I'm not sure how many of us use Alltrax controllers in their EVs but I wanted to share a learning experience I had with one. I purchased an AXE-7245 3 years ago and last summer it started acting up where it would not boot in my boat (http://www.evalbum.com/4767). It appeared something was amiss in the logic of the unit- green light would not come on. If I waited a few hours, tried it again it would come on and stay on with no issue. However every few days this issue would creep back. Being that the controller was installed in a boat and always just a few feet from lake water, I called Alltrax support and inquired whether moisture could be the culprit. They advised me that the boards are 100% sealed and that as long as water wasn't being splashed and arcing out the connections this wasn't the cause. Well I dug some more and found in one of their documents that a diode should be installed on the power pin as well as the contactor. I installed one and the issue appeared to go away. Fast forward a few months and I swapped this controller into my snowpig (http://www.evalbum.com/4544) for winter duty. It worked great up until last week and the no LED gremlim re-appeared. After checking everything 10 times and another winter storm bearing down on us I was a little worried to say the least! Just as I was about to do a hard day of shovelling/ snowblowing with an old ICE snowblower, I took the chance and focused a hair dryer on the serial port opening. Within 2 minutes the controller booted up! I think where the weather had warmed up a bit and my garage had gathered some moisture something inside the controller got damp and crossed something out. I guess the learning part of the story here is that despite what support tells you or what the advertisements say, sealed controllers can be prone to moisture over time. I suspect some of the epoxy has cracked or developed openings around the board with it heating up and cooling up with service. I have since ordered another controller and I'm also building a Cougar controller, be good to be able to service/see the controller board to be able to service it.
Cheers Dan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20160202/9298dc34/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
