rode over my lipo battery at wot

[whereswally606]

almost shat myself. basically I have just nearly finished my 3rd ebike. a norco dh team race.
see pic

you may see from the photo that there is a pvc rectangular duct which is my 72v 18s2p 40c zippy flight max battery. you may also notice the only thing holding it to the frame is little plastic clips designed to support an upright empty pvc duct (read: not any force at all). This is all part of the design as it means I can take the battery off the bike when necessary very quickly. When riding I use a luggage car roof rack tie (long) to secure the battery to the holder and bike. this works great. Anyway today I wanted to try the bike with tyres inflated to a decent psi because I had just rigged a RAC 12v inflator to the modified hp power supplies Ive been selling here. That has been great for two reasons. My 2nd bike the scott ransom has hookworms and consequently can take 60psi. This meant I could ride the 10 mile journey easy into town. (and back again after a charge). Since I had such a great win on the ransom bike I thought Id do the same on my norco with crazy bob tyres. These tyres look good but arent in the same league as the hookworms so I did them to a conservative 35 psi. The other reason for the greatness is that running the tyre inflator of the power supply meant my tiny 12v on my car was not being flogged. The car is a Honda insight 1st generation and the 12v batteries are tiny and pathetic to keep down weight. Since it is old and having issues (IMA errors) I baby the battery as much as I can. You may remember me talking earlier about the luggage car roof tie that secures the battery to my norco, well its previous use was to secure 2 maplins solar suitcase trickle charger to my cargo bay boot in the Insight. We are having a little heatwave at the moment and I thought Id capitalise (i have 3 of these solar chargers but 3 will blow the fuse, ask me how i know) on the sunlight. So the luggage tie strap was still in the car and not as it should have been i.e. around the battery box. To give credit to those little plastic clips I got once around my block at a throttle limited speed without any issues. then i decided to give it some juice up the steepest hill on the estate. crack. instantly no power as the power bullets disconnected but still with the momentum i had even up the hill I managed to ride over the box with the back wheel.

At this point i was thinking stay calm assess the damage, the box hadnt fallen far and the batteries are very secure inside. the balance taps which are way to exposed suffered some damage. I to insult to injury my 2x3s to 6s connector came loose and one 3s tap disconnected itself from within the pack. the insult to injury was actually me not checking and within my 9s pack 3 3s2p subpacks I reconnected the wrong 3s pack into the adapter. The result was little sparks and one toasted JST connector.

Things Ive learnt from todays experience.
1 tyre inflation is very easy with the correct tools (ie12v server supply and rac inflator)
2 jst connectors dont like short circuiting
3 jst connectors can be crimped without soldering
(i know they are supposed to be solderless but before i couldnt get them to hold properly until I was desperate, that is i left my soldering iron in Wales not Manchester)
4 I can ride over my battery, not that I ever want to again.
5 I should make a preflight checklist which has at the top, use a strap on (ill know what it means)
6 I need to upgrade my balance taps to dbXX ala doc Bass' suggestion

Aside from this i may have sussed why a golden motor external controller i have is toasted but again argh my soldering iron is too far away to help me right now.

another thing, a well built lycra passed me today (built like chris hoy) anyway he got in front of me, I thought to myself i could go faster than him but then realised this is like free energy so slip streamed him for a couple of miles ha ha ha.

and last thing, promise. has an arab gent in an BMW X5 with a Dubai VIP window plate roll down his window and ask me about my bike. we had a conversation at about 25 mph. Its a first on me.

sorry to every one who read this and feels none the richer for it, i read a better nate than lever joke the other day, 11000 odd words and 21 pages when i copied it into word. Great joke, just made me think people on here might like long posts. mine lacks a snappy punch line.

so here it is: to avoid riding over you LIPO dont forget your strapon.

 

[catchinem]

Sorry 'bout that. Strap that baby to the bike with good velcro straps around the entire case instead of hanging it with plastic.

 

[MadRhino]

Well, I never had the chance to run over my Lipo, but I had my Lipo run over myself once.
(Took me some time to master rolling stops with a heavy rear wheel)

PS: Drafting a cyclist with your Ebike is cheating

 

[whereswally606]

yeah I know drafting a barndoor of a cyclist is cheating but just wish there wish more of them about, set a decent pace, police less likely to pick on me if i'm behind a unassisted machine going quickly. plan to never have my lipo run over me but one day it might try and get its own back.

