rlbindy
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See my post. It's got a link to the troubleshooting manual.
Ryobi RM480E 38" riding mower won't move!
- Thread starter forcefed4door
- Start date
shucker mower
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Hello DR. Foo - I have the same problem - fully charged, blades spin, not accelerator response, Ryobi service tech emailed me the procedure to check the accelerator transducer and transducer cable. In my situation the cable did not show the correct voltage. The Tech thinks it is the motor controller board. It would be nice if it is something else.
My mower is just past the 3 year mark, 101 hours, needs new batteries, may not be worth the batteries and repair bill.
$1000 in batteries (for me, upgraded from 75 ah to 100 ah) is a lot less than $2,700 for a new electric riding mower... and that is for a 50 ah version. If you can figure out and repair the accelerator problem it is well worth keeping the mower you have now.
Now, if you are itching to get a zero turn, or the new Lithium Ion version just admit it to yourself and buy the new toy
Otherwise, fix what you have.Keith
Hi all. I joined the forum to pass on multiple issues with my RM480e (since 2017 purchase) and their solutions. Great mower but just has not been reliable for me (bad luck it seems). I do all my own repairs (out of warranty and never in a repair shop). Hoping to help others. I'm on the 3rd Drive Motor Controller and I've upgraded the batteries (75AH to 100AH MightyMax AGMs) and the charging system (Clore Automotive 4-bank charger and rewired mower for 12V independent (vs 48V series) charging). These are only my opinions/experience to date - could be wrong - but likely right
Symptom: 1 week after purchase: Key on, gas, loud clunk. Can't move fwd or back. No power to anything (no lights, no blades, no power).
Fix: The Drive Motor Controller had dead short on input. Fuse blown on power cable. Ryobi actually sent me the replacement controller/fuse under warranty and I installed. I got lucky having a rep that trusted me to install vs using the service shop (who at the time had no clue as the mowers were brand new). Rep said "there is a newer part number than what you have". So... it appears there was one redesign of some sort and my older mower had the older part. Pretty sad that controller design is such that it lasted one week.
Symptom: 4.5 years after purchase: Mower works great night before, overnight charge, key on and mover lurches 2 inches fwd and dies. No fwd, no back. As others have said, I notice if I move the gas very so slightly, the mower will continue inching fwd. Any hard gas, kills it. Other items still power (blades, lights etc). The failure happened not mowing or under load.
Fix: I was so confused why an overnight sit would do anything to the mower. 1st I tried the accelerator ($120) replacement - no go - same problem. Then I had to find (good luck) a new drive controller again ($400) - they seem to be national back ordered. I put it in, and problem is fixed for now. This is the 3rd controller in less that 5 years. So..I opened the old controller (for those thinking about it) and there is nothing that can be fixed inside as it is filled with heat conductive goo (that apparently melts and leaks under stress - as one reviewer mentioned). Again - why did the controller fail just with mower sitting? And why can the motors still turn with ever so slight pedal?
Symptom: Flakey gauge (after full charge - shows 70% sometime - other times its 100%), poor run time, and weird charger behavior.
Fix: This is the 1st sign of one or more of the 4 batteries failing (no matter if your gauge/DMM shows good voltage, etc). You will need to replace batteries to restore performance. I had (but did not know at time) a weak battery in my mower at time of delivery. This is an issue as the 48V pack charges in series. Series charging is really not a great idea/design because if ONE battery in the system is not as capable as the others, what happens in series charging is good batteries are OVERcharged and bad batteries are UNDERcharged. This problem continues, getting worse and worse with time. Ryobi should have come up with a delivery concept where they check/provide/install verified batteries at time of purchase (not mowers sitting out on the delivery floor for a year or in rain out in front of Home Depot (like mine was) with weak or bad batteries). It took me a year and half for my weak battery issue to show up and get figured out (out of battery warranty of course). By the way, you can change just one bad battery at a time, but if you understand series charging, then you understand why its alway best to replace the entire 4-pack together.
