Preparing for long slow tour

[JennyB]

My sister has offered to look after Mum for a couple of weeks at the end of June, so it looks like I will finally be able to take that long trip!

I 'm planning to take a loop round the North of Ireland, visiting a few friends and relations and staying in bed&breakfast or hostels in between. I have plenty of experience on the cycling side, but would appreciate any help and advice to ensure that the electrics are reliable.

My 36v 15ah Ping can manage an average of 45-50 miles on a charge over 4-5 hours, including camera stops and natural breaks. I don't plan on going any faster than that, but I would like to go further, which means either more battery and/or opportunity charging. At most 75-100 miles on some days, which is, at all, as far as a Pony Express rider would do in a day at full gallop with ten changes of mount.

Recharging is enticing because it means I won't have to carry an extra 12 lbs of battery on those days when I'm not going so far, but on the current battery (assuming that I am recharging on the middle two-thirds) it means 10 amp hours of charging for 75 miles, or 20 for 100 miles. My little 2.5 amp charger won't be fast enough, and 5 amps seems marginal.

I know that some of you charge Pings at 10 amps by bypassing the BMS, but is there a charger that is light and reliable enough to do that on the road and also do overnight balance charging? Alternatively, I am very tempted by the 20 ah BMSBattery LiNiCoMn, which is about the same size and weight. It comes with a 4 amp charger, which would be the equivalent of charging the Ping at 8 amps for 75 miles range (5 ah) or 5.3 amps for 100 miles (15 ah).

 

[Drunkskunk]

Sounds like a great trip. Post pics!

I can't find a good reliable source of info on the LiNiCoMn battery, and I'm not sure what the Ni does for it. A LiMnCo (No Ni) battery splits the difference between the safety of the LiMn and the power of a LiCo.
It might be a viable chemistry for ebikes. But it might turn out to be crap, and BMSbattery.com batteries aren't known here as a good source of quality batteries.

You could go for Straight Lipo from HK, but the charging solutions for that would be almost the size of the ping, and it would need more attention while charging.

I'd probably go with a second Ping, or a battery from Cell_man.

 

[dogman dan]

A 5 amp charger would be the starting point. One from Ping, or one from another source that is basicly the same kingpan charger. You should get about 210 wh per hour on the Ping 5 amp charger. So about 3 hours would get you full again. Pretty long lunch break, but you might find only 2 hours would give you enough charge to get your day's goal done.

This is also where RC lipo will shine as a range extender. A tiny little 10s 10 ah cube will add 2/3 to your range. You'd have to carry another charger for it, but a small, slow, cheap, 50w charger could then charge the lipo in the room at night.
A dinky charger would not be so bad to carry, and having it charge so slow overnight shouldn't be that big a problem.

Here's one source for a faster charger, if you want to bypass the bms. This would be 8 amps, for a two hour full charge.
Run it for an hour and a half at lunch, then use your original charger overnight.
http://www.bmsbattery.com/alloy-shell/26-alloy-shell-400w-lifepo4li-ionlead-acid-battery-ebike-charger.html

 

[BikeFanatic]

I also vote for Lipo supplemental pack . A small Lipo pack is also Great also for a back up battery if something happens to your ping. There is a learning curve but you have been around long enough you may already know a few things about lipo. if You do not you can ask me if you need info.

 

[JennyB]

A 5 amp charger would be the starting point. One from Ping, or one from another source that is basicly the same kingpan charger. You should get about 210 wh per hour on the Ping 5 amp charger. So about 3 hours would get you full again. Pretty long lunch break, but you might find only 2 hours would give you enough charge to get your day's goal done.

Thanks for the numbers, Dogman; it's hard to estimate these things without experience. Do i take it that other chargers are more or less pro rata according to their amp rating?

This is also where RC lipo will shine as a range extender. A tiny little 10s 10 ah cube will add 2/3 to your range. You'd have to carry another charger for it, but a small, slow, cheap, 50w charger could then charge the lipo in the room at night.
A dinky charger would not be so bad to carry, and having it charge so slow overnight shouldn't be that big a problem.

That's something I hadn't considered. I always associated lipo with high output and complex charging set-up. What sort of charger would I need for this?

It does have some advantages that I can see:

Two chargers, two batteries, means I still have some assistance if something blows
I should be able to get close to 80 miles on an easy day before I would have to think of mid-route recharging.
I could leave the Ping somewhere safe to recharge and go ride a loop on the lipo.

