Icecube 57's Lipo battery harness review. 4 battery set.

Icecube 57 just sent me a set of the battery harnesses that he is making for people. ES for sale section, or just PM Icecube 57 to buy one, or have something else custom made.

In this case, it's a set designed to connect 4 lipo packs. Ideal for taking 4-6s- 5ah lipo batteries, and making it into a 12s 10 ah pack to run a typical kit controller. This harness set fixes you up for an "idiot proof" lipo pack that easily charges and discharges with one simple plug that cannot be screwed up. It completely elimiates the possiblility of kentucky fried fingers.

It does not connect packs on the cell level. It's designed for simple foolproof non balancing charges, and discharging.

I'm giving it four smileys



So with the set you get three wiring harnesses. One battery set, one controller set, and one charger set.

One set extends the wires from the battery and connects two packs paralell. This can be used with any 4 packs of lipo with the same number of cells. So it could be taking 4- 6s 5 ah packs and connecting them into 2 6s 10 ah packs. Or it could be used with 4 -5s packs, 4-4s packs, whatever. It just needs to be 4 similar packs. But they could be different brands, or different c rates, so long as they are all the same in cell number. All 6s or all 5s, whatever.

This battery side harness terminates in what I am calling a block, 4- 45 amp anderson powerpoles. So at the block, its two sets of connectors that are the same voltage as the battery pack you have chosen. In the case of this review, I have4- 5s- 5 ah packs, 3 zippys and one turnigy. This battery side harness can be connected to the batteries, and left there untill you want to do a balancing charge. If you use the batteries conservativley, that won't be needed very often. On the other end, this has 4 mm bullets to match the hk lipo packs. Higher c rate packs use different size bullets though, so make sure you get what your batteries have.

To run the bike, you want to make a series connection between the two sets of paralelled lipo batteries. Simple, plug in the series connecting block to the battery side block and plug that into the controller. You can't mix em up, it's the one with two andersons on the end. Now you have a 10 ah battery at a voltage your controller can use. In this photo, using 5s lipo's, I have about 40v, 10 ah.View attachment 3

To charge, you want to paralell all four batteries. That way you just need one charger to run a non balancing charge on the pack. Simple, unplug the discharging series connection block harness, and plug in the charging block, which makes another paralell connection. So now all four batteries are paralell connected, and ready to charge to, in this example, 21v.
Again, pretty impossible to get the wrong harness, this one has bannana plugs, that fit your charger.
View attachment 2

Some of you will of course want to build your own set of harnesses. It's not rocket science to connect paralell or series, so I may as well show how the wires connect on the blocks.
Series

Paralell

The quality of the assembly is excellent. The andersons are 45 amp, and are properly crimped, plus soldered.

The harness in this case is designed for up to 40 amps in my opinion, and uses 45 amp anderson powerpoles on the block, and 12 guage wire. I wouldn't hesitate to use this on one of Lyens 12 fet controllers myself. On the battery side it has connectors that match the bullets on the hobby king lipo. In this case, they are the 4 mm bullets. Icecube57 can make anything you want custom, so if you wanted bigger bullets to match the 30c packs, or the entire harness made with bullets instead of andersons, I have no doubt he could do that. If you are running at 100 amps, he could make your harness out of large wire and bullets to carry that kind of current.

In every detail, the harness is well constructed, no funky bent contacts trying to back out of the housing, and no cheap wire. Good 12 guage silicone insulated wire.

It really is nice to just easily plug in and ride, swap one plug, and charge. I'm used to making up series connections for every ride on my dirtbike, and having to be very carefull not to mix up the plugs and get a kff experience.

So I took some stored lipos out of the locker, balanced charged em, and took the harness system out on the road.

Here is the 10s 10 ah pack, plugged into the battery side of the harness. Always want something around lipo, so I quickly made a bit of protection for the naked packs out of a cardboard saltine box. For a permanent setup to carry in a bag, I like to make boxes out of coroplast political signs. Free after the election, losers never want their signs back and dawdle about picking them up.





After the ride, it's time to charge. I don't worry much about lipo catching fire when charging, if you are using a conservative depth of discharge, you should have the packs stay balanced for quite a few cycles. So charging right on the bike should be safe. However if you are carrying in a bag, it's pretty easy to unplug the battery at the block, and carry it to a fire resistant location to charge if you like. Here's my charging setup. One meanwell 350 watt power supply, and a 150 watt charger. A few bucks more, and a 300 w charger would charge this pack in one hour, using the fast charge cycle. So with a 300w charger, you get 300wh of usable capacity, and one hour charging. On my commuter, a stock E-BikeKit direct drive motor, I can easily get 12-14 mile range out of this 36v 10 ah pack, at 22 mph.

The charger, ready to plug in.



So here is the discharge harness plugged in, and the charge harness ready to swap to charging. Simple and idiot proof, unplug the block and plug in the charging harness to the battery. View attachment 1

And there you are, charging with one simple plug, plus the AC plug to power the charger, plus a couple button pushes to select the charge cycle you want. OK, it might take 30 seconds as opposed to 5 seconds to plug in a ping. But really, this is pretty plug and play, and a noob would need only to balance charge individual lipos occasionally.



You still are using lipo, so you DO want to monitor your individual cell voltage from time to time. I recomend you have a cellog 8 and a cycleanalyst. Use the cellog to see if the packs are still balanced fairly often, say every 6-10 cycles. Use the cycleanalyst to monitor voltage and watthours when riding, and never never ever overdischarge them. If you do use more than 8 ah out of the pack, then go ahead and check the cells with the cellog, and balance charge any pack that needs it before resuming quick charges with the harness.

Now it's time for the teeny tiny nitpicks. If you are using the harness to charge on the bike, a longer wire on the charging harness would be nice. Allows putting the charger where you want, perhaps the floor or the ground, and reaching a battery in a box on the bike. Depending on your needs, you may want the harness on the battery side to be shorter. As it is, you could reach two seperate battery boxes with the stock harness. but you might want to ask Icecube 57 for a shorter harness is space is tight.

That's it, this harness works fine for me, but for your particular bike you might want different lenths of wire. So just tell him what you want, and he'll make it that way. But since I want to put a spare extra battery in a pannier bag, this harness is just the right length for me as is.

Its perfect for somebody that wants to use lipo, but doesn't want to spend a lot of time figuring out how to connect a 4 battery pack, and doesn't want to have to buy a crimper, spend time soldering, etc.

I rate it four grins.

I sent dogman a harness to review.

He did mention that the parallel harness I sent him is for bulk charging without balancing and that it doesnt parallel the packs at the cell level. This is true but I offer the 6 to 1 JST-XH balance tap harness or purchase a harness from EPBUDDY so you can use my harness to parallel your pack at the pack level and use the 6 to 1 Parallel JST-XH harness to parallel your pack at the cell level that way you can balance all 4 packs while charging.

Good Review Dogman.

Excellent review - I am now awaiting my 2nd harness from Icecube and am very happy with his product.

While I could do it myself I do appreciate having a well built kit with top of the line materials so it's worth it to me.

That's how you do a review hope he got the harness for free GJ

He got it free and its only fair and with his reputation I couldnt ask for a better person to review it. You gotta send sample out to build consumer confidence with reviews.. its the cost of business. He didnt get a full kit but what he has Im sure it will be unmodified and left as is. It would be a sin to destroy that harness because it so functional.

This is no art and im not keeping any trade mark secrets to myself but not everyone want to buy crimpers, soldering irons, solder strippers flux and anderson housing and contacts and bullets... I havent denied anyone any information on how to make these harnesses. With the videos that are on my youtube page..I pretty much walk you through the creation of one of these harnesses but the question is do your have the materials, tools, time, and patience to complete the task.

Yeah, it's a really simple matter to get or make your own jst paralell harnesses if you want to take each pair of batteries and paralell them at the cell level. A third paralell harness could then be used to make all four packs paralell for charging and balancing. Unfortunately that doesn't work as good as you might expect. By the time you are balancing a 20 ah pack, the balancing takes foreeeeeeverrrrrrr. Plus once you introduce paralelling at cell level into the system, you open up a possible way to screw up and get kff. So for those wanting to keep it really simple and idiotproof, this harness as is is perfect.

Again, if you are using the batteries properly, you should not be unbalancing them very much anyway. keep dod from being 100% and the batteries will not need a tedious balancing that often. In the last year I was doing it about ever ten cycles. But actually, they really rarely ever needed it, unless I'd been doing deep discharges.

Opinons vary, but I think it can be an advantage to not paralell at cell level while discharging. If one pack has a weak cell, it doesn't suck power out of the other, and no chance at all of something heating up those tiny balance wires. So not paralelled at cell level, the one weak pack may have a cell go down, but it's pair will not have the same cell dragged into below 3.5v discharge.

Since I have four chargers, its actually faster for me to do the balancing at the end of the charge one pack at a time. By then the amps are so low, I can run all four chargers from the one meanwell.

I agree that it is probably not a good idea to parallel at the cell level while discharging because one cell would take down it's paralleled cell. What about at the pack level? I have some 4s hardpacks and was looking to run 12s2p for an EVG ebike that I have (hopefully it will take 44v). Is it better to parallel 2 packs and then make a series string of them, or make 2 12s strings and then parallel those?

hinv said:

I agree that it is probably not a good idea to parallel at the cell level while discharging because one cell would take down it's paralleled cell. What about at the pack level? I have some 4s hardpacks and was looking to run 12s2p for an EVG ebike that I have (hopefully it will take 44v). Is it better to parallel 2 packs and then make a series string of them, or make 2 12s strings and then parallel those?

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My harness parallels two or more packs at the pack level and then series them. When charging... 2 packs up to 12 packs or more are in parallel at the pack level and cell level.

I see what you mean, but if you have the right charger, you can do up to 14S. Unfortunately, I did not get one of those. I got the turnigy quad 6s charger with the intention of making it do up to 24S like Doctorbass did.
It isn't an easy mod though and you really have to know what you are doing. Your harnesses and your videos make it easy for someone to use a stock charger.

I have one of Icecube's harnesses, and I'm here to tell you if you want a worry-free intro to lipo, he's the man. Also bear in mind that he'll build a harness tailored to your needs. We just talked about what I wanted (in my case a modular pack that lets me run 12s at 5ah, 10ah or 15ah) and he crimped and soldered everything. Six months later, I haven't fried a single finger.

Do it yourself if you want a science project. If you just want a harness that works, at a good price, plus a bunch of good advice from a fellow e-bike enthusiast, then PM the Cube.

Beachcruzer said:

I have one of Icecube's harnesses, and I'm here to tell you if you want a worry-free intro to lipo, he's the man. Also bear in mind that he'll build a harness tailored to your needs. We just talked about what I wanted (in my case a modular pack that lets me run 12s at 5ah, 10ah or 15ah) and he crimped and soldered everything. Six months later, I haven't fried a single finger.

Do it yourself if you want a science project. If you just want a harness that works, at a good price, plus a bunch of good advice from a fellow e-bike enthusiast, then PM the Cube.

Click to expand...

This guy was like the very first adopter. Glad to hear all is well.

Just wanted to make sure of a couple of things here, which will be obvious to most people...

In the picture, middle bottom, you have 2 connectors not connected to anything. Are the other 2 packs missing from this?

Also, I want to start off charging my lipos one at a time, with small charger/psu. This is still possible I assume, as I would just need to disconnect each battery from the harness one at a time, instead of using the parallel charging block?

I know these are obvious questions, but I've just spent ages thinking it through and wanted to be sure.

You are correct.

Even with a small charger, you can still paralell the batteries and charge them. It will just split the amperage between all the packs, so they will be charging very slow.

Good idea though, when you have new lipos, to seperate the packs and balance charge them every cycle for the first 5 cycles or so. If you have one pack that doesn't balance well right away, it can be good to note that, labeling the pack for future scrutiny.

Once you are assured that all your packs are in good shape, and don't go out of balance quickly, then you can start using the harness for charging. Parallell, non balancing charging is only for packs known to be in good shape. I tend to balance charge about every 10 cycles, but often it's not really needed at all.

Good ideas there. I have also read it's a good idea to cycle the packs a few times to begin with, before connecting them together and using them on the bike. The reason seems to be mainly to make sure there are no duff cells.

One thing not clear to me in the pictures on the previous page was the reason for not charging using the discharge lead at 40V? A parallel connection is made and the multimeter shows 20V. Pretty sure I'm missing something obvious here.

Wouldn't you need to balance the batteries before connecting them in parallel? :? It goes against everything i learned, using lipo thus far. lol

The first initial cycles yes it would be wise to balance them individually before putting them in parallel groups.

Icecube57 made my harness when I went to the lipo darkside with a 72v system of 20s1p zippys which is also a 4 battery pack solution. I couldn't be more pleased. Wait till I tell him I need 30s4p (24 * 5s8Ah zippys) charge and discharge sets for an electric motorcycle I want to build. I just have to let my paypal account cool down after 2 electric bicycle builds last year or the wife will have me committed.

30s 4p you gotta catch up with Tom hunder who has the potential to 30s 6p with his harness I made for him..

30s 4p you gotta catch up with Tom hunder who has the potential to 30s 6p with his harness I made for him..

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Did you make a youtube vid of it by any chance?

Here is 3 parts of it.

icecube57 said:

Here is 3 parts of it.

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Here is a 5s 4p harness also.

With fuel prices escalating so fast you might become the General Motors of harness makers.