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[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! 

[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

[WiscoZeroPilot]

This is definitely inspiring, as I have a 2010 DS that's collecting dust with a bricked pack. 

How much did your pack cost to assemble?

[Brian Zero]

Well, at the time hybrid auto center only offered the pouch cells as a complete module with more than 2x the number of cells I needed, so I had to pay over a thousand bucks just for that, and then split it. After that, the material costs were minimal. Now I see the retailer is offering smaller modules and even offering a new BMS with it. That looks like the way to go.

[cat33]

Hello to all
This is my first post here. I'm a owner of a 2011 Zero XU in Switzerland. My XU had a very bad battery when I bought it, so I made a battery conversion with the following Lipo Cells
https://hobbyking.com/de_de/multistar-high-capacity-6s-20000mah-multi-rotor-lipo-pack.html
Unfortunately they sell only 6S packs so I had to rip one pack apart to achieve 14S (2 complete packs and 2 cells of one). These are 20Ah so I put together 14S 3P. This gives me a total of 60Ah at 58.8V when full. If I would do it again I would pack another 20Ah pack in the original compartment, it should fit as far I can juge. I have used the original XU BMS, and the onboard charger works well with my conversion. So if you want a 4kWh (80Ah) pack in the original box it can be achived  .
I added a temperaturesensor and an external voltmeter to the dashboard to have more information. When the pack is discharged at full throttle the temperature rises to 55 degrees celsius, perhaps it would be a good idea to add a fan and a vent to the pack. The energy meter (gas gauge) reads nonsense, momentary it tells me that it is empty after just 20 km of soft riding, I can go on with riding for at least another 25km and the pack is still not empty.

So here is my question: Does the display calibrate itself for the new bigger capacity of my pack over time or do I have to live with the wrong display of the SOC?
regards cat33

[cenesdelavega]

Can you give full instructions to do this? I'm also in CH, with a bricked zero x extreme... Thanks, Roger