1st Ever Ride on LiPo !

[ZapPat]

Have you tried getting the Turnigy cells apart yet YPedal Man? Its near impossible the glue they use between the individual
cells is piled on (was on mine anywayz) I was only able to prior the first cells off the pack i couldnt seperate the middle ones just wrecked them trying. Least i'm not the only one that has come across dead cell, just the only one thats lost near 12 packs because of it.

KiM

You can use Methyl Alcohol as a solvent for the glue between cells, and use a new slim x-acto blade (the brake-ff type) to slowly seperate the cells. Dribble drops of the alcohol solvent as needed between the cells as you slide the blade down.

Ethyl Alcohol probably would work too, but before you grab for your bottle of whisky, keep in mind that 40% might not be pure enough to work well. Maybe even isopropyl would work. I probably wouldn't try hydrocarbon-based solvents as I would worry about them eating the pouch plastic. I've tested the methyl alcohol on one pouch for a long time without any signs of damage.

For the PCB, I carefully break apart the board around the dead cell connections instead of unsoldering the tabs. Get rid of the dead cell and any bits of PCB left attached to it, and you can restack them into a new smaller pack... voilà!

 

[Doctorbass]

if you use methanol, please wear some gloves!!.. it is reconized to cause blindness!!

acetone is also good for that.. otherwise i know that at home depot or canadian tire you can buy some adhesive dissolvant.. it's especially made for!.. generally the bottle is orange and you can also buy that i spray format. it work well for old duck tape dryed adhesive removal


Just put that stuff and wait few minutes to let the magic happen.. and then remove that adhesive easy
Doc

 

[ZapPat]

if you use methanol, please wear some gloves!!.. it is reconized to cause blindness!!

:lol:

I wasn't suggesting drinking the stuff, Doc! Even good old ethanol is pretty darn toxic to us, yet we still love ingesting it... not to mention the other great toxic substances that nature provides us. :wink:

acetone is also good for that.. otherwise i know that at home depot or canadian tire you can buy some adhesive dissolvant.. it's especially made for!.. generally the bottle is orange and you can also buy that i spray format. it work well for old duck tape dryed adhesive removal

Just put that stuff and wait few minutes to let the magic happen.. and then remove that adhesive easy
Doc

Have you actually tried these solvents on Lipo-style pouches, Doc? Before trying any new solvents on the glue I would do a resistance test on an cell pouch first. Acetone is generally a more agressive solvent that the above alcohols, and who knows what they use in the adhesive solvent? In any case I'm sure that these solvents are not good to drink either though!

Pat

 

[wineboyrider]

Did someone say ethanol? Yum I prefer the wine type.

 

[dogman dan]

Ethanol fun. Methanol not fun. Go blind if it don't kill you. You can easily get a dose of methanol, or laquer thinner, or tolulene, or acetone etc through the skin contact. You can get high on enough skin contact from standing in paint thinner vapor with a good mask on if the vapor is strong enough!

It's how I got so dumb, not knowing that fact for too many years and washing my hands in laquer thinner after laquering a house full of doors and trim. I'd wear a mask all day, and then like a dummy wash the sprayer parts bare handed. Now I have lots and lots of space in my head between grey cells.

 

[Hyena]

As we used to say at uni when having a big night shortly before exams, killing off those brain cells actually makes you smarter. It's the old story of a chain only being as strong as it's weakest link. Kill off those slow brain cells and you'll get smarter. Practise in moderation of course :lol:

 

[Ypedal]

Killing off weak brain cells lol.... yep.. a good thing . agreed ! :lol:

Tonight, i'm charging the Chaos, and at one point i notice a cell on the battery medic unit says 4.25v !!!.. so in a panic i need to shut down the charger for that pack.. impossible to determine what's what in all the spaghetti of wires..... so i had to shut down all 4 packs.

After that.. i went for the tape !

I have an impressive collection of tape, i think i even started a thread about it a while ago...

Anyways.... i got 100ft rolls of this 3M reflective stuff i picked up locally..

 

[Ypedal]

The turnigy charger really needed color coding, what port is what on left/right is not obvious, in a panic situation it needs to be clear.

 

[Ypedal]

I made fairly long ( 4 to 5 ft ) leads for each port.. and color coded the ends as well as every ft along each wire with it's color.

 

[Ypedal]

I also made one of these :

The HK battery medics ballance well, but only work when there is a very small imballance, large differences are faster to fix up by charging an individual cell via the ballance leads..

Charge the pack until most cells are at 4.20v.. then charge indivicual low cells up to 4.2v instead of bleeding down the high cells.

 

[AussieJester]

Crazy charging to 4.20v IMHO YPedal MaN you will increase your lipos life drastically if you back it off to 4.15v As i said in my worklog, if you use the battery medic with a booster it only takes minutes not hours to balance...Check GGoodrums website for the booster.

