Iccarus's blog

I recieved my 3500li in september but it was damaged in shipping, so I had to refuse shippment.(that wasn't easy I wanted it bad) so I waited for my friend to get his. His came with slight chafing on right side of cowling (mine had hole worn clear through)but we accepted it. It works well but only does about 45mph stock. The first thing we did was replace all the lights with LEDs and added a switch so you can turn off the main headlight to save power. We haven't found an LED replacement for the main. Then we moved the breaker under the seat so you can remove the storage compartment for easy battery access. As I've seen posted a BMS is definatly needed. Some cells were getting significanly out of balance after a few charges. We are using balance pro balancer/monitors from commonsense rc. They can balance up to 6 cells per unit so you need 4 to handle 20 cells. You need to order leads also that the balancers plug into. These must be attached to all the batteries it's a bit of a chore but well worth it. Then we bought four 22.2v 10AH lipo batteries from a hobby supplier. These are then wired in parallel and hooked up to the system. they fit under the seat in the front part of the battery compartment,on top of the stock batts.(padding under and around them) Now you have added 22.2v to they're 63v-66v pack. Both being 40AH there is not a problem with uneven draw.This gives you about 88v@40AH we have gone through 4 charge cycles and have had no problems.(you have to charge the four 22v lipos using a differant charger...more$$$) The battery gage on the bike seems to work but drops rather quickly when getting low. We checked all cells after running and none were undervolt even after running the bike till it stopped. The bike did 57mph and we went 32 miles at mostly full speed with a little bit of 45mph and lower.We estimate 100mi range at lower speeds(estimate kind of pulled out of you know where though) We will do more testing and post results. The 22v 10AH lipos were $300 apiece ouch!But progress can be expensive I guess. Thanks for all the great tips I've been reading this site for months now!
Bill-