Luna Mini Charger Clicking, Not Charging, My Fix That Worked Last Night.

[Chris Duke]

Ironically just after getting home from a strand ride up to and back from Luna yesterday to pick up a BBSHD, I plug in my 17.5Ah battery into the mini charger, and all I could get it to do was click, click, click on and off. This happened once before. The last time I waited a while, then turned the battery on and off several times, and changed the charge settings a few times. The first time I sort of assumed that the charge was still close enough to 80% that it didn't want to start up, and that by flipping switches like a crazy monkey did something to help. I was wrong.

What it was, is that I had drained the battery lower than ever before, about 50%, and for some reason, it didn't want to do the charge. This time I drained the battery to 42V, probably lower than it's ever been drained in the past, and no matter what monkey business I tried, it wasn't going to do it's job and charge my battery.

The fix!
I took an old cheap plastic dumb 48V charger out of the garage, and soldered a XT60F connector on it. Charged the battery up for about an hour, then the Luna Mini 48V charger worked again.

Apparently Luna has some magic adapter to fix the problem, and the problem is not limited to the 48V Mini. I found complaints about the advanced chargers in both 48 and 52V having the same problems with my searches. The dreaded Click and no charge syndrome.

I'll contact Luna after the new year when they have full staff on hand again to take the time to answer my questions and offer solutions. Until then, all I can say is that a cheap plastic charger can save your butt and get you to work the next day with an adapter. I'm just glad I had a cheapo dumb charger and a female XT60 laying around where I could find them! It's nice to have spare parts!

[paxtana]

Yes the latest Mini chargers trickle charge when the pack voltage is low. It's slow but it is charging. Would probably take days with a big 17.5ah pack though.
If you give me your order# I'll have the adapter sent that makes it work the way you expect.

[jigs]

It happened to me as well. Not having much experience with these batteries I drained it too low and everything shut down. I didn't know it was THAT dead because it was still reading 47v or something close to that (52v battery) and the battery meter was still more than half way. I thought I had a bad connection somewhere. I unplugged and re-plugged a few things in and it came back on. Went a 1/4 mile and it popped off again. Repeat this a few times to get home (each time was a shorter distance) and I had apparently over drained the battery. As mentioned above I hooked up the mini charger and got the click on, click off. They told me it was still charging, just slowly and would eventually start charging again. It sat there clicking for a week. Not a business week, I mean like 7 or 8 days. The bike was new and to be frank I was pissed. Finally I woke up one morning and it was charging. That aforementioned adapter wasn't available yet so I worked it out with Luna support and got the advanced charger.

Since then I'm careful not to discharge too much while on a ride and have not had it shut down on me. Now I stop once in a while and check the voltage with no load on it. Fully charged it reads around 58v. I try to not run it past 49-50v at idle.

I wish there was a fix for the battery meter. In my opinion the bike shouldn't shut down when it's telling me it still has more than half a charge. There is definitely a learning curve with these bikes. The more reading and research you do, the better off you are.

[Chris Duke]

Yes the latest Mini chargers trickle charge when the pack voltage is low. It's slow but it is charging. Would probably take days with a big 17.5ah pack though.
If you give me your order# I'll have the adapter sent that makes it work the way you expect.

Thanks. I'll just pick one up next time I'm at Luna if I can remember. I've been back twice now ank keep forgetting to ask for one. My fix workes good. I was lucky to have the connector and a spare 48v cheap generic charger around. It happened again a few weeks ago, but no sweat since I have the other charger to give it a boost until it's charged up enough for the Luna charger to take over.