Dead Ping Battery 48V 20AH

[Puppyjump]

My 48V 20AH Ping died after only 2 months. I noticed suddenly the power cutout even though the pack was charged. I found the problem is a shorted cell of 0.275V while all the rest are at 3.4V. I attempted to charge the dead cell individually with 2 amps from a bench power supply by using the same BMS wires shown in the pic. The cell will not take a charge.

I wonder what my options are? Anyone know of a way to reach Ping? Is he likely to help?

Possible solutions:

1) Jumper the bad cell. The reduced voltage pack will still serve the short distances I use the bike before recharging. But what do I do with the BMS? Missing one cell, it will shut down.
2) See if Ping will send me an individual cell so I can replace the bad one.
3) Remove the bad cell and enough other ones to make the pack a 36V 20 AH one. I could use this pack on my second bike that had 36V SLA batteries. I would need a new 36V BMS and charger module though. Purchase a new 48V pack, which seems cheaper recently. My roomy bought a Cammy 48V pack for $500 and it works fine.
4) See if Ping will take the battery back for x-change or repair. Shipping sounds messy here though. Anyone have experience here?

 

[dnmun]

email ping, he will repair it for you, maybe he will cover it under warranty and i'm sure he will be able to tell you if you can fix it yourself.

so you should ping ping. sorry, had to do it.

 

[dogman dan]

Ping will help as much as he can, but you may have to eat some shipping. Even the best cells, like the tool packs and such can still have it happen, to the joy of those that get to scavenge. The best bet may be to get a fresh pack and sell some loose cells since there is a demand for those. If you jumper the thing to keep riding, asuming you bypass the bms, keep those rides really short! You could get a 36v bms and ride slower, or even sell the pack as a 36v.

 

[mingonn]

I had two cells go bad in my v2 pack. Ping sent me 2 replacements cells and a single cell charger, I had to cover the $25us postage to australia.

Its quite fiddly to swap out the cells with the hot glue securing the cells and all the sensor wires, but if you are handy with a soldering iron it will be no problem. (just warm the sodering iron up a bit and use it to melt the hot glue around the bad cell first)

I think the cells were bad from the start as my cheepo LIPO pack gave me better range, I would check them all while you have the pack open. They should be within .02 of a volt, any more and it could mean a suspect cell.

Derek

 

[Puppyjump]

Got a reply from Ping. He is going to send me parts to fix my battery. I am satisfied.

 

[dogman dan]

Can you Imagine other vendors fixing you up like that without a big dispute? Ping is OK 8) . He can afford this, since he gets a bit more for his packs, AND, it doesn't happen so often in the first place. If anybody remembers where that resoldering your ping tread, or page in the duct tape tread is, post a link. He'll need it.

 

[Puppyjump]

What a nightmare it looks to be to fix this battery. The dead group of cells is pretty much in the center of pack. desoldering them will be fun. One good thing though is it looks like Ping did not use a hot glue gun to glob all the cells together. Cutting away the tape and successful desoldering will do the trick. I can just lower out the bad cells and then push the new ones in. I hope he used regular lead/tin solder instead of the new higher temperature RoHS stuff.

 

[dogman dan]

Take a look at the 18650 packs inside and you will see your task is less of a nightmare than it could have been. I'd still like to see a different construction, with each cell group more easily removed from the pack by cutting a fat jumper wire or copper strip. Then you could pull out the bad cell group to solder on it. Wouldn't be needed in the vast majority of packs sold though.

 

[Puppyjump]

Take a look at the 18650 packs inside and you will see your task is less of a nightmare than it could have been. I'd still like to see a different construction, with each cell group more easily removed from the pack by cutting a fat jumper wire or copper strip. Then you could pull out the bad cell group to solder on it. Wouldn't be needed in the vast majority of packs sold though.

Actually, This can be done. With a big pair of cutters, I could cut thru the PCB jumperbuss between the cell groups such that the bad one can be lowered down with its half of the jumper buss. I could then more easily remove the individual cells, reverse the process with the new cells,insert back into the pack, and then finally use some stubs of copper wire to mate the separated jumperbuss PCBs together again.

