RXV help

[jeremykent]

I have a RXV that was brought in it will only go slow in either direction. The last guy replaced the electric brake but said it didn’t help. Currently the brake is off and the cart is still slow. From reading other post I am leaning towards the speed sensor.

First how do I determine what year the cart is? Can’t find any markings in the normal places.

I did look at the motor and do not see any external sensors so I am assuming it is the one in the bearing. There are 2 small plugs with wires that go into the motor where the power wires attach.

And is there a way to check the sensor? I would like to verify my thoughts before removing the motor.

Any help is appreciated, the only thing I know less about is Yamaha’s and women....

[nickdalzell1]

Does it barely go crawl speed? sounds a bit like grinding? Does it have the silver (not black) heat sink behind controller?

If you said 'YES!' to all these, time for an encoder bearing.

You need an oscilloscope to check it properly, but in my case (and our shop is stuck in the '70s anyway) if it barely moves and you've eliminated the brake, it's going to be that encoder bearing.

I think you have a Danahar RXV, years 2007-2010 (some 11, but that was the change year) RXV usually has a serial number sticker on the lower steering column near the floorboard, with teeny little numbers representing 'date code' that looks a little like '0408' where the '04' is the month and '08' the year

[jeremykent]

Yes barely crawls and silver heat sink. There are some pieces of the sticker on the colum enough to see there was a bar code on it but no numbers left.

[jeremykent]

Ok so before I order the encoder bearing is there anything else I should check? Is there any way to confirm the accl. Pedal is working properly, out put on con troller?

[BobBoyce]

I agree with nick, the motor speed encoder has likely failed. You can use an oscilloscope to view the 2 outputs from the encoder. Orange and Black are 5 VDC power, the other 2 are the outputs. Jack up the rear axle and put it on jack stands to get both wheels off of the ground. Power on the RXV in ON/Neutral, then unbolt/remove the motor brake. Rotate the exposed motor shaft, or a wheel, very slowly and check each encoder output to look for nice clean 5V square wave pulses. These pulses must exist on both outputs. They are out of time with one another to read rotation direction.

[jkredman]

The motor will have to be removed to replace the encoder. It weighs around 40 pounds.

The three hi power cables will have to be unbolted from the controller, and fed through to the back of the cart.

I took a a ratchet strap and tightened it just enough to hold the weight of the motor. I was then able to remove the six or so screws that held the motor to the gear housing. I could then remove the motor.

The motor is held together by for long bolts. They need to be unscrewed with an Allen wrench.

The plate holding the bearing Encoder will then come off.

In my case the old bearing popped right out after removing the two retaining brackets. The new encoder popped right back in.

[nickdalzell1]

sometimes the end cap of the motor wants to stay attached to the armature as well, nothing two blocks of wood and a rubber hammer won't solve. There is a snap ring and wave washer holding the armature to the end cap as well

Put car in TOW before doing any work

[cgtech]

I would check the temp sensor before buying a encoder. It's the 2 wire plug near the motor that does NOT power the brake. You should get a ohms reading of something like 400-1300 ohms. If the temp sensor is bad, motor replacement is required, as it is woven into the motor windings.

[nickdalzell1]

In my experience I have not seen a temp sensor causing the same crawl speed issue as an encoder fault. If one has the handset it will not show a code when the encoder goes, but will show a numerical code for motor over temp if it has issues, and we used to have one guy who constantly overloaded his car (he weighed 300 lbs, and had a 1,000lb toolbox on the back, and it was lifted) and constantly had the over temp fault, and it just shut the car down.

[BobBoyce]

Originally Posted by nickdalzell1

In my experience I have not seen a temp sensor causing the same crawl speed issue as an encoder fault. If one has the handset it will not show a code when the encoder goes, but will show a numerical code for motor over temp if it has issues, and we used to have one guy who constantly overloaded his car (he weighed 300 lbs, and had a 1,000lb toolbox on the back, and it was lifted) and constantly had the over temp fault, and it just shut the car down.

The default crawl speeds are different between the two failures... The Motor Speed Encoder fault crawl speed is 100 RPM (less than 1/3 MPH), While the Temperature Control fault crawl speed is 800 RPM (about 2.5 MPH), 8 times faster. The speed of the crawl can be used to tell the difference...