Has anyone repurposed an EZ limn with lipos???

The EZ kits came with a great little case that hung off the side of a rear carrier. They had a short life span, but their controller and charger should work with lipos. Don't tell me that I'm going to be the first one to try it....

If someone has done something along those lines, what size of whose cells worked well?

Bob

you can even salvage the BMS and hook it up to Lipo !!

LiMn has the same operating voltage range as lipo.

I am about to do this myself..

It looks like li co nanotech 10S from hobby king will run around $300 after shipping to Canada. The old li mn were pretty good in the winter here. Their limitation was in only working 2 years. I'm not sure if the li co will handle the cold, but if I can figure out how to wire this thing, I should be able to save half of the price.

I've started to disassemble, but I haven't soldered much since I repaired an Atari game in the late 70's.

I'll post photos so if anyone wants to do the same, you can avoid my mistakes along the way...

Heh, you could save even more by using regular lipo
I am sure even the cheapy 20C stuff would be an improvement. nanotech is nice though..

According to DoctorBass, LiCo ( lipo ) handles cold terribly! It is just like any other lithium battery, but that lovely discharge rate gets cut into a fraction of what it was..

I bet you a little 100w glove warmer thingy around the pack would take care of it during the winter months.

After peeling back the cases and the shrink wrap...so 10s for 36v...and 10ah. I would have expected that connector on the end to be used for balancing... but it's unused with a piece of tape over it.

Neptronix

I may just try to find a resistive heater of some sort for winter, because the coldest weather comes with snow that eats power.

bob

LiMn can last more than 2 years... i have a few packs well into year 4~5 .. ( showing their age but still going )

i believe that port is used for diagnostics, the BMS is burried in there under some more tape..

And yeah, the turnigy 20C or Flightmax packs would be more than enough..

Colt weather use, as long as you store the pack indoors and just bring it out when you ride it will be fine, if you heave it out overnight in cold weather it will suffer some voltage sag ..

I unwrap Xmas presents slowly, too.

Ypedal, you're right, it turns out that the wtf port is quite clever, and it IS for diagnostics. I can check the voltage across each battery in the series with it. That's useful because I notice that one of the battery pouches has expanded. Hmmmm... maybe I shouldn't assume the battery is done for.

There's a substantial heat sink at the circuit board end of the battery, and aside from the packing tape holding the thing together, it looks very well made.

A couple of more photographs next.

The ez battery used a pc board to connect all of the prismatic batteries in series. I'm not sure that I want to just drop them off at a recycle depot, because most of the cells may still be good. The connecting pc board is almost flush with the batteries, though, and may not leave any wire to work with when I disassemble them.

The turnigy lipos that I got to replace the ez's are two packs of 10s (really 5s plus 5s, but that's another issue). Essentially, I'll be replacing a 10s battery with 10s2p to get 10ah, roughly the capacity of the old battery.

So, I don't know how I can use the old controller for balancing, and will likely use seperate charge balancing, and just use the old control board for lvc.

The turnigy 10s long pack fits very easily in the case, but I'm not sure if It will be practical after figuring out a charging solution.

the eZee cells ( phylion ) are tabbed from cell to sell with rivet style tabs.. the boards are just a means for the ballance leads to be hooked up.. you can junk that part.. just salvage the BMS .

Thanks Ypedal. Personal issues took me away from the project, but I have to get back to it now...

I recently had to open up one of these and turns out that the packs are made of 2 groups of 5 cells, each have a board with what looks like ballance circuits ( resistors )... not entirely sure of their function.. fyi.