So, like everyone around the world, I am stuck indoors, with nowhere to go, due to the current coronavirus.
Nearly 1 year ago today, I removed all the Gen 1 (24KWH pack) cells out of my purchased fazer conversion. I bought the bike from a guy who had already converted it.
Shortly afterwards the Kelly controller failed quite catastrophically. I have since replaced the controller (twice) and have dialed in the settings so its a little bit more reliable, and a little bit slower unfortunately.
The old cells have gone into a Vectrix VX-1 (along with a few others) to give that bike a new lease of life.
With the old Gen 1 cells, this bike had a max bus voltage of 106.7 volts and a top speed of 65MPH. The range was roughly 38-45 miles depending on how you rode it. logging the charges, it turned out the bike did roughly 1 mile per AH which made it pretty easy to calculate.
Now, I am putting in 7 Gen 4 modules. (see my other post for details on this). These modules have twice the energy density, so once installed, will have a total pack capacity of 11.5KWH or roughly 105AH at a fully charged voltage of 116.2V. I am hoping this will give a range of roughly just over 100 miles!!
A big hurdle was the fact that the new modules are twice the size of the old modules. This meant finding space for the “top”. Although you can fit them all in like this:

Turns out, you cannot fit them in like this once the battery box is taking up space, as its short roughly 15mm at the top! Argh. OK. The batteries do need to be clamped and also must be in a water tight box (for obvious reasons).
After lots of mockups and fiddling, I ended up cutting the frame rail that sat near the base of the fuel tank and made up an aluminum box of its own for the 7th module. The 7th module would also be rotated so it was transverse compared to the other modules.
Whilst this method added more wiring (read losses), it was the only way I could get the additional cell in, and I did not want to loose the additional top speed the extra pack would give (and the range!)
After wiring, sealing, relocating the contactor and inserting a mid pack fuse (red box) I had something resembling the bike I took apart a year ago:


The previous owner had wired 2 DC to DC converters. One dc-dc would go live when the master switch was enabled. This would power the bikes 12v system. The second would go live when you hit the run switch and would power the controller.
Whilst this worked, I would prefer the vehicle to have its own 12v battery as it would simplify the wiring somewhat. It would also give me some space in the tail for faster chargers. So I removed one and kept the larger one. I then installed a very small (6ah) SLA battery in the tail by the rear lights. The main 12v system is powered by this and is charged by the DC-DC converter at 13.5v whenever the master switch is on.
This also gave me the benefit of an always on 12v sytem for things like alarms, balancing systems etc, and also stopped the trip meter resetting every time you parked the bike.
Here is a test of the charging system, a modified Huawei DC Power supply (I will do a more indepth post of this once tested at 5KW.

This setup with a Kelly KLS96601-8080I will run at approx 280battery amps, which is roughly 30KW Peak. I do have a KHB that can deal with 1000Phase amps for 30 seconds and 600Phase amps continuously, that should be able to push the Enetrac 602 up to 40KW or so quite nicely 🙂 I am running it at the moment on the consertative side to ensure it works reliably.
I am using a coloumb counter as a battery gauge and a Cycle Analyst to be able to gauge riding efficiency etc. The chinese supplied coloumb counter is pretty accurate compared to my 500,000 count Brymen.

Still a fair amount to do to get it fully running, but the bulk is done. I will post another update when I have more complete.
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