Bad battery or safety feature?

E

EZrider

Member
I have two Seagulls.
One battery shutting down under load. Tried it in other seagull and same issue
It will run fine while using pedal assist but throttle only in 4 or 5 and it shuts off. Actually surges in 5 until it shuts off
I plug it into charger for a couple seconds and everything comes back on and fully charged
Less than 2 years old and out of warranty
Any other options other than spending $450 for a new ecotric battery?
Some of the repair businesses don't look that good
 
Cheep cells. What is the voltage? Is the battery either proprietary or internal? You could possibly wire in a new high quality battery that is neither proprietary or internal. Or buy another cheap one from eBay.
 
51.8, proprietary.
Ecotric won't help since it's out of warranty. They say it could be bad cells
That's what i get for buying crap e bikes
 
51.8 Sounds a lot like 52V. Point .2 is less than 1% for that bike. Strap on a new external battery. Or see the new thread 'Hi There'. I am converting, a regular bike which will out-run $7400 bikes from stores. Right now. And it will not be proprietary. It's all open source. Like Wiki and Linux, not Apple.
 
The Ecotric Seagull is one of several Ecotrics that use proprietary batteries. Another one is their Bison. I've never seen one that looks like yours with built in tail light.

My Ecotric 20" fat tire folder uses the tried and true Silverfish, which is a case that's been around for almost 10 years. Mine also crapped after about 26 months. Would shut down after a few miles, after the battery had only drained 2 volts. One bad row of cells. Since it was a Silverfish, a generic case, there were batteries available for as low as $160, but I paid $260. Ecotric's version was $399. I'm seeing yours listed at $450 on their website, but they must add tax/shipping.

After getting a new battery, I opened the old one and replaced the bad row of cells. Really difficult to remove the old ones, and the ever present risk of sparking a fire. But I did it. The battery was well constructed, but they used 99 cent cells. I looked them up, and that's what they cost.
 
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Waiting to hear back from ecotric if they will give a discount.
I found the battery on amazon for $401 with tax and free shipping
 
@Gionnirocket, This electric bike is almost finished. The left brake lever and the SuperMotoX tires arrive tomorrow. I programed it so it think it has 5 inch wheels with a top speed of 45. And put a Niki swoosh on the battery to dress it up.
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My battery dropped to 2.6 volts and it won't even take a charge.
Ecotric won't even reply to me for any kind of help
I'll just get a new battery but I need to recycle my old one.
Should I worry about a fire with my old battery until I dispose of it?
 
Somewhere, I saw a video of a little battery going up in flames inside a garbage truck when the trash compactor crushed it. They use a garbage cam to catch those problems.

Here's a website that will tell you where to find a Li recycler. It doesn't tell you that Home Depot limits batteries to 300WH. That would mean any 10AH ebike pack is too big.

Battery & Cellphone Dropoff Locations | Call2Recycle | United States

Find a drop-off location near you
www.call2recycle.org www.call2recycle.org
 
harryS said:
The Ecotric Seagull is one of several Ecotrics that use proprietary batteries. Another one is their Bison. I've never seen one that looks like yours with built in tail light.

My Ecotric 20" fat tire folder uses the tried and true Silverfish, which is a case that's been around for almost 10 years. Mine also crapped after about 26 months. Would shut down after a few miles, after the battery had only drained 2 volts. One bad row of cells. Since it was a Silverfish, a generic case, there were batteries available for as low as $160, but I paid $260. Ecotric's version was $399. I'm seeing yours listed at $450 on their website, but they must add tax/shipping.

After getting a new battery, I opened the old one and replaced the bad row of cells. Really difficult to remove the old ones, and the ever present risk of sparking a fire. But I did it. The battery was well constructed, but they used 99 cent cells. I looked them up, and that's what they cost.
Click to expand...
I got my new battery. I'm sure it's Ecotric selling their batteries and other stuff on Amazon.
It was $399 plus tax and free shipping.
Never heard back from Ecotric.
Now I'm wondering if I should keep my old battery in case a row of cells fails again.
You said it was difficult to replace them but you did it.
Any advise would be appreciated
 
I decided to open up the old battery to see if there's anything obvious.
Sure enough! Poor workmanship killed this battery.
Broken wire on the main switch and a chaffed wire where the screw holds the case together at the bottom.
That's probably why it was surging until it died and i would get random voltage readings
Now it won't charge.
Oh well, new battery works good.
ecotric.jpg
ecotric1.jpg
ecotric2.jpg
 
Ecotric had nothing to say but pointed me to a link to purchase a new battery.
They won't even own up to shoddy workmanship.
 
