B & B battery dealers
I emailed B & B Batteries asking if there are any retailers in the Philadelphia area, and I was contacted by zbattery.com in Michigan. Does any body else know of any B&B dealers in or near Philadelphia? Does anybody have experience with zbattery.com? I believe their price is the lowest I have come across, but I want to make sure I get fresh batteries.
You can try the "Batteries Plus" chain. There is a store in Lancaster and York. I bought some from my local Pittsburgh store but they had to special order them, and even that took some cajoling - they couldn't figure why I wouldn't be happy with a cheaper brand. So, I also had to pay shipping from California.
For your 4-battery application - the HR22-12's would probably be the ones to get.
I have dealt with zbattery.com several times with good experience.
According to a B&B tech I contacted, the HR series will not survive as many cycles. I think they said somewhere around 150 full cycles but it was a few years ago so I'm not sure exactly.
Personally I'd go with the EVP, EB, EP, or BP series. Preferably the EB series as that was designed specifically for EVs, but the BP (general purpose) appears to usually be the cheapest.
I was thinking the HR series because in this particular application - a 70 amp e-max running on just a 20AH pack, instead of the usual 40ah, the discharge rate is very high - up to 3.33C.
Zbattery does have very good prices considering the current market. I don't see the EB20-12 or the EVP20-12 on their web site list. I wouldn't get the BP17-12; you don't have much capacity as it is.
I have dealt with Electric Rider for my B&B Batteries. They have reasonable prices and I have had good service from both them and the batteries.
Grandpa Chas S.
PJD, yeah, I noticed that they don't have the 20-12 listed on their website, but they seem prepared to sell them to me.
Andrew, I checked the specs on the HR22-12 and they don't have the same information about life cycle that they provide for the EB20-12, but thanks for alerting me to that potential difference.
For the benefit of anyone reading, I had a discussion with e-commuter that I posted in thread: Emax Sport too difficult to keep up. Here's the comment link.
I accidentally posted that to the wrong thread. e-commuter posted:
Well, zbattery tells me they can sell me EB 20-12 batteries. I've spoken with two sales reps and they both said the same thing.
Andrew, just wanted to let you know that I did contact B&B tech support and while the guy did not specifically give me the number of 100% DOD cycles for the HR 22-12, he recommended the EB 20-12 saying that while the HR 22-12 would give me a little longer run time, that I would probably find that the performance would decline over 3-6 months.
Anyway, good luck with the batteries.
I bought a set of three B&B HR22's from zbattery.com and the shipping was really quick and the batteries were good to go. These batteries are about as good as it gets in the world of AGM's.
It has been almost exactly a year since I last posted here as I was buying a set of EB20-12 12v 20ah sla batteries from zbattery.com. 900 miles later, it seems to be time to buy four new batteries for my E-Max Sport (I'm only running on 4 batteries for my short commute.) Actually, according to my Pak-Trakr it seems to be the fourth battery, at the end of the string, that is beginning to fail. This isn't surprising as I have heard others say that the last battery in the string is usually the one to fail first. So, my question, for anyone who is knowledgeable, is whether I should just replace the fourth battery and ride further, or whether I should replace all the batteries at once. I'm tempted to simply replace the fourth battery, but I wonder if the weakness of the other three batteries will simply strain the fourth one too quickly. Any suggestions?
PJD,
Thanks for the suggestion. Given that I'm probably one of the less tech-savvy folks on the forum, I'm curious to understand why HR22-12's are preferable. I see from the specs for the HR22-12B1 that the nominal capacity is rated differently (11.0 AH at 15 min rate and 20.0 AH at the 10 hour rate) and the internal resistance is a little less than in the specs for the EB20-12B1. I also see that the applications for the HR22-12 are "UPS, Fishing Lights, Booster, Emergency Lights, Lawn Mowers, Video Camcorders (VCR)." The other specifications seem to be the same.