BD 36 on ping battery

I've been running the 36v 20 ah ping battery for about a week now and have no problems with the battery. I was popping a lot of spokes on the trike though since it had no suspension. On a 24 mile per day round trip it was getting a pounding on the bike path. Now I am running on a full suspension mountain bike and getting a lot more speed and range. range is at least 18 miles full throttle all the way except for downhills. That 18 miles includes 700 vertical feet of uphill, as well as about 8 smaller ups and downs before the big hill. The battery gets hot though, so I'm working on an aluminum box to help dissipate heat. Full charging is taking about 10 hours, but since I coast downhill for a lot of the way to work, I'm getting fully recharged after about 6 hours at work. The pack on the rear carrier is pretty light at 15 pounds and doesn't feel like an anvil back there like the lead did. The 20 ah ping battery fits perfectly into the stock battery bag so that was a nice bit of good luck that made switching to the ping easier. I would guess that if you had a flat road to ride to work, and an 8 hour workday, a 20 mile one way commute would be doable with a 20 ah ping battery. I sort of kick myself now for not getting a 48 volt, but my hub motor is also getting pretty hot, climbing the big hill. So maybe at 36 volts I'm melting enough brushes allready. I might save myself a ticket too, but so far the cops show no interest in me at all. If I understand the New Mexico state law, I'm a moped so its good that I kept the motorcycle licence all these years. A bike helmet will do me since I'm a lot older than 18. Thirty years ago when I rode a gas moped, there were no such thing as bike lanes let alone the nice bike paths that got built as the town grew. I am not asking anybody if I am allowed on the bike paths, but there is no signage saying no mopeds YET! If the law says I can't ride the bike path it would be suicide to ride in the street without being on a larger faster bike, which by my calculations can cost as much per mile as an economy car including fuel. The WE hub, ping battery, and a mongoose cheapie mountain bike still cost less than 4 cents a mile, if I get about 1000 cycles out of the battery. With lead it was more like 10 cents a mile total cost. My car is costing about 35 cents a mile. The bike would be even cheaper if we didn't have to buy our electricity from texas at 11.5 cents per kwh where the rest of the state only pays about 8 cents. Still it feels good to pass the huge line of cars at the sams club gas station on the way home every day.

No I haven't, I don't have the equipment. I do know I'm putting out pretty much the maximum the WE bushed will do if left stock. This route I ride is pretty much all uphill to get home, and at one point I gain 500 vertical feet in about a half mile. My experience, along with what I've seen on other posts indicate to me that the ping batteries run pretty well with the stock WE controller, and brushed or brushless motors. That goes for 48 volts as well. Some people have had problems with the smaller size ping batteries, especially the 10 ah, either cutting out on hills, or under acceleration. I am not sure whether my controller is 20 amp or 35, but I think mine is a 20, for the brushed hub. The cut out problems I've seen posted elswhere were not on WE stuff, but a variety of bikes and scooters. In most cases, the 10 amp size was just slightly too small for the continuous amperage draw. I think it's cruicial for folks to buy the 20 ah size, since it comes with a more powerfull bms, allowing more amps to flow. At only 15 to 20 pounds, weight should not stop anybody from packing the extra amp hours. Everybody will be happy with the extra range. The 15 ah size is perfect for my commute, but having the 20 gives me extra range for detours, scenic route, or windy days. On my MTB, I get about 18 miles of flat out, full throttle, uphill riding. I like to give range in bad as it gets terms. If I rode slow, and did not live on a big hill, I could go 36 miles per charge. For me the combination of the 36 volt ping battery and a 25 mph motor is the ideal commuter bike.

Mine was $450 including shipping, not including ebay. That was before the run on his stock. auction the same week was at least $150 more.

Generally a bms shutdown requires the plug to be unplugged and reconnected to reset the bms. A controller shutdown is fixed the same way. controllers can trip if they get too hot. If you are tripping a bms regularly you are running too big a motor or controller. It takes the largest size of the Ebay batteries to even deliver 20 amps. Many many many scooters and bikes need more than that. 500 or 600 watts is about all most of these batteries can handle.