Symptom: Plug-in the charger over winter season and batteries are dead or really bad in Spring
Fix: This happened to me. I was like: It was plugged in all winter? I contacted an engineer at Delta-Q Technologies (maker of charger) and I was floored when he confirmed "For SC48s on older (pre-2019) Ryobis, the interval between top-up charges is 30 days"!!!! This means (and explains) that charger power output is turned-off and the packs are not topped off for 30 day intervals when the mower is left plugged in for months unused! And if you have a suspect/weak battery - then the pack is going to fade quickly in that 30 days. This is NOT a good design spec from Ryobi - as its common for these mowers to sit over many months without use. I'm assuming this problem is fixed as he said "pre-2019", but the rest of us are stuck with a bad design?? Sulfated (weak batteries) quickly climb to the full voltage but are not really charged - then fade in voltage quickly when charger output is removed. This is what my pack was doing. In other words, pack looks charged but isn't, especially when a few days goes by. I got fed up with the poor charger behavior, installed a new battery 4-pack, and rewired the mower for independent 12v charging on each battery. I use a four bank 5 amp charger - and all my issues with batteries are gone - independent charging is the way to go. I've run my mower for almost an hour in thick grass many times and the gauge never even moves off 100%. There are some safety issues with rewiring as you bypass the key lockout when you aren't using the stock charger port. So...you have to be out of warranty and be smart about hooking up your charger if you chose to do what I did. Just like with at car, don't drive off with your charger plugged into the garage outlet.
Symptom: Right headlight cuts in and out sometimes.
Fix: Took apart the connector and found that the wire was NOT connected to the pin. Only resting inside the connector. Poor build quality. Had to re-crimp the wire to the pin. Working now.
Enjoy your mower! LOL
Last edited:
A lot of great information RLMguy. Thanks for posting for us fellow sufferers. How do you know that little skin tag on the soon to fail drive controller is a thermistor? mine has 3 gray wires, the battery thermostat has 2 wires and is easy to test. Were you able to detect any damage inside your controller when you opened it up or just too much goo? My 2nd one just went bad so I might dig in to it soon if I don't just toss it in the heap.Hi all. I joined the forum to pass on multiple issues with my RM480e (since 2017 purchase) and their solutions. Great mower but just has not been reliable for me (bad luck it seems). I do all my own repairs (out of warranty and never in a repair shop). Hoping to help others. I'm on the 3rd Drive Motor Controller and I've upgraded the batteries (75AH to 100AH MightyMax AGMs) and the charging system (Clore Automotive 4-bank charger and rewired mower for 12V independent (vs 48V series) charging). These are only my opinions/experience to date - could be wrong - but likely right
Symptom: 1 week after purchase: Key on, gas, loud clunk. Can't move fwd or back. No power to anything (no lights, no blades, no power).
Fix: The Drive Motor Controller had dead short on input. Fuse blown on power cable. Ryobi actually sent me the replacement controller/fuse under warranty and I installed. I got lucky having a rep that trusted me to install vs using the service shop (who at the time had no clue as the mowers were brand new). Rep said "there is a newer part number than what you have". So... it appears there was one redesign of some sort and my older mower had the older part. Pretty sad that controller design is such that it lasted one week.
Symptom: 4.5 years after purchase: Mower works great night before, overnight charge, key on and mover lurches 2 inches fwd and dies. No fwd, no back. As others have said, I notice if I move the gas very so slightly, the mower will continue inching fwd. Any hard gas, kills it. Other items still power (blades, lights etc). The failure happened not mowing or under load.
Fix: I was so confused why an overnight sit would do anything to the mower. 1st I tried the accelerator ($120) replacement - no go - same problem. Then I had to find (good luck) a new drive controller again ($400) - they seem to be national back ordered. I put it in, and problem is fixed for now. This is the 3rd controller in less that 5 years. So..I opened the old controller (for those thinking about it) and there is nothing that can be fixed inside as it is filled with heat conductive goo (that apparently melts and leaks under stress - as one reviewer mentioned). However, I did notice a thermistor on the outside cabling. This made me think, WHAT is that for. Does temperature affect the drive controller? There is NOTHING in the manual about temperature limiting the physical operation of the mower (yes there is a temp sensor on the batteries and one inside the charger - but these are all related to charging - please don't confuse that with this thermistor on the controller I'm talking about). I noticed that Lazyworm above has said he has an "H" on his gauge???? My gauge is not digital, and cannot display an "H". Does anybody else have a gauge capable of displaying "H" and if so, can we get Ryobi to tell us what that means?? Seems like "H" would mean heat - but what heat? Outside temp? Controller temp? He/she had the same issue as me - that is - it could move slowly fwd then cut off. Others had said that going uphill caused a cutoff. I'm wondering if that thermistor (i.e. outside temperature) on the controller is cutting off/failing the drive control? Why is the thermistor there and what does it do? I don't see any temp conditions in the manual. Could these $400 controllers be shutting down do to a simple external thermistor failure - just a thought/wag. I wish I knew how to bypass that 3-wire thermistor correctly - because then I could see if it fixes the problem.
