Hisun E1 Parking Brake Return Spring

[Gorj]

Do not know if any of you Hisun E1 owners have  had issues with the parking brake pedal  not returning completely, thus preventing you from moving forward or reverse.   I had this issue and even sometimes when going over rough road the parking brake pedal would move down far enough to shut off power.  Local  dealer said no one had complained about that issue and they had no fix.  So decided to correct it myself. I installed a return spring on the parking brake arm and it stopped the problem!

[kenfain]

Nice job on that fix! Thanks for sharing that. But what's the original design of the parking brake return. Shouldn't there already be a spring somewhere on the release?

[Gorj]

Yes there is a return spring inside the mechanism on the other  side of  the firewall. But  on my E1 it was not strong enough to return the pedal enough to activate a microswitch that  permits current to flow into a relay and then thus to the electric motor. A safety switch! I could have replaced the weak E1 spring, but this was much simpler.

[kenfain]

I kinda suspected that might be the case. Either way, it's a simple solution. And simple is always good. Thanks for sharing it with us. 

[Howard]

Have the same problem.  I might try your solution.  I just pull up on the brake pedal and that fixes it when it happens.

[mcraigchr]

Great idea!  I have to pull my p-brake pedal manually.  Hasn't sprung back correctly since a month after I purchased it.  I will try this!

CC 

[Cougsfan]

I too have the same problem.   I just sprayed the linkage down with lubricant and it helps a lot.   Still happens occasionally and I just pull up on the pedal with my  foot.

[Howard]

Exactly.

Any other problems?

I have at least one defective battery.  Has less than 100 miles on it.   

[Gorj]

Have a friend here with an E1 and he has had battery problems too. In his case I think the batteries set to long either at dealer or distributor without being charged.  These type of batteries need to have the charge kept up on them or they go bad. Hisun has replace several of them under warranty. My E1 was fresh out of the distributor and did not sit around at all.  I have had no issues. I charge it about every two weeks, but the charge level has never gone below one  notch of the gauge. I have never driven mine far. I use it only on my 18 acre place. I have a small mountain at the edge of my property and it has no issue navigating it. It is always parked under cover so it is not completely out in the elements. 

[Howard]

I think it was the same thing with ours as we bought it early in the summer, but it is a 2019 (we did get a $1500 discount on the price though).  I tried to ask the selling dealer how they had maintained the batteries but they were vague and in any case they had been in Texas for a while before coming up to Canada.

How many batteries did your friend have to replace?

We as well only use it around our 75 acre property.  A few miles if that each outing.

Otherwise we are very happy with the vehicle.

[Gorj]

In the last year he has had three batteries replaced.

[Osney]

I've had seven of the eight batteries replaced now, and finally the E1 seems to be working properly (fingers crossed!) I always put mine on charge when I finish using it, and it stays plugged into the wall socket until I take it out again. Daily run is only about five miles, which barely registered on the charge meter on the dash, but it was getting stuck and flashing a low voltage warning whenever I went up a moderately steep hill. What Gorj says about the batteries sitting unused for a while - either at a dealer/distributor or even in the factory pre-fitting - is probably right. These things are designed to be charged and drained repeatedly; they don't like being left idle!

[Howard]

Hi Osney, 

I am very pleased that you responded to my post.  I hope you don't mind if I ask you for some suggestions on how I should proceed.

We took possession of our Hisun last May.  Right away I noticed that the charge meter would go down after only a few kilometers.    I got very little guidance from the selling dealer, or from Hisun Canada.  I bought myself a multimeter and started to test all the batteries, keeping a log of my readings.   I am only able to measure open current, not the current under load.  I quickly identified one battery that was always below spec after a full charge, and that discharged quickly during use.  It took a while to find a service center that was willing to look at an electric vehicle (Hisun is still fairly new in Canada and does not have a great dealer/service network).  Now I am getting ready to send off the bad battery to the service center to be tested by them and then, I assume to receive a replacement.   We have DIscover dry cell batteries.

I am wondering how the replacement of your 7 batteries rolled out.  Did you test your batteries as well?  Did the batteries fail one at a time?  How was Hisun in the UK for dealing with your problem?  Are there any suggestions you can make for me?

I will take note of using the unit regularly.  We are heading into winter, still with no snow on the ground, but we did purchase a plow attachment and we do plan to drive her around on a regular basis.

We do like the Sector E1 and we use it only for work around our 75 acre property.

Thanks and regards from Canada.

Howard

 

[Osney]

Mine went back to the dealer several times, and I think they replaced two, then another two and then three most recently. They're a good dealership, to be honest - have been here forever selling lawnmowers, chainsaws and all that sort of stuff and only took on the HiSun franchise recently. They understand petrol engines, but batteries not so much! The mechanic didn't get a lot of help from the UK importer either, but finally worked out how to drain test the batteries. That's presumably what yours will have done, and is the only sure way to tell if one of these batteries is a dud. 