 

[mvly]

Nice bike! And Clean battery mount. Is that a 9c or cro-motor on that bike?

 

[whereswally606]

Motor is defo not a cromotor, it's basically smaller width than a magic pie but I bought it from Devi comfort in the Netherlands laced originally in a 700c wheel, I unlaced it cut the spokes down rerolled them and had a bike mechanic in prestwich who lent me use of the spoke roller lace it back into the 26" wheel its now in.

 

[dogman dan]

One more time, it's been shown that a stout protective container for your battery is the only way to go.

Glad to see you didn't have em taped to the bike, or loosely stuffed in a bag naked.

I had a battery box lid fail once, and a pingbattery flew over my head landing in the road 15 feet ahead of me. But I was able to stop in time before running over it. The ping was in a protective container, then carried in the box. So the battery was, and remains today, unharmed. Another time, same ping, a seatpost broke dumping the battery to the dirt at 25 mph.

Stuff happens, so......

Box em up boys!

 

[John in CR]

One more time, it's been shown that a stout protective container for your battery is the only way to go.
Glad to see you didn't have em taped to the bike, or loosely stuffed in a bag naked.

Only way to go...glad to see you didn't have em taped...????

You've got containers busting open and containers falling off your bike. Proper use of duct tape would have prevented all these failures, including the OP's. Battery security trumps looks every time.


WheresWally, nice looking bike. Since you went with such a weak connection of your battery to bike, I'm compelled to ask since they aren't visible in the pic...Do you have proper torque arms on that hubmotor? If not, get some. I assure you that the motor coming off will be a much more serious event than running over your battery was.

John

 

[Ricky_nz]

One more time, it's been shown that a stout protective container for your battery is the only way to go.
Glad to see you didn't have em taped to the bike, or loosely stuffed in a bag naked.

Only way to go...glad to see you didn't have em taped...????

You've got containers busting open and containers falling off your bike. Proper use of duct tape would have prevented all these failures, including the OP's. Battery security trumps looks every time.

You beat me to it john. I use all weather clear tape and it lasts more than a year before needing replacement and it is used in heavy rain. 3 separate wraps around the battery provides more redundancy than the original poster had. just one of the 3 is enough.

What ever your mounting method is be it tape, or box the really important thing is redundancy and not relying on the user. Try for at least two independant faults required to drop the battery, three is even better.
With a battery pack that would end up under the wheels being a major safety hazard extra redundancy is important.

 

[dogman dan]

I meant the usual bike pic. Nothing but naked packs taped to the bike. Tape not as big a problem as naked packs.

He didn't need tape, he needed the retaining system he had in use, and rode off without installing. But all ok, because he boxed em up.

Box em up boys! Once in the box, use all the tape you want.

 

[smudger1956]

Holy sh one t.....sorry to hear your grief...glad you did not end up with a lipo fire, is that another B&Q ducting job..?

 

[pchen92]

Sorry about your story.
Btw nice bike. Are you having problem with radial lacing ? What's the spokes thickness ? 13g ? How many A are you running ? 'Cause I want to run an hs3540 in a 20" rim (radial lacing) @ 90V 45A or maybe 65A.

 

[whereswally606]

Sorry for the lack of responses been busy trying to get my Honda insight through its mot. Anyway to any a few q's . Yes the box is a b&q job smudged manrose rect duct excellent and cheap. John in cr, I have dr bass's torque plates bolted and glued with hankel aircraft glue epoxy (comparative quality to dp420) also radial lacing is working fine at the moment and the spoke guage is as thick as what came on my prelaced magic pie probably cause golden motor supplied this one to Devi comfort too and as I said I reused those spoke post recut and reroll. Will have Velcro straps eventually permanently secured to the frame. Anyway future upgrades/sideways movement is to fix a magic pie controller I busted trying to power the 4kw eMax motor ala flexy thread. That way both bikes will run similar power ie 48v, love the busting controllers for the price but really miss good regen that I have on the ransom. Also I will gain capacity by reconfiguring the pack to 12s3p. I figure I don't need the top speed that 18s gives me though it is fun.
Hope Ive answered all q's thus far, will post more when I have a few progress shots

 

[whereswally606]

Some great news for me, Last week my honda insight flew through its MOT and service, today i got my insurance sorted for next month.

