Hello - I am a newbie here and I recently got a very good deal on a damaged EB-500 without the charger. Does anybody know of a replacement charger that will work? This is the 48 volt system - not sure what kind of batteries it has either? Note: I did call Baja Motorsports/Gardner in Arizona and I ordered the charger which but it won't be available until some time in early August. Thanks very much!
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It is actually a BE-500
http://www.bajamotorsports.net/product_info.php?cPath=6&products_id=880
You have the perfect justification to rewire to Parallel/series:
http://visforvoltage.org/forum/7020-charging-help#comment-39976
Better balance, easier charger replacement; all stock 12V chargers will work.
Mark
OK - so if I take the batteries out from under the seat there are actually four 12V batteries under there? If so I could just wire up a charging circuit from the four negative and four positive outputs(in parallel) to give me a 12V circuit that would be just for charging and I could use a standard car/motorcycle charger for that.
Likewise - as the other thread suggests I could charge each battery independently with a 12v charger however that would be a lot of connecting and disconnecting. It would definitely be worth it in the long run to wire up the parallel charging circuit. Can't wait to dig into those batteries when I get home tonight!
Thanks!
I cant find it right now, but im sure he was referring to a post on here about rewiring the pack with Anderson powerpole connectors. then using jumpers to effectively rewire the pack from series to parallel for running and charging etc. I will most likely be doing something very similar but taking it 1 step further. While he used wire for the jumpers I plan on using another set of powerpole connectors that I have made into a "cartridge". I will have 10 or 12 connectors in my set. 2 for each battery (5 batteries) 1 for main - and main + to controller. this way I can swap out a cartridge that is pre-wired how I want it. IE i would have one that series wires all together for 60V, one that sets them up in parallel, with an output to my 12V charger for charging in parallel, one so that if I wanted to I could simply run the bike at 48V etc. With a couple extra batteries on board it could even be set up to say... run at 36V or 48V with 40ah to almost double its range when needed.
Dave ; Tennessee
XB-600.
That's it. The links to the other thread are in my message above. There is one plug wired to supply 12V in parallel to all batteries in the bank. My original plan used two chargers, but I was concerned with matching the voltage cutoffs of the two chargers, so I now use a single charger. If a battery has less capacity than others in the parallel group, it will show a higher internal resistance, and get a reduced share of the recharge current.
There is a separate plug wired as a jumper plug
to "rewire" the pack into series to supply full pack voltage to the scoot. I have wired a 30A circuit breaker into the center link of the jumpers. In the current install, the outer two connectors (empty in this photo) are the cables that take the pack voltage out to the scoot. When the series jumper is in place, the stock 48V charger may be used.
OK - I wired up each battery to its own wiring block so I can charge them independently. I am not that familiar with these Gel batteries so I did not want to take any chances. Now I am going to charge them up one at a time but I am wondering how many amps I should charge at? My automotive charger charges at 10ams which seems like alot for motorcycle sized batteries. Has anyone used a 10am charger to charge these? Here are some pics - I marked the positive wires with a red pull tie.
A 10 Amp charger is not ideal for charging batteries like these. It will charge them but will cause excess heat and wont end up charging as well as a 2-4 Amp charger would. Also, what gauge wire did you use???? It looks like 14 gauge utility wire. If it is anything LESS than 12 gauge wire I would redo it ASAP. You will lose a lot of charge with the resistance and heat that will be created as well as loose performance because it can not handle the amperage going through it. The SMALLEST gauge wire I would suggest using is 12, with 10 being pretty much ideal for this sort of thing.
Dave ; Tennessee
XB-600.
AFIK, a C/10 rate is standard maximum for SLA batteries. If you have a C (capacity in AH) of 20, that would mean 2A maximum charge rate. Now, if you had all four batteries in parallel, a 10A charger would put 2.5A into each battery... Come to think of it, you probably have 12AH batteries, so the maximum charge rate would be 1.2A. A 5A charger would parallel charge such a pack fairly well.
Remember you'll have to disconnect the series wiring to use parallel charging. I think you'll find it is easy to use. As far as I can see, there's a 48V potential from one side of those terminals to the other right now. You could use four separate 1.2 A chargers if they were electrically isolated. I tried that, but I ran into imbalances caused by differences between chargers (aside from the cost of buying four chargers).
As to wire size, I'll second Dave for pack wiring. Pack wires will be asked to carry up to 20A at a time (and I'll bet that those power plugs are 14ga!). I wouldn't worry about resistance losses in wiring that only carries charge currents. (I didn't look at your pix closely enough to see if you were using the same wires to carry drive currents.)
Thanks for all of the information! The wires have held up despite the thin guage - being solid and not braided helped and I switched chargers so I was only putting a 4amps through them. I recently purchased a 48 volt charger from EBay so I am charging with that now. It puts out 52 VDC at 2amps, I had to change the plug on the end but that was all. Again thanks for all of the info - Zip Zip!
Um, solid wires are susceptible to vibration cracking. That's why vehicle wiring is generally stranded.
Hah! I am not surprised - these never move - straight up out the batteries on to fixed wiring blocks. I just use them to test individual battery voltage now. The battery voltages seem to have synchronized now after a few series charges at 52+ volts. As a result the bike performs a bit better than when I was charging the batteries individually. Almost 300 miles on it now - seems to be holding up pretty well. Does anyone know how long these batteries should last?
Great picture of the battery packs. Mine came without, and this is the first time seeing the OEM configuration. Need to wire some batteries up and make cables from scratch. Good to see what it is suppose to look like.