2018 Specialized Turbo Levo battery cut out at 4th LED

[rocky yeung]

Bike model : 2018 Specialized Turbo Levo FSR COMP 6 Fattie battery

Problem : battery cut out at 4th LED, 1st LED being the red lowest one.

Repair warning : At your own risk. Careless mistake may short circuit that may cause sparks, fire and then explosion if ignored.

How it happens :

Pre condition : I left the battery in fully charged status seperated from the bike for a few months due to fork repairing work that is waiting for spares.

What happens : Power on shows 9 LED. Top it up to 10. Test ride : battery cut out at 6th LED. I thought it might be bad contact but no luck.

What next : clean and exam contacts, or any wire damages, no luck. So recharge the battery for another test ride, it started up again. Happy for a ride until it cut out at 4th LED. Repeat the same examining steps, no luck. Only recharge the battery can start up the battery again. This is the first time I learn after battery cut out, you must recharge the battery to reactivate it again. (I confirm I charge it just for 3 mins it can restart again, I don't expect it will drain to the red LED. In fact it cuts out after a short distance ride.)

Headache now : Why it cut out while still shows green LED indicating it has power. I start to think there must be some battery problem inside. Experience tells me some batteries are in low voltage inside the battery module such that it refuses to be discharged. However not this case because I can charge it. I decide to contact the factory and bike shop that I brought it from trying to get some clue. I have no LBS to handle EBIKE. Battery is 1.5 years old still within two years warranty. Till I have fixed this problem and today I still receive no reply, not any initial reply, from these two sources !!!

What can I do : 1. keep using the battery in this unstable condition. 2. buy a new one. So without any original manufacturer's help I decide I will not ride with this battery in an unexpected cut out status, you know it is very unpleasant to ride up hill to get back home in a very hot day while it suddenly cuts out. So I pull apart with reference to this The Battery Doctor video.


What found : Total 40 batteries divided into 10 groups in series makes up 37V or peak 42V.

Measurement immediate : Total 35.5V. All groups 3.5V except one group 3.1V

Recondition : Use Li-ION battery charger to charge this group up from 3.1V to 3.5V is OK but it is quite difficult to justify the exact 3.5V as other groups. So I charge every group individually to maximum until the charger stops. This makes sense that every group stays at the same level.

Finally : I put back everything and charge it with factory charger.

Test ride : I climb up 900M hill with minimum foot work. Before the fix, it can only climb 650M. My intention is to burn out all the charge. Yes, it does go back to one RED LED now. Did another two power burns and same results. I am happy with this condition now so it is all done.

Battery health : before recondition is 95%, after fix is 90%. Don't care about this as I don't know how it calculate the health value. May be a combination of voltages and internal resistance whatever.

Conclusion : Due to battery management system BMS kicks in to protect the battery from dropping too low voltage, it cut off the supply at around 3.0-3.1V though other groups still may have 3.5V. That is why it still shows high voltage but will not supply any output in my case. I don't know if this situation is caused by these reasons : I seldom ride the battery to flat and then charge it back up; I left the battery too long, a couple of months. Well I suggest you occasionally flat the battery just to check it goes all the way down to RED level.

Some extra battery operation :

You can use the Mission Control apps to read the bike and battery information. Without the battery connect to bike motor, you can read battery only. Otherwise you can read both.

Power on battery, you can measure the battery terminals. It is exactly the output voltage. My battery reads about 0.2V in power off status.

If you are this battery expert, may I ask you some questions here.

1. Could you tell me how to read the little red LED on circuit board. Before the fix, this LED fast blinks around 9 times in 3 seconds and then 29 times slow blink in power on mode. Stop blinking after a long time idling. Very long time means may be hours later.

2. There is a small push button next to this red LED, how does it use. (Reset ? Diagnosis?)

I have been busy, I may not have time to read and answer your questions. Sorry for that.

Many thanks.

Hope this information may give someone help if it happens the same to you.

Cheers,

 

[rocky yeung]

Photos explaination :
1. You can see there are 10 battery groups seperated into VG, V1, V2, ......V9, ( V10 ).

Two battery terminals P+ and P-.

2. The side control power switch and LED shows some oxides (no water leakage though).

3. Just the battery terminals.

4. The switch and LED on board that I am questioning about its operation.

5. I use two Li-ion battery charger to speed up the process, because they are just a 18650 1A charger, it takes hours to fully charge one group. Don't worry the grey battery, it is just acts as a spacer only to provide a structure, it is not being charging.
Avoid charging more than one group battery each time like what I did. DO NOT use one multi cells charger to charge two groups battery, the charger will short circuit your Levo BMS and toast it. If you insist, use two independent chargers to charge two groups.

 

[I want my 2 Dollars!]