Anyway inspired by Neil P's honesty about his showing off I thought Id share my stupidity today.
Firstly I took my bike to a friends barbeque, since it was at his wife's mother's house which was closer to me and that he has just had a new first baby he hasn't managed to make his way over to try out the bike. Anyway today he got his go, he was suitably impressed, then however his wife's brother, Simon, then had a go. What happened is the brake cable which was a bit dodgy (had contacts which could touch and basically operate the brake) Simon must have knocked it accidentally, my fault really leaving it in such a state. All my closest friends watching and the bike refused to go.

I recently bought a drain brain second hand on the forum, physically it was in a terrible state with black gunk all over the wires which only came off after lots of GT85 (like WD40). Electrically it was sound and has given me such a clearer picture of the stresses I put on my battery, controller and hub motor.

I have now fixed the wire for the break to be as good and waterproof as it can be but the wires still look alot like a rats nest. I think I will end up relocating my controller so I tell my self that the bike is in a temporary trial phase.

Now for the other stupidity.
last week I decided that I would place labels on the outside of my battery box which contains 2 9s2p subpacks. I came to charge it tonight on my hyperion 1420i. not soon after i began to charge the first subpack I got a battery connection error. I tested the other subpack in the same battery box, same error. Bearing in mind Ive modded the inside to hold a bluetooth serial connector in doing so voiding my warranty, I thought calmly about it, and found a spare battery to hook up. No error. Then i took my battery out of the diy pvc duct box (something i dont want to have to do very often)
I had put the labels in the wrong places.

basically I was connecting the main power wires of one 9s2p subpack to my hyperion charger with the balance taps of the other subpack. Thankfully the charger is clever enough to prevent me doing any damage but I feel properly stupid about it. Eventually I will sort out a DB25 connector and make this process a breeze but at the moment not so much.

My new rule as of today. don't show your hard work till it is free of dodginess.

 

[dogman dan]

Sounds like stuff I do all the time. My first 6 months in ebikes, I blew three chargers in a row by mixing up + and -. check with a voltmeter, and then mark the dang wires backwards. Put on plug, plug in, poof. Duhh. Finally learned to check with voltmeter, mark wires + and -, then check again. Put on plug, then check again.

 

[whereswally606]

More changes to the bike.

I should have taken a few pics but weather is lousy here, will maybe upload some tomorrow.

Anyway this morning I decided that Id like to sling the bike into my girlfriends car so i could go to the farm where she shares a horse and go for a horse/ebike ride. I thought to make my life easier when I'm doing this i would make the connectors to the hub motor nearer the rear wheel so that i can just quickly remove both my wheels to make putting the bike in the car a very easy maneuver. I started to take the wheel off and the Dr Bass torque plate which id glued with a aircraft glue by hankel just fell off. this was the side which i had put no bolt into.

from there my day got worse and worse.

thinking I should fix this and not go riding i looked into buying a drill bit capable of going through the dr bass metal. I know the last time i did this i ruined plenty of bits and it took hours so my day was never going to be a fun one.

I went out to the local B&Q and bought some HSS drill bits in a pack. 30 minutes later i was back at the store getting a refund after snapping the bits. Then i bought a titanium bit. Together with this and a different ruined bit I spent two hours swapping bits to make tiny differences to the hole. (one bits would cut a central hole, the titanium would level the hole again.

I managed also to burn out my black and decker pillar drill.

broke the titanium bit (on purpose with my angle grinder to get a better head)

broke the other HSS bit earlier.

but I did finally make a hole in the torque plate. managed to drill the swing arm in the correct place. set the bolt through both and reapplied some of the aircraft glue. (more confident that with the bolt I might be okay for longer but I conscious to check it more often now)

other changes, I moved the controller to hang in the space within the frame. I finally got around to the wire mod of putting the disconnect near the hub.
A few weeks back I made a throttle reducer in a nice hobby box I tried to improve it by cutting the shaft of the 10k pot with my angle grinder but in doing so i probably made it so hot i broke that too. Anyway I scared myself cause i had no idea at first that the problem was with the throttle or with my soldering the hall and phase wires to the hub. I was pretty sure I buggered up the throttle device to i messed around with it with the bike upside down and the bike worked intermittently. Kinda of a relief but it does mean i need to make another now (at least buy another 10k pot). very frustrating.

