# Kelly KDH07601A live casing fault - help needed



## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

You sure it was a short, and not the caps charging up ?? Was the connector live when you tried connecting to it ??

Are you aware that many controllers need a pre-charge circuit ??

Sorry if you know all about this, I'm not sure how much you know about the subject.

Roy


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## adcyork (Jan 22, 2012)

Roy Von Rogers said:


> You sure it was a short, and not the caps charging up ?? Was the connector live when you tried connecting to it ??
> 
> Are you aware that many controllers need a pre-charge circuit ??
> 
> ...


I connected the positive side of the battery pack to the controller and then checked between the negative terminal of the pack and the chassis and 33v (pack voltge) was registered. The batteries are tottaly isolated from the chassis. 

I then removed the controller and checked the isolation between the controller casing and the HV battery connections on the side. This is when I observed continuity between the two, albeit with a resistance of 2.6Mohms. The controller is mounted on the chassis and so the casing is in direct electrical connection with the chassis. This continuity has caused the visible voltage on the chassis.

I am running a precharge circuit.

Is this normal?


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## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

You should not be reading anything from pack to chassis ground.

Try this...take off the screws that mounts your controller to chassis and put an insulator under it, like a piece of wood, rubber etc., anything to isolate the controller from chassis.

Now check to see if you have any voltage from pack to chassis ground or only from controller casing. You had me confused with calling it a short, what you are having is a leakage from somehting, doing the above will tell if its from controller or something else.

The most common voltage leak is generally an electronic device using your 12v aux voltage, leaking to chassis ground, like a digital volt or amp meter.

Roy


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## cruisin (Jun 3, 2009)

Roy Von Rogers said:


> You should not be reading anything from pack to chassis ground.
> 
> Try this...take off the screws that mounts your controller to chassis and put an insulator under it, like a piece of wood, rubber etc., anything to isolate the controller from chassis.
> 
> ...


Wrong, you will see voltage between the battery pack and ground when using a Kelly (junk) controller. Not fully isolated even though they say they are. It is not enough leakage to do any damage, but will give you a shock and destroy digital voltage meters that use common ground. others who have not worked with these products dont know and can get you in trouble or hurt.


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## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

cruisin said:


> Wrong, you will see voltage between the battery pack and ground when using a Kelly (junk) controller. Not fully isolated even though they say they are. It is not enough leakage to do any damage, but will give you a shock and destroy digital voltage meters that use common ground. others who have not worked with these products dont know and can get you in trouble or hurt.


 
Thats the reason I asked him to isolate the controller. Also I'm not wrong about a controller that should not have a potential between it and ground, if so, Kelly needs to be notified and told its a hazzard, I cant imagine a company selling a product that can harm you knowingly.

Roy


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Roy Von Rogers said:


> ...Kelly needs to be notified and told its a hazzard, I cant imagine a company selling a product that can harm you knowingly.
> 
> Roy


Yes, Kelly did use a simple resistor divider to measure the pack voltage in this model (which is several years old), so there is not total isolation between the traction and 12v sides of the controller.


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## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

Thats just plain nuts. So I'm assuming thats in this model only ?? First time I've read about this.


Roy


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Roy Von Rogers said:


> Thats just plain nuts. So I'm assuming thats in this model only ?? First time I've read about this.
> ...


Yep, nuts about sums it up. IIRC, all of their controllers back then had this issue. Then they started selling "optoisolated" controllers and, presumably, this problem went away. I don't know for sure as I haven't looked at one of their controllers in years. These Kelly's, btw, were also infamous for only delivering about 1/10th to 1/6th of the claimed "peak" power on a continuous basis.


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## cruisin (Jun 3, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> Yep, nuts about sums it up. IIRC, all of their controllers back then had this issue. Then they started selling "optoisolated" controllers and, presumably, this problem went away. I don't know for sure as I haven't looked at one of their controllers in years. These Kelly's, btw, were also infamous for only delivering about 1/10th to 1/6th of the claimed "peak" power on a continuous basis.


The newer controllers are better, but still not up to par except those only interested in price. Support is the worst of the worst. Talking about isolation, how about one of the most costly and popular charges that is non isolated?


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