Don't leave your battery at 100 percent change during storage

 

[rocky yeung]

I still receive no reply from Specialized dealer and factory. Hopeless support.

Well today I finally find out how and why there were copper oxide on the ON/OFF switch circuit board. One day I came across sudden heavy rain, the motor then react unpredictably. I don't ride in wet weather. Motor has some power assist, sometimes not, auto push bike assist, remote control button sometimes had no response. Check battery to motor plug connection was dry enough.

So better ride back home without power and unplug battery to avoid further possible damage. After cleaning up, found 8th LED twinkles and weakened. I know there is something wrong again inside the battery. So pull apart and find out a little water is leaked onto the ON/OFF circuit board. Try to exam the weather seal of the mini board by pushing it out the rubber layer to reveal any rubber crack. OPS ! The whole seal assembly pops off. By then find that water has already leaks since Day 1. Re-seat it back, it fits but not tight. In photos, the uneven outside epoxy sealant was found to be used on outside to hold the seal boot onto the housing. Well, in fact very in effective. They should use silicone glass sealant instead. The epoxy glue is not really doing its job properly here.

Let dry and everything seems return normal except the handicap LED.

 

[rocky yeung]

Hi. I'm having similar problems with my bike! 2016 Levo it dies with 2 green LEDs left. Battery health shows 90% and have 135 charge cycles.

I watched the Battery Doctor video and my bike also will have the 3 red LEDs and beeping but as soon as I start pedaling, it works.

If I understand your post correctly, you were able to fix the issue by charging the lower voltage batteries separately?

BTW, the LEDs on my bike always act funky after they get wet. I don't wash my bike that often but when I do they will not all work. As soon as it dries they are fine.

Yes, I suspect the battery management system BMS cuts out the power supply to the motor and locks it until you recharge the battery again. So far I am guessing is that the BMS will cut off the power supply if it finds any battery groups drops below certain voltage. Charging the battery with the bike charger does not help the lower voltage group to catch up with the normal voltage groups. Hope this help to answer your question.

Cheers,

 

[Troutwrestler]

If the charger is left connected after the battery reaches 100% does it not spend time balancing the cells?

 

[rocky yeung]

If the charger is left connected after the battery reaches 100% does it not spend time balancing the cells?

My charger that comes with the bike will cease charging once it detects the total voltage has arrived the designated voltage. So any imbalance battery is bad to overall individual battery groups.

Let's say three battery groups 4.2V x 3 = 12.6V, and one group is out of balance. For example, when the battery BMS kicks in to cut off, the three groups voltage are recorded 3.0, 3.5, 3.5 . Now put it into charging, every groups might restore it group voltage at the same rate. For instance, 3.2, 3.7, 3.7. And later, 3.4, 3.9, 3.9. And then 3.7, 4.2, 4.2. Assume the charger will cease at 12.6V. So in order to complete the charging, every battery must receive the same amount of current flow. Each group must keep increasing voltage, the final voltages might be 3.9, 4.4, 4.4. Now you might see it is doing bad to the last two groups battery. They are overly charged.

I am saying the BMS is not that smart to do any battery balancing job during charging. I found the BMS only protects the battery, of course it does monitor the charging process. This is my experience I found how the battery groups works overall.

 

[freerider85]

Thank you for your report regards battery .I have similiar problem with 3 LED's blinking . I found two goups were under voltage (3,7V) and the rest of groups (4V) my battery was in storrage for 5 months charged on 70% .

So yeah you are right BMS inside battery is little stupid ballancing not working very well .Maybe bms ballacing all groups at very end of charging process (very last 10% usually taking long time) so if its not completed to end it can result unballanced cells .

When I arrived first thing what i did was plug battery to charger and it suddenly stopped charging around 80% .When powered batt on 3 red LED start blinking red. I opened battery after that measured all groups and charged those two goups with udervoltage to 4V but no luck error is still there and BCM not let the power out. Currently charging all 10 groups with my RC charger so hopefuly it will work .

 

[freerider85]

Charged to max every group and no luck for me still 3 fuckin red LED's .......

 

[rocky yeung]

Thank you for your report regards battery .I have similiar problem with 3 LED's blinking . I found two goups were under voltage (3,7V) and the rest of groups (4V) my battery was in storrage for 5 months charged on 70% .

So yeah you are right BMS inside battery is little stupid ballancing not working very well .Maybe bms ballacing all groups at very end of charging process (very last 10% usually taking long time) so if its not completed to end it can result unballanced cells .

When I arrived first thing what i did was plug battery to charger and it suddenly stopped charging around 80% .When powered batt on 3 red LED start blinking red. I opened battery after that measured all groups and charged those two goups with udervoltage to 4V but no luck error is still there and BCM not let the power out. Currently charging all 10 groups with my RC charger so hopefuly it will work .

