Twins!

[Drunkskunk]

Thats right, the Stork arived yesterday. Its twins. 4.4 pounds, 9.75 inches. I tell you, its been a hectic week, knowing they were soon to arive, but seeing them both sitting there, all bundled up in there packing foam, it could bring a grown man to tears.

I got my Lipos yesterday from Itselectric.ca. 2 - 37V, 8.2 AH packs for a grand total of 8.8 pounds. A real nice alternitive to SLA.

I could go on about how great Ken at Itselectric.ca is. I won't, but I could. Lets just say I highly recomend them. The batteries only took a week to get here.

I made up 2 powerpole connectors; one for series, and one for parrallel. The first thing I noticed about the parrallel was that Lipo at 37V is darn close to SLA at 48V. the preformance was 2-3 miles an hour slower, doing about 19 MPH with the 408. Nice. In series, I hit 33.2 mph. Also nice, but DAMN cold wind, and its only going to get colder. I'll run parallel for the winter.

I also learned a few other important lessons with these batteries.
1.) Don't leave your Wattsup meter wired in when running 74V of Lipo, or you'll let the smoke out. I'll miss that meter.
2.) Bugs in the face at 30mph hurt.
3.) Powerpoles, dispite all they hype, aren't that great. I had one fail on the ride on my series harness, and the connectors on the parallel harnes got notacbly warm. these are the 45 amp connectors with 10 guage wire, too. Now I'm sure they work fine for single hookups, but the setup I have involves 4 connections between the battery and the controller. 5 if you count both batteries. I'm planning to convert the whole thing to Deans, eventualy.

 

[xyster]

Thats right, the Stork arived yesterday. Its twins. 4.4 pounds, 9.75 inches. I tell you, its been a hectic week, knowing they were soon to arive, but seeing them both sitting there, all bundled up in there packing foam, it could bring a grown man to tears.
...
I could go on about how great Ken at Itselectric.ca is. I won't, but I could. Lets just say I highly recomend them. The batteries only took a week to get here.

Sounds like a happy marriage. Would hate to see how the babies were conceived...or delivered.

2.) Bugs in the face at 30mph hurt.

Yes they do. Pretty much everything hurts in the face at 30mph. Gotta watch that the EV grin doesn't expose too much mouth.

3.) Powerpoles, dispite all they hype, aren't that great. I had one fail on the ride on my series harness, and the connectors on the parallel harnes got notacbly warm. these are the 45 amp connectors with 10 guage wire, too. Now I'm sure they work fine for single hookups, but the setup I have involves 4 connections between the battery and the controller. 5 if you count both batteries. I'm planning to convert the whole thing to Deans, eventualy.

How many amps you running? I haven't noticed any warmth at 35amps with the 45 amp powerpole connectors. Lousy connections in otherwise acceptable connectors can lead to heat. Since one failed on you completely, are you sure you assembled them correctly? I noticed it's easy to bend the connectors during crimping....

 

[lazarus2405]

Grats on the new additions! May they have long, productive lives. Now why haven't you sent pictures to your friends and family, or at least us on this board?!

As for the Anderson... Exactly how did it fail? Could you please be more specific? I've never heard of such a thing happening, though I haven't been around too long to hear it anyway.

 

[Drunkskunk]

No pics yet. my camera needs batteries

As for the connectors, its probably human error on my part, but I can't tell. all the pins "look" fine, and they all look the same. all of them test ok on the meter, but the one conection fails under load. it just stops conducting. I need to redo the conector I'm sure, but I can't "see" any problem with it, and thats what I don't like. it feels solid, it looks solid, and it isn't. I want a conection that is solid when it feels solid, and isn't when it isn't. A good Manly conection. Maybe I'll just use ring lugs and bolt the batteries in.
On second thought, no. Maybe not.

Right now the whole electric system is less than perfect, I need to strip it all down and build a wire harness for the new batteries, instead of patching them to the old setup for the SLAs

I also need some kind of meter that can handle up to 84V without going into early retirement.

 

[lazarus2405]

I also need some kind of meter that can handle up to 84V without going into early retirement.

Cycle Analyst, from ebikes.ca. It'll handle up to 100v nominal, and they have a 200v version available "on special request".

http://ebikes.ca/drainbrain.shtml

 

[D-Man]

How fast does it go in 412 mode?

 

[BiGH]

see and people told me i was crazy for using 8ga wire and 75a connectors.

Honestly though I did have a couple of issues wiht powerpolls too initially. There was one that didn't sit right in the plastic - and made it impossible to connect, and another, i didn't crimp/ soldier it correctly.

I'm using the 75a connectors, and have to say they don't even get warm to the touch.- highly reccomend them.

While my bike is off the road (new frame) i'm going to be soldiering up everything for 72v operation (and making a parallel harness so that i can have it run at 36v extreme range version possibly!

This is one of the good things about having access to the bms board

There is a bit of development cost in our bikes - but its all good - once most good weather days we'll be out riding them

 

[Drunkskunk]

How fast does it go in 412 mode?

