Physical damage to the cell, happy I'm not on fire

Pictures of internals below

I could never find the time to build a hard casing for my 14s triangular battery, so just had it in my backpack for the time being. Recently fallen off my bike and damaged one of the cells. Happy to say that I did not become crispy chicken... From visual inspection only this cell was visually damaged, but gonna have to do more tests to see if excessive vibrations have damaged the rest of the cells... Hopefully not.

I used side flush cable cutters to cut the nickel strip and lighter fluid to dissolve the hot glue holding the cell. Now gonna have to order some replacement cells and redo the connections. Discharging the damaged cell slowly so that i could safely discard of it.

I suspect you "dodged the bullet" on that one. specifically about 70 rounds of ammo in your backpack. Suppose you bumped your head and were a little dazed, could you have gotten the backpack off quickly enough?
Buy a new cell and fix the battery but please find a better way to protect it.

Hwy89 said:

I suspect you "dodged the bullet" on that one. specifically about 70 rounds of ammo in your backpack. Suppose you bumped your head and were a little dazed, could you have gotten the backpack off quickly enough?
Buy a new cell and fix the battery but please find a better way to protect it.

Click to expand...

Maybe if adrenaline would have kicked in I could have taken it off quickly, but in my case I was in pain and needed to lay it off for a moment, didn't want to move just in case of a serious injury. I'm working on the case right now, gonna prep the bike for winter at the same time.

I discharged the battery fully and took it apart to see what the damage looked like internally. The layers where compressed, but there was no fatigue on the metal casing. It did reveal that I was spot welding a bit too hot as the separator(Blue) had couple minute marks. Probably from heat of spot weldingView attachment 1

If I ever wore a battery pack on my back besides better protection for the batteries , I Would protect my back / Spine , as well

I would be wearing something like this ... http://www.rideicon.com/gear/mens/protective/field-armor-stryker/green

or this ...http://www.rideicon.com/gear/mens/protective/field-armor-stryker-rig/black

ScooterMan101 said:

If I ever wore a battery pack on my back besides better protection for the batteries , I Would protect my back / Spine , as well

I would be wearing something like this ... http://www.rideicon.com/gear/mens/protective/field-armor-stryker/green

or this ...http://www.rideicon.com/gear/mens/protective/field-armor-stryker-rig/black

Click to expand...

On a motorcycle I would completely agree with that, but I'm a city cyclist. I average 20mph due to lights and don't go over 30mph top speed. Leaves and oily road is the nemesis right now, so just need to be more careful on the bends.

I had something similar happen, but the cells aren't physically damaged that I can see (battery was padded), but the twisting force cracked some of the heat shrink on the cells. Any suggestions?

https://imgur.com/a/VfJzdd5

Do I have to buy a spot welder to fix this "safely"?

Aquakitty said:

I had something similar happen, but the cells aren't physically damaged that I can see (battery was padded), but the twisting force cracked some of the heat shrink on the cells. Any suggestions?

https://imgur.com/a/VfJzdd5

Do I have to buy a spot welder to fix this "safely"?

Click to expand...

If heat shrink is damaged, check if the cells are interconnected with negative side. If yes, add a bit of hot glue. If no, I would try and put a barrier between the cells. Check that there are no kinks to the nickel strip, specially on the positive side. I would do a complete battery cycle to see how the cells are doing. A single 110v hairdryer will usually provide 5A of discharge current. You can either invest in multiple hairdryers and connect the in parallel to get to your desired discharge rate or take one cheap hair dryer apart and use the nichrome wire inside as a resistor. Put it a bucket of cold water and the length of the wire will determine the Discharge current.