Disadvantages:

About 4 kilos more weight than the Ping alone?
About the same price as the BMSBattery for half the capacity?
Is there really a simple plug-and-play way to do this?

Here's one source for a faster charger, if you want to bypass the bms. This would be 8 amps, for a two hour full charge.
Run it for an hour and a half at lunch, then use your original charger overnight.
http://www.bmsbattery.com/alloy-shell/26-alloy-shell-400w-lifepo4li-ionlead-acid-battery-ebike-charger.html

That's the same model as avadalen modded here? If I knew someone who could do that for me, would it mean I would only have to carry one charger, about the same weight as the 5 amp? I really want to travel as light as possible, and get myself fit enough to manage most hills without my little 350 watt motor falling behind the power curve. OTOH, I do want to go further most days than the PIng alone will take me, and until I take this trip I won't know for sure if relying on mid-way recharges is a sensible strategy.

Unless there's a good simple solution for a lipo extender I'm still inclined to go with the BMSBattery, because I could do with the extra capacity for another project I have in mind. But - one 20 ah or two 10 ah? :? Are two 2.5 amp chargers together less trouble than one 4amp?

Options, options. I'll need to make up my mind soon, or this trip will never get off the ground.

 

[dogman dan]

Unfortunately, like many things in the EV world, specs tend to be nominal. So a charger sold as a 4 amp may be only putting out 3 amps. On the other hand, maybe that's just what they do on American 110v input. You'd have a 220v or something like that I believe?

I'd say as a starting point, get a faster 5-6 amp charger for your ping. Just charging the ping faster will help a ton if your ride has a lunch break planned into it.

Lipo is definitely more complicated than another lifepo4 pack. But it is about as light as more battery can possibly be. About 7 pounds for 36v 10 ah, and that would easily fit in a handlebar bag. About 4.5' x4.5 'x 7'. It would take hours to charge with a small, cheap, lightweight charger. But that could be done overnight.

When I have gone on longer rides, I have carried two pings with no problem. Two 800wh batteries (36v 20 ah) gives you incredible range for sure. No need at all to have fast chargers when you are carrying a 1600wh pack.

Nowdays, I only have one ping. So I now carry one ping and some lipo when I want more range. Easy for me, I have a pile of lipo for the dirt bike, racing bike, lawnmower....

 

[joe tomten]

You could just get a second charger for your ping and plug that in where the controller gets fed from. I often do this with both the signallab v1 and v2 types of bms's. Just don't walk away for too long - because the bms can't shut off that second charger.

an hour of charging mid-day - say 6 amphrs @ 40v gets you 240 watt hrs further down the road.

 

[dogman dan]

There's a damn good idea. Well, sort of. The discharge plug is not supposed to like having lots of amps of power inputed to it.

But a tiny 2 amps would not be a problem since the ping v2 bms is ok to have 5 amps of regen. So you'd be fine as long as you weren't using a big charger that way.

Ping 5 amp charger through the bms charger plug, plus your original 2 amps through the discharge wires.

Bet you could get a full charge down to two hours that way. 300wh an hour with 7 amps of charger input.

 

[JennyB]

Ping 5 amp charger through the bms charger plug, plus your original 2 amps through the discharge wires.

Bet you could get a full charge down to two hours that way. 300wh an hour with 7 amps of charger input.

That sounds interesting. About equivalent to a good meal, in terms of time taken and energy added. One last question: if I do get some liposuction, will the small charger serve to charge that overnight as well? I don't want to carry any more chargers than I need!

 

[dogman dan]

You'd be best off to use a special RC lipo charger for the lipo if you went that route. So you'd end up carrying two chargers, one fast ping charger, and a very slow lipo charger. Or perhaps your slow ping charger, and a fast lipo charger. In any case, two chargers. You may find that just having a faster 5 amp charger for your ping will do you well enough. A long break, but still carrying just one charger, and a big boost in range on just 2 hours of charging time. You don't need to fully recharge, and wait for that slow tapering off end of the charge cycle. Just slam it with 2 hours at the full 5 amps, and you put in 400wh.

