danjpendleton said:
As far as balance charging, hows your cheapo ebay one working? Do you think id be okay to bulk charge and use 3 battery medics (6s3p) kind of like what you did with 4? I can easily make 3 harnesses for the balance leads. Cant say I really understand why you use the battery medics to balance out the cells though, if you have a seperate dedicated balance charger. Guess im a little confused, because i thought thats what the battery medics were supposed to do. Also when you tie two packs together at the balance leads and plug them into the battery medics....how does that accurately account for differences in voltage between the two packs... and if i did that with 3 packs?
They balancer works okay
What I do when I charge my pack is:
1, I plug them in the bulk charger and start charging.
2, I check the battery medic and see if any of the cells are out of balance.
3, If not, i'll leave it on there(without using balancing function) so that I know how much its charged.
3, if yes, I'll see if I can balance them with battery medic. If not, I'll separate it from the bulk pack and use slow dedicated balance charger to balance correctly.
End... I only use the slow Balance charger like once a year since none of my battery goes out of balance anymore.
The good thing about paralleling cells at the beginning (pairing, then series connecting) is that each cells in pair will try to balance their selves without having to balance them. So, usually what you see on your battery medic is what each packs have.
Almost forgot, The reason why I used to use battery medic all the time while bulk charging was to make sure new packs dont do crazy things...New packs needs to be looked after carefully for the first 10 cycles. after that, they act as they should. Once cells are balanced, you shouldnt try to use battery medics to balance them unless you must. (if battery is balanced (I top balance them), they dont usually go out of balance easily).
Also for your setup, 3p means there are more energy battery medic needs to get rid of to balance, so it will take alot longer to balance them so may not act as well as my setup...However, if it definitely useful to have them to know what voltage each cells are at.
Also curious if your controller has an on/off switch? Mine does so Im trying to decide whether I should wire in a main power switch at the batteries like you have.
I have a switch no my handle bar that does on/off of controller. but no, it did not come with on off switch built in tho it did come with on off wires.
it helps to have battery main switch when you need to charge. Those cheap charger likes to get plugged into the mains, turned on then pluged with battery pack.
Last question- you only made one harness correct, for both charging and running the bike? (when bulk charging)
yea thats right. I didnt want to have anything other then plug and play type of easy charging method
. (tho I do need to take them all out once in a while)
PS: 18s3p sounds alot of batteries, got enough space for it on the bike??
