Wednesday 1 December 2021

Zeeclo Fenix inside


As it gets somewhat trickier to drive this in the sub-zero temperatures and icy paths, it is perhaps the moment to take the Zeeclo Fenix to the garage. 

What is inside the box?


The scoot has been folded and placed upside down on top of two chairs, so the folded stem fits between them.

The bottom panel was easy to remove, there are 14 hex/Allen screws.

The inside is a curved-corner container with the battery pack, controller boxes and a huge spaghetti of cables.

Not shown is the inside of the removed panel, which also holds two more of those foam rubber bricks. It is yet unclear if there is something else than glued foam rubber holding those elements in place, because otherwise everything is simply lying on that bottom panel.

The front end after the cables is empty space, no more boxes there.

Among the spaghetti there's the grey cable loop that I understand is the speed limiter, forcing the 25km/h maximum speed. In Finland, this makes the electronic kickbike equal to a bicycle in the eyes of the law.

I've read some differing information about the true maximum speed, which might be 35 or 40km/h.


The battery pack

The battery pack certainly takes the most space. While it looks that a slightly larger pack would fit inside, I'm not sure if it would be worth the trouble. The vehicle is heavy as it is.


The amount of typos here do not really build my confidence about the quality assurances and certifications, but this alone isn't a reason to think the battery would be fake.

The ~20x10x7cm blue box contains the battery pack with this information:

Li-ion Power Battery Pack
Model: CHY3713E041090
Nominal voltage: 37VDC
Charging Voltage: 42V DC
Rated capacity: 13Ah/481Wh
Cell:18650 [=18x65mm type]
ISO9001/Authentication enterprise [=quality management standard]
Manufacturer: DongGuan CHY BATTERY TECHNOLOGY CO.,LTD
IEC62133 [=certification]
UN38.3 MSDS [=certification]

Googling the "model" or a fragment of that code did not give meaningful results. Should I need a replacement, it might be not as simple to find as I thought. The DongGuan site did not have the exact model either.

18650 means the pack uses the 18x65mm cells, commonly used in electric bike and car battery packs. A 6x11 matrix of these could theoretically fit into this pack, but after peering through with a small flashlight it looks there are 5x10 cells.

Some high-level math suggests that 10 x 3.6V cells need to be in series to get at 36V. I'm thinking each odd column is upside-down in relation to each even column, as I've seen photos of comparable products do that. But this is something I couldn't see directly.

I didn't take the battery pack out now, but it shouldn't be hard to guesstimate how much the ~20x10x7cm pack could weigh:

There's a website that talks of fake 18650 batteries: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-know-a-fake-18650-battery/

They claim that a fake 18650 battery weighs less than 42g, as little as 32g. Real cels weigh 45 or even 50 grams.

So, 

50 * 32 =1,6kg ("fake")
50 * 42 =2,1kg ("fake")
50 * 45 =2,25kg
50 * 50 =2,5kg

If the battery pack weighs less than 2kg total there might be reason to worry, but even if it weighed more it's no guarantee of best possible quality.

This also shows that the battery makes for less than 10% of the scoot's weight (27kg).
 

The controllers

There are two controller boxes on top of each other, and I'm now just assuming they are similar, possibly because there are two motors. At least they have the same cables coming out of them. However it looks it says "dual motor" on one, so why wasn't one enough?


Although the brakes are physical disc brakes, the levers need to override the motors, so the levers also work as a kind of clutch. This is likely the reason why the controller needs to address brakes too.

I had to tear away some of the foam rubber to see the full text, typos and all:

DC Brushless motor Contoller
Voltage: 36V
Current: 21A
Brakes: Low level
Speet set1. 1-3. 7VDUAL MOTOR
TF-S866-ABS-ELECTRON
YKJY06F0C01-A-H-T4

Again the codes were not that useful for finding an exact make, but the "S866" at least is a clue this plays together with the S866 display. Looking at webstores the S866 is often sold with a similar-looking controller box.

The code might actually be YKYJ06F0C01 and not "YKJY..." but that doesn't give many results either.

There are so many typos in the texts I'm unsure if the information is correct in the first place.


The indicator lights

While at it, I looked at the deck sides and pulled out one of the indicator light plastic housings. 


This was again simple to do and revealed it should be easy to remove these decorative elements.


Now if the deck and all these were removed I'd get a nice-looking black box, but I'd also have to take care of all the openings so that water and dirt don't get in. There's some black gunk that both keeps the wires in place and prevents water from getting in.

The wooden deck

I also took the opportunity to check the wooden deck and how it might be removed. 

I was afraid the deck might just be brutally glued in, but this isn't the case. Feeling around the "sandpaper" with my fingers, I discovered spots where it gave in, just a little, indicating there are bolts underneath.


The surface is probably skateboard grip tape. Pulling one corner out, the bolt could be seen, but I didn't pull it out more as this ruins the look of the surface. Perhaps after I get a replacement grip tape I can experiment more.

The deck looks like some bamboo variety, this might weigh 500 grams or even less, not very significant. The plastic decorative parts also weigh almost next to nothing.

Removing the wooden part could make the deck 8mm lower. But I'll still have to see if the wooden piece is there for a good reason or not.

No comments:

Post a Comment