Mike Moser ( the builder) is a friend of mine. I talk with him two or three times a month at least. I have had alot of other friends ask me my opinion on this. The bike was a fully custom made trellis frame with some skill...but pooor execution in some areas of design in my opinion. He has played with the notion of using packs I build in his TOB bikes.. ( " hey when are you gonnna build me a battery for a TOB?")
Bottom line, its a sad day, Jaimie ( the buyer) should get a new bike, and we may never know what happened.
Mike has built many bikes... and one at the start of the life, of the bike, means something was fluke, faulty, and wrong and Mike might have / might not have caught it. He is not to blame, Jamie is not to blame, being an uneducated buyer, there should have been more protection and fail-safes, I dont know yet if Mike bought or built the battery, a young ebike enthusiast just wants to buy, ride... not worry about the bike.. and its not the buyers responsibility to make the bike safe... Buyer assumed he was buying a safe item.
So I dont think anyone is at fault, and statistically, one is a fluke, two is a pattern. Mike has never had a bike burn before this.
However, I hate the way he builds with pigtails everywhere and huge banks of sub-par quality lipos to people who dont know any better....I smashed my bike in a semi high speed accident and my battery did not care.... can you say that about a HK lipo? No. They are known dangerous. Compared to a highway approved and tested in long term vehicle use cell.
If I was Mike, I would ship Jamie my own personal bike.... as a temp replacement while I build him another. Jamie should not have to pay a dime more. Mike should eat the cost.Mike has a good rep, and if he does not let the buyer down... the community will see and Mike will still be held in good regard.
The maker of the cells should give a refund for a battery that worked 1 time... too.. if the cells were bought with warranty. This would helm Mike replace the bike ( cost) but really it is just a sad day.
Jamie is under no obligation, express or implied.
You are supposed to put battery in item easy... not a user thing that he needs to learn.. every battery compartment in the world.. clearly labeled.. Lol... Imagine if walkman batteries blew up when they were put in backwards... we wouldnt allow them to be sold to the public. It is the responsibility of the electrical designer to make it as safe as possible for the error - prone uneducated end consumer ie the buyer ie the user.
Yes. The thing is... user should not be blamed at all in my opinion. You should not be selling anything if it does not have either an " implied warranty of merchantability" or a general " express warranty"... and if you offered no warranty, that is an easy lawsuit for d3efective product. Win for plaintiff.
If it had a ( written) EXPRESS warranty, mike might not have to pay.
IF it had a " IMPLIED MERCHANTABILITY" mike would have to pay for the defective item. Take it to court, plaintiff would win. + damages.
Just like the electrician signs the permit and inspector follows up and does the same... before a township releases a occupancy permit...Whenever ANY home is built in the USA... Skilled, trained people making sure everything is ok, everything requires no user to touch any " hot " thing... and a whole codebook devoted to people NOT getting burned.
Jaimie should not have to pay a dime... In my opinion. Bike lasted 9 min. Was supposed to by a turn-key purchase. Should not have relied upon his skill, to make work, when Jamie was just a buyer wanting to ride.
Wrapped up with blue posterboard? Or something and taped to the edges. The dangers of a pigtail parralel charged lipo on a bms.
I think you can see the tops of all the packs in one of the frames. Mike says he " only uses lipos on my personal bikes" but that means he was useing a junk, unproven (GTK?) battery manufacturer that was offering him a deal cause he builds so many ebikes.
"The reliability of any electronic device depends on how well the hardware protection circuits have been designed. The end user (consumer) is prone to make mistakes and it is the responsibility of a good hardware designer to protect his hardware from any mishappening. There are ample types of protection circuits each with its own specific applications."
(sic)
Yup. Yeah Mike should build him a whole new bike and just eat the cost. I think that is the best thing to save his reputation.. even though he has sold many of that design of bike and has people willing to pay stupid money for the bike.... with such sub-par items as disk rotors cut from pit bike brake systems... and ghetto-welded to bicycle iso brake rotor mountings... poorly. ... yeah needing assembly by someone who doesn't know these things. Im not gonna get on their shit though, they are hurting enuf I'd say. Mike can. just build another and eat the cost.
premade batteries? I’m only guessing that’s a GTK battery then. I have one that didn’t test to capacity. Pulled it apart and found all sorts of wrong with it!! 2nd hand cells, unpowered bms, inadequate terminal connections… they’re bad.
Cardboard..... this pack was encased in cardboard.
Lol I have tried. Ive warned about big HK lipo packs and the quality. Not hard to heat up a lipo, or break a cheap wire.
Smoked out the whole block. In the open air. Like a military grade smoke grenade. Lol. Fire is crazy thing.. sometimes it spreads fast, literally.. and also ( funny thing? ) online, where the current "anti-ev sentiment" propels it.
I am building a pack for a friend right now... but this is his 3rd or fourth ebike so he knows and got some experience... Plus I am building it .. lets just say a little bit ( quite) differently... the thing.. Mike has probably build 20-30 retail junk quality Hobbyking lipo powered bikes. he knows what he is doing, and on e of the tough things is showing ( teaching?) a buyer how to use the machine. Its dangerous. Pitgtail lipo charging. On poor quality BMS. No. Dont do it. However, this bike did not burn on charge, makes me think it was a user assy error, or a poor quality pack that had a cata strophic fault.
I think it was a cheap retail " GTK " pouch cell pack, dont know the BMS, dont know the quality, Mike is kinda " blaming " Jaimie for using: or not using: a certain piece of foam in the right spot... Jamie is pissed and saying that is no excuse. Which it is not. Item ( bike) should have been safe when arrived. I got pics of the pack. They are all over Facebook. Pack looks like a joke, honestly, posterboard, tape, soldered lipos on a board with slots,, spaggeti wires, and XT90 ( not even antispark)... tape ( did I say tape? ) ...for a QS180 motor and 200A+ controller on a 60mph+ bike.... IDK.
I slammed my packs so hard in my time, with force, current and temperature.... and never had a problem. I pack my packs in very, very strong polycarbonate. I use 20g THHN made in teh USA, Panduit, Littlefuse, Bussman, and the like... I use electronics grade bus bar, I use pure copper construction, I use cells that scientist at the NHTSA studdied for a few years and said were OK for the United States roads. and Cannon gold for the contacts. Everything gets a fuse, a battery gets a bluetoof BMS, rated for at least 25% more current than the controller, and the battery can handle a direct short without toasting itself... Yes, you can zipper fuse a pouch cell for 1400~1500A and it will brick the pack, ... but it w3ont start a fire. Come the time you need that zipper fuse to do its thing.
I DO want to say that Jaimie is by no means laying all blame on Mike, and is still stoutly representing Mike as a stand-up guy who IS helping him with this problem. You can see in the vid he is devastated. It was an expensive bike. 6K$ is not laughed at, in our legal system. He paid for a bike, he should get a bike... or every dime back. One or the other.
Quote from Jamie:
f you were thinking about buying a tob, pls don’t let this situation deter you. This is the absolute first issue he’s had out of…I think he said 17. Ups ground, China or any number of things could have caused this and I hold zero resentment. One thing I’m convinced of tho, Mike moser put his heart and soul into building me a 1-off tob that’s rock solid.
That is all I'm saying for right now.