery levels. You can’t trust LEDs and make assumptions of battery levels. Often these cheap Chinese chargers go bad before the battery pack