OK, got ya. For a minute you confusded me. Not that that is hard t odo these days.

I got the watt meter today and installed it tonight. Hobbyking has the cell monitors back in stock so I ordered 2, another battery media, and some cables.

I'm going to have to design a dash board for all these electronics.

The system never draws more than 15 amps.

I got my watt meter strapped to the top bar but it looks pretty ghetto. Every now and then, I'll take a look at how much battery I've used.

Only used 1.7AH on the way in to work today. 4 miles. I did pedal on most starts and some stretches.

That would give me a range of a little over 20 miles on half the battery capacity.

I accidentally used 13 AH today. Going into headwinds and burned lots of battery. My battery cells still all read 3.27v though so I'm well above the danger zone. Once you get those cell monitors, you'll be able to use almost the whole pack.

What's the low limit again?

I'm thinking I'll move the watt meter off the handle bars and back to the batter pack. I don't ride with my glasses so I can't read the little numbers that well anyway.

I've got a huge 5303 motor and a 35 amp controller so I burn lots of energy and I was going into a headwind so I was doing 1 AH per 1 mile. I usually do about 1 AH per 1.5 miles.

The low voltage cutoff is 2.5v but you probably don't want to go below 2.8v. What really gets people is that once one of your cells hits 2.5v, it only takes 5 seconds to destroy the cell. That's why it's so important to be careful. People think it will take 15 or 20 min to kill the cell. Nope, if you look at the discharge curve, once you get to the end of the curve, it drops off like a cliff.

I got my watt meter right below my seat so I just take one hand off the handle bars and while I'm cruising I just look down and see what it is.

A woman told me to, "get off the road". Also, I got behind a semi truck and was able to draft him a bit, took me from 28 mph up to about 31 mph.

Get those cell log monitors as soon as possible. Not sure if you'll have the same problem as me but one of my cells didn't charge for some reason with the black and decker. It went from 3.27v to 3.38v . It's charging now but I think B&D stopped charging earlier than usual and so that cell didn't get a full charge or something. Not sure what happened. Maybe it was the 13 AH usage that did it. I think I'm going to get two of those cell log monitors too since it's only about $30 for two of them. I'll just plug them in each time after charging to make sure all of them charged because if you take off on a ride without all the cells charged, you'll end up destroying cells.

The cell is at 3.40v now and it appears to be charging slowly. All my other cells are fine so I don't know if it was just a bad cell or what.

I have them on order. I had one cell that did that after the first charge, now it's one of the strongest cells. I check each cell after each charge anyway.

I researched what was going on and it appears that it's normal for the cell to bleed down to 3.35v like mine did. Not sure but it's performing normally so that's all I care about. My pack only sags to about 35.8v under 40 amp load and only to about 38v under a 20 amp load and that's very very good.

Check out this pack...it sags all the way from 39v to 32.7v under only a 20 amp load. That's a crappy lifepo4 pack. Not sure who the maker is. Definitely not Thundersky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJKsM...layer_embedded

Josh, You have to keep in mind that the normal voltage of these cells is 3.2v and anything above that is a bonus. Most will agree that the higher then 3.2v is very short lived and tapers down very quickly as soon as you load the cells. Now that you have ridden with the low cell has it popped back up again?

You never know whos cells are in the video. I maybe a small Ping pack. As I remember most of the Pings are only rated for 1c to 1.5c. Bob

Bob, your point is driven home by the data I'm seeing in the logs on my CellLog 8. (Although the new lower priced model of the CellLog is fine, I'm glad I have the version that logs. You see the performance of each cell under load.) The area I ride is hilly; I'm in the far northern US Rockies, west of Glacier National Park. What I'm seeing when riding a steep hill (say 15% grade and a climb of 154 ft in less than a mile) is power in individual cells declining as low as 3.03 then rebounding back up to 3.302 once I've cleared the hill. When going up hills, I don't depress the throttle too much and I pedal in low gear to assist the motor. That said, climbing steep hills with any motor assist is going to eat up a fair amount of energy (flat landers definitely get better battery performance and a longer battery life). However, my knees are extremely grateful for the assistance and my primary purpose for getting my bike electrified was to have power assist to tackle the hills around here.

LOL......I'm with you. Given a chose my batteries or my old knees the cells are a lot cheaper then knee replacements. Have you ever considered relocating your motor to run the crank chain? I was looking at this the other day while working on my modification and while it would be a fair amount of work and some money I have to believe it would be a major improvemnet on the big hills you ride. I can tell you evem my 360w Cyclone kit with a 6 speed or my Nuvinci I could pop up some pretty big hills that people were walking their bikes up.

