BL-36 Power Upgrade Help...

Kind of a spazzy wiring job...

But, wiring batteries in series is simple. Hook up the first batterie's + to the second's -. Then hook up the seconds + to the third's -, and so on.

This pic might help. The batteries on the bottom are in series.

That definitely is "spazzy".

In the pack in the picture if you swap the middle and left battery leaving all the wires as they are, it will look just like the image of the d-cells. Only problem is that the wires aren't long enough to do that! So those two battery locations have been switched in the pack.

Simple thing to remember is just to alternate colors (i.e. positive/negative) in sequence across the batteries:

Out on Red B1
Black B1 to Red B2
Black B2 to Red B3
Black B3 to Red B4
Out on Black B4

The spazzy wiring must have a reason but untill somebody educates me, I'll keep doing mine the way I do, sensibly connecting each battery to the nearest one. I got confused a lot and melted some connectors trying to recreate the we method. As long as they are in series it's ok.

I'm guessing it's to keep the angle of the wire in relation to the connectors low. No real reason to do this, IMO, since you could use a shorter amount of wire and still keep the angle to a tolerable level if you connect the batteries next to each other. :/

Now that I think about it, there is lots of room for movement in battey bags. My sla's are in the trike, where I built a battery box that allows no movement of the batts. Trying to put back the original wiring as is, soon had me confused enough to melt a lot of connectors, so when I made new ones, the wires got much shorter.

Re: wiring. Make sure the red wire is attached to positive and black wire is attached to negative for the controller and charger connections. Some of us have blown chargers and controllers with reversed polarity.

Has anyone tried doing 48 volts using dewalt 36 volt or black and decker 24 volt(2), batts? Would appreciate any input on this, trying to upgrade my wilderness 36 volt pack, for less weight, more speed. Would like to use existing drill charger for speed, variety reasons, (I still use it in my drill!) Anyone with pics of a setup like this? Probably a dumb question, I know... Also will the stock controller handle it? It says 50 amps, but some of this stuff is iffy at best. I should probably add I'm using it on a Giant Revive bike, for back reasons, so, not very fast to begin with.

On my bd36 I gave it a try with two B&D 24v packs for 48v. It works but the batteries drained so fast I couldn't belive it. Like a mile and a half and done. And then they were so hot you could hardly hold the battery. It will work fine with about 6 or 8 of em, but just two was way too hard on the packs in my opinion. After pricing a big pile of those, I just went and bought a Ping 36v.20 ah and couldn't be happier with it. One heck of a lot lighter than any nicad or nimh. It might be a good way to boost your volts for a short hill, but the weight was more than I wanted to carry, and no range with just them.

I was actually thinking of using the new litheons from bosch, they're fan cooled 36 volts, but if you've tried it I'm not gonna waste my $ on it, I'll just buy another 12 volt & wire to what I already have, save my $ till the price falls a little, $600. for a battery is a little steep for me!

The main benifit of using the tool pack batteries is when you get ones with A123's inside. Those Lifepo4 cells blow away the prismatic cells in the duct tape packs. They can use those cells for small packs that put out huge amps that would kill the battery I have. The B&D ones I have are just nimh and a pair of em was possibly less than 1 ah, so not really a bargain. I doubt they would have stood continued use unless used in a big string.

When you say tool pack, can you be more specific? I wouldn't consider anything but lithium as an upgrade. I'm trying to find a picture of a 4 pack 48 volt battery conversion, so I can figure out the wiring to upgrade. If I can see it, or a schematic, I can do it. I don't process written word well, slightly ADD! I got fired once for not wanting to learn electrical, I do it now, but Carefully...

I'm not a pack builder so I can't reliably say which brand is the one with a123's. Seems like Dewalt may be one, or Milwaukee, and another is yardworks, but I don't really know what cells are in which, and not all tools run on the lifepo4. Most are still nimh, like my B&D 24v hammerdrill. Look on endless sphere for pack builder info.

I feel like I just got a Christmas present! Thanks so much for the link, Lots of good stuff there...

Hello All,

This is such an awesome web site!!! The information you guys have provided has been a great help to me... I have joined the EV generation and purchased the Wilderness Energy Brushless BL-36. It is a lot of fun. Got about 60+ miles on it so far... I previously built a moped using a 7 speed beach cruiser and a Chinese 2 cycle motor kit. Had fun on it too... Took the 2 cycle motor kit off and replaced it with the BL-36. The beach cruiser is kind of a Clunker so I moved the Kit to a better bike to improve weight and drag... I'm going to test drive it today. Many of you have already discussed the next steps I want to take but I don't know enough about electrics to figure it out for myself... I'm going back to Dennis Bernson (Bernsonev.com) and purchase a 4th 12 volt/12 amp SLA battery and the 48 volt generic charger. It sounds like a real good investment from what you guys have been saying. I have the 50 amp controller and that should not be a problem.

My problem is I don't know enough about electrics to figure out how to wire in the 4th battery to the series... Here is a picture of the current setup. The wires on the right side exit the carrying bag and hook to the controller and charger. So I'm figuring the 4th battery will be placed on the left side of the series but I'm not sure how to tie it in. If we number the batteries #1, #2, #3, and #4 with + and - connections on each one maybe someone can explain it to me. I'm thinking #1 will be the new battery added and #2, #3 and #4 are the existing ones shown below...

So, the way I describe this right now (looking at batteries 2, 3 &4) = #2 negative (red) to #3 Positive // #2 Positive (black) to #1 negative // #3 negative (black and brown) out the bag // and #4 Positive (double red) out the bag... I hope my description makes sense... BOTTOM LINE = what should I do to add the NEW #1 Battery. If someone had a picture of the setup, that would really be great.... if not maybe I could figure it out with a description like the one above...

Thanks to all on this web site for sharing your knowledge and information...

For fun, here is a picture of my first moped and a picture of my latest BL-36 set up...

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check out this link for 48volt wiring
http://www.electricrider.com/docs/Crystalyte_Owner_Manual.pdf