OK, quick easy question for those of you with XB experience.
If you are going to upgrade to 60V and use a 60V charger with the same connector type as is already on the bike. When you add the 5th battery, can u not just add it in the middle of the pack.... say in between the 2nd and 3rd baterries, in series still. Then you would only have to change like 2 wires and could use the existing charging socket. Rather than worry about cutting and splicing all the connections at the end.
Also, in regards to Amperage. Does anyone know what Amp switch I would need to use for this.....
I would like to use the switch to essentially "remove" the 5th battery. IE. if it is "ON" there are 5 batteries in series. If i turned it "OFF" the wire would go straight from the 2nd to the 3rd battery leaving only 4 batteries in series.
I never plan on charging like this etc. It would only be used in case I needed to "hypethetically" return the bike to stock performance. The largest switches I have seen for this are 12V 40A switches... should these be high enough to not have any problems?
My XB-600 will be here on 3/31/09 and I want to have everything set to do all the mods while I am assembling it. Unless anyone thinks it would be a better idea to assemble it first and test it for a while to ensure it works properly before I make any Mods to it....
Thanks in advance,
David
David,
You talk about wiring into the middle of the pack, but I found it easiest to build a cable with connectors, male and female and just plug my additional battery in without having to make any modifications to the existing wiring. This is done by plugging the new battery (adapter cable) in series with the plug that is already on the battery box. There are more details at the following link.
http://visforvoltage.org/forum/3534-30-mph-xtreme-xb-600-60v-modification-instructions#comment-27224
When you read that forum page, you probably saw references to switching out the battery to make it legal again. I think that is a bad idea, because your batteries will then discharge unevenly, and will therefore age unevenly, and will not charge properly in series with a single 60 volt charger. This will cause some cells to overcharge, shortening their life.
Actually, from a performance standpoint, we are not talking about a huge change in bike performance. Significant, and fun, but not huge. So, unless you plan to put a child on the bike, and let them ride it, I don't think there is any reason to reduce the power back to stock levels. Using the technique I used, you can always just unplug the series cable, and return to stock.
By the way, the shunt mod talked about in the following link, is pretty effective at increasing the ability of the bike to climb hills at a reasonable rate. This is not an easy mod, due to the need to disassemble and reassemble the controller, but it is very useful.
http://visforvoltage.org/forum/3990-xb600-quotshunt-modquot-instructions
Good luck,
Tom