 

[voicecoils]

Hi Jenny,

I have done some multi day trips and also long 1 day trips & have some suggestions. Try to equip yourself with as much basic/lightweight diagnostic & repair equipment as possible. Your charger, BMS or battery could fail at any time, so to make sure the trip can continue:

* Carry a spare charger (even if it has low charge power). Most are notoriously flakey when they get bounced around a lot. Few manufacturers take care to secure components from vibration.
* Be prepared to disconnect and bypass the BMS if necessary and charge the pack directly. Carry at least a multimeter to allow individual cell voltages to be checked if BMS is bypassed.
* Carry a sweet portable Irish soldering iron for repairs on the road
* Carry spare fuses, wire, electrical tape, solder, desoldering braid

I also strongly suggest the quickest quick charge option as your primary charger that you can comfortably carry. I've used 36v5A chargers, carrying one per 10Ah or 14Ah battery and found them to be the minimum needed for a mid-day and night time charge. Ideally, you want a setup that can do an 80% charge in 1hr or less. A battery like this one can be charged at 15A without bypassing the BMS.

I have bought several BMSbattery chargers, they over-rate their charge current specs. A 400W charger might draw nearly 400W from the wall, but won't output 400W after efficiency losses. Fortunately, you can open the cases and tweak up the current on internal pots, they run hotter but as long as ventilated you can bump up the current a fair bit.

Overall, the move energy capacity you carry and the faster your charge equipment, the more flexible each day's ride length and stops can be. You'll also be better prepared for the unexpected, like a strong headwind or B&B unexpectedly closed that forces you to continue on to the next town.

A method of current limiting, such as running a Cycle-Analyst will help you budget your energy usage.

 

[dogman dan]

If you are going to buy more battery, some A123 from cellman would be a good choice. But it's not a really fast turn around time with his packs, that are not factory mass produced. Even getting some RC lipo from HK could take weeks.

At this point, June is nearly here. I'm sure if you get it ordered now, you can at least get a 5 amp charger to improve your charge time on your existing battery. Get that done before it gets too late to have it in time. You have excellent hypermiling skills, so just a two hour charging break midday with a faster charger will extend your range to nearly double with nearly no extra weight. Maybe get a routine where you ride 20 miles, charge an hour, ride 40 miles, charge another hour.

 

[JennyB]

I've ordered a 5 amp charger from Ping now. The plan is to bring both it and the original, both as backup and to experiment with joe's idea. It turns out I'll only have six days on the road, so I'm not going to worry about ordering more battery. My other backup plan if the worst happens is to be fit enough and light enough to be able to ride out without power, at least as far as the nearest bus station. I have a 42 mile (unpowered) charity bike ride coming up a few days before departure, just to give me a reality check.

Now what I need to do is to get some sort of watt meter to keep a check on battery drain and make sure all the wiring is reliable.

 

[dogman dan]

Yup, any kind of wattmeter is just what you need when trying to set a distance record. It becomes a fun game to try to keep speed at one number, while not letting watts get above another number. If nothing else, it's a big help to know where you stand about halfway to the next plug.

You'll love a cycleanalyst if you can afford one, but the cheaper 60v max wattmeters will work for you if you don't want to spend for a CA. I have two of the stand alone CA's. No watt limiting with the stand alone, but they adapt real easy to any bike controller I want to put them on. Just having the data is all I really need.

 

[voicecoils]

I've ordered a 5 amp charger from Ping now. The plan is to bring both it and the original, both as backup and to experiment with joe's idea. It turns out I'll only have six days on the road, so I'm not going to worry about ordering more battery. My other backup plan if the worst happens is to be fit enough and light enough to be able to ride out without power, at least as far as the nearest bus station. I have a 42 mile (unpowered) charity bike ride coming up a few days before departure, just to give me a reality check.

Now what I need to do is to get some sort of watt meter to keep a check on battery drain and make sure all the wiring is reliable.

good luck!

Both chargers together for 7.5A should give you well over 80% charge in under 2 hours, nice.

A watt meter such as the Turnigy Power Analyser ('Power Analyzer' on hobbyking.com) is a low cost option and may be found at a local hobby shop, otherwise the Cycle Analyst sure is a nice investment though you might wish to wait for the CA V3 with all the extra bells and whistles.

 

[JennyB]

A watt meter such as the Turnigy Power Analyser ('Power Analyzer' on hobbyking.com) is a low cost option and may be found at a local hobby shop, otherwise the Cycle Analyst sure is a nice investment though you might wish to wait for the CA V3 with all the extra bells and whistles.

I don't think I'll need the extras on the V3, so I'll treat myself to the current version as an early birthday present! Now what connectors should I order at the same time? At present the battery is connected to the controller by a double red/black Anderson, so I'll need two doubles for the shunt. The new Ping charger should have a male 3-prong XLR. Unfortunately this was changed by the previous owner of my own battery to a smaller 2-pin connector.