If the battery group is in fact degraded, individually charge it back to same level as other groups may not help. I mean that faulty group discharges to a lower level again. That means replacing the battery is not an option.

 

[freerider85]

I would like to see some statement from Specialized .As by the end of this year this generation of Levo's become out of warranty .And if there is not DIY solution how to fix or just reset battery .This bike will be just expensive money pit. Nobody wanna buy new battery almost every year .I was even prepared for some internal motor parts failure (bought some spare metal sprag clutch and new belt) .But this shitty BMS in battery killig it .Next time looking for open platform like Luna X1 what should be easy to fix .Currently I'm pretty pissed on Specialized parts are still overpriced they want 1200Cad for new battery.

 

[Javier]

Hola, soy nuevo aquí. A mi se me encendieron dos leds en color naranja, no rojo. Quité la cubierta del pulsador y ví que había entrado agua. Lo sequé con un secador de pelo y lo limpié bien. Se encedieron todas en verde y después de ponerle la cubierta, horas después, un led se quedaba en rojo. Desmonté de nuevo y ahora se encienden todas en verde. Voy a esperar antes de volver a pegar la cubierta, a ver si sigue todo bien. Utilizé silicona de montaje de termostato de coche (gris) para el sellado. Se quita bastante bien en caso de tener que desmontar de nuevo. Un saludo.

 

[rocky yeung]

Lithium ion battery protection boards

Information about how to use battery protection circuit boards with lithum ion batteries wired in series, with circuit diagrams

rctrains.co.uk

I found this web page has a good explain regarding the unbalanced batteries.

 

[microballoons]

Charged to max every group and no luck for me still 3 fuckin red LED's .......

hello, were you able to solve the problem of the 3 flashing red LEDs? I have the same problem, battery removed, cell groups perfectly balanced. I do not know what to do. what is the switch next to the small led on the pcb for?

 

[freerider85]

hello, were you able to solve the problem of the 3 flashing red LEDs? I have the same problem, battery removed, cell groups perfectly balanced. I do not know what to do. what is the switch next to the small led on the pcb for?

I was Lucky because I still had last two months of warranty so my LBS changed battery .Do not touch the switch, then battery will be completely dead and even shop with specialized software can't connect battery to pc .If you ballanced cells your last chance is bringing battery to shop they can re-flash firmware this can maybe save battery. Biggest problem is specialized will not release any solution for this issue as its business for them .

 

[microballoons]

I was Lucky because I still had last two months of warranty so my LBS changed battery .Do not touch the switch, then battery will be completely dead and even shop with specialized software can't connect battery to pc .If you ballanced cells your last chance is bringing battery to shop they can re-flash firmware this can maybe save battery. Biggest problem is specialized will not release any solution for this issue as its business for them .

Tomorrow I will take the battery to an authorized service center and take the battery with me. This makes me angry because my battery has 35 recharges and the health status is 100%. I can't throw away 700 euros of battery just because they placed a killer button above the plate. and this button is not even protected from involuntary pressure like that which occurs if I turn the plate over and place it on a surface. I make a final consideration: if pressing that key I risk deleting programming and I can no longer recover having to throw away the battery ... why was it put there? Thank you very much you have been very kind

 

[freerider85]

Tomorrow I will take the battery to an authorized service center and take the battery with me. This makes me angry because my battery has 35 recharges and the health status is 100%. I can't throw away 700 euros of battery just because they placed a killer button above the plate. and this button is not even protected from involuntary pressure like that which occurs if I turn the plate over and place it on a surface. I make a final consideration: if pressing that key I risk deleting programming and I can no longer recover having to throw away the battery ... why was it put there? Thank you very much you have been very kind

Can't say on 100% this button will kill your battery but from my experience if you press it battery is not able connect to PC diag software. My battery had this problem with 3red leds after long storage (3monts). There is still small current draw even when battery is not connected to motor and is off (Bluetooth module probably as I can see it on my phone even when battery is off) and this causing problem with unbalanced cell groups after long storage.

 

[microballoons]

I am writing this message so that it is of help to those who have had problems with the specialized Kenevo 2018 battery. in particular the three LEDs lit and the continuous beep. in this state the battery continues to supply voltage, the engine power change from the handlebar button works but the battery connected to the charger does not recharge. After going around the web I realized that many have this problem but few have solved it by not changing the battery. The button located in the center of the motherboard is a reset that resets the battery programming. Nothing to do with a cell anomaly. the only way to restore the battery is to take it to a service center where with their interface (which you can buy on the net) and the turbo connect software they update the firmware and everything goes back to normal. I repeat no problem with the cells but only a matter of firmware.

