Hi all,
Long time lurker of the forums and Dave's channel, lots of great info. I now need some help...
Recently I started a project of fixing a 2014 Brammo Empulse R motorbike. The battery was having various faults and making the bike unusable for the previous owner. I'm very much a DIY person, love tinkering and love bikes so I thought I would grab it and have a go at repairing it. I narrowed the fault down to a balancing issue. The onboard charger stops charging if it detects one module out of limits, tries to balance the cells by bringing down the high cells then commences charging again. The problem was that the high cell wasn't coming down so the charger refused to charge anymore.
The module out of balance was no 1 of 7 and after pulling apart the battery I found out why. The battery has 4 internal heaters that are used for heating (obviously) and also for balancing when commanded to. Due water ingress part of the module's controlling PCB had some corrosion and component damage which has stopped the heaters from working which is why the charger couldn't balance the pack. I've cleaned up the corrosion with some vinegar which seems to have worked. I now need to identify the damaged components and replace them and hopefully get this bike working again.
I've attached photos of the stages of me pulling apart the bike for those interested.
The bike before dismantling
[attach=1]
Disassembled
[attach=2]
7 battery modules
[attach=3]
Module 1
[attach=4]
Cover removed
[attach=5]
Corrosion on PCB
[attach=6]
Underside of the module showing all the pouch cells
[attach=7]
Top of the module with PCB removed. You can see the plates used to connect the pouches in 4p9s config.
[attach=8]
Underside of the PCB
[attach=9]
After cleaning up the corrosion.
[attach=10]
edit: fixed up photos
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