Note: It does not show well in the pic, but I wonder if it's more than a coincidence that the bad cell group is the one whose left-most cell is soldered in the pack such that one of its corners and electrical tab is bent way over towards the right. Look carefully at the cell group attached to the left side of the PCB with the blue wire. The cell on the far left is not mounted in purely vertical. The top corner of that cell is being pulled way over to the right such that it can be soldered into the PCB. Could physical deformation (bending) cause damage to a 18650 cell?

 

[dogman dan]

It could be, sometimes a tab gets torn, cutting that cell out of the group. When I said 18650 cells, I was refering to the round cells in most of the ebay lifepo4 packs. Those ones have about a dozen cells per group and all are spot welded. Soldering on those packs can ruin the cells in the process. I don't know the tech name of the ping cells.

 

[dnmun]

dogman is talking about cylindrical metal encased cells, your ping pack is composed of 'prismatic' pouches which is why they need to be supported and enclosed by the duct tape, or plastic solid container for thundersky prismatic pouches. i think there is a thread somewhere (go search on here) about removing and replacing the individual pouches, and you can always send mr ping a picture and ask him his opinion of the stress on the tabs and if that is why your cell is bad, seems more likely than any other reason. but he would likely want to know for quality control and warranty purposes, and may be able to give you good directions on how to remove/replace the bad pouch or maybe even repair it if it is only torn across the top and could be soldered back together in place. he really seems to care about the customer so use him if you can. use as little heat as possible and use a heat sink too to protect the cell itself, use very fine electronics assembly solder, the thinner, the better, since it will melt quickly on a small tip (2mm) so you don't have to apply heat for too long. email if you need some. bol, dm

 

[Toronto_ebiker]

My 48V 20AH Ping died after only 2 months. I noticed suddenly the power cutout even though the pack was charged. I found the problem is a shorted cell of 0.275V while all the rest are at 3.4V. I attempted to charge the dead cell individually with 2 amps from a bench power supply by using the same BMS wires shown in the pic. The cell will not take a charge.

I wonder what my options are? Anyone know of a way to reach Ping? Is he likely to help?

Possible solutions:

1) Jumper the bad cell. The reduced voltage pack will still serve the short distances I use the bike before recharging. But what do I do with the BMS? Missing one cell, it will shut down.
2) See if Ping will send me an individual cell so I can replace the bad one.
3) Remove the bad cell and enough other ones to make the pack a 36V 20 AH one. I could use this pack on my second bike that had 36V SLA batteries. I would need a new 36V BMS and charger module though. Purchase a new 48V pack, which seems cheaper recently. My roomy bought a Cammy 48V pack for $500 and it works fine.
4) See if Ping will take the battery back for x-change or repair. Shipping sounds messy here though. Anyone have experience here?

Is that a Signallab BMS?

 

[Ypedal]

Sold an X5 to a guy in Quebec who had such a pack.. rows of paralell cells spot welded ..

BMS and chargers failed, and then the voltage sag signaled a problem, i don't think this pack is being used anymore..

 

[dogman dan]

Bump

 

[AussieJester]

Hrmmmmz...I recall just a few days ago you were telling me ping packs didnt have
problems was all the "other sellers" dogman LoL

Seems a biiiit more complicated than unrolling some tape and popping
in a new cell like you made it sound to ...just quietly ...:: wink ::

I hadn't seen inside one of the V2 Pings before glad i have now, shall be emailing the
pics off to me mate Matt (1000watt) who was tossing up between Ping pack and Yesa pack.

Best of luck getting it fixed anywayz puppyjump, i think i would of
sent it back myself and let Mr Ping deal with it, looks like it would
be pretty easy to cause more damage replacing the knackered pouch

Kim

 

[dogman dan]

what did I say exactly? Did I say pings batteries have had zero problems? The broken ping threads are turning out to be hard to find. The broken other duct tape vendor threads are everywhere. The Jimmywu66 one is many many pages long. The Duct tape ebay battery thread, mostly about ping, is over 70 pages, got locked and continued on another thead, didn't seem to have the broken battery pix I was looking for.