With the packs in parallel it does 14 with the 4012. in series, it does 24. It did 16 with the old 48v SLA pack. For me, 14 is fast enough for the winter. It was 45 degrees this morning. This is Texas, I don't even own a coat.

I'm looking at the Cycle Analyst now. my controller doesn't have the connector, but I think I can add one if I can find the 6 pin connector.

One of the things Ken from Itselectric mentioned was they are working on a parallel to series Solid state switch that could be run from a remote switch on the handlebars. no word on a price or when it could be available, but it sounded like something I may have to have

 

[BiGH]

i can't forsee it needing a remote switch. Before you ride you'd know what mode you wanted your controller in, and with the cycleanalyst it wouldn't matter as much as you can limit on amps (and therefore watts) and speed.

 

[ngocthach1130]

Guys i'm going to use 4 dewalt battery, 2 in series and then put them in parallel. I was going to use 10Ga wire but they're PIA to solder into the tab inside so i bougth some 12Ga. Which one do you recommend. I have 45A powerpole right now. Got any tips on soldering to those tab inside the dewalt battery? I had problem closing it up when i used 10Ga. Will use these battery with 408crystalyte and 35A 72V controller. Those battery are so powerful. I accidentally touched 2 powerpole tab together while making connection for a brief second and it melted the tab and dropped a burning chunk of it on my carpet. Didn't do that before when i worked with SLA. These battery can pump out serious amperage. They'll be on a bike rack behind me. I hope the wire are up to task. Having potential fireball strap behind my seat isn't very comforting.

 

[fechter]

You might be able to better center your wheel by placing a washer(s) between the motor and the inside of the dropout. You might need to slightly spread the dropouts to get the motor in with the washer.

10ga. wire is good to minimize losses, but as you found out, is difficult to work with.

One way around this would be to use 12ga to make the connections to the battery, then splice to 10ga a few inches away from the battery. 12ga is not likely to melt (assuming a reasonable current limit), and if the total length of it is only a few inches, the added resistance will be minimal.

Depending on your total wire length and current limit, 12ga for the whole setup might be OK.

 

[Drunkskunk]

Something that might intrest you, is this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge

There's a chart half way down the page that lists the rated amp load for each guage. 12 guage can only handle 20 amps, but the good news is a 408 on 72 volts shouldn't pull more than that during normal running. Infact I run a 20 amp fuse on mine, with a 30 amp controller. I hit 30 amps plenty of times, but never long enough to blow the fuse. 12 guage wire should be more than safe.

As for your brake rubbing, it looks like you need to true your wheel to your frame. That gap on the spacer looks normal. if it was too close, it would bind up when dust and dirt got in there. These motors come laced to the rims, but its imposable to ship a rim and have it stay true, so they all need some adjustment.

I would start by losening the spokes on the side were it rubs the brake by 1/2 a turn, then tighten the spokes on the side with the gap by 1/2 turn. you might have to do it a few times before it's perfect, but its just part of fitting a new rim to a bike.

 

[Ypedal]

If the rim being used is wider than your original rim, you may have to loosen the brake cable at the caliper end and give it a bit more slack. From the picture it looks like both sides are very close to the rim.. a bit too close. 8)

But as fechter said, a spacer or 2 between the frame and axle will help things a bit as well.

 

[xyster]

Something that might intrest you, is this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge

There's a chart half way down the page that lists the rated amp load for each guage. 12 guage can only handle 20 amps, but the good news is a 408 on 72 volts shouldn't pull more than that during normal running. Infact I run a 20 amp fuse on mine, with a 30 amp controller. I hit 30 amps plenty of times, but never long enough to blow the fuse. 12 guage wire should be more than safe.

The resistance increases with decreasing wire diameter and increasing wire length. 12 gauge is fine for ebike-level amps. I use 12 gauge with a 35 amp controller.

 

[BiGH]

overengineer wherever possible!

10ga is a pain, 8ga is just as bad... but its worth it. ditto high amp connectors - don't even get warm!

 

[xyster]

overengineer wherever possible!

10ga is a pain, 8ga is just as bad... but its worth it. ditto high amp connectors - don't even get warm!

If I needed to, I'd double-up my 12 gauge, and its connectors, taking continued advantage of the super-floppy 12 gauge noodle wire already there.

 

[ngocthach1130]

in the end i went with 12 gauge. easier to work with. plus since i'm using dewalt battery and keeping the packaging it's easier to fit 12 gauge. what i've done is use 12 gauge to solder to the tab inside and when i parallel 2 of them i move to 10gauge. 10guage is hard enough to shape around the frame of the bike i can't imagine using 8gauge.

 

[xyster]

in the end i went with 12 gauge. easier to work with. plus since i'm using dewalt battery and keeping the packaging it's easier to fit 12 gauge. what i've done is use 12 gauge to solder to the tab inside and when i parallel 2 of them i move to 10gauge. 10guage is hard enough to shape around the frame of the bike i can't imagine using 8gauge.

That's my experience with 10 gauge too. I'd rather double-up on the 12 gauge if necessary.

 

[Lenk42602]

skunk, when you have more info on your lipos let us know. i am leaning towards this config for my 5303 on version 2.0 . Still up in the air about what size controller though.