E Bike Waterproofing Tips – How to protect E bike wiring and components from moisture
Welcome to the high voltage Light Electric Vehicle Channel this video looks at some waterproofing tricks you can do to better protect your electric bike from moisture in some of the content here is aimed at people using our upgrade kits but many of the principles you can apply elsewhere
Especially when it comes to things like battery connectors the main principle is to use multiple layers of protection so when they’re combined together they kind of reinforce each other to keep out moisture the most important and basic one is just to keep book Water away so
If you ride in the wet and mud a lot and commute in the rain good mards are a good first layer to keep as much water as possible from spraying onto the electrical components and wiring the less bulk water the less moisture there will be to cause a problem some bikes
It’s easier to do that than with others like on this fat bike here I do have some clip-on ones but they’re not as effective as a full Fender and I’ve not been able to locate a full Fender that will really work with this Frame and the
4.6 in tires if you can use a full Fender I would for very wet areas but something’s better than nothing the next thing to look at is creating drip edges with the wiring what I’ve seen happen quite often is moisture gets onto the wiring and then runs down wires and gets
Into the connectors if it’s something like the jsd connector on a controller it can short out the low voltage feeds corrode pins if it’s a battery connector it can short out the battery this one here is an xt90 connector that had moisture get inside and you can see the
Discoloration around the pins when you arrange your cables wherever it’s possible create a low point or a drip edge so that any moisture that accumulates will naturally run away from the connectors and drip to the ground it’s not always possible to do that you can see with my connector here for the
Phase wiring it’s going to be very difficult to put on a drip edge you also need to account for moisture being driven by the air as you ride along so you can use a tube of Automotive grade silicone to seal around the gaps in the plugs if you look at
These xt90s this Qs connector and even these Anderson connectors you can see there’s a gap around where the wire goes all you need to do is fill the Gap in with silicone even if they do get some moisture running down the cables then it’s not going to be able to track
Inside if you use a silicone with a fine nozzle like this it’s much easier to get the stuff in without making a big mess you can see with just a small amount of silicone you can seal up the back of these if your connectors are nicely tucked away inside a battery bag you
Probably don’t need to worry about this so much but if your connectors are on the outside then it can’t hurt and it could prevent a short you can do some really neat tricks with heat shrink like this one but I would still use the silicone in the end it
Does a really good job and heat shrink doesn’t make a complete seal moisture still has the potential to get in and you can see that with the gaps here at each end I’m using a bit of silicone on this phase wire connector there’s not much room around the wires but I didn’t
Want to take the chance of having moisture driven in here while I’m riding and shorting the phases a further trick you can use is di electric grease and you could just smear around the outside the connectors so when you push them together it makes a nice seal if you’re enjoying this video and
Like what we’re doing here please consider liking it and subscribing it really does help to grow the channel and it would be massively appreciated thank you for the next part we’re going to have a little look at bbsh HD and kit specific stuff this more applies to modified Motors using external
Controllers but there are some tips there that can be applied to pretty much any DIY build this is the cover to fill in where the stock bbsh HD controller goes there is a gasket and there’s also a gasket here for the wires but there are a few
More steps that you can take to give yourself a bit of extra protection if you’re concerned these are optional ones but they might be worth it if you’re in a really wet area like I don’t know Vancouver Wales Scotland maybe Jamaica and the rainy season the first area is
If you’ve had the motor apart for a service or to fit a peak gear you’ll have had to have removed the silicone to get the phase wise through so you can replace that all you need to do is get enough silicone to go around where the wires go you can also use silicone
Around where the H sensor’s plug in because in my case I damage the factory seal that goes in there and it’s pretty easy to do that um when you remove the silicone that they’ve put over at the top of it to get at the plug in the
First place you can also put silicone around the back of the pedal cyst plug and you can also then use some dialectric grease inside where you make the phase connections I’ve sealed up the back of the phase wise here here with another bit of silicone you can also use
Dialectric grease around all these plugs when you put them together what I like to do as well with the cover is Seal up the Gap where it meets the motor around the edges and this is because I ride in the snow and what I find is you tend to
Get snow build up in and around the motor and then it melts and there’s naturally a little bit less compression on the inside of the gasket so I do like to take the extra precaution here to stop moisture sitting in this Gap and then potentially working its way inside
The way I do this is to run silicone around the inside of the motor case here you don’t have to go nuts and then you can slot the control cover over the top it’s best to get a nice fit with all the wires first if you’re just doing your
Install now make sure everything’s routed nicely before you do this part and maybe do a motor test as well make sure you’re fully good to go first so that’s what I do with the motor to add extra layer protection if you ride a lot where it’s really wet damp
Humid and snowy and you don’t need to go this far if you not be routinely rejecting into those conditions but I’ve ridden many Winters commuting and done well with techniques like these let’s have a look at the controller and the mount next the ASI back 855 is fully potted but the biggest
Weakness is the jsd connector which is why we spent a lot of time designing this Mount and the plug to support it properly and prevent it flexing and also to seal up the back of the plug when you put this plugin make sure you use dialectric grease all around it and
Again drip edges are important to make sure that water runs away from the back area of the controller there is potential however to get moisture in and around the edges of the mount and we can approve that situation further by using some silicone again you don’t need to go nuts but in a
Few key places you can help keep moisture from getting into the back here for Extra Protection if you live in a very wet area the first area is to put smear in around the front and down the side so when you slot the controller in place it seals up against the back
855 once the controller is in place you can then put a small bead of silicone along the edges the final part is to use a small amount on the back of the controller in between where the cover screws in place and again you don’t need to go crazy you don’t want it splurging
Out everywhere just enough to make a seal and then once it’s all in position you can remove any excess um if you don’t like how it looks but it should be possible to get a pretty clean look if you want to go all the way you can also
Seal up the back and we’ve made this area where the wires come out as small as possible to allow for for that personally I don’t and I’ve not run into any issues with water Ingress here but it’s also facing down in the right direction too so anyway that’s it for my
Tips and tricks here if you have any yourself you like to use any builds please post them in the comments if you want to go further and submit ideas via Discord then maybe we can do a future compilation of of other tips and tricks for waterproofing the next in this series is
Going to be setting up the egg Rider V2 including activation and Rider profiles to take advant of some of the tuning options that you get with those anyways huge thanks for watching and extra special thanks to all the channel members I’ll see you in the next video Cheers
This video has some e bike waterproofing tips and tricks you can use to protect your wiring connections and components from moisture ingress and damage. This video is aimed at DIY builders mainly but there are some tips particularly with battery connections that all ebike riders can benefit from. There is some focus on our upgrade kits but there are important things to consider here with any DIY build.
Timestamps
0:00 – Intro and layers concept
0:26 – Keep off Bulk Water
1:02 – Using Drip Edges
1:49 – Connectors
3:14 – BBSHD motor wiring and cover
5:34 – ASI BAC855 and mount
If you want to get involved in the discussion you are welcome to do this via the Discord or the comments here. https://highvoltagekits.com/discord
Our Upgrade kit for the BBSHD can be found here https://highvoltagekits.com/hv-shop/p/bbshd-bac855-upgrade-kit
Gaskets for the BBSHD motor can be found here https://highvoltagekits.com/hv-shop/p/bbshd-gasket-set-molds
Huge thanks to LUX https://www.youtube.com/@LUX-AmbientMusic for allowing me to use their amazing sounds for this video. Well worth checking out.
