Giant Lite battery problem

[oznog]

Help!
My battery is being strange. I got to work today and the display (that you usuall have to push to show) seemed to be stuck on. I didn't think much of it, but 8 hours later when I came back it had gone from 2 bars to blinking one! It seems to be stuck on and draining! Luckily I still made it home. how can I fix this?
Thanks!

 

[PedelecCommuter]

My Giant Lite battery LED light stopped working properly a while back. Now it just blinks on and off continously all day. However all this blinking on and off does not seem to really impact performance. ......not really a solution to your problem but maybe reassurance that it may not be draining too much by being on.

 

[flecc]

It's very unlikely to be able to drain much. The change from two to one LED could have been because it was on the borderline of doing it any way, and the drop of temperature in the battery once you'd stopped draining current allowed it to flip over.

These gauges are a bit troublesome, they've packed up for many after quite a lot of uses.

However, there is one thing you can do. Integral gauges lose reference to their zero point over time, needing to have the battery fully emptied to reset. When you get a chance, ride the bike until the power cuts out with battery empty, then fully recharge the battery. That will reset the zero point, then see if it's working ok again.
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[oznog]

Thanks for the advice, I did refresh the battery last night and its still blinking like its almost dead.. From both your advice and the fact I made it home fine, I'd say the battery meter is not right. It is however a bit daunting to take the battery for my 13 mile commute with it saying its empty! I'll let you know how it goes and if I have any luck riding it until dead to reset

 

[flecc]

If it's still like that after a refresh, it's virtually certain the meter has failed. This is quite common on those NiMh batteries as they age, and they aren't repairable, being just a minimal circuit of miniature surface mount components.

Although my one always worked correctly, I always judged my battery state by mileage on the trip of the cycle speedo, resetting it to zero at each charge. That way the reading is always there on the handlebar without bothering with the gauge.
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[oznog]

So does that mean that if I try and ride it down to zero, it won't reset? I.e. its doomed to blink forever?

Unfortunately I don't use a bike computer (not sure where I would fit it on handlebars!) but I do pretty much do the same route, which I know usually gets me home and back with 1-2 bars left.

Just checking with this type of battery its fine to recharge at 1-2, there is no reason to completely drain it?

 

[flecc]

NiMh are best discharged once in a while, say every tenth charge, but using refresh on your charger does that, so no need to do it on the bike as it amounts to the same thing. As your journey fits well within the charge available, no need to worry about reading the charge any more.

As for the gauge, it's likely to continue to read wrongly now, though what it reads may vary since the circuit is very sensitive to slight changes.

If your battery is quite old, cell variations can also cause misreading, and some recelling services refuse to do the Giant Lafree battery as they have too many meters failing to read afterwards with different cells, the circuit being too finely balanced and fussy about the conditions.
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[oznog]

Well just an update. I rode the battery to nil and recharged it. It no longer has a battery meter now it seems. But it still works to get me to work. I suppose its just a bit dodgey having no idea when the battery life is going to get to not enough to get into work!

 

[flecc]

They don't suddenly lose capacity, so using the battery on a mileage or routine journey basis is safe. If your battery starts getting to the point where the capacity for your journey is marginal, it will feel distinctly weaker, giving much less assistance.

So just recharge for the journey each time and be confident that you will get plenty of warning that it's starting to be a close thing. Even if you ignored that and just carried on every day, when it eventually fell short, it would only be by the final couple of hundred yards or so at most, nothing you couldn't pedal or easily walk.

As mentioned before, I never rely on gauges. Batteries are far more consistent so I've always judged range on a mileage basis.
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