Lipo Fire on Chick Bike

[Green Machine]

So was riding through golden gate park on an ebike date and heard my girl behind me start swearing.

We are going through the frisbee gold coarse in the park and i think she just got hit by a flying disk.

To my amazement when i look back i see that her bike has caught on fire thanks to lipo fire.

The battery in question is the battery space lipo 48v 10ah with BMS: http://www.batteryspace.com/highpowerpo ... nrate.aspx

So the fire breaks out and it burns steadily as in the below video for 10 minutes straight.

Frisbee golfers are coming over concerned.

Im having the girl hold the bike so I can video the catastrophe for the sake of fellow es'ers who think lipo is ready for the general public.

After i finish taking a few videos i notice a crowd of frisbee golfers have gathered around to see the carnage (we are stuck in the middle of the course.) One of them suggests i should ride the bike out to the street so it doesnt burn there course down. I say hell no i am not riding it.

When i tell them it is an electric bike the general reaction is "your going to have a great lawsuit with whoever sold you that bike"

It was kind of scary..one frisbee golfer was actually a lawyer and gave me his card.

At one point i decided to use a stick to separate the battery from the bike so it would not do any damage to the bike frame.

When the pack hit the ground the frisbee golfers got concerned that somehow i was going to burn their course down so at that point they decided to assist me putting the fire out using there frisbees as shovels to throw dirt on the fire.

Me and the girl i was with got a pretty good whiff of lipo smoke...i am not sure if i am gong to have cancer in 5 years or whatever ramifications...but the smoke was nasty.

Afterwards we got the hell of of there (before the police or fire deparment showed up) and amazingly the bike was still ridable as a pedal bike.

[Joseph C.]

Very lucky, it could have been much worse. Plus, someone could have decided to throw water on it to quench the fire.

[liveforphysics]

Very lucky, it could have been much worse. Plus, someone could have decided to throw water on it to quench the fire.

Water doesn't do Jack squat to lithium batteries. There is no metalic lithium in them.

[Hillhater]

....When i tell them it is an electric bike the general reaction is "your going to have a great lawsuit with whoever sold you that bike"

In this case, I would be more inclined to blame the person who assembled the battery pack !

[AussieJester]

I wonder if the BMW i.e. battery murdering system had something to do with this?
Either way, smells of user error....


KiM

Edit.

p.s I thought you werer married Green Machine

[liveforphysics]

This sounds like an epicly fun day my friend.

I'm jealous.

[scotticeberg]

You have some pretty lame disc golfers in San Fran. Incidences such as these make the idea of lipo backpacks pretty scary. Good thing you did not have this pack in the frame.

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

coming on the heels of your burnt astros might consider altering your username once again.
replace green with burned sienna.

[Green Machine]

Your right luke it was an amazing day.

Afterwards the girl acted a little pissed.

I am like what are you talking about because of the fire we will both always remember this day. The lipo fire was extremely fun and exhilirating and we got away with no one hurt and no trouble. I brought up the point that the bike burned down while she was riding it...so it could be some kind of karma or fate thing and if anyone should be mad i should be mad.

Let me tell you the whole story because now that i think about it it was all good:

So we took turns riding the burned out bike to my favorite restaurant in the middle of golden gate park, the moss room in the basement of the academy of sciences.

I know the bartender and he got us both smashed with amazing cocktails. And we had just an amazing lunch.

She was still pouting a little bit about getting all sweaty pedaling that burned out bike and dealing with the embarrasment of the whole fire scene and said i was going to have to ride the burned out bike home. I said no way, that she had to ride bitch on the back of my bike because of the whole body weight thing...she said if anyone was riding bitch i was riding bitch..bitch. (i got topeak bag on back and she is super thin tiny asian girl)...she said how did she know my battery container wasnt going to set on fire and burn her crotch. I thought that was pretty good point for 23 year old girl to make and thought this chick is really great.

Anyway i talked her into riding on the back of the bike as i had planned. So we left the burned out daisy bike locked to post in parking garage and rode off. We were speeding through the park and at one point we rode up on a group of 4 lycra riders riding by themselves. Oh i forgot to tell you on Sunday gg park is closed to cars so its just bikes. So all is good and fun and safe.

So i tell her she has gotta yell something at them as we go past. SO i go full throttle pass them and she says as we roll up on them "Pass these fools!"

We rocket past laughing and taunting. Imagine we are riding 2 people on one mountain bike with huge 4 inch wide snow bike tires. I am pedaling like shit and the bike is silent and stealth. In there mind they just got passed by a mountain biker with a girl riding bitch.

We were laughing so hard that i let off on the throttle and coasted a bit. i thought isnt it a great time to be alive. As we were coasting the unexpected happened again.

As we are coasting and giggling one of the lycra riders blasts past us.....and then turns back and gives us that obscene gesture where he brushes his chin at us with his face pointed in the air.

We loved it. We both busting up laughing and applauded the guy as he turned back to go join his friends.

