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Old 03-25-10, 01:34 PM
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morph999 
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Well, I bought the same batteries but I didn't buy the balancers. When I bought them, I don't think the balancers were available but I didn't feel like I needed one anyway. Some want them, some don't. Most people want a BMS because they want to be able to use 90 % of their battery. I'm happy using 50 % of it since it's more than enough for my needs.

The questions are: how much of the battery do you want to use? If you are planning on only using 50 % and you don't mind manually balancing them every 4 or 5 uses, then you could get away without a BMS and probably save about $100 if you don't buy that package and instead buy the chargers separate. If you want to really easy setup and don't want to hassle with balancing them, then you are better off buying the package deal which includes the BMS. I think most people are probably better off buying the package deal. I have lots of time on my hands and I don't mind balancing mine. ALso, I already had the 12v charger at home so all I had to buy was the batteries and then a little 3.2v lifepo4 charger to balance them. I saved probably $150 not buying the package deal. If you have a 12v charger at home already with a 6 amp option then you might be better off going without the BMS, too. Just remember that if you use a 12v charger, and you use 10 AH of the battery, you'll need at least a 4 - 6 amp charge current to charge them unless you want to take like 15 hours to recharge the whole battery. I use a 10 amp charge current and it takes about 3 hours to charge a half completed battery.

On just 50 % of those batteries, you'll still get 20 miles range. I typically get about 2 miles for each 1 AH so about 10 AH will get you 20 miles. That's more than enough for what you are using them for. Also, make sure you measure the batteries and think about where on the bike you will put them. They are a little big. They are still very lightweight, though but a little bigger than other lifepo4 batteries. They are still half of the weight of SLA batteries.

You have several other places to choose from....I like Thundersky batteries and I like elitepowersolutions.com and I think they are a fantastic value. You are getting like $1000 worth of batteries for basically half price. But you have other choices:

pingbattery.com (you pay about $100 - $150 on shipping cost so you need to add that in to whatever price it shows because he ships from China )
cycle9.com
ebikes.ca
evcomponents.com
itselectric.ca
batteryspace.com

Those are a few more places where people buy there batteries. Also, there is lipo from hobbyking.com but those are pretty dangerous batteries and I don't recommend them unless you have experience with them.

Last edited by morph999; 03-25-10 at 01:38 PM.
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