The symptoms with mine were a little different to what you're describing. I often had a 'full' charge according to the meter on the dashboard, but the buggy would struggle with a hill and then start to flash the 4C53 error, which the handbook says is low voltage. I bought a fairly cheap lead-acid battery tester from Amazon, which seemed to be quite good at identifying the duff cells once I'd limped home after a hill incident, but would show them all as fine after an overnight charge.

One of the things that occurred to me is that while the handbook says to plug the charger in whenever you're not using the buggy, I've read elsewhere that these batteries are designed to be fully discharged and recharged regularly. They apparently reach full efficiency/capacity (I'm not an expert!) after a few dozen charge and drain cycles. Most days I use mine to go up the hill on my farm to check my cows. It's between four and five miles round trip, depending on whether they've gone to hide in the gorse at the farthest end of the farm or are waiting patiently at the gate in the hope of a feed. Sometimes on the way there - uphill most of the way - the battery charge meter will drop one bar, but by the time I've made it back home the meter's usually showing full again thanks to regen braking. I'd plug it in to charge anyway, and then not use it again until the next morning. 

My worry is that this might have actually been the wrong way to treat the batteries. Either I should have been waiting several days until they were quite drained before recharging them, or I should have been going a lot further on a trip than five miles. The handbook is not particularly forthcoming on this, and I've had no reply to my emails to both UK importer and HiSun itself, so this remains just a theory.

Fingers crossed, the buggy seems to be working OK now. I did a six and a half mile trip today with no problems, and it doesn't seem to bog down on hills quite as much. It's still not particularly fast, but I can live with that. 

[Howard]

Hi Osney,

Since we last wrote winter has descended upon us and today it is -10C.  Today my wife was out and even though the vehicle was fully charged it couldn't make it up the first hill and is in fact stranded there now after giving a new error code 4dc3 which is Power Supply Critical.   Hopefully left overnight, and with weather warming up slightly,  we can get the vehicle home.

We have not brought the vehicle in yet as my wife wanted to do more work with it before bringing in.   The service centre said to just bring in the battery in question, the one that has tested low since the beginning.  Since it will cost me close to $200 to have the vehicle transported to the service centre I will start that way.   I am not looking forward to removing the battery and will have to borrow an insulated torque wrench I think.  I was never one of those guys who liked to fiddle around with vehicles, but you do what you have to do.

As for battery charging.  In the manual (which I can send if you like) it recommends charging after every use.  I haven't been doing exactly that, but almost.

Hope this finds you well.

Regards,

Howard

[Gorj]

Thank goodness we do not have really cold temps here.  If one battery is defective it affect your power output.  In an emergency there is something you can try. Remove the bad battery.  With the power off. connect the two battery cables from the removed battery.  If the other batteries are good and charged, you should have enough power to move the vehicle. I have never tried this but technically I think it would work. 

[Osney]

We don't often get down to -10 here, but it's been known to happen. I'll have to keep an eye out for that, so thanks for the warning!

Removing the batteries is apparently a bit of a PITA, as they're heavy and the space is awkward, but as long as you've pushed the big red isolation switch in you shouldn't have much risk of electric shock. It's not like working on a car where the battery is earthed to the body. Best of luck with it!

[Howard]

Thanks Gorj.  I am a little afraid to try that.  Hopefully with the weather warming up the batteries will charge enough to get her home.

 

Osney.  I am curious as to how/why your 7 batteries were changed out in stages.  Were they not all tested when you first brought the vehicle in?  That makes me worry even more .   What type of battery are they?  We have the Discovery Dry Cell.  Also, you mention an isolation switch.  Where do I find that?

I am attaching the Owner's Manual as you mentioned you didn't have it.

Wish us luck!

Owner+Manual+-+Sector+E1.pdf

[Osney]

41 minutes ago, Howard said:

Thanks Gorj.  I am a little afraid to try that.  Hopefully with the weather warming up the batteries will charge enough to get her home.

 

Osney.  I am curious as to how/why your 7 batteries were changed out in stages.  Were they not all tested when you first brought the vehicle in?  That makes me worry even more .   What type of battery are they?  We have the Discovery Dry Cell.  Also, you mention an isolation switch.  Where do I find that?

I am attaching the Owner's Manual as you mentioned you didn't have it.

Wish us luck!

Owner+Manual+-+Sector+E1.pdf 10.51 MB · 0 downloads

I do have the owner's manual, but not a workshop manual which might be more use! Looking through that version of the manual, the isolation switch must be a UK/European spec thing. It's a big red button on the front of the battery compartment, just below the lip of the seat in the middle. You can't miss it, so if you're not seeing it, it's not there! If I press mine in, it disconnects the batteries from everything else.