It was a great freaking day.

Ebike dates are the best. No reason to stay married when you got a couple of ebikes and know how to use them properly.

[GMUseless]

Good god man... LiPo Fires, batches of cocktails, asian girls, smoking Lycras... keep it up man and you'll have us all divorced!

[Green Machine]

And i am keeping it tame...

Imagine i am not even mentioning the hard drugs and the other wild escapades.

Ok so here is other video..

You can see my bike close to the other bike...at one point i had to save my bike from catching fire cuz wind was blowing flames towards it.

At first i was holding the bike and then i had her hold it so i could start taking videos. She got some good lipo smoke wiffs.

I was trying to keep her out of the video for the most part to prevent further evidence.

But what the hell.

I got to share this moment with you guys.

Sorry this is turning into sick brag post but this ends up being by far the best day of what has been the worst summer for me...

I recommend everyone with a wife over age 40 should do the trade for 2 20s.

And then go start some lipo fires in golf courses. Highly recommended.

[texaspyro]

Rule ONE of LiPO bikes... always carry marshmallows and a stick. Even better include some graham crackers and chocolate in your tool kit...

[parabellum]

[neptronix]

Two ES reported lipo fires on ebikes in very public settings in the same area...
Not good!!!

I smell an oncoming fear factor from the news

BMS + lipo ( of the potentially flamey variety ) + clueless user = massive public perception problem leading to awful legislation.

[liveforphysics]

Such a fun day my friend!

We gotta hang out this week.

[Grinhill]

brilliant story, Green!

[liveforphysics]

The flames billowing out of that burning bike with flowers on it is just too perfect. I love it. I can't stop re-watching it.

[EBJ]

You should have thrown the lawyers card in the lipo fire while it was still burning.
I agree that lipo-fires in public are bad for us all. If mine ever light up I'll do my best to put it out before anyone sees it.

Was that pack just sitting in that bike basket unprotected? Did you ever check the cell-voltages to ensure the BMS was actually working? (is that even possible with this battery ? )

If I handed a girl a bike and it caught on fire, I'd expect her to kick my ass, i'd say you got off real easy.
I did like the bit about "we will remember this forever" hahaaa.

[Joseph C.]

Very lucky, it could have been much worse. Plus, someone could have decided to throw water on it to quench the fire.

Water doesn't do Jack squat to lithium batteries. There is no metalic lithium in them.

My mistake.

[Ykick]

So, what's the likely cause? Low cell reversed?

[Arlo1]

Yeh I wonder what caused it. The is so very few good BMS's on the market if any.

[Green Machine]

My best guess its the turn signals amberwolf talked me into installing on the front of that bike short cirquited and caused a catastrophic fire.

You guys are playing with fire with this turn signal thing.

SO the bike was built with a metal plate at the bottom of the basket for the battery to strap to. Originally the battery was strapped in really tight and we only used one battery on the bike. But after a while we started switching batteries out on it, and each battery is a slightly different in size depending on whether it has corking protection around it or not.

So seriously my best guess of what happened is planning on taking the road route through the GG park i didnt take as much care strapping the battery down as I normally would.

The path through the frisbee park was a spontaneous detour. I dont think it is a coincidence that the bike burst in flames in the roughest part of the ride. The bike obv has no front suspension and the jarring up front must have been pretty severe.

I believe the battery jiggled loose from its strap and then hit one of the sharp edges of the metal plate.

I noticed when the fire intitially broke out that the battery was loose from its strap. I am not sure if the battery had bounced loose or burned loose however.

Justin had visited my house and we had taken an ebike ride a few days earlier and he had checked out the the battery packs. He commented that they should have a hard metal case of some kind to be safe.

He also said that from importing hundreds of many different kinds of chinese lipo he had no success on any pack and had just about given up. His comment was that until panasonic or sanyo or some company like that decided to construct a pack with bms, lipo packs would continue to be unreliable and unsafe and nearly impossible to sale to the general public.

Oh also...when a pack is constructed with BMS its very inconvenient to unwrap the pack from its shrink wrapping and check each individual cell. Everyone i know who rides with these packs basically just charges and rides with them and forgets about them. The BMS will usually shut down the battery when any abnormality occurs. I have thousands of miles on these packs and this is the first fire mishap. Of course i am taking much larger risk of fire since i ride about 10x as much as the average ES member i believe.

Also liveforphysics had warned me in an earlier post that he had tested these battery space cells and they are the most dangerous cobalt chemistry he has ever tested. Now I see what he is talking about.

I think a better quality cell may have just fizzled a bunch of smoke which wouldnt have been nearly as fun.

[AussieJester]

I think i speak for many here when i say this GreenMachine, frock the battery, wheres the pics of the 23 year old Asian chickie babe

KiM

[Gordo]

I like the wicker basket touch. You might as well wrap the lipo in gasoline soaked rags and tie a bundle of cedar kindling around them.

[GCinDC]

that is hot!

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