Symptom: Flakey gauge (after full charge - shows 70% sometime - other times its 100%), poor run time, and weird charger behavior.
Fix: This is the 1st sign of one or more of the 4 batteries failing (no matter if your gauge/DMM shows good voltage, etc). You will need to replace batteries to restore performance. I had (but did not know at time) a weak battery in my mower at time of delivery. This is an issue as the 48V pack charges in series. Series charging is really not a great idea/design because if ONE battery in the system is not as capable as the others, what happens in series charging is good batteries are OVERcharged and bad batteries are UNDERcharged. This problem continues, getting worse and worse with time. Ryobi should have come up with a delivery concept where they check/provide/install verified batteries at time of purchase (not mowers sitting out on the delivery floor for a year or in rain out in front of Home Depot (like mine was) with weak or bad batteries). It took me a year and half for my weak battery issue to show up and get figured out (out of battery warranty of course). By the way, you can change just one bad battery at a time, but if you understand series charging, then you understand why its alway best to replace the entire 4-pack together.
Symptom: Plug-in the charger over winter season and batteries are dead or really bad in Spring
Fix: This happened to me. I was like: It was plugged in all winter? I contacted an engineer at Delta-Q Technologies (maker of charger) and I was floored when he confirmed "For SC48s on older (pre-2019) Ryobis, the interval between top-up charges is 30 days"!!!! This means (and explains) that charger power output is turned-off and the packs are not topped off for 30 day intervals when the mower is left plugged in for months unused! And if you have a suspect/weak battery - then the pack is going to fade quickly in that 30 days. This is NOT a good design spec from Ryobi - as its common for these mowers to sit over many months without use. I'm assuming this problem is fixed as he said "pre-2019", but the rest of us are stuck with a bad design?? Sulfated (weak batteries) quickly climb to the full voltage but are not really charged - then fade in voltage quickly when charger output is removed. This is what my pack was doing. In other words, pack looks charged but isn't, especially when a few days goes by. I got fed up with the poor charger behavior, installed a new battery 4-pack, and rewired the mower for independent 12v charging on each battery. I use a four bank 5 amp charger - and all my issues with batteries are gone - independent charging is the way to go. I've run my mower for almost an hour in thick grass many times and the gauge never even moves off 100%. There are some safety issues with rewiring as you bypass the key lockout when you aren't using the stock charger port. So...you have to be out of warranty and be smart about hooking up your charger if you chose to do what I did. Just like with at car, don't drive off with your charger plugged into the garage outlet.
Symptom: Right headlight cuts in and out sometimes.
Fix: Took apart the connector and found that the wire was NOT connected to the pin. Only resting inside the connector. Poor build quality. Had to re-crimp the wire to the pin. Working now.
Enjoy your mower! LOL
I've been noodling how I'm going to do individual 12v charging but I can't find any information on how the lockout operates. Mine is stuck in lockout status due to me shorting my charge port. If I do individual charging I could just remove the charge port, I think, if I could figure out how to disable the lockout switch. I'm assuming it must receive a signal from the charge port via the blue wire and acts like a relay to interrupt the power but beyond that I don't know how it works.
Hi Mowitor. Thanks for the kind words - just trying to help out others anyway I can with my sagas.
Great point on the thermistor. Just went out and confirmed (cut off the coating on my failed controller), that what I thought was a thermistor is an unused connector (on the drive controller) not shown in the service manual (my bad) - I'll edit my previous post. This is a bummer, as I was hoping there was some sort of correlation of heat related shutdown - as many seem to post that the mower "resting" for some time gets it to move again (odd if not somehow heat related). I also was confused on one person saying they had an "H" on their gauge. Would like to understand that response better.
On opening the controller box, "goo" is probably not the best description. Its goo that the entire electronics board was dipped in and then the goo hardened (almost plastic like). This I believe is to conduct the heat to the casing. As a result - I don't see how you can service anything. Its completely encased in goo.
On the interlock, I tried to understand the wiring, but as you say - its confusing. It appears plugging IN the charger shorts two port pins which in turn cuts off main power availability. Its tied in with the seat switch also. If your port "short" remains, that would explain the lockout. The service manual has a connector to connector wiring diagram but not really a schematic diagram - which is what is needed. Its got to be a simple bypass somehow however. I think the port assembly is relatively cheap compared to a controller. Are you saying your mower is completely down (locked out due to your port issue)?
bertsmobile1
Lawn Royalty
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2014
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FWIW
A bomb is simply a device with a large amount of stored energy that can be released instantaliously
This can be chemical like gunpowder, dynamite or fertilazer & diesel
Or it can be physical like ripping atoms apart
Or it can be electrical like a massive big battery
So every battery is every bit as dangerous as a can of fuel and in fact is more dangerous
Fuel can only burn within a specific range of fuel to air ratios ( well fuel to oxygen to be more specific ) and then you still need an ignition source strong enough to set it off
A battery can spontaneously combust if internal damage causes the oxadizing & reducing agents to come into direct contact and because all of the parts needed are there it can not be stopped till all of the chemicals is consumed
Lithium batteries hold a massive amount of chemical energy.