I did however have a nice meal at the curry house with my little god son Max and his parents and their parents so not a completely terrible day.

 

[whereswally606]

Warning largish post ahead,

amazing day today, got to ride in Dorset to a local airfield up a large hill called Winn Green. very steep, went past a couple of lycras on racers on the hill who were left in my dust so to speak. Drain Brain showed 38 Amp max and I saw peaks of 2500w through my cheap GM motor. The hub was warm after the hill, wished I had internal temperature sensors on my stators and my controllers fets.

Lycra clads found me at the airfield later and were actually pretty complimentary, I admitted it was cheating but they conceded they couldnt take theirs offroad.

So after my fix of the Dr Bass torque arms (ie drilling fiasco previous post) my handy work seems to have held well today. Also relocated the controller inside the mid of the frame where it fits nicely and cleaned up a load of shoddy wiring. Also fixed the throttle limiter (replaced 10k broken pot with 5k pot).

So after I made it back from the airfield today back to my girlfriends farm the batteries were at 68volts, 66.6 being where all would have 3.7v my drain brain said id used 5.6 Ah and my packs are 40c 4ah 3s packs but configured so i have 18s 8Ah.

I have a feeling my bike is not as efficient as Id like, and that I need a bit more battery to cope with the issues. I love the power it has but the top speed is just more than its worth pedaling with. on my other bike I have a GM external controller which has great smooth regen which I lack on my hua tong controller. Since I have a busted one of these GM controllers which i intend to fix I might step back from 18s down to 14s, this is because
a) at 14s the top speed at WOT will be a better match to pedaling,
b) this in turn should be more efficient since pedalling will make a difference and I wont have to pulse the throttle,
c) my hyperion can be used to its full potential
d) I have some extra 3s packs (4 of them) out of which i can make 2s packs to combine with my 3s to make 14s
e) I can then have a 14s 3p 12ah pack
f) the pack should have less Voltage sag and last more cycles.
g) If i get the GM controller working I can have regen
h) 12ah * 2c = 24 which means my bulk charger project will cost less and be within the amp limit
i) 21s 2p is possible with a battery rejig which can bring me back to fun/non-commute times on occasion
j) can monitor the cells with two BVM8s

reasons not to convert to 14s
1) time and effort
2) have to mod the hua tong to take lower voltage cut off, (unknown consequences of how the ebrake will perform)
3) configuration of the battery in the diy B&Q box has no space for extra 2s lipo in the width meaning a complete rethink
4) I like riding really fast and having the crazy acceleration, mitigated slightly by point (i)
5) cheaper chargers (which i dont really intend to use) will be a pain to use.
6) 14 is not a good divisor of 6 for handy balancing battery medics.

Im probably gonna go down this road in the near future as the other spare 3s packs are sat deteriorating and if i am careful I can do this right.

thanks for reading all this, comments are welcome.

 

[whereswally606]

so new news.

The week before last I was down at my girlfriends farm in Dorset. This seemed a perfect opportunity to meet another UK ES member Burtie. We arranged a ride to a local pub and then went back to his for a BBQ. Pippa and I enjoyed every minute and Burtie was an excellent host. He has also given me several ideas for my next build.

Anyway the other thing I wanted to show today was my biting the bullet and inspecting the inside of the lipo pack I have (when i say inside i just mean taking off the blue wrapping and inspecting the terminals)



Its not very clear but it looks like the cathode tab of the battery is not actually in the pouch and that the spot crimps are coming away from the pouch of the pack. I thought i might have a loose balance tap before seeing this but I doubt the cathodes are supposed to be loose like this. Not sure what to do with this cell. I have an idea to buy up some 2s cell like the 3s cells i have to upgrade my entire pack to 14s from 12s, this can become one of those 2s cells by a removal of the last cell.

Is it worth talking to HK about this? I know ive voided the warranty by doing this and I way past the time anyway.

thanks for reading.