But taking the tape off and fixing em is not too hard compared to something sealed in a plastic case. A lot of people who have problems with other vendors go to ping for the parts. They want no part of replacements from the original vendor. Do continue to bust my chops, I always deserve it.

 

[AussieJester]

what did I say exactly?

I beleive your exact words were

Oh, and by the way, all those fried chargers and bms? Those were sold by other guys, notably mr laumphkjimmywu etc and use a totally different cell in the pack. Not Ping. The main similarity to those piece of crap batteries was the tape. What is inside a ping pack has a better track record than thundersky in my opinion

You are definitely easily "baited" when it comes to the Ping packs thats for sure
hehehee... I'm a just a playinz with ya dogman...

Be interesting to see though if it these V2 Ping packs are still
up and running without issue in 18 months time and if they aren't how generous Mr Ping will become replacing them... looking at them if left "stock" i wouldn't be betting on them, they look shockingly put together IMHO
but thats just me...im fussy about such things, i take 2 hours to sort my
power cables under my desk for my pcs LoL...

Peace

Kim

 

[dogman dan]

Yeah, Cammycc acused me of being Ping. I get up early, so a lot of my posts were done at what looked like china time. You can tell I'm not ping by the spelling, his is much better!

I was about to puke as I sent Ping money last spring, but have been nothing but happy with what he sent me. I just crossed the 2000 mile mark on it, 200 or more estimated cycles, and it still performs like it is brand new. I did fry my ping charger, but what do you expect when you run 110 ac into the dc output wires? A few ping customers have had a loose tab, a bad cell, or a bms go poof, but all I heard of have been happy enough with what ping did about it. The really dodgy packs are the ones with a hundred or more spot welded round cells. A lot of those came with missing fets on the bms and dead cells buried somewhere in there. Then the pissed off customers had to wait months for paypal disputes to resolve. There have also been some ping packs killed by overdischarge. I don't recomend em for more than 1c or at most 1.5c.

Btw these broken ping threads were bumped so Ried could see some pics of them taken apart.

 

[AussieJester]

Yeah, Cammycc acused me of being Ping. I get up early, so a lot of my posts were done at what looked like china time. You can tell I'm not ping by the spelling, his is much better!

HAHAHA.. funny fella, Mozilla Firefox is the answer buddy, i spell as bad as you but look pro because of it, it puts a lil red line under any word you type that is incorrectly spelt, right click the word it gives you suggested spelling same as your word spell checker and Firefox (last i checked) was supposedly the best internet browser available OH dogman tiz free too You will never spell "peadle" wrong again...much to recumpences disappointment hehehehe

I did fry my ping charger, but what do you expect when you run 110 ac into the dc output wires?

hehehe that sounds EXACTLY like something i would do except it would of been worse we have 240VAC in OZ LoL

I think its fantastic your happy with the Ping packs and Ping is definitely got the name as far as customer service goes something most lacking with alot of the sellers in China...usually something goes wrong they shut up shop change name and start over again, i'm always skeptical of businesses in China...

Kim

(apprentice Gangsta 8) )

 

[BikeFanatic]

Pings pack are not trouble free, but he does help on repairs and is not like those Ebay venders that Don't give a
Crap about you after the sale. Ping does offer support, but it is not like dealing with a big depattmnt store where you just ship it back.

I had one of my two Pings fail and it was a cell group that went to 2.2 volts and ping helped me fix it. A BMS wire had come off I believe, or it came off when I was fixing / testing the cell goups/ 72 hours on the chager and the pack came up to balance but I used a single cell chage on that group (at that time ), and all is well since then. one and half years later Yesterday I rode 15 full ( almost) thottle miles on the ping 48v 15 amp hour.

 

[nomad85]

My first ping 48v 15Ah V1 went about 1000 miles and started to cut out at 7ah, it was a bad cell group. I got a replacement pack/upgrade to a 48v 20Ah V2 pack for the cost difference between the packs when new, and shipping, not a bad deal. 2500 miles later on the V2 and its been trouble free so far, fingers crossed