Battery Vehicle Society

Here in the UK, the weather is often wet the country roads full of pot holes and after this winter they are dirty/ dusty. My Smart 451 has an AC30 and has been throwing up code 36 errors. (ENcoder fault) Often after a sharp jolt. Having had a number of customers HPEV motors with encoder problems recently, I feared another replacement was going to be needed. But I hope its not so, the pins on the encoder and the plug were showing signs of corrosion, the encoder pins being gold plated cleaned up fine, but the plug is more suited to the sound card on a PC (Just one more connection) and isnt so good. The connection is partly covered in the US Digital cover but the end of the connector is fully open and has clearly got wet and muddy/ dusty. A good clean up later, I hope the problem has gone away. With low voltages and currents, any corrosion / resistance is going to give problems. I will probably eventually replace the connector, and then put silicone sealer over the cable entry to connector. I feel a replacement part search is to be had, probably little chance of getting gold plated sockets though, but that would severely reduce the problem. This version also has a 6 way Molex connecting the motor to the Car. I think this has also to go. Others here have used the 6 way deutch plug which has a decent seal.
Oh to be in the Dry US, but then I hate the hot sun, so I will put up with just sealing stuff from the weather.

Grumpy-b

On this topic I have been wondering how to source a plug for the encoder on the AC35 I bought from you recently. Any Ideas?

Rory

Just got the plugs and pins in stock. I spent some time resourcing the correct part, as you know I have had an issue with one of mine. Cost is £4 including carriage for one plastic housing and 5 crimp terminals. In these the connetion pins have partial gold plating where they connect with the encoder.

Grumpy-b