Santana 3 just stopped working

[Nosweat]

My wife's Santana 3 suddently and without any warning cut out the other day on the way to work. The display went dead, not even a backlight, and the motor stopped supplying power. She had to cycle home unassisted. It has been very successful and came with one factory mod - we requested Woosh to fit it with a torque sensor crank and KD58C LDC control as we both greatly preferred torque sensor ebikes to cadence sensors when deciding what to buy a few years ago. The LCD won't come on when the on button is pressed and there's no power from the motor.

When she made it home she charged up her bike overnight and the charger light turned green so presumably the battery must still be charging. I did check that the physical switch on the battery was on.

As I have the same torque sensor and LCD on my bike (retrofitted as a kit), I swapped my LCD over to her bike, but it also failed to turn on. I then tried my wife's LCD on my bike and it seems to work fine powering my bike.

I've eyeballed all the cables and it doesn't look like anything visible such as the connection into the hub motor is damaged.

So in summary we have a Santana 3 that won't turn on, yet the battery seems to charge, the KD58C LCD controller works on another bike and none of the cables appear damaged or unplugged.

Please could someone suggest what the next step should be and how I can get this fixed, bearing in mind I have minimal tools, limited electrical expertise and my local bike shop won't touch e-bikes?

Supplementary question - if it needs any new parts can she continue to ride it to get to work but unassisted without causing any damage (minus battery due to its weight penalty)?

 

[Woosh]

Your Santana3 was built with a TS kit and a one off. I remember it well. I assembled it for you. The wiring is slightly different compared to your bike, check first inside the controller box to see if any connectors got loosened. Thinking about this, it can explain what you see. The second possibility is a fault in the controller.
Please note that the TS controller is located in the crankset. If you can swap it with yours, then try to do so. Please email
support@wooshbikes.co.uk with your findings, we'll try to sort it for you.

 

[Nosweat]

Thank you Tony, well remembered and it's been a pleasure to ride until now. If the controller box is what the battery fits into I can open that up and have a look inside. But I don't have the tools to swap the crankshaft over and would have to take both our bikes into a bikeshop some way away to ask them to try that so it could be an expensive experiment if that's going to be necessary.

Can we continue using the bike for unassisted riding, minus the battery pack, while we try to work out what's going on?

 

[Woosh]

Yes, of course you can.
Let our Andy assist you in fault finding. He is very good at it. Just email support.

 

[Nealh]

Is the battery fused Tony and does it have an extenal one hidden by a grommet ?

 

[Woosh]

Is the battery fused Tony and does it have an extenal one hidden by a grommet ?

It is a rack battery and there is a fuse on the battery output.

 

[Nealh]

I would then check for a blown fuse or see if one sees voltage on the discharge side first.

 

[Woosh]

Hello David,
I talked to Andy here this morning about your Santana bike.
He said pull the battery out of the bike and check the battery leaf contacts where they make contact with the controller box.
Somethimes the leaf springs get crushed and cut the power to the bike.
If you have a multitester, check the battery voltage as NealH suggested.

 

[Nosweat]

The wiring is slightly different compared to your bike, check first inside the controller box to see if any connectors got loosened. Thinking about this, it can explain what you see.

This is about as far as I'm confident in taking the bike to pieces, but all the cables appear to be plugged in within the box, as well as the external cables.

 

[Nosweat]

Hello David,
I talked to Andy here this morning about your Santana bike.
He said pull the battery out of the bike and check the battery leaf contacts where they make contact with the controller box.
Somethimes the leaf springs get crushed and cut the power to the bike.
If you have a multitester, check the battery voltage as NealH suggested.

What an intriguing idea. Doesn't make any sense to me as I never remove the battery from the rack (well maybe once, to take the photos above when I opened up the control box).

I gingerly stuck the pins of my multimeter into the two holes of the battery and measured 39.6V (I had charged it only the other day after the motor cut out). Then I took a photo of the spring leaves. I'm not sure what they are supposed to look like, other than to say that one (the positive terminal) looks like it's deeper than the other. Is it meant to look that way?

 

[Nealh]

The fuse is ok , always the first and easy check to rule out any power issue fault.
Andy will have to confirm but that + terminal is recessed to far and looks like the cause of power loss, if one looks closely one can see burn marks from arcing and discoloration on the plastic.

 

[Woosh]

The spring leaves are in poor condition, Andy can help you with restoring the spring leaves later, it's not the reason why the bike cuts out.
The next step is to open the controller box and follow the battery lead to the next junction.
Please check the battery's voltage at the next junction.

 

[MikelBikel]

That battery terminal appears to have been pushed back out of contact.
Same thing happened on my Gale, but I never twigged why it cut power on bumps until I eventually replaced the battery (a different fault, mine) and looked inside it.
Follow their advice re fixing it, of course.