Damnit, screwed my batteries

[Mathurin]

So my lead charger has been 1/2 dead for a long time.

I've been using my brain as charge controller by unplugging the batteries when they get warm. Last nite however I went to sleep with them plugged in...

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White stuff came outa this one, don't eat this!
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Well, they still have good voltage each...

 

[dogman dan]

Perfect excuse to go lifepo4. Maybe they will still work till Ping ships you one.

 

[fechter]

Yep, time for new batteries and a new charger.

Those may be good for a while though.
Check out this one. Got hot enough to melt a hole through right through the top and spewed acid crap all over.

 

[Mathurin]

nah, building an on-bike ducktape battery, just you wait...
two 18ah slabs with tqo of these paralleled, so I oughta get better capacity or something. I hope.

 

[Lessss]

You know those christmas tree light timers. One of those mighta saved your batteries, as it would have been set to turn off befor full charge. I use them on all my chargers just in case whatever circuit that governs shot off fails.

 

[Mathurin]

nah, building an on-bike ducktape battery, just you wait...
two 18ah slabs with tqo of these paralleled, so I oughta get better capacity or something. I hope.

Worked, got about 2X range. Still shitty charger, not good.
Don't want to invest in lead either, Do have an hour minuter thing tho?

PS. after spending 1/3rd of a year in the hospital I'm truly, authentically broke.
This defines "this sucks" , and I am quite greatful for charity at this point.


How many hours should I set an hour charger to not bake the batteries?

 

[methods]

Sorry man, that is a bum deal. The only thing I hate worse than being broke is blowing up my favorite toy. Good to hear you are rolling again though.

The number of hours would depend on both the charging current and the charge state of the battery. One option is to try to shuffle around and find a power supply that happens to be the exact voltage your packs charge up to. When they reach that voltage the current will fall to near zero and you wont have problems.

-methods

 

[dogman dan]

sympathy for the hospital thing. Lucky for me I bought the lifepo4 before my trip there. Lifepo4 will get you though times of no money better than , you know the rest. On 2 amp chargers, usually 6 hours was the charge time for my 36v 12 ah pack.

 

[Mathurin]

Yeh, Docbass & Justin were trying to steer me toward getting three cheap 14v psu's to charge the batts instead of admitting they couldn't fix my charger... But hey ask and ye shalt receive, Docbass gave me a set of awesome 18ah slabs!

 

[Jay]

Mathurin, are you using 36V? Because I have a leftover 36V charger from the Wilderness Energy kit I got a couple of years ago (Don't need it because I switched to 48v NiMH).

It's only 2A, so would take a long time with those big batteries. It looks pretty cheap, but worked fine the few times I used it. If you want it, send me a PM with your address & I'll be glad to send it to you.

Jay

 

[Mathurin]

Awesome! PM sent

 

[Mathurin]

So, the batts Doctorbass gave me were much better but still quite weak for their nominal capacity, and I had two other fresh 18ah slabs, so I've decided to use 4 slabs to get 36v, two weak ones in parallel and two stronger in series. Just hope they pretty much even out, it's already an absurdly massive 24.4kg of batteries... Also using 4 slabs lets me put the weight low and on the sides, whereas the cool looking 3 slab cube makes the bike unwieldy. Would be nice to have the batt weight mid frame but that would cost the only bottle cage on my bike, not acceptable.

One of the batts in the cube was cracked, so that's the one I decided to not use.
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I made two duck tape towers of lead slabs, but it's gonna take a whole lot more duck tape to finish them. Gonna have to add several layers of cardboard as padding on the sides toward the rack.
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Recovered some worn out jeans to make a rear rack duck tape tower holder thing. Just hope it's gonna resist the weight, shocks and not rott away, or something. This part is sposta take the most of the weight, rather then duck tape.

Sufficient heel clearance, liberates the top of the rack so I can actually use it. Eventually I'll probably finish soldering the wires, install the rack on the bike and wrap the batteries onto said rack with lots of black(?) duck tape. Also add DOT3 reflective tape on the rear and sides as well as a rear blinky.
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[HornetB]

Get seatbelt webbing to hold those batteries. Strong as all hell. For a couple of $$ you could even get an upolsterer to stitch it for you.

Otherwise get some of those rachet straps and use them, once again very strong. I'm not sure how the jeans will hold up long term (or even short term).

Just some ideas.
HB