Mine has the Discover dry cells too. I think my dealer only replaced the ones that tested as failing, unaware that others were on their way out too. I suspect the mechanic didn't know how to test the batteries properly the first time, either. Or didn't want to have to pull them all out one by one! Mine was the first of these buggies the dealer had sold, and they still haven't sold many a year later. They're used to petrol and diesel machines, but are still at the bottom of a steep learning curve where battery vehicles are concerned. 

[Howard]

So were you checking your batteries yourself and when you saw they were down you brought them in?  The good ones show about 6.58 when fully charged and the bad one shows 6.28.   These values drop after use and at one point the good ones were 6.39 and he bad ones 5.35.  I have tried to talk to the Hisun distributor here and it looks like they have little experience with these machines.  The mechanic I will be bringing it to has never worked on an electric Hisun before. 

What confuses me is that when my wife took the vehicle out yesterday the energy gauge (or whatever you call it) showed full power.  I wonder what it is measuring?

[Osney]

I didn't check mine at first, because I didn't have anything to do it with. My dealer came and collected the buggy after I'd phoned him about the low voltage code flashing and the almost total loss of power going uphill. Fully charged it was fine, but it would give up after four miles or so.

After it had been back to the shop the first time, I bought a fairly basic Chinese knock-off battery tester, that seems to do the job. It generally shows all batteries healthy once they've been on charge overnight, but after I've used the buggy for a few miles it shows up the duff batteries. I've not tested them since it came back after the last visit to the shop, as it's been running well. 

I've no idea what the dashboard gauge measures either. I've never seen mine dip below one bar off the top, even when it's flashing low voltage warning!

Incidentally, the spec sheet for the discover batteries suggests they should be fine at -10, so it's probably one (or more) duff cells. I wonder how many replacements under warranty HiSun will fork out for before they decide to use a different supplier.

EVGT6A-A.pdf

[Howard]

That's interesting.  So after the first time in the shop you started testing the batteries and only a couple, or three would show low (you said you replaced them in stages 2,2 then 3).    I didn't really want to have to pull all the batteries out of the vehicle and haul them to the mechanic (or pay $200 roundtrip for someone to haul it) but maybe that is what I need to do.   Did you happen to keep a log of the voltages?  I got myself a pretty good multimeter which I have been using.  Looks like we have to educate ourselves!  I will try and contact Hisun down in Texas, where they assemble and test the units we get up here in Canada.

Thanks very much for the PDF.   Very interesting.   It seems that at around -10C the batteries only have half their regular capacity.   The chart shows that they should not be used under -20C.  I am wondering about storing them at a low temperature as we do not have heated storage at the moment.

And interesting to see that you have the same opinion of the energy gauge.  I will ask what it is actually measuring.

It is too bad because overall the vehicle suits our purposes well.   And from the initial research I did it seemed like the batteries were of high quality.

Together we will get to the bottom of this!

To be continued....

[Howard]

The OPEN CIRCUIT VOLTAGE TO THE STATE OF CHARGE diagram is very useful and seems to mirror what I have found in measuring the batteries.

[Howard]

To follow up.  I headed out to the vehicle (henceforth known as Alice) and first measured the "bad" battery and one of the "good" batteries.   I had fully charged Alice a few days before.   The dashboard charger showed "FULL".  The bad battery measured 4.35 volts and the good battery measured 6.48 volts.    I tried to move Alice forward in Max mode and got the error.  Then I tried to back her up and that worked for a moment before I got the error.   I thought that maybe if I went VERY SLOWLY I might be able to get her to move and that is what I did, moving her foot by foot backwards up the hill.  She stopped with the error a few times if I got too aggressive on the pedal, but I was persistent and we managed to limp back home.   So for now she is in our shed and in the New Year I will start the process of getting batteries replaced.  

Thanks for all the advice and help.

Have as good a holiday season as possible.

 

[Osney]

Good to hear you managed to get it back, albeit slowly! I hope you can get it sorted without too much expense. I think I might need a name for my buggy too, rather than just The Buggy. My sister in law's called Alice though, so I'll have to think of something else!

[Howard]

Thanks.  I will keep you posted.  I am going to contact Hisun to clear up why the dashboard gauge shows no problem.

Alice is named after my wife's late mother, who lived with us in the last few years of her life.  She died in 2015 at 93.  We also have a motorhome, used as a studio, named Zella and a riding mower named Goldie (she is orange).

[Gorj]

I hope you get it sorted out.

We call our E1 the Mule, for our other side by side was a Kawasaki Mule! Our two wheeler with a handle that curves out, we call Dolly Parton!  A funny: You know what Moses used to part the Red Sea? ..... A sea saw!

[Mac1942]

Got a new Coleman 550 and drove it off the trailer into my garage. Set the pedal parking brake. Went out the next day, it starts and runs ok but the parking brake will not release. Tried rocking it and stepped on the brake at least ten times. Cannot get it to release. Suggestions please.