 

[microballoons]

I bought an empty shell where the electronic board is mounted. I am studying a new combination of lipo cells to have the same weight but greater autonomy. for the moment I do not go into details but as soon as I build it I take it to the service center where they told me they update it and I check how it behaves in the mountains. then I will report here all my detailed experience. Ps if someone wants to try the same way, start from the Sanyo NCR18650 3450 milliamperes lipo cells, discarge 10Ah

 

[mvdh]

I bought an empty shell where the electronic board is mounted. I am studying a new combination of lipo cells to have the same weight but greater autonomy. for the moment I do not go into details but as soon as I build it I take it to the service center where they told me they update it and I check how it behaves in the mountains. then I will report here all my detailed experience. Ps if someone wants to try the same way, start from the Sanyo NCR18650 3450 milliamperes lipo cells, discarge 10Ah

Did you go on with this project?

 

[Paulo Eduardo]

Did you go on with this project?

Hello, I would also like to know if you managed to complete this project, taking advantage of the moment, I ask if it is technically possible to change the Turbo Levo battery cells without activating the battery protection mode, I am afraid to take the bms off and when reinstall I definitely lose the battery....

 

[Questionmark]

Hi rocky yeung, Hi everybody,

Thanks for the description!

What I miss before I begin my same try:
Did you unsolder the battery wires from the panel before the external charging?

Thanks!
Q

 

[rocky yeung]

Hi rocky yeung, Hi everybody,

Thanks for the description!

What I miss before I begin my same try:
Did you unsolder the battery wires from the panel before the external charging?

Thanks!
Q

no need to detach anything. Just parallel charge only one group of battey, that is only 3.7V. It is just like adding a parallel battery onto one of the group. There are ten groups of battery that add up to 36V system. If you do not know how to parallel charging, then forget this operation now.

Warning : DO NOT use the SAME charger (if it has more than one charging port, like mine) to charge more than one group of battery, otherwise you will destroy the motherboard.

Caution : if you use crocodile clip, be very careful it will slip out of place and contact the motherboard circuit which may also damage the motherboard.

Take great care and good luck.

 

[Questionmark]

no need to detach anything. Just parallel charge only one group of battey, that is only 3.7V. It is just like adding a parallel battery onto one of the group. There are ten groups of battery that add up to 36V system. If you do not know how to parallel charging, then forget this operation now.

Warning : DO NOT use the SAME charger (if it has more than one charging port, like mine) to charge more than one group of battery, otherwise you will destroy the motherboard.

Caution : if you use crocodile clip, be very careful it will slip out of place and contact the motherboard circuit which may also damage the motherboard.

Take great care and good luck.

Thank you rocky! I will be very careful.

 

[bern1234]

Hello, I would also like to know if you managed to complete this project, taking advantage of the moment, I ask if it is technically possible to change the Turbo Levo battery cells without activating the battery protection mode, I am afraid to take the bms off and when reinstall I definitely lose the battery....

Hello, ive a battery first version for turbo levo (401) i've have removed voltage from the bms, opening the battery and disconnecting the cables. Ive done this to clean the mother board. When i've reconnected 3 red leds start to flash and the battery is in a block status. I suppose that bms goes in block when you remove voltage. Do you know jow unblock or reset bms? Thanks a lot

 

[bern1234]

I still receive no reply from Specialized dealer and factory. Hopeless support.

Well today I finally find out how and why there were copper oxide on the ON/OFF switch circuit board. One day I came across sudden heavy rain, the motor then react unpredictably. I don't ride in wet weather. Motor has some power assist, sometimes not, auto push bike assist, remote control button sometimes had no response. Check battery to motor plug connection was dry enough.

So better ride back home without power and unplug battery to avoid further possible damage. After cleaning up, found 8th LED twinkles and weakened. I know there is something wrong again inside the battery. So pull apart and find out a little water is leaked onto the ON/OFF circuit board. Try to exam the weather seal of the mini board by pushing it out the rubber layer to reveal any rubber crack. OPS ! The whole seal assembly pops off. By then find that water has already leaks since Day 1. Re-seat it back, it fits but not tight. In photos, the uneven outside epoxy sealant was found to be used on outside to hold the seal boot onto the housing. Well, in fact very in effective. They should use silicone glass sealant instead. The epoxy glue is not really doing its job properly here.

Let dry and everything seems return normal except the handicap LED.


View attachment 33973

View attachment 33974

Hello, ive a battery first version for turbo levo (401) i've have removed voltage from the bms, opening the battery and disconnecting the cables. Ive done this to clean the mother board. When i've reconnected 3 red leds start to flash and the battery is in a block status. I suppose that bms goes in block when you remove voltage. Do you know jow unblock or reset bms? Thanks a lot