Hi all, after owning the Evolve Snubnose for about 3 years now, lots of carving along the french side of the river Rhein, frequent (if not daily) reading of this forum... I finally planned my battery update and ordered the Panasonic NCR-18650B (50 pcs.), inspired by whitepony HOORAY! - OK, this already happened last summer 
Now, 9 months later, right after I became father, I finally managed to assemble my very first Li-Ion-battery for the Snubnose.
I have to admit that I'm not really talented with everything concerning handcraft, especially soldering, etc... all I try is to tinker as less bad as possible.
But I learned a lot and just wanted to give something back and share my experiences with you. Comments welcome.
First I sticked 5 cells together to one parallel pack (I used 2k-epoxy, not really cheap but works perfectly) and wrapped each pack with gaffer-tape:
This is how the packs will fit against each other into the original battery-case (to achieve highest packing density):
Now the part I'm not really proud of... used a big fat soldering iron (100W) and tried to solder as quick and short as possible... burned my fingers twice, copper is a pretty good heat-conductor ...
...but by soldering (and thereby serializing) the packs on the upper battery-layer only, the battery can stay flexible in itself. This is important as the deck is a bit flexible, too, and I wanted to avoid mechanical stress to the battery and the connections (copper braid) while I'm having fun riding the board (total load around 100kg).
Then I connected the balancer cables to the balancer. Stupid me: Didn't find the right connector (JST-PHR-something) - the balancer I ordered was actually a 12S balancer with a 10S firmware on it - so I soldered the wires directly to the pins. Sparking here and there but in the end it worked and it seems safe now.
I wrapped everything with transparent tape and put some plastics (waste from packaging) between the rows of cells in order to avoid shortcuts by abrasion of the isolation-tape:
Left: the original Evolve-controller
Middle: the 10S BMS with cutoff above 4,2V and below 2,9V
Right: the new battery
That's all!
After all I'm still a bit worried about the amount of energy stored in the cells (612Wh, quite a lot). Therefore I soldered two fuses between the connectors, one for charging (5A) and one for discharging (30A). But this won't help if one of the cells decides to get hot and burn the whole thing down. Especially as my soldering-capabilities are not the best on earth... and there's a little family around me, I don't live on my own any more. Yes, that's exactly why I'm storing and charging the board in the garage now
And I'm still not quite sure if the BMS itself is protected enough... in the end it got a bit tight in there and I had to lay it diagonal to the battery. I'm going to look into the case from time to time... hopefully I can prevent a failure by visual control.
We'll see!
Last weekend I had a first test... rode for about 1,5 hours (non-economy-mode) and still had 38V left. The original battery would have been flat after about 45 minutes... so it seems like a big improvement! Yeah!
But let's wait... the summer will tell the whole truth.
Happy riding!!!
Now, 9 months later, right after I became father, I finally managed to assemble my very first Li-Ion-battery for the Snubnose.
I have to admit that I'm not really talented with everything concerning handcraft, especially soldering, etc... all I try is to tinker as less bad as possible.
But I learned a lot and just wanted to give something back and share my experiences with you. Comments welcome.
First I sticked 5 cells together to one parallel pack (I used 2k-epoxy, not really cheap but works perfectly) and wrapped each pack with gaffer-tape:
This is how the packs will fit against each other into the original battery-case (to achieve highest packing density):
Now the part I'm not really proud of... used a big fat soldering iron (100W) and tried to solder as quick and short as possible... burned my fingers twice, copper is a pretty good heat-conductor
......but by soldering (and thereby serializing) the packs on the upper battery-layer only, the battery can stay flexible in itself. This is important as the deck is a bit flexible, too, and I wanted to avoid mechanical stress to the battery and the connections (copper braid) while I'm having fun riding the board (total load around 100kg).
Then I connected the balancer cables to the balancer. Stupid me: Didn't find the right connector (JST-PHR-something) - the balancer I ordered was actually a 12S balancer with a 10S firmware on it - so I soldered the wires directly to the pins. Sparking here and there but in the end it worked and it seems safe now.
I wrapped everything with transparent tape and put some plastics (waste from packaging) between the rows of cells in order to avoid shortcuts by abrasion of the isolation-tape:
Left: the original Evolve-controller
Middle: the 10S BMS with cutoff above 4,2V and below 2,9V
Right: the new battery
That's all!
After all I'm still a bit worried about the amount of energy stored in the cells (612Wh, quite a lot). Therefore I soldered two fuses between the connectors, one for charging (5A) and one for discharging (30A). But this won't help if one of the cells decides to get hot and burn the whole thing down. Especially as my soldering-capabilities are not the best on earth... and there's a little family around me, I don't live on my own any more. Yes, that's exactly why I'm storing and charging the board in the garage now
And I'm still not quite sure if the BMS itself is protected enough... in the end it got a bit tight in there and I had to lay it diagonal to the battery. I'm going to look into the case from time to time... hopefully I can prevent a failure by visual control.
We'll see!
Last weekend I had a first test... rode for about 1,5 hours (non-economy-mode) and still had 38V left. The original battery would have been flat after about 45 minutes... so it seems like a big improvement! Yeah!
But let's wait... the summer will tell the whole truth.
Happy riding!!!
8)
