Rad rover 6 plus battery suddenly dead no bars no charging stays green

[nickster99]

I had my battery inside my house always kept inside with probably 3/4 charge or more . I grabbed it to go for a ride after couple weeks of bad weather outside. I pushed the button on battery ,  no bars no lights at all ! I put in my charger it's green not charging . I confirmed battery is dead by putting on bike . I have only about 250 miles on bike and 2 to 3 years old ?
How could this die inside not being used at all ?

[John Rose]

Maybe it actually is charged up but the output fuse is blown.
I don't know what's in the semi-integrated batteries, and the manual for the RR6+ makes no mention of them. Maybe they're soldered on the PC board, maybe they're more like a circuit breaker that eventually resets itself.
In the non-semi integrated batteries there's one fuse for charging (something like 5 or 10 amps) and another for output/discharging (40 amps?).
Conceivably, if the charging fuse is good, the charger can still charge it, but if the main (output) fuse is gone it looks totally dead according to the on-battery LEDs or the handlebar display. Green LED on the charger would mean that it's finished charging.

Again, this is all sheer speculation on my part,🤷🏼 but it would seem to be consistent with the symptoms you reported.

[nickster99]

Thanks for your time , I did pop the end cap off and it seems I have black plastic shrink wrap around my batteries and not blue, so I may not have the car type fuses. I haven't gone any further with it .
I read on fixit post that black wrapped may have soldered on fuses. Amazing that fuses might blow while sitting in my house not connected to anything at all.
Nick

[DickB]

It's extremely unlikely that a fuse blew on its own. I understand there is a "ship" mode for these batteries - maybe check that?

[nickster99]

DickB , I read your post , I was hopeful and tried the get out of ship mode , nothing happened unfortunately.
Thanks for the info, battery still dead  and I agree how could fuse fail while sitting in my house not connected to anything and last used it was fine and over 3/4 charged

[Naranja_CT5+]

250 miles over 3 years. Seemed quite a low mileage. How often have you charged your battery?

It has been a long time and I vaguely remembered the sequence of events. But there was an occasion where I thought I saw green light instead of red light when I started charging my battery. Obviously it was not what I expected to see so I stop charging. But one thing I remembered was that the bike was parked outside and there were frost on the ground. So I decided to wait a couple of hours while the battery warms up a bit and try charging again. This time the charging light was red. BTW while at work the bike is parked inside my office where there are electronic equipments therefore it's usually warmer than room temperature.

I wonder if extreme temperatures played a role with your problem (heat or cold). Where were you storing it? Have you tried charging again?

Lastly, when I assembled my bike, somehow the ship mode was not working but it seemed to be working now. So I tried testing the ship mode. Once on ship mode, pressing the Battery button will not activate the Charge level lights and no power is supplied to the motor. If I turn the bike On, the motor spins but the battery remains in ship mode.

[nickster99]

I may have closer to 300 can't check it with no battery and it may be just over 2 years old . I never kept battery anywhere but inside my heated and cooled house. I tried hold the button in to take it out of possible ship mode , nothing happens

[John Rose]

I'd be curious to know what exact set of conditions cause the green LED to light up on the charger.

On my car battery charger, the analog meter stays hard to the left until you hook it up to the dead battery. Then it immediately goes way up to indicate that there is a lot of current charging the battery. Gradually, the meter drops, to indicate less (or no) charging current as the battery is charged up.
So, in that case, if you look only at the meter, the needle to the left means either:

• No battery is hooked up, or
• The battery is all charged up.

Clearly these are two different sets of conditions, one of which tells you nothing about the state of the battery.

Now I wonder if the green LED on the Rad charger really means that the battery is at full charge (by measuring the open-circuit voltage of the battery), or merely that the charger has simply stopped trying to charge it any further, for whatever reason dictated by it's firmware. Maybe there's feedback from the BMS.

[Naranja_CT5+]

I may have closer to 300 can't check it with no battery and it may be just over 2 years old . I never kept battery anywhere but inside my heated and cooled house. I tried hold the button in to take it out of possible ship mode , nothing happens

I only mentioned the mileage because with 300 miles you probably haven't used your charger much. At the time, I was thinking that the problem was in the charger. Not anymore.

The fact that you are not seeing any charge at all do point the problem towards the battery. I cannot wrap my head around the semi-integrated battery which consists of multiple cells would totally lose 100% of it's charge. Logic dictates that you should see some voltage when you put a meter to it.

I read somewhere that a li-ion charger will think the cell is dead if the voltage falls below the minimum charging voltage and the charger will not charge.

I tested my charger by turning it on but I did not plug the charging cable to the battery. The charger's LED shows green.

I think maybe it's time to seek professional help. Depending on where you are, I'd look for a battery repair place instead of electric bike repair. Most likely a battery repair shop will have a variety of test equipment than an e-bike shop.

I'd bring both the battery and the charger.

[John Rose]

I had my battery inside my house always kept inside with probably 3/4 charge or more .[...snip...] I have only about 250 miles on bike and 2 to 3 years old ?
How could this die inside not being used at all ?

Hmm... I just noticed this detail. If it was kept topped to 100% charge while in storage for most of the time over 2 or 3 years, it could kill the battery.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Lifespan

Simply storing lithium-ion batteries in the charged state also reduces their capacity (the amount of cyclable Li+) and increases the cell resistance (primarily due to the continuous growth of the solid electrolyte interface on the anode).

I know that with my old iPod touch, the Li-ion battery runs down to a thin red line overnight even when it is completely powered off. It takes less than five minutes to charge to 100% of "full capacity", but that's only because the capacity has gotten so low. Then it runs only for a few minutes.

To translate this to the ebike battery, maybe the "100% charge" (according to the charger LED) yields a battery voltage that is slightly less than enough to satisfy the bike's controller or even the battery's own on-board metering. Yes it's at 100% of the battery's capacity, but the capacity is too low to be useful. Again, it comes down to figuring out what the green LED on the charger actually means.

[nickster99]

John, thanks for the observations , to be clear though my battery was not full , I had used it for probably a 10 mile ride and it was down a few bars. I then stored it in my climate controlled house and after couple weeks went to ride the bike , pushed battery guage button on way to garage and nothing lit up dead and wouldn't charge

[Naranja_CT5+]

For the sake of argument. Let's assume that you have a bad battery.

If the display powers up the 40A fuse is not blown.

Does the battery charge?

https://www.radowners.com/index.php?topic=8970.msg20404#msg20404

Try to identify which fuses were blown? Do you have a meter to test with?
https://www.radowners.com/index.php?topic=1655.msg12657#msg12657
Since you have already opened the battery compartment. We know you have a surface mounted fuse because of black shrink wrap. It looked pretty accessible to measure if you have an open (bad) or shorted (good) fuse.

Be careful cutting the shrink wrap. People have accidentally slit the flex copper ribbon that goes to the charge level LEDs.
https://www.radowners.com/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=3348;image

Once you have determined whether you have a blown 10A or 40A fuse. Fixing it is not be that difficult unless you do not have the proper equipment. Soldering irons are super cheap just make sure you have the correct tip. And be careful not to overheat what you are soldering.