If discharged too quickly, if charged too quickly if they get too hot the battery breaks down internally causing it to explode and then burn
The explosion is simply because the pressure of the gasses produced exceeds the strength of the battery case
A lead-acid battery will do the same thing if the vent is blocked .
However with a lithium battery the heat produced is high enough to melt titanium and the only way to stop the burning is to drop it into liquid nitrogen and freeze the chemicals but the instant you take it back out it will start to burn again
And Musk wants us to bolt one of these to the walls of our houses and drive around with them under our cars .
Even worse with most EV's if the battery spontaneously combusts, there is no power to unlock the doors or open a window and you only have a few seconds before the intense heat turns you into a side of roast beef .
Petrol can leak out after a collision and 99.9% of the time it runs down the drains & pollutes the water till the bacteria consume it, unless of course it is a TV or movie collision when it always explodes because they look spectacular on the screen
over 1/2 of the collisions of EV's have resulted in a battery fire
Now Musk wants you to trust that the onboard computer will prevent any chance of collision but to date that seems to have a lot bugs yet to be fixed
While EV's have been involved in far fewer major collisions ( no idea what a major collision is defined as ) more than 50% of the occupants have been burned to death before they could get out as compared to 0.025% of the occupants of petrol / diesel cars who die from fire or fuel fume entering the cabin.
Now those numbers came from research funded by a motor vehicle manufacturers lobby group so they probably have been massarged a bit but the trend would have to be correct .
While this is not directly related to mowers there was over 100,000 cases of house fires in 2019 big enough to have the fire department called out that were attributed to failures with battery chargers connected to lithium batteries and this is important for lithium powered garden equipment .
Convienent that are
safe they are not
A bomb is simply a device with a large amount of stored energy that can be released instantaliously
This can be chemical like gunpowder, dynamite or fertilazer & diesel
Or it can be physical like ripping atoms apart
Or it can be electrical like a massive big battery
So every battery is every bit as dangerous as a can of fuel and in fact is more dangerous
Fuel can only burn within a specific range of fuel to air ratios ( well fuel to oxygen to be more specific ) and then you still need an ignition source strong enough to set it off
A battery can spontaneously combust if internal damage causes the oxadizing & reducing agents to come into direct contact and because all of the parts needed are there it can not be stopped till all of the chemicals is consumed
Lithium batteries hold a massive amount of chemical energy.
If discharged too quickly, if charged too quickly if they get too hot the battery breaks down internally causing it to explode and then burn
The explosion is simply because the pressure of the gasses produced exceeds the strength of the battery case
A lead-acid battery will do the same thing if the vent is blocked .
However with a lithium battery the heat produced is high enough to melt titanium and the only way to stop the burning is to drop it into liquid nitrogen and freeze the chemicals but the instant you take it back out it will start to burn again
And Musk wants us to bolt one of these to the walls of our houses and drive around with them under our cars .
Even worse with most EV's if the battery spontaneously combusts, there is no power to unlock the doors or open a window and you only have a few seconds before the intense heat turns you into a side of roast beef .
Petrol can leak out after a collision and 99.9% of the time it runs down the drains & pollutes the water till the bacteria consume it, unless of course it is a TV or movie collision when it always explodes because they look spectacular on the screen
over 1/2 of the collisions of EV's have resulted in a battery fire
Now Musk wants you to trust that the onboard computer will prevent any chance of collision but to date that seems to have a lot bugs yet to be fixed
While EV's have been involved in far fewer major collisions ( no idea what a major collision is defined as ) more than 50% of the occupants have been burned to death before they could get out as compared to 0.025% of the occupants of petrol / diesel cars who die from fire or fuel fume entering the cabin.
Now those numbers came from research funded by a motor vehicle manufacturers lobby group so they probably have been massarged a bit but the trend would have to be correct .
While this is not directly related to mowers there was over 100,000 cases of house fires in 2019 big enough to have the fire department called out that were attributed to failures with battery chargers connected to lithium batteries and this is important for lithium powered garden equipment .
Convienent that are
safe they are not