How to tell if I can upgrade to 48v

DrInnovation

100 W
Joined
Jul 28, 2014
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110
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Colorado Springs, CO
I bought a used e-bike kit on craigslist. is 36v ampedbike kit with bottle battery. The Battery is toast.. I'll disassemble to see what cells I can reuse. and test the BMS.
I won't use the bottle, and have lots of 18650s to build a new battery for my older lashout, which has a nice battery box and suspension. I think I can get 80 cell + BMS in the box. Before I do the rebuild I am considering if I should upgrade it to 48v. I now it would be faster, but mostly I care about power for hill climbing. For 36v I could put in 10s8p and for 48v it would 12s6p. (the majority of cells I have are panasonic cells 18650DA cells -- 2400 mph older but not many cycles on most of them.. So at 36v in 10s8p, that would be about 19ah and at 48v 12s6p it would be about 14ah. (36v has the advantage I can reuse the existing BMS if its not bad).
So the questions are what I need for the upgrades. I've included pics of the motor and controller below.

From my reading the motor seems to be a rebranded MXUS XF39 -- so believe 48v is fine there but hope someone has a more definitive answer.

The bigger question is the controller. It is rated at 36v 22A. to upgrade to 48v Is it sufficient to open it up and check for 63v caps and if it has those just go ahead and upgrade the battery?

I hon't have a good enough understanding on how these controllers work, so I so also curious if the upgrade will limit the draw to 22A at 48v or is the actual limiting factor really total watts (about 36x22 ~800 in this case), in which case the upgrade will be mostly speed not total power for climbing and I'll stick at 36v and keep the old BMS.

20170507_180401_001.jpg


I did look at other 48v controllers on eBay/amazon but none of those I saw had the right connector for the motor and I don't want to hassle with rewiring that (or the added cost) for a little speed.
 
You can run 12s on a 36v controller, just be careful because fully charged (4.2 per cell) its just over 50 volts, so charging to 4.15 is recommended. Most 36v controller will have 50v capacitors in them.

12s is not really considered 48v usually 14 or 15s is considered 48v
 
Thanks for the feedback. Well I got some time to disassemble the controller.. and alas the caps are 50v, so no easy upgrade. Pic below
So for the record.. a HuayuxinFeng machinery & electron co controller model XF1011090121 is not upgradeable to 48v... (added incase someone else goes searching as I did).

 
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