 

[whereswally606]

So yesterday I went all out on repairing the batteries i have. I have isolated 3 of my 3s packs which have one weaker cell.

Going to go down to 12s this way i can use all 16 of my 3s packs. I intend to have the weaker ones in a 12s string on my handle bars but this way im up to 12s4p which is 16ah of 40c lipo. bought a piece of wood to act as a frame insert to my pvc duct box. this should make servicing the battery far less damaging.

anyway bought a battery medic from hobby king. measuring the same pack simultaneously with a celllog 8s the battery medic was way off. And it also didnt appear to do any discharging or balancing. my turnigy 3s/2s 0.3amp balance charger did a better job.

lastly my battery box was not well protected last time i went riding with the girfriend and her horse. the terminals of a few batteries got damp and some cells ended up very unbalanced. I was relating this new to my sister and mother who were on there way out shopping. on there return they bought me a pingi. A pingi is like a rechargable (via microwaving) silca pack which basically acts to suck the moisture out of the air, like what you get with your new trainers/sneakers. i have the lipo now in a flightcase with the pingi for one week prior to my battery rebuild.

no other news so far. oh apart from i am almost done on building my modular bulk charger.

 

[whereswally606]

I had been running this norco team race with lipo in manrose B&Q diy ducting for sometime. The plastic white clips where not really cutting the muster, I and for that matter my girlfriend whose bike this has become did not feel safe enough.

after reading Kingfish's stinker thread about his lipo i thought it was about time to check mine which are all paralleled at the cell level first then series. turns out they are all fine which is surprising since one im pretty sure used to be self discharging a while back.

Faster charging modification.
after checking all the cells at the cell level i put an extra wire in the main larger battery box. the purpose of the extra wire was to decouple the 3s from the 9s string so that I could further parallel the two 6s halves of my 12s battery. I run 12s4p giving 16ah. I recently built a server/meanwell clone bulk charger which will do lots of amps however the end of the charge sees less and less amps which is when i switch over to the bc168 (hyenas 6 cell wonder charger). but before i needed to do each half of the pack separately whereas now I can disconnect the wire so the battery becomes effectively 2 6s4p batterys and plug the into the paraboard which came with the bc168.

So i bought some roofmountable cycle racks of ebay. they are good thule ones for £8.50 each. I plan to mod the front holder to take a 20mm pipe clamps for the front axles of my bikes. Unfortunately today i realised that I couldnt quickly take the battery rack i had built off. My plan was to mod some pipe clamps i had holding my other battery on my scott ransom. I thought it was probably overkill having 4 on them and i couldnt really afford to buy any extras so i gambled and took them off. In doing so i actually found that i could secure the scott ransoms battery a bit more securely (one more bolt to the plate. I have made that bike a few grams lighter. I used some wood hole saw drill bits to enlarge the hole in the clamp. my tools are so basic but the outcome was really good.

once i was convinced about the new strength of the mount i decided to put all the batteries under the downtube in one block. this has the bonus that they are easy to remove fast from the bike in the event of a lipo incident. Also the bike is so light without the battery that it works well as a non ebike should the need ever arise.

The white cables (phase wiring) is proper over kill. Its the wiring out of a wrecked honda insight (not mine thank god)i had to enlarge the 4mm diameter holes in the strip block to jam it all in and even then it was a struggle. (lesson here is buy enough cable before you start working on your bike) mind you I had it lying about and it was wasting not being used.

anyway a photo of the end product so far.

whole bike

the close up

 

[whereswally606]

Today i converted a magic pie controller 328 pcb internal to a bac281p external.

why?

My external one blew a mosfet and a small transistor taking with it the traces too. i had already repaired it once. anyway I wrote to golden motor who kindly sent me the internal one by way of replacement for the cost of shipping (which was £16) anyway it got here in about a week which i unbelievable for stuff from china but i was well surprised. better yet i could install it in time for ebike holiday next week wit h the missus.

so it turns out this is not a straight forward mod for several reasons

1) you need to desolder the connectors off the broken one and solder them to the new one

2) the caps are on the other side of the pcb on the internal version so they need desoldering and resoldering the other side

3) the smaller cap on each phase are slightly larger form factor than on the external boxed version. i could have used the caps from the broken one but i thought inside it would be easier to drill the cover to accommodate the larger caps. turned out very well.

once i had it in a similar state to get it tested i trialled it on the scott ransom which has the identical system so it was an easy case of unplugging one set of leads and plugging in the other. It worked which was a relief since i was about 3 hours invested by this point.

now i just had to install it onto the norco. Using some padding and zip ties i held it in place in the space within the frame upside down.

