52V CCX / RCS - Will generic 48V "Dorado +" battery work?

[iamjcl]

Has anybody tried this?

Like the fact that Juiced uses a non proprietary battery mount, but not sure that functional packs are actually available that will work, fitting physically and working electrically. 52V packs seem really only available form juiced, and they are insanely expensive. In the case of the RCS, more than 1/2 the price of the whole bike.

So it seems it is basically a proprietary battery solution as to my knowledge there are no other choices for batteries for these 52V bikes?

Hope I'm missing something and that there are alternatives.

 

[Chris Hammond]

subscribing

 

[joshuaho96]

Once I get my Biktrix Ultra FS I'll try out the 52V CCX/RCS/HF1100 battery on it. If it fits the Biktrix their batteries should fit as well. 48V for sure is supported, the controller + motor will be the same.

I'm pretty sure Biktrix/Frey are both using this battery pack, not 100% sure on the logistics (might be a different distributor, maybe a different cell, etc...) though : https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...ml?spm=a2700.7724838.2017115.1.174275faC70pgs

 

[Rob02150]

Once I get my Biktrix Ultra FS I'll try out the 52V CCX/RCS/HF1100 battery on it. If it fits the Biktrix their batteries should fit as well. 48V for sure is supported, the controller + motor will be the same.

I'm pretty sure Biktrix/Frey are both using this battery pack, not 100% sure on the logistics (might be a different distributor, maybe a different cell, etc...) though : https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...ml?spm=a2700.7724838.2017115.1.174275faC70pgs

From photos it looks like your Biktrix has the longer version of the Dorado battery.

 

[michael mitchell]

Juiced uses a standard positive/negative connection for their batteries. There are no proprietary electrics involved. So you can add any 52V battery you want, so long as you get the right connectors, and figure out a way to mount it (triangle bag, pannier, helmet, whatever). On my Air, that's a XT60 connection direct to the controller, or the Reention 2 prong female connector at the battery. I think some higher power bikes may use the XT90 at the controller. Not sure about that. See Tora's comments here:

https://electricbikereview.com/forums/threads/a-battery-standard.9170/page-2#post-76352

 

[joshuaho96]

No, it says it's a 505mm version. Juiced uses 440mm. The one in this picture is longer, so it won't fit for Juiced.

How are you deriving that 440mm measurement? That's a lot longer than any length I can measure on my 52V 19.2 AHr battery.

Edit: looks like that's the frame mount measurement, not the battery length measurement.

 

[Chris Hammond]

I am curious if anyone has experience/ or knows, the max voltage battery that a Juiced CCS can safely handle????
I love my 52V battery, especially when its at higher voltage state. I usually only charge to 80%, and I don't like how the performance of the bike drops when the pack reaches <47V.
I'd love to go to a 60V battery when its time to replace my current battery. I'm thinking 40 mph assisted is possible with that.

 

[joshuaho96]

I am curious if anyone has experience/ or knows, the max voltage battery that a Juiced CCS can safely handle????
I love my 52V battery, especially when its at higher voltage state. I usually only charge to 80%, and I don't like how the performance of the bike drops when the pack reaches <47V.
I'd love to go to a 60V battery when its time to replace my current battery. I'm thinking 40 mph assisted is possible with that.

Max safe voltage for the capacitors and other components in a 48V controller is usually 60-63V. So 52V is the max.

More power is really a thermal problem, too much power will just melt the windings so you need to figure out how to cool the motor. Even if you get a new controller that can take more voltage/amps the motor itself is the limit at a certain point. You can run 25A and get up to maybe 35 mph but questionable on much more.

 

[joshuaho96]

There's a video of Tora on YouTube showing HyperFat's speed controller. I believe it was 35A 12FET and yeah... the wires were quite a bit thicker.

The Hyper bikes all have serious thermal management problems too, the motor is on paper capable of sustaining the 1800W for a while but the controller is in the same place as the CCX and will start going into thermal protection mode before long.

 

[joshuaho96]

I can see those vents on HyperFat's frame.. is that for cooling the speed controller?

Those vents are not actual vents, there is no real airflow going on there AFAIK, more just ribbing to try and increase the dissipative area. Even if there was you would need a lot more airflow to keep the thing from throttling. That would also completely compromise the weatherproofing of the battery, the connector is right next to the controller.

Maybe if there was direct contact from the FETs to the frame via thermal paste would make that design work, but the controller is in its own enclosure which then dissipates into the frame without any thermal grease to reduce the impedance.

 

[joshuaho96]

I'm not familiar with German car engineering, but Porsche 911 had air cooled engine for a while and I imagine they were able to flow the air to the engine without rain getting into the engine bay?
Maybe they could use similar structure in order for them to not compromise the weather proofing..

It's called a bend in the pipes to separate out water. And even if it doesn't get all of the water out of suspension it doesn't matter, most engines can tolerate some amount of water splashing through them.

None of those solutions are really relevant, especially when the whole bike frame represents a great heatsink opportunity and the natural ram-air effect will solve the rest unless you're going full throttle in deep snow/mud with very little forward speed. The problem is that actually coupling the components of interest to the bike frame thermally is an engineering challenge that is not as simple as it seems, especially if you want to retain water resistance. Maybe a cutout is needed with a rubber gasket to get direct access to part of the controller so the controller can be shimmed and thermal grease applied. Both the controller enclosure and the vent plate would have to be polished as well to help ensure good thermal transfer.

It also seems like the current controllers just use thