Hey Cwah,
just read through this entire thread. Sorry for all the trouble you´ve been through.
Although many members have had bad cells when ordering Hobby King Lipos, none of the packs that found it´s way into my bike had any problems when arriving here in Germany.
In roughly 2 years a total of 32 Turnigy nano tech 6s 8Ah packs came from China to my house. All the cells were balanced perfectly and had a storage charge of 3,85V.
The battery for my stealth custom built bike is made up of 12 turnigy packs. Having 4 in parallel and then 3 of these blocks in series gives me 32 Ah at 75V.
Prior to riding inserting a 42 pin custom " Harting " plug establishes all the serial connections combining the 3 blocks and thus producing an 18S 4P*4 battery.
The great thing is that when charging this using 3 i-chargers, they do all the balancing and checking. They even monitor the temperature.
So yes, there´s no BMS. So what, i have 3 battery medics installed in the bikes dashboard and thus can see ever cells voltage at all times.
At around 3,6V i cut power and pedal home, if not there already.
This is it. Machined out of aluminum this dashboard shows me every cells voltage. The round switch on the right side with the green wires cuts the power to the medics when the bike is not used.
So, i´ve done 214 cycles so far. Problems?
Yes, one cell dropped a bit more in voltage then the others on heavy acceleration.
Since this battery is modular it was easy to locate the problem. I could have just swapped that one cell soldering it out, but just sticking a new pack in there seemed safer and faster.
Believe it or not, this battery gave me 17481 km without any problems. The 109 $ spent on a new pack after all this time seems cheap.
Ok 1308 $ is what the whole pack cost me and it will probably die soon. My simple setup though gave me years of riding with no issues. Balance charging is essential. Prior to assembly all cells where charged individually to exactly 3,85 V.
