Reality bites

Reality just bit me on the a$$.

I rode my bike at lunch, had some fun but no hard riding, then took it home and charged it up. the packs were cool, no damage to them. everything seemed fine.
I just went back out to ride, opened the battery bag, and found one battery bigger than the other.

I run LiCo. Swollen batteries are bad. Very bad. Lico explodes, and a swollen cell has gassed internaly. It will explode if any of the swollen cells rupture now.

I'm looking for my camera now. I was planning on taking the ebike on vacation and leaving tomorow. now I probably won't be.

it looks like I lost 3 cells in the one pack. Its 6 months old now, but has less than 50 cycles on it. I'm not sure what happened, but since its all in one pack, I'm assuming some sort of defect in the cells.

I still have one good pack, but I'm not sure about using it until I do some testing on it.

Sorry to hear that. Do those come with any warranty? Didn't you get those from itsselectric?

Shoot the swollen cells with a BB gun. Get vids 8).

Link said:

Shoot the swollen cells with a BB gun. Get vids 8).

Click to expand...

I believe some sort of pick-me-up is in order. This might do the trich.

aw man.. that sucks..

Post a picture !

Link said:

Shoot the swollen cells with a BB gun. Get vids 8).

Click to expand...

I like the way you think.

Its too dangerous to transport right now. I'm going to have to figure something out first. Don't want to lose the back of my truck quite that way.

Give it a few weeks, and this ought to be fun.

Any chance the charger malfunctioned?

Skunk, any update on the swollen pack?

While Drunkskunk calls the bomb squad.......Hey Lenk, don't you have those same batteries hiding in an ammo can?

that's affirmative - I am waiting anxiously to see what he discovers. just to be safe, I pulled mine apart when this post came up - everything is kosher with my packs....

then again, skunk has been kinda quiet....maybe....the packs got to him before he could escape.........

Len

I hope he has'nt joined Xyster in the sky ! :lol:

I think skunk was on a road trip for a few days tho.

Didn't he mention a vacation?

Perhaps from us specifically?

very encouraging.......

I'm wrighting this sitting up in heaven right now. the back blew up.

No seriously, i'm On An island, sitting on a balcony stareing at the waves and wishing I had something with an umbrella in it. I'm on Vacation.

Before I left, I tore into the BMS, and it looks like the heatsink colided with 2 transisters and shorted them, and as it turns out, only 2 cells had buffed, the thrird was just bent into a u shape by the back under it swelling.


On the good news front, I took the one remaining pack and the bike with me. Took a riding tour of whats left of Boluxi Mississippi. Its a real shame what this country hasn't done with the aftermath of Katrina. everything I remember from there is gone. even the boardwalk that used to run most of the leingth of the beach on that stretch of coast. nothing but burgerkings, waffle houses, andbroken dreams there now. I only saw one casino, and its not fully rebuilt yet, but it was up and running. Now if you'll excuse me, the charger is showing green, so I'm going to ride up to the bar and see if I can find something in a bikini.

It could be worse.

I was riding my bike home in the dark, durrng a snow storm, without a light (my light mount had broken off in the ride in durring the morning). I was riding when I wasn't in any condition to ride a bike, let alone walk down a street. I crashed and broke my hand. I rode the rest of the way home without gripping with the bad hand and went to get an xray three days later.

I asked the xray tech at the dropin clinic give me the pic. He wanted me to just go upstairs to the clinic and cast it. I've been injured a few times before and one thing about Canadian health care that I've learned, you have to be assertive and ask for the type of treatment you want. I googled around a bit back at work before going to the real hospital. It was a Bennet's/orlando fracture and there were basically three options - cast it, pin it, or try to put screws in with surgery. I was lucky to get an excellent hand surgeon who was on call that day. He said normally he would cast it but that if I wanted he was willing to go in and try the screws. I opted for local anesthetic so that I could watch and make sure he was on top of things. After cutting it open and examining the fracture, we realized there wasn't enough bone at the end to screw into. So we went with the pins instead. After the surgery the doctor mentioned that he was pretty releived that we went with the surgery option. He felt it would have been a bad outcome with just casting it.

I rode a few days latter with the cast but it wasn't really a great experience.

Fast-forward 4 weeks latter: the cast comes off and I'm commuting home after work and noticed a sudden loss of power. This is never a good thing. Turned around and my rear sack of batteries was smoking. Frantically tore it appart and separated the precious a123 packs. Two were on fire. A jogger going by offfered to pour water on it to help. "Umm thanks for offering but no" I replied. I eventually snuffed them out with dirt. Two of my three 6s4p packs had three cells fully exploded in the center. Debated discarding them at the fire hall on the way home but decided to put them in a bag and bike them home. The diagnosis: my copper bus bars had shorted out on the side of one of the a123 cells that didn't have the original casing on it -- just some masking tape instead. (that's a longer story) So now I'm in the process of re-soldering them with much better protection around the cells. I gingerly tore apart the burned out packs and tested the unexploded cells. Of the 48 cells, 40 still had 3.33 to 3.34 volts in them. So I'm going to use them in this kind of a configuration next:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3171&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Here are the pics:
View attachment 1

View attachment 3

That's a cool intra-op picture. Not much of a sterile field if your camera was that close!

:x

Ouch, man.

It really says something when the incised hand gets more views than your battery packs.

Toshi said:

That's a cool intra-op picture. Not much of a sterile field if your camera was that close!

:x

Click to expand...

Yeah I whipped out my cell phone when the doc was pre-occupied with something else and snapped a pic. I was on antibiotics for a week after the surgery. Whenever you get pins sticking out of the skin, there's a high risk of infection. Luckily I didn't get any.