I'm less likely to modify this bike since I'll probably be buying a second bike this year. Yes, I'd love more power on the hills, although the Currie does pretty well. Yesterday was our first warm day of the year (it got up to 78F, yippee). I went for a 14-mile ride into the forest. When I started up a very steep ascent on a mountain I've never been on before. I had to go down to second gear while pedaling and then I heard the CellLog alarm beeping so I stopped the bike, checked the CellLog--cell 1 had dropped to 2.89. So, I walked the bike up a bit until the grade improved. By that time the low cell had recovered to 3.302 and I got back on the bike and rode more (the CellLog alarm never sounded again). The ride only used 1.31aH even though it was up down, up down the whole ride. Anyway, I love riding the forest and hope that our weather continues to improve. Here's a short video that gives you a feel for the area I was riding.

Today was my first decent length ride.

22.5 miles, 8.78ah used. About 1/3 streets with lots of stops, 2/3 bike paths with ramps that go under the roads. My father in law was along with the yellow bike I got from my neighbor. He did about 15-17 miles. He stopped along the way and the bike quit. We thought it needed a charge so he sat with it charging while I went up the trail and back. It still didn't work, so I fiddled with connectors and found when I unplugged one of the connectors on the handle bars it started working.

The yellow bike tops out around 15-16 mph. Like I said, he got 16 miles on the batteries with a 25 minute charge. It was slowing up on the way back.

My batteries were all at 3.29-3.30v per cell.

Nice ride. Farthest I've went is 19 miles. Looks like the batteries are working out well for you. They'll last a long time if you take care of them. Did you put any padding underneath the batteries? I don't know if it matters or not but I put some foam underneath mine. Sounds like you could probably do 30 miles if you wanted if you took it to maybe 10AH or 10.5 AH.

BTW, if you ever plan on not riding for a few months, it's best to store these lifepo4 batteries half empty because they do lose capacity over several months if they are not used and stored at full charge. If they are stored at half discharge then they don't lose as much or any capacity over time.

I am assuming the forest is quiet and the cellLog alarm was load enough for you to hear it without problem....

It was great. Rode from home toward the ocean. Stopped at the Newport back bay by UC Irvine. Next time I'm going all the way to the bay, maybe even the ocean.

Today it went toward the mountains. Not as far but much more scenic. 12.5 miles. I'm consistently doing 2.6 miles per 1 ah.

Morp, what is your recharge schedule? Do you recharge after every ride and keep full, or do you go down to a recharge point regardless ofnhow long it takes?

I finally got the kick stand replaced. The bolt was froze and had to break the head off, break the old stand base before it would give way. I bought the one that was recommended here. It's a bit tall, I'll need to cut it down.

My cell log 8 order has been shipped, hope to have it soon.

I charge it up after each ride, no matter how small. So even if I only do 1.5 AH, I charge it. We got like 3000 cycles so I think time will probably kill these batteries before charging cycles do. My batteries around only 65 % full right now, though because it's going to rain for 4 or 5 days straight so I'd rather they be a little empty for a few days than full and then I'll just charge them up before I ride. Over the winter, I'll keep the batteries at half full.

Is it getting to be a hassle with the charging? If so, maybe you could try Dumbass's method of putting them in parallel and charging them. I think it had something do with using anderson connectors and just unplugging them and changing to parallel.

my bike is in the kitchen so what I usually do is just put the black and decker clips on the terminals and then go back to watching tv or go on the internet until I hear it beep then I walk back in and put it on the 2nd ones. Doesn't really bother me much but if you had the bike it like the garage then it could be a hassle.

Today it went toward the mountains. Not as far but much more scenic. 12.5 miles. I'm consistently doing 2.6 miles per 1 ah.

Morp, what is your recharge schedule? Do you recharge after every ride and keep full, or do you go down to a recharge point regardless ofnhow long it takes?

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Keep in mind that the rated charge cycle rate is based on a level of discharge and is not an actual number. In other words, just because you charge it after a small discharge it is not counted the same tward the rated charge capability. A cell that is recharged twice for a discharge of 5ah will last longer then a cell that is recharged once after 10ah of discharge. So don't worry that you may only have 3000 charges and you are using them up with small charges. It doesn't work that way.

So charging more often will make the batteries last longer? I ride 8 miles a day total to work and back. I could get 3 - 4 days before a charge would be required. But recharging every day would be better for the batteries?

I recharge both my batteries after every ride, if they're both used (I still have my original SLA). I'm surprised you're only getting 2.6 miles per AH on your TS LIFEPO4 battery. Are you pedaling or just riding using your motor? I'm averaging more miles per AH than you using my TS battery, but I always pedal.