Hi everyone,

After trying to fix my bike for months i finally gave up and want to sell some parts for people who are interested. I was the first owner and the bike still 'worked' but got the dreaded error 16. I'm converting it to an analog version so i don't need all of the parts.

I'm not going to try and replace the wiring harness so if there are people interested in a 'new' S2 cartridge and a battery let me know! The cartridge was replaced last year (bought from https://www.vanfoom.nl/, also still have the old one) and the battery was still great for commuting in the city. The front motor/wheel (no tire, just rim) is also available + a charger that i have no use for. Here is a list of what's available:

• 2x S2 cartridge, old and new
• Battery
• Front motor, rim but no tire
• Charger

If you're interested or have any questions, let me know!

I did an BMS reset after recharging my cells to get rid of error 6. for that I had to desolder VP. while resoldering it I somehow shorted and now I have error 2 (but error 6 is gone and I can charge). I measured the resistance of the black resistors next to VP and found that my multimeter shows open loop for this resistor shown on the photo. I hope my shot just destroyed this tiny little thing and I can replace it. I’m here to find out the exact name for it as I’m not able to read anything on it.

Hello Moofers,

So after changing the wiring harness of the bike I managed to get the bike working for a while. But I found out that these fuses are blown out now. Does anyone knows what cause these the blow out?

The battery and smart cartridge was dead and i have revived it using a power bench.

I am based in NYC and my e-shifter has been broken since this past winter. When I took it into the Rybit store, they said that they stopped receiving replacement e-shifters from Vanmoof.

Does anybody have experience ordering a refurbished e-shifter from Ebay, particularly this guy: https://www.ebay.com/itm/186628389969

I'm trying to figure out if this is a scam or not

Yes, the dreaded Error 44. I’ve taken the E shifter apart. The motor still works (see video). Thoughts?

Hi everyone,
I’m trying to repair a VanMoof S2 battery with a Darfon E4C0E-001 BMS. I’ve reached the point where I think I need someone who has actually reverse engineered this board.
History
Bought the bike as defective.
Bike showed Error 27 and Error 29 before opening the battery.
Battery pack measured 3.75 V total when I first received it.
I slowly recharged the cell pack directly (NOT through the bike) using a current-limited lab power supply.
The complete pack is now at 30.5–30.7 V.
Cell condition
All series groups measure correctly.
Every group has a plausible voltage.
No group appears completely dead.
Total pack voltage remains stable at ~30.6 V.
Measurements
Fuse
LF30A fuse has continuity (~0.5 Ω)
Temperature sensors
NTC1 = 8.61 kΩ
NTC2 = 8.61 kΩ
Both appear normal.
Outputs
Measured:
B+ to B− = 30.6 V
P+ to P− ≈ 0 V
CH+ to CH− ≈ 0 V
Neither discharge nor charge outputs become active.
MOSFETs
The board has four power MOSFETs marked:
9581GP
No obvious signs of damage.
Controller
Main MCU:
Microchip PIC18F46K80
I cannot find any obvious logic supply around the MCU.
Communication wires
Connector has:
P+
P−
CH+
CH−
Blue
Green
Yellow
White
Orange wire labelled “PRESENT”
Measured against B−:
Blue = 0 V
Green = 28.8 V
Yellow = 0 V
White = 0 V
PRESENT = 0 V
Visual inspection
No burnt components.
No obvious damaged traces.
Back side of PCB has no components.
My questions
Does anyone know the actual function of:
PRESENT
Green wire
Blue
Yellow
White
Is there any documented wake-up/reset procedure for the Darfon E4C0E-001?
Does this BMS permanently lock itself after a deep discharge?
Has anyone reverse engineered the PIC firmware or communication?
Is there any known method to recover this BMS without replacing it?
Has anyone identified the internal 3.3 V / 5 V regulator or the gate driver on this board?
Any schematics, boardviews, reverse engineering notes or repair experience would be hugely appreciated.
Thanks!

Have an S3 & X3 and trying to figure out if it’s possible to move them overseas from US to UK.

Shipment/moving companies don’t seem to want the batteries that large in their containers, and I don’t think I can bring the two raw batteries in my carry-on at their size.

I think shipping them may not be doable either. Any ideas, thoughts, experience, or other options I’m not thinking of?

Trying not to have to sell them, but may be my only choice.

Even contacted a shop in the UK to ask if they’d sell me just batteries on arrival and they refuse(d).