So: one pair 3-prong XLR so that both chargers can connect through the BMS. Another female XLR connected to a pair of Andersons to connect the small charger for fast charging charging. Before I fast charge, note how many amps have been used, and set a timer accordingly?

Anything else?

 

[joe tomten]

I made up a pair of xlr to anderson connectors that lets me convert the chargers xlr output to the anderson discharge plugs on the battery. That way i can use the charger in any location (and for different batteries i have hanging about).

be sure to use your volt meter to check polarity before making the final terminations, and then again before plugging anything in.

you can count amp hrs or watt hrs - since i usually just plug a watts-up in while charging - and can see that (for example) 100 watts are being delivered to the battery at that moment, and I just rode the route that uses 250 watt hrs, then I just know to come back in a couple of hours. Easier maths for me thinking in watt hrs.

 

[JennyB]

Got the charger, got the CA, got a neighbour to make up the connections... Now my controller seems to be dead It had a habit lately of sometimes not responding to the throttle, but I thought it was just a bad connection somewhere - it always came right with a bit of fiddling. This time I've double-checked everything I can think of with a multimeter and am getting no response. Is there some diagnostic procedure I haven't thought of,and if it really is dead, where can I get a reliable replacement quickly?

 

[wineboyrider]

I vote for the 10.8 amp hour meanwell while bypassing the bms as your opportunity charger and it can double as a 10-12s lipo charger!

 

[wineboyrider]

I made up a pair of xlr to anderson connectors that lets me convert the chargers xlr output to the anderson discharge plugs on the battery. That way i can use the charger in any location (and for different batteries i have hanging about).

be sure to use your volt meter to check polarity before making the final terminations, and then again before plugging anything in.

you can count amp hrs or watt hrs - since i usually just plug a watts-up in while charging - and can see that (for example) 100 watts are being delivered to the battery at that moment, and I just rode the route that uses 250 watt hrs, then I just know to come back in a couple of hours. Easier maths for me thinking in watt hrs.

I did the same thing with the meanwell and at 10.8 amps it cranks as an opportunity charger....

 

[Wurly]

Jenny, have you measured the throttle voltages with your multimeter?it sounds like a connection problem. you should have 5v between the red and black wire and between 0.8v & 3.5v on the signal wire.Maybe the connectors on the plug need closing up a bit.

 

[JennyB]

Jenny, have you measured the throttle voltages with your multimeter?it sounds like a connection problem. you should have 5v between the red and black wire and between 0.8v & 3.5v on the signal wire.Maybe the connectors on the plug need closing up a bit.

There's no voltage there at all, which leads me to presume that the controller is dead. It was the basic 15amp Ampedbike, with no LEDs or switches. I'd changed the throttle to the simplest Wuxing thumb type, wired in with a connection strip. I pluged the original throttle back in, but couldn't light its LEDs either. Apart from the battery, throttle and motor, the only other connections were to a remote on/off and one ebrake, both of which seemed to be making and braking as they should.

I'm concluding that there was an intermittent fault somewhere, but in testing for it I've somehow bricked the controller without letting out the magic smoke. I have a new 20amp controller on order from Hightekbikes who supplied the kit, and I'm a bit nervous about doing the same with that.

 

[kfong]

If you are not getting 5 volts from the controller for the throttle. Then there is a good chance the power regulator is blown. This is usually an easy fix if you have the ability to do some soldering and if the part is and Lm317 and Lm7805. Could be fixed as a spare backup. Pictures of the board should make it easy for us to help.

 

[dnmun]

.

 

[JennyB]

do you know that the controller is dead? you had a neighbor do something with the wiring, and now your controller is dead?

you need to post up pictures so we can see what your neighbor did and you need to get the voltmeter to the input of the controller to see if it is even getting power.

It's ALIVE!!!

Part of the problem was a dodgy Anderson on the input side, but even when I was sure that was working I still wasn't getting any voltage at the throttle. Tonight I laid it all out on the kitchen table. And made everything as simple as possible. Used a piece of wire to short out the remote switch socket, even though I knew that was working.

VOLTAGE!!!

There may have been a bad connection at the socket there, and it seems every time I tested the throttle wires either that or the input was broken. Since I don't need a remote kill switch I'm thinking of wiring one directly to the controller to remove another possible point of failure.

Any volunteers to write a page on basic multimeter debugging for the wiki?