Built a BBS02 bike, mistake?

tahustvedt said:

speedmd said:

For flat road riding, why deal with the complexities and wear issues of a mid drive. I don't believe It was ever intended for that. It's forte is the adaptability to using a vast array of gearing options for integration into more varied rides / riding situations. Nothing beats this type of drives ability at riding around the cow pastures (natural terrain) throughout the world.

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Depends what's important to you. Crank drive means the wheels are easier to remove and install for flat repairs.

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After years of bicycles and motorcycles, this is my first ebike. The idea of a mid-drive is very appealing to me, as it keeps the bike nicely balanced, as well as the ease of changing flats. I have a rack and big saddlebags on my bike, so I already have weight in the back. That said, I would really like to ride a beefy rear-hub bike for comparison. The BBS02 is fun to ride but I could use a little more power. I may build one for comparison if I can't find anyone in the Seattle/Eastside area to let me ride theirs. I have an old 70s schwinn road bike that I've been pondering what to do with

I’m curious as to how long it took to charge a dead battery. If you know you are charging at 2a, you know how much you are putting back into the battery. That is about 10 hours for 20Ah.
I pedal hard like you, but I get 24 miles doing about 23mph (or 30+ miles on a road bike doing 25mph) with 36v10ah.
What do you do for throttle on that bike – PAS?
Post some pictures of your final build!
(P.S. You are going to get more power and speed out of your legs and out of your motor if you don’t try to push too high a gear)

tahustvedt said:

speedmd said:

For flat road riding, why deal with the complexities and wear issues of a mid drive. I don't believe It was ever intended for that. It's forte is the adaptability to using a vast array of gearing options for integration into more varied rides / riding situations. Nothing beats this type of drives ability at riding around the cow pastures (natural terrain) throughout the world.

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Depends what's important to you. Crank drive means the wheels are easier to remove and install for flat repairs.

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Yes and chain and gear wear / maintenance will more than make up for the few minutes you save changing a rare flat riding on the road. Agree; lots of great advantages and also significant disadvantages if all your doing is commuting on the road/path a few miles.

I haven't had a flat in a couple of years. When I did, I didn't remove the wheel. Simply pulled the tube out, aired it up to find the leak , patched it and put the tube back in and aired it up again. If you want to make wheel removal easier, then put a connector on the cable close the the exit of the cable from the wheel and not mess with the wiring up to the controller. Then, other than weight, it no more harder to remove than a standard rear wheel. I don't use torque arms in my steel dropouts.

My charger is a 3A, took something like 5 hours to charge the old battery. I never timed it so can't be sure. I managed to zip tie the throttle close enough to the right brifter to use it while riding, but I like the PAS better so far. Currently the throttle is off the bike and Im just using PAS. I have one of the "big green buttons" mounted near the left brifter, for use when I want to rapidly downshift, as I don't have any sort of ebrake hooked up. Anyways I plan on posting some pics and such once I get this thing working, and I hide the wires a little better

chas58 said:

I’m curious as to how long it took to charge a dead battery. If you know you are charging at 2a, you know how much you are putting back into the battery. That is about 10 hours for 20Ah.
I pedal hard like you, but I get 24 miles doing about 23mph (or 30+ miles on a road bike doing 25mph) with 36v10ah.
What do you do for throttle on that bike – PAS?
Post some pictures of your final build!
(P.S. You are going to get more power and speed out of your legs and out of your motor if you don’t try to push too high a gear)

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So I received the new battery yesterday, charged it all morning, battery charger says it's done, reads ~54V on the multimeter. Plugged new battery into BBS02, hold power, display flashes on and then off again, as if the battery is dead. It never behaved like this with the old battery.

Ideas?

If you bought a 52V 14s battery, then it should charge to 58.8V fully charged. Are you using the proper charger?

wesnewell said:

If you bought a 52V 14s battery, then it should charge to 58.8V fully charged. Are you using the proper charger?

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Probably not. I have the charger than came with the 48v battery. It says 54.somethingV3A on the side so I figured it would work fine with the new battery. Damn so I need a different charger :/

Your charger is not ideal for your battery. You need to get the correct one, but your presnt one can put enough charge into the battery to make it work. Your problem source is rlsewhere.

Ok so I have 2 batteries, the original is 48v, the new one is 52v, both are 20ah. The original one works, as in I can charge it and the bike turns on and everything works fine, but I only get 10-11 miles of range, even with slow easy riding. The replacement battery took a charge just fine it seems, it reads 54V, but the BBS02 just flashes on and off when the new batt is plugged into it. So do I have another defective battery?

d8veh said:

Your charger is not ideal for your battery. You need to get the correct one, but your presnt one can put enough charge into the battery to make it work. Your problem source is rlsewhere.

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So the 48V battery doesn't work today either? You did try it again after the new 52V failure?

Sorry, just want to be clear. Things go south when I get frustrated and I can miss a detail. Just want to confirm.

tomjasz said:

So the 48V battery doesn't work today either? You did try it again after the new 52V failure?

Sorry, just want to be clear. Things go south when I get frustrated and I can miss a detail. Just want to confirm.

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No the 48V battery is working fine, other than having really short range. The 52V battery is not working at all.

Double check the leads and connectors. We had a new batt that wasn't putting out voltage due to bad solder connection at the plug.

Thanks for the help everyone, finally got the bike done and it's working great. I ended up with a smaller battery, but I'm getting to and from work on a single charge even with hard fast riding

Build thread:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=74656

Newb here. First post, etc... (Hi!)

bokokon said:

The battery advertises 50a continuous output, 80a bursts. Doesn't the BBS02 draw 25a max? My understanding of how all this stuff works is pretty limited but I don't think the BBS02 should be able to damage the battery going up a few short hills.

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If I'm following things correctly, the battery that bokokon bought originally bought did not advertise the ability to output 50A/80A, although the language used on the product page in question is (IMO) a bit misleading.

The product description describes the pack's BMS (not the pack itself) thusly:

It is a high power BMS which will allow the pack to put out 50amps continuous (2500 watts) and 80 amp bursts (4000 watts) although running this much power will drastically reduce packs life expectancy so we recommend to not run your battery to hard if you expect it to last over a couple hundred charges.

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So, the BMS will "allow" the pack to output 80A bursts, but I'm kind of doubting that the pack itself is capable of that sort of heroics. (My neighborhood park "allows" me to do 360 windmill dunks when I'm on the basketball court, but that's not gonna happen either.)

I'm too new to this subject to be able to estimate what sort of amperage that original pack was capable of, but another poster stated that the Samsung 26f cells would sag a lot with even a 3A draw. In an 8p pack, I think that corresponds to a 24A draw on the pack as a whole. That implies less than 1000W of total output, once the pack voltage had sagged below 45V.

Again, I may have this all wrong, but it looks to me like that (first) pack bokokon had wasn't really capable of keeping up with his BBS02, at least not when he was really pushing it. (Please correct me if I'm confused. I don't want to post bad info.)