Makes And Models > Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2012 and older
Completed Zero X battery rebuild with lithium pouch cells
Brian Zero:
2010 Zero X Battery rebuild with pouch cells
Hey all, I have a Zero X "Extreme" I bought new back in 2010, that had the usual badly sagging battery pack, and early this Spring, I decided to revive its usability by replacing the terrible old battery pack. I found the excellent posts by DoctorBass, and by iSurgeon, which led me to hybrid auto center's online store and valuable discussion with them, which led me to discover a newly available alternative to the Nissan Leaf cells, and with them I was able to build my new pack, hooray! Then life came up (baby), and I was delayed in posting my results or doing testing. I'm finally getting around to posting it, though I still haven't had time to make a nice tutorial, or for that matter to do proper testing on the build. In fact I wouldn't call it 100% done, as I'm not sure I want to stay with the wooden spacer parts that were really just supposed to be temporary mock-ups, and I still have threaded rod ends sticking out the sides a little bit. But the main thing is, it works! The bike feels much, much zippier and it charges up fine with the existing charger and reused Zero BMS.
The most amazing part is how perfectly these pouches fit into the battery compartment of the X. And with the perfect amount of space for the BMS to fit in too. One thing to note, ye builders, is that pouch cells like to be enclosed so they can't puff up, thus the threaded rods and the big metal plates to compress the cells. Other than that it's just a lot of fiddling and careful building. Ideally, I would add more sensors and monitoring of the cells next. Failure modes are worthy of consideration and prevention. Another issue is that the Zero BMS is optimized to extend the life of the LiFePO packs by reducing the depth of their cycling in order to get more cycles. So upgrading the BMS starts to look attractive as well. And of course the Zero BMS had the undesirable 'feature' of destroying the battery pack if it is not kept connected to a live charger; woe be to them that doesn't notice the charger was left unplugged.
Ok, gotta run. But to get it started, here is a link to the photo album:
https://goo.gl/photos/f8c7cXvsdZHfFGSq5
and these are the links to hybrid auto center:
http://hybridautocenter.com/HAC4/
http://stores.ebay.com/Hybrid-car-parts?_trksid=p2047675.l2563
This looks a lot like they are ready produce new battery packs for the older zeros:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lithium-Li-Ion-48V-53Ah-BMS-Car-Golf-Cart-Pack-Battery-Upgrade-EV-2-6kWh-/252404762857
Brian Zero:
And the battery
cec:
This is outstanding. Thank you for sharing the information. This will be very helpful with those of us still running the older Zeros.
C
2011 Zero X
ColoPaul:
Awesome, Brian! ;D
MrDude_1:
Those look pretty cool. I like how they have plastic mounts attached to each cell. It solves the largest problem with pouch cells... how do I make a pack out of them?! lol
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