You will need some kind of box on lifepo4 batteries unless it comes that way. I took a cookie sheet and folded it into a custom box for my duct tape Ping battery. When I flipped the bike and broke both collarbones the battery was ok, but had a big dent in the cookie sheets corner. Others have had poorly boxed batteries ruined by falling over. Inside the battery is little foil pouches that are easily ruptured if left in a battery bag with just the duct tape. Others use round cells and may be more durable.

The ping, and other duct tape batteries have been made with prismatic cells, which are foil pouches with two terminals on top. A stack of em makes a rectangular shape. Each pouch on the old Ping cells was 5 ah, and the new ones are 4 ah apeice. So a 36v 20 ah from last spring, like mine, has 4 pouches per 3.4 volt cell, and 12 cells. My 36 volt battery is actually usually above 40 volts, and at full charge around 44. Sla batteries charge to 43 for a 36 volt pack, but drop down closer to 36 pretty fast, where lifepo4 stays higher for most of the ride.

The cells on mine are made by connecting 4 pouches with solder and then stacking them up and connecting in series fashion to the desired voltage, in this case 36. The duct tape then binds them together into a box shape, and a cardboard cover is put on the top over the solder and taped down. All the tape on mine is intact, or replaced after a look, and I put an extra layer of cardboard to insulate all the soldered connections. Then the cookie pan was put under the battery and cut in the corners, and folded up to make a sturdy box with an open top. This box is then carried on the bike with a toolbox bolted to the seatpost rack. So I have two layers of metal between the road and my battery. When I crashed, i was still using the battery bag from the sla pack, but the cookie pan saved my battery. Others have had rubbing cut open cells, or bashing the road cut open cells. So protection for these duct tape batteries is a must. An inadequate box is not enough if it falls apart on impact in a crash. Some report that the cut cells still work, but are worried about leakage. There is talk that Ping will soon have boxes for his batteries, but no solid word to when. He is constantly improving his product and Is extremely trustworhty.

The round cells commonly avaliable don't appeal to me since a large battery from them requires more than a hundred cells. That is a lot of connections. One brand A123, is superior to all others, and is actually used in the tesla car. They can take huge discharge and charge rates compared to a Ping, and the price is huge for them too. If you only need a 4 ah battery, they are the ones to use. Other round cell packs on ebay have not been sold long enough for us to get any feedback on them yet.

In general, for a bike, you are looking for a pack that can do 20 amps rated, or nominal discharge rate, and usually about double that for continuous discharge. Less than that, people tend to have problems. Very low watt scooters can run on the 10 amp batteries, but not big bikes.

I was riding a bike with the water bottle mount in a stupid place. I got one chance to learn that pulling the bottle while moving results in stuffing the bottle into the forks when the bottle touched the front tire. there is a post about it here somewhere.

I rely on the green slime. Lotsa thorns here in the desert. Wouldn't help with stem in your hand though. I try to keep my route close to bus routes for emergencies.

You will love it. A 36v 20ah will fit in the original battery bag and go farther than 20 miles uphill. A 48v should go at least 4 mph faster, and depending on your speed, 30 mile range should be possible. Losing half the weight is a big deal too. A few folks on other forums report problems with duct tape batteries but I find they tend to be running big controllers or doing multipile packs. The majority of us do not have problems when running motors under 1000 watts. My pack still has all it's capacity whith 1400 miles on it. About 100 cycles now. A few will whine that thier 10 ah pack only delivers 9.5 ah or something, but really, your old lead 12ah may have only delivered 8ah. I assume a half ah or so has to remain in the battery to keep the cells alive. In any case your battery will last longer if you habitually leave at least 2 or 3 ah in it when you recharge, rather than run it till cutout.

Email Ping directly for a price. No need to bid on an auction unless you are in a hurry. It will take at least an extra 2 weeks, but you should save money.

Back last spring, the starting price of an auction was pretty close to what I paid. At that time, the auctions were starting at $350 for my sise.