Making up the other cables again took a long time. extending the hall wires, making up the spade terminal connectors and fixing up the wiring harness all took a while.

last thing i have to do here electrically is make a 2 stage switching system for my antispark resistor switch. that can wait another day.

will post photos tomorrow but there is not much more to see. I would say if someone asks you to convert a internal magic pie controller into the external one that it can be done but maybe it a huge pain in the arse to do so. As it stands now i have two potential controllers for the holiday. but at least now she can have proper regen.

 

[whereswally606]

So I dug out this old thread to update the bike since all its history seems to be in this one place.

It started life as a Huatong powered bike and now its returned there due mostly in part to the fact I'm skint and I still have 2 of these controllers doing nothing.

I really needed to get the bike going so I can sort my husky a decent nightly run. Last night I returned HuaTong back to this bike after doing another lvc mod to allow the macallister packs to work with it.

She seemed pretty happy with the work.

Unfortunately on my test ride I must have exceeded the amp rating on the macallister B&Q battery so I lost power but fortunately I have a throttle inline pot which lets me remap the throttle so that it cant give back the full voltage and thus limits the power. Could do with putting a wattmeter on it to see whether I have the wire combos right. I remember vaguely that an incorrect combo with runs can have a significantly higher amp draw. Having done half the run that I normally do with the dog and checking the battery led status I feel that this controller is a lot less efficient that the small one I did have on. Maybe we were just enjoying the extra power.

So I also learnt that the old 36v controller I was using had died, I used the ebike tester lyen sold me to verify the halls and phase wires on the hub and then tested the throttle. All were fine, then I hooked up the controller to the tester and nothing.

I have another 36v sinewave controller I bought I while back from bms battery with an lcd screen. I don't know how long I will use the HuaTong for before retiring it (note its quite noisy) but I think it will at least be dependable since its massively overkill for what I'm doing, plus I have a spare. My thought is to use this bike to do a commute of 25 miles one way soon so I need something which if it fails I can swap out and not be too late for work. I think in this respect I might get all three hooked up with the same connectors and length leads for some redundancy.

The other thing on my mind is that I thought id broke the phase or halls on the bike changing the brakes over to hydraulic ones. Turns out that isn't the case, but before testing this I pulled the trigger on ordering some 10awg wire and 3mm heat shrink to up the copper fill going through the axles. I also bought a cheap 3 jaw puller so that I can. Probably why I cant afford a new controller. Anyway its interesting as you don't see many hub mod threads active anymore. I imagine this is because people are going mid-drive or buying better hubs in the first place. Other mods on the cards are ds1820 temp probe and ferro-fluid too.

Anyway shall do some tidy up on the wiring and upload here again from now on.

 

[whereswally606]

I've fixed my rear wheel completely now, its been re-laced in the alt single cross pattern from the ebikes.ca spoke calculator. I drilled the rim to get the angles right using a pillar drill and a wooden jig. Once I had it done loosely I took it to my local bike shop for trueing. I also replaced the wire from the hub using a standard ebike wire from a uk seller from ebay. I'm not hot rodding it yet since I don't use those power levels for running my husky.

Last night I made some plastic printed brackets for the Huatong controller to get it to align more centrally with the Norco frame.

I made too test prints after measuring with Vernier calipers and then hit go on my final design for 4 off.

Unfortunately they began to lift off the print bed and so the prints finished prematurely (didn't apply my normal layer hairspray at the start). They are useable just not as thick as they were going to be.
Essentially they will help hold the controller in place with minimal plastic and tidy up the look a lot. I am holding it to the frame currently using a bungee cord so this will be a massive upgrade. They fit so well that its necessary to unscrew the plate off one end and slide the brackets on before reattaching the end. Then you have to also sequentially take out the heat sink screw to slide the bracket down but this is easy done too. I will post up the files on thingyverse once I'm satisfied they are a good design for the bike.