I know what you mean about the chatter. I had a metal box on the back of mine and it annoyed me so much that I switched back to my topeak bag. I got a piece of foam cushion under my batteries. It seemed to help stop the batteries from jarring around and loosening bolts on my rack. I also stuffed some newspapers in my bag.

As far as battery setups go...I'd say bags or plastic setups > metal boxes .

I'm going to go to the plastics store and get a new base place soon. This chatter is too much.

I turned my turnigy watt meter around and measured the charging ah's. It pretty well matched the discharge ah's. 4 trips that normally draw 1.7 to 1.9 ah each. The charge was 7.12 ah's / 4 = 1.78 ah per trip.

The black and decker charger display was a bit off from the watt meter display. And when the charger said full, it was still putting 1.2 amps into the cells.

I'm not sure but I think that's normal for a B&D charger and most chargers for that matter. they say full but then go into what I call an "at rest" charge of a floating charge. The next time I use my B&D I will try to check if mine is doing the same thing.

On one of the other packs i didn't stop it right when it went full and it was down to 0.36amps.

Could the 1.2 amps be the watt meter drawing it from the charger?

That would be a lot of current draw for just a meter so I wouldn't think so.

@Morph99

"If you want to manually balance them like I'm doing then I would suggest buying these two chargers:
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Decker-V...pd_sbs_auto_14

That one has a 2/6/10 amp charge setting. 6 amp is the recommended current to charge. I use a 10 amp charge and it's okay. I have the same brand of charger but it's the 2/10/15 amp one. "

Just wondering how come this charger you recommended has so many bad reviews. Just curious.

I don't know. Works fine for me. Maybe because people are trying to charge batteries that are already dead. I've been using mine a year now with no problems. They had some fan problems in the beginning but I read that the new ones don't have those problems.

Same charger I've used for charging both SLA packs and lifepo4 packs for almost 3 years now and it works fine for me. I've even charged 6 12v packs at the same time together.

The wife went for a ride with me today. Now she wants me to convert her bike.

I thought she was using that one bike that you bought off the neighbor?

She took one ride and wants more speed, range, and the fit of her bike.

has she tried your bike out yet? The one with the lithium.

Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. But this gives me the option of giving her my system and doing something different for me. I wouldnt mind a little more speed.

if you take the bike out and ride it until the cells are 2.8v or 2.5v, I recommend putting in a balance charge with the single cell chargers when you get back from the ride because I've heard that the longer you discharge them, the more out of wack the capacities get.

I finally took at trip to the ocean on the bike. Streets for 2 miles, bike trail with lots of stop signs for 3 miles, trail with a few stops signs for 3 miles, trail with no stops for almost 7 miles. 14.5 one way. 28.9 miles round trip, used 10.7 ah. I pedalled a lot at the end because I saw I was at the end of my capacity. I logged the second half of the trip and the lowest cell under load was only 3.09v

you only used 10.7 AH or almost the whole pack? So if you used 19 AH, you'd go almost 60 miles?

You have 20AH. If you have a loud enough alarm on those celllogs, you should be able to use around 18 AH or 19 AH if you really want to use the whole pack. Just make sure you can hear the alarm if you do use that much capacity. Or since you have it hooked up to your key switch, make sure you know that it works.

This lifepo4 is crazy. Just last year, I had SLA batteries and could barely go 6 miles.

I spent the weekend moving my old stuff to the wife's bike and installing the new e-bike kit direct drive hub. A few notes comparing the Amped geared kit to the E-bike kit.

-The Amped kit came with the freewheel already installed.
-The e-bike kit has the wires exiting opposite the freewheel, makes installing the freewheel easy, but means you have to install the torque arm on the same side as the derailer or take off the connectors to get the torque arm over the wires.
-The e-bike kit is quieter (nice) but larger (not as stealthy).
-Nice torque on both, more acceleration on the e-bike kit.
-Almost identical ah consumption, 0.47ah per mile.
-The e-bike kit comes with a pack of tywraps.
-The amped kit has cruise control, for some reason I was expecting it on the e-bike kit but if it does have cruise, I can't get it to work.
-The amped brake handles are longer (same brand as e-bike kit), the e-bike kits look like they would be more at home on a mountain bike.
-The e-bike kit throttle feels like better quality and doesn't have the LED's indicating power on.

The amped kit gave me top speed of around 20-21mph, the e-bike around 22-23, both at 36v.
I was surprised at the torque of the e-bike hub. I was expecting less torque but higher speed. The low end is very powerful. Even from a stop on a hill, it just got up and went. I had hoped for a little more speed, but I'll get that when I go to 48v.

I don't know if any of this is affected by a brand new set of thundersky 20ah LiFePo4's, but it's the first trip with this set.

Both kits are nice and I would recommend either one.

The next step for me is adding the 4th battery pack to go to 48v. I need to figure out how I'm going to mount the pack to the side of the rack.

I know. I wish the thundersky were just a little smaller. Still, I'm very happy with my battery pack. Definitely one of the best lithium deals on the internet if you ask me.

I finally found my max range. 37.1 miles before the bms dropped me out. Moderate winds, light pedaling here and there, went up then back down a decent hill. I was 6 miles from home when it dropped out, but only a half mile from my work, so I pedaled over there and put it on the charger and drove my car I leave there home.

Did you season your pack first? A lot of "in the know" people recommend cycling a new pack 10 to 20 time at 50% then increase by 10% for 10 cycles each. Just a thought to increase the pack life.

Yes, Ive been riding this pack to work every day for a month and a half plus longer trips on the weekend. I think I have about 400 miles on this pack. I unknowingly did what you said. My commutes are 13 miles round trip and I've done a 24, 27, and 30 mile trip just prior to today. Not a methodical break in but it doesn't sound like I stressed it.

Hello. Sorry, I'm a newbie here and to e-bikes in general. I just bought a Schwinn 24 volt lithium ion battery for the Schwinn Prestige model for $120 and was hoping to adapt it to use on my original iZip with the SLA battery. I thought I read somewhere in this forum that the LiOn batteries have a shelf life and these batteries have been on their shelf for at least 3 or 4 years. Is this a problem? Should I return it? Can I just adapt it from the XLR connector the 3 prong connector or is there more to it than that? What charger should I buy for this battery? Sorry for all the questions but I might be wading in too deep for a newby! Thanks for any thoughts.

Tom

It's hard to say what the condition is of the pack. Can you tell us what the currect voltage is? If it's close to 25.6v and assuming $125 is a good price then the 3 or 4 years is not a major problem. Lifepo4 cells drain at a rate of about 1% per month. But most manufactures ship to the suppliers at about 1/2 charge. So if the cells sat for 36 months they self drained about 36%. You do the math if they were on 1/2 charged in the first place. As I said if they are still holding about 25.6 they are in very good shape. You may not want it if they are below 22.4v.

You should actually be able to use the old IZip charger assuming it's also 24v. It likely has a max output of 29.2v whice is exactly what is needed for a 24v lifepo4 pack. Of course I am assuming this pack has a BMS. I would recommend looking on EBay for a female XLR plug that you can use to do a quick temp connection to the pack through the charging port........what ever you do be sure you connect it up correctly.........(Check the polarity). Eventually you may want to look into a new charger but be careful of buying "smart" chargers. Some BMSs will not ****ion correctly with smart chargers.

Bob

PS..The life of lifepo4 is said to be 10 or more if properly maintained and cared for. So as I said it's a matter of how low the cells were allowed to discharge. There is always possible that the pack was charged just before shipping to you. But so what as long as it was holding the charge when you received it..........