That's horrible. Can't believe they would ship it like that. No quality control? Maybe why mine died just inside one year. I just made it before the warranty expired. The new one they sent has worked great, but no more Chinese batteries. I'm using Samsung battery parts from now on. FTH Power. Lithium Rebuilds. Best deal. Good rep.
 
Horrible for sure. Both me and Ecotric
I was just out of warranty but it probably failed over the winter some time
They wouldn't even discuss it or give me a discount.
Bad for them since they now have a ticked off customer and I post negative reviews whenever i can and I send them to ecotric.
1 ticked off customer is worse than 10 happy customers since you rarely see people posting that they are so happy with their product
 
I'm more than happy with my Seagull, but only after I made some changes to it. I knew I would never be going off-road with it so I turned it into a very comfy cruiser. All the running gear, shifter, derailer, motor etc. has been working great with no problems. I just lube everything after a hundred miles or so and it keeps going smooth no problem. Like I said, they did give me a bad battery at first but quickly replaced it, so props for that. I knew I wasn't getting a $5000.00 ebike when I bought it. Of course it's not built like a top of the line ebike, but for $1200.00 it would be hard to find a better one imo. They save money by using low grade tires and batteries. So, you throw out the tires and get a replacement battery from them in the 1st year if needed and it runs real good. I have over two years and many fun miles so far with no major problems. It sucks that you're battery died just past the warranty date. People should probably go for the extended warranty on these. My girlfriend has the Peacedove but in Springtime will be getting the more powerful Leopard to keep up with me. Are you even able to use the bike now?
 
Stepping in a little late here. Glad to hear you have the bike up and running, and further, had the guts to open the battery up for a look see. That's a teaching moment if there ever was one!

I've been in radio control for just about forever. We use batteries with similar chemistry to what is used in the bikes, and I did have one try to light up the back of a garbage truck when I just tossed it in a trash can a few years ago. NOW, after looking into how others were handling this issue, I found that storing them in a bucket full of water for a few weeks prior to disposal will neutralize them to the point where fires are no longer an issue. I use a 5 gal. plastic bucket placed under the drip edge of a shed so rain water will keep it topped off. Water WILL get sorta colorful, and God only knows how lethal it might be, so putting a screen over it to keep pets out might be a good plan. FWIW
 
Robspace1 said:
I'm more than happy with my Seagull, but only after I made some changes to it. I knew I would never be going off-road with it so I turned it into a very comfy cruiser. All the running gear, shifter, derailer, motor etc. has been working great with no problems. I just lube everything after a hundred miles or so and it keeps going smooth no problem. Like I said, they did give me a bad battery at first but quickly replaced it, so props for that. I knew I wasn't getting a $5000.00 ebike when I bought it. Of course it's not built like a top of the line ebike, but for $1200.00 it would be hard to find a better one imo. They save money by using low grade tires and batteries. So, you throw out the tires and get a replacement battery from them in the 1st year if needed and it runs real good. I have over two years and many fun miles so far with no major problems. It sucks that you're battery died just past the warranty date. People should probably go for the extended warranty on these. My girlfriend has the Peacedove but in Springtime will be getting the more powerful Leopard to keep up with me. Are you even able to use the bike now?
Click to expand...
Agree with everything you said. People were pointing me towards bikes that were 3X the price and i wanted 2 bikes.
I think mine were about $1100 each since i got a discount for 2 and free fenders. Not bad for being shipped and no tax.
After the 3rd flat tire in 11 miles I sanded all the spoke holes and put in thick rim tape and heavy duty tubes. Ecotric did pay for the parts even though flats aren't covered under warranty. Like you did, I showed them proof.
I thought for sure they would do something once i showed them the wires in the battery.
Sounds weird but we don't venture too far from home since we don't trust them very much.
Now that winter is setting in at our vacation home the bikes get used even less.
I put on handlebar risers and softer seats which helped a lot.
Did you change the seat post? That's the only other thing I thought about replacing.
Friend has one of these.
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