KiM

 

[Ypedal]

I will on the RC bike with 20ah worth... but the Chaos only has 5ah and i want it all at my disposal and max voltage ! .. i don't care if they only last 2 years.. heck if they last this season i'll be satisfied ! :wink:

 

[AussieJester]

haha fair nuff long as you is awarez, i read one of Lukes posts he stated something like 10x the lifetime if keep them at max of 4.15v
I would be happy if i could get mine to last 5 bloody minutes

KiM

 

[BikeFanatic]

I love the Adaptor, anderson to JST or whatever the balance connectors are called. I only use 5amphr packs myself and Think that is a great idea to balance out one of my problem child 6 series turnigy packs that came 0.20 volts out of balance for two cells - and continues to
be a bit of a problem.

 

[Hyena]

haha that anderson balance tap adaptor is hardcore. I made up a little 2 pin plug for inserting directly into the balance tap plug to charge individual cells. Not that I've had on the packs I regularly use (only on duds and while experimenting) I just have to be sure and get the polarity right!

 

[dogman dan]

That adapter is a great idea. I just hope to never need one.

Finally got my first real lipo ride in a few minuites ago. 15s 5ah 30c turnigy on the dirtbike. SWEEEET! 10 pounds less ping on the back really made the bike handle nice! I'd done a few test rides around the block to put a few cycles on em, but then the dang cycleanalyst had a prob, and I wanted to wait till I had a wattmeter to go for a real ride. The new CA came last night so let er rip now!

I still just can't belive how nice it was to ride without the battery weight. 3x 5s 5ah tunigys seemed like riding carrying no battery at all.

End of ride 4.55 ah or 258 wh used, 54.4 volt . They must have been just about to go over the cliff, but the CA says min volts the whole ride was 52! Wow that's what I call minimal sag, and that is out blasting through piles of sand in the desert! No taking it easy at all. Gotta get more gotta get more gotta get more! Another lipo whore is born.

Nothing wrong with the ol pings for boring commuting around town pulling 10 amps, but on the dirt bike lipo is clearly the only way to fly, unless you get free toolpacks.

 

[Ypedal]

I"ve been cycling some packs for the RC bike these last few days.. some observations to share.

4 x 6S 20C packs in series.. discharging at 1C ( ~5 amps ) with lightbulbs..

 

[Ypedal]

Discharged 4.3ah before i pulled the plug ( lowest cell was going into 3.3v )

 

[Ypedal]

At the end of the cycle, all the packs were quite warm, considering the discharge rate..

Room temps were aprox 27 celcius ( was a warm day ) .. pack temps 36 celcius !!

This is only cycle 3 or so, not sure if this improves with cycling..

 

[Ypedal]

Oh, and it also looks like my Turnigy 4x6 charger has quit outputting power on Ports 1 and 3.. the display shows voltage, and counts up mah and charge time, however nothing going to the cells.....

 

[dogman dan]

Sigh. Great prices, but notice every product in the charger section has a " this thing broke right away" post.

I hope I have better luck with my cheap B6's. But I did buy two for a reason, and I didn't buy 4 for the same reason. Trying to decide which charger to take a chance on was the hardest of the lipo noob decisions for me.

 

[Hyena]

Everyone goes on about what a fire hazard lipos are but I've had more B6 chargers catch on fire that all our collective quantity of lipo combined! :lol:

 

[GCinDC]

Oh, and it also looks like my Turnigy 4x6 charger has quit outputting power on Ports 1 and 3.. the display shows voltage, and counts up mah and charge time, however nothing going to the cells.....

I think mwkeefer offers a free service to fix these... :lol:

Just kidding! He did talk about a couple charger blowing up when pushed to the max. I wondered if the Turnigy 4x6s was too good to be true. (It took me 6 months of trying to rationalize paying $200+ for a charger!)

Anyway, that's a real bummer. I wonder what blew?

 

[El_Steak]

Discharged 4.3ah before i pulled the plug ( lowest cell was going into 3.3v )

Odd, I've never conducted a controlled discharge test like that but I'm pretty consistent on my commute and use up almost exactly 13ah out of my 15ah pack (9 x Turnigy 6s 5ah, 25C in 3p, 3s) every time. That matches up your 4.3ah per pack exactly.

I charge up to 4.15V and at the end of the run (after 4.3ah per pack like you) my voltage is resting at 3.67 to 3.70 per cell; not yet at nominal voltage. I never when under 3.6V per cell on any of the pack.

My packs are in series/parallel so the load is shared by 3, however the load is much higher than 5 amps x 3 (limited to 80Amps).

Keep in mind that all of those numbers (yours and mine) rely heavily on the precision of the shunt value configured in the Cycle Analyst. Maybe that an inline "watts up meter" would be more accurate?

 

[wineboyrider]

I bought the cheapest charger I could find? I hope it lasts at least long enough so I get a few cycles out of my lipos. I bought the 15c ones though, but with my 22amp controller I should have no problems right??