advice for buying an ebike

[burb72]

I have should have about 325$ from work in amazon gift cards. The only thing i see on amazon in price range is crystalite bushed kit for 299 w batteries or various chinese hub kits without batteries for about 250$ for 700 watts. I know this isnt an ideal budget, but i currently dont have alot of extra cash. Also for lead acid batteries do the "Pulsetech Powerpulse 12 Volt" chargers work on amazon. Per the reviews they work pretty good.

Thanks,
mike

[amberwolf]

I have should have about 325$ from work in amazon gift cards. The only thing i see on amazon in price range is crystalite bushed kit for 299 w batteries or various chinese hub kits without batteries for about 250$ for 700 watts. I know this isnt an ideal budget, but i currently dont have alot of extra cash.

Even though you have Amazon gift cards, I would suggest seeing about selling those cards and using the cash to buy instead. Or make a trade of cards for kit.

I would take a look here on ES in teh for sale sections, and keep an eye out for a used kit from someone upgrading their old stuff. You'll get a better deal for the money, almost certainly, with far less chance of getting ripped off--plus you'll know it already works and plugs together, which is not necessarily the case even with so-called "kits" from ebay, amazon, or other websites. There have been several "kits" mentioned in past months on ES that were purchased from such sites that then turned out to not even have the same connectors on each part, and so could not be plugged into each other. Or fi they did have the same connectors, they had to be rewired on halls or phases or throttle or all three, to put them in the right wire order to work.

I would not get a brushed hub kit if you can avoid it, simply because much better tech is available than that, and it would just about have to come with SLA for that price if it includes batteries.


That said, if you *have* to use SLA, go find people throwing out old server UPS systems and save the batteries and connectors from those. Don't go buying new ones, but instead save the money you would have spent on them so that later you can use it on a good battery pack. I'm certainly glad I never had to go buy SLA when I was using them, becuase while they do work, they're nowhere near as good as just about any other chemistry for any kind of portable use, especially for EVs.

Unfortunately, the battery really makes the bike. You can have the best motor and controller possible but a crappy battery, and you'll have a crappy ebike, because either the battery won't last long enough for a ride, or will badly underperform, or even be damaged by overdrawing on it because it may not be capable of handling the power the motor/controller try to get from it.

Also for lead acid batteries do the "Pulsetech Powerpulse 12 Volt" chargers work on amazon. Per the reviews they work pretty good.

No idea about those chargers; I've never heard of them. You might want to search ES using Google to see if there are any existing threads discussing them.

Remember that if you are using 12V chargers, you're going to have to separately charge each battery, which will generally take several hours per battery, or else you are going to have to disconnect all the series connections and then reconnect them in parallel each time you charge, then do the reverse to run them on the bike. That gets complicated enough that over time you are bound to eventually make a mistake and short something out via a misconnection.

If you use one charger for each battery, you can avoid that, but hten you have multiplied the costs, and might as well buy a better charger for the whole string at once.

Another issue with charging one at a time is that SLA are rapidly degraded by sitting discharged, so the hours that each one sits waiting it's turn to charge eats into the capacity of the battery and into it's lifetime. Desulfator-chargers can sometimes help with this, but never letting it happen is much better.


If your only option really is to use the gift cards directly on amazon, and to go for an SLA kit, then find the ones you think you'd like to get, and put links here in this thread so we can see what you're considering, and then we can let you know better what you are going to get yourself into.

[burb72]

thank you for the reply

[Sunder]

Just to add to what Amberwolf said, old UPS batteries are good deals, especially if your country charges to dispose of lead acid batteries. People will literally give them away.

I recently salvaged a set from work. The batteries ranged from 6v to 13v when I took them apart. They then charged to resting voltages from 10v to 13.8v. However, after 4 weeks on a desulphator, all of them charge to at least 13v. They're definitely not reaching their rated capacity, but most of them are reaching at least 80%

From what I've seen from the power pulse chargers, they have built in desulphators, but in my experience they're less effective than dedicated units.

[wesnewell]

This is the exact kit I bought.
http://www.amazon.com/1000w-Wheel-Elect ... 005233L2O/
but got it off ebay for $275 shipped to my door.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/48V-1000W-26-Re ... 0694031625
Sell your amazon coupons for $275 and get this kit. Don't waste money on sla batteries. For ~$130 you can get a cheap charger and a 12s lipo pack.