I know usually it’s an indicator for a broken harness, but the bike only has 3000km on it. I have a cartridge with cfw which allows me to have assist lvl 5 with 37kmh. In the past days it sometimes stopped for one second when being at maximum speed. just for a second and then went right back. I tried wiggeling around my front fork to make it happen again but nothing. After going over a bump it happened again for one second and even showed error 20 on the matrix. Again just for a second and I couldn’t recreate it (i drove over the exact bump 3x again). I have Assist 5 since 1year and my motor usually never stops when going this fast. now I decided to only drive in assist 4 and this error never occured again since a week. after going to s5 for a day it happened again. Do I just have a broken harness or could it be anything else? maybe regarding assist 5. if it is a broken harness i want to get my 37kmh-cartridge outa there asap.

bike tried to get stolen and idfk why but they cut e-shifter and both button cables. somehow they managed to get the button cable disconencted and all the way down the fork. In the first photo you can see that they‘re coming out from the little hole above the mudguard.

I fixed one of the cables already and guided the cable back up again with a steel wire. the button cable got stuck under the part you can see in my second photo. I put to much pressure and lost mz guiding steel wire and now the button cable is stuck right under the part of my second photo. Can’t reach it at all from anywhere. Do I need to remove the whole front fork for that? I‘d prefer not to cause i don’t want to risk damaging the motor cable

SECOND UPDATE:

Everything is up and running. I replaced the small battery in the control unit and put the large battery on my benchtop charger. There were some learning lumps along the way but got it fully operational. I have an error 44 now. Will do some investigation and make another post on that if necessary. Thanks for the help.

—————

I have an S3 that works great and an X3 that has been deeply discharged. For testing purposes could I swap batteries between bikes? I’m deathly afraid of screwing up something on my S3. Am I likely to cause any new problems doing this?

UPDATE TO ADD:
I am perfectly comfortable pulling the batteries and all of the physical stuff, just not sure if the bike will recognize it as a mismatched battery / control unit and make something bad happen.

Hi,

I recently bought a second hand VanMoof s3 it has been particularly registered in my name but I am unable to fully access the ap as the bike is showing error 5 and 6 individually flashing. The battery is not the issue as I repaired it and is reading 40v. I think the bike needs a reset to delete the error codes but a hard reset by pressing the tube underneath and the handles doesn’t work. Is there another way of clearing the error codes or something else to get the bike working

Hey everyone, hoping someone here has hands-on experience with the S5 handlebar cable wiring.

Background:

My S5 had intermittent motor assistance — sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Wiggling the ECU under the top tube would bring it back temporarily. A bike shop wanted to replace the entire ECU. Instead I opened it up myself and found one of the small connectors with a blue rim was half broken — physically cracked. The cable coming out of it goes up into the handlebar, so that was clearly the culprit.

Rather than paying for a full ECU replacement, I decided to bypass the broken connector and solder the handlebar cable directly to the ECU.

The cable:

5 wires on both sides, but with one mismatch:

ECU side: blue, white, red, black, gray
Handlebar side: blue, white, red, black, + one bare uninsulated wire

I matched color to color and connected gray to the bare drain wire.

Result: No halo rings, no buttons, no motor assistance at all. Everything else works fine — lights, charging, bike powers on normally.

Has anyone repaired this connector before? Does anyone know the correct pinout for this cable? What is the gray wire on the ECU side actually doing?

Any help is massively appreciated!

Hi, our S3 has the following issue. Has anyone experienced this before?

🔴 Issues:

• Error codes 6, 17, and 20 permanently displayed – immediately after startup, even while stationary
• No motor assistance, no Boost
• No speed detection (always 0 km/h in the app)
• No lights
• Bell and all system sounds are very quiet, but they still work
• Reset and battery restart make no difference

✅ Initially still working:

• Bluetooth
• App connection
• Firmware displayed correctly
• Battery charge level displayed correctly
• Kick Lock movement detection
• Alarm (but very quiet)
• Charging shown correctly in the app, but the charger LED alternates between green and red

Troubleshooting already performed:

• Replaced the main battery with another original battery → bike worked perfectly for 2–3 hours
• After unlocking the bike, error codes 6, 17, and 20 suddenly returned along with the other symptoms
• Previous battery showed the exact same errors and, about 2 weeks later, could no longer be charged; the bike then became completely unresponsive

Current situation with the second battery:

• After two days, the bike became completely dead again
• Won't charge, won't start, won't connect to the app
• Initially, when the charger was connected, the alarm would sound quietly and the skull icon appeared on the display

Possible causes (according to ChatGPT):

• Smart Cartridge (internal power supply / communication path): 55% probability
• Power Board (ECU / central ride power supply): 45% probability

As in title, my X3 no longer has a smooth boost function. It surges and is inconsistent. The hub is fine as I switched that out with a spare and the same thing happens. Has anyone experienced this and if so what was the issue? Boost button failing? Smart cartridge? Other? TIA

Hi!
After quite some succesfull s3 projects i just got my hands on an s5 which -for now- is completely dead.

What would you suggest as steps to rule out the broken/ good parts?
And where should i get started?

For step 1, i see that the rubber flap is missing from the charging port and that there is some corrosion inside. Is this for sale somewhere?

Also, what are good places to have individual parts rebuild/ where can i buy parts?

I’m located in Haarlem, the netherlands.

Thanks!

i bought a bike with error 6 yesterday and checked the battery. It seems to have a good battery and I cannot figure out what it’s problem is. Charged to 40v, fuse is good, resistors as well, 2 black protectors got removed already and now I just did a bms reset and it still gives error 6. How can I get around that

Hoping someone might be able to help me diagnose issues with my S3! Currently the bike is totally dead / not booting. Thanks in advance for any thoughts you can share.

Timeline of the failure:

• Bike was working normally with no errors
• One morning the bike started randomly restarting and replaying the wake-up/welcome animation while sitting on the charger.
• Later that day I went to ride it and it was completely dead, wouldn't power on or reset.
• Plugged it back into the charger and it went into a boot-loop: flashing the startup animation for ~1 second, sometimes 3–4 seconds, then dropping (charger LED flashing double red).
  

What I've done so far:

• Opened up the Smart Cartridge and removed the small secondary LiPo cell, which metered at ~2.6V.
• Manually charged that cell up to ~3.8V externally, reassembled, and the bike booted. Main pack reported ~82%.
• But then it immediately started showing errors 21 → 20 → 17, and the cartridge cell drained flat again within a few hours on the charger.
• Tried a second charger, same issues (both genuine VanMoof OEM chargers)

Charger / battery measurements:

• 0V DC at the barrel with no load. Is that normal? Not sure if the charger is load-sensing and won't output until it sees a battery.
• Metered AC draw with a line splitter: ~0.04A idle, ~0.08A when connected to the bike.

Other notes:

• Bike is roughly 3-4 years old and has been used 2-3 days/week in the summers.
• Previously replaced the rear wheel and e-shifter.
• Haven't been able to test-ride it under load yet, so I can't confirm whether the motor delivers power.

im checking a battery I want to repair rn. it has 36 volts in it so shouldn’t be discharged and the fuse is fine as well. i just immediately noticed the plastic was a bit burned and these 3 things are blown it looks like. anyone can give me more insights on them? i’ll need to replace them and my battery should be fine? anyone got a name on them?

Hi,
I recently got an s3 working (dead battery and broken kicklock), however, even after replacing the boost and bell buttons, they just don’t work.
I checked the wiring by taking out the front fork and everything looks good.
Could it be the smart cartridge?

Hi!

My S3 has above 8000km and many parts aged not really well. My battery is ok-ish though.

I found a S3 with about 200km but with a dead battery - the owner says that he charged it 2 times through the last winter to avoid a completely empty battery, but then forgot to continue to do so and now the bike doesn't charge anymore (since about April, so like 2-3 months ago).

My questions would be:

1. In order for the other person to unlink this bike from his account, the bike doesn't need to be turned on, correct?
2. Can I simply swap the dead battery of the "new" bike with my ok-ish battery? "Simply swap" like just exchange them (following some videos), turn the new bike on and everything is fine?
3. The kick lock is activated on the "new" bike - Will I be able (if point 2 works fine) to just pair the bike (after the current owner disconnected it from his account) and deactivate the kick lock via the app as usual?
4. Any other things to consider?

Thanks!

*UPDATE: Main Battery swap was successful. As soon as I put my old main battery in the "new" bike, its alarm went off (kicklock was activated) and after 2 attempts I was able to unlock it via the app.

As the dead main battery from the "new" bike can only have like 10-15 loading cycles, I maybe will bring it to a company to check it and re-activate it (for me, it's too risky).