Tips: Updating DFC3’s software

Three months without TW560 taken its toll on me. No long therapeutic drives across Switzerland’s beautiful landscapes. No tinkering with my TWIKE to keep it in tip-top shape. After working really hard for a few weeks, I decided to take a day off from work and asked Andreas from Ksenotek if I could take on his offer to borrow his TWIKE – he happily agreed to give it to me for the weekend. Just a few minutes after setting off with Andi’s TWIKE, I noticed that the controller was running a 7-year-old version of DFC’s software. Many of the goodies […]

How to balance with dead cells in a stack

Another spot of giving back love to the community after having driven a TWIKE that was offered to me after my catastrophic total-loss accident with TW560. TW230, a 10Ah capacity TWIKE from 1999 was lent to me by Thomas who also asked me if I could tell me if I could hear something that wasn’t OK with his TWIKE. After a few hundred km, my verdict was: some ball bearings are on their way out and will be needing some attention soon. The battery pack, however, was showing strange drops in voltage at higher loads and the end-charge voltage would […]

Want to travel with your TWIKE?

Finally, a page that’s been in the works for a very long time is ready: An answer to the ever-returning question: What kind of kit do you need to take your TWIKE on a trip across Europe or further afield? Click here to go to the brand-new page called “TWIKE long-distance travel kit“. Got feedback or miss anything? Let me know!

To be expected after 17 years…

Once every month, I check my TWIKE’s exterior for potential problems (like this one, or this one) that are easily fixed if detected early and turn can into very costly repairs, if left unattended. This entry shows you another part of your TWIKE you should check regularly – which I haven’t … until now. TW560’s swing steering arm!   Seeing this brown colour – very unusual for a TWIKE since all other parts are made of either plastic or aluminium – got me thinking: rust is never a good sign. I’m aware that most of my readers haven’t seen this […]

Post-TDE2017 TLC for TW560 (Part 3/3)

Finally, after being very busy, I’m able to conclude TDE2017‘s TLC for TW560. After ~30’000km driven since I bought the new pack, I figured it would be time to see how the cells were doing and balance the pack to restore its full capacity. Unlike my last pack that just had 15 balancer ports, this pack has 2x3x7=42 such ports. (The answer to all questions 😉 ) Balancing this battery pack will definitely take longer than before! According to Ralph, inventor of the TWIKE and vendor of my current pack, balance cycles per port should be around 15 minutes – […]

Battieres: Current status & how to keep them healthy

Batteries: the most important part of an electric vehicle and the most expensive part, too! EV drivers always obsess about remaining capacity (…especially the ones that use their EV for more than just their daily commute) and which external factors can contribute to capacity loss…and what can be done to preserve capacity as much as possible. When speaking to a non-ev-driver, there is much confusion about what exactly capacity is. Car manufacturers make things even more confusing with much electronic nannying and many abstraction layers. Chemical energy storage is a vast field and I could start a full blog covering […]

Display troubles…

Just after arriving back from my one-day-trip to Feldkirch, TW560’s display started acting strange, showing confusing information. My TWIKE was working fine overall, so it wasn’t any serious problem. I suspected this to be the same problem I experienced during my 2011 trip to India, where challenging roads made a daughter board from TW560’s new controller from Dreifels a.k.a. DFC 3.0, come loose Let’s dive in and fix this problem, shall we? All that needs to be done is push the daughter board firmly back onto its contacts. (newer boards are held back by cable ties). Where is the cable […]

plexi-vodoo!

as you might know, older swiss twikes are fitted with a plexi windscreen to save weight. (elsewhere in the EU, the glass manufacturer-lobby was successful in having legislation for cars include glass as the only material approved for windscreens…which adds an uncool 30kgs to european twikes and forces even the hyper-efficient VW XL1 to have a glass windscreen even though all side windows are poly carbonate!) after my vandalism incident last year, and my subsequent purchase and custom fitting of the worlds’ last original twike plexi windscreen, i am obviously even more interested in keeping it in pristine condition! however, […]

IEC type 2 for TW560

remember us lamenting the unavailability of a reliable solution to connect to IEC Type2 socket – to allow for a tri-phase charge of at least one TWIKE, better two. well, finally, TW560 gets it’s type2 plug. there are multiple ways how to make this work. i downloaded the official documents from mennekes and combined the info with some of the ideas floating around on the internet. the hardware was bought in china and assembled at home. initially, i had a short cable with the release switch close to the mennekes plug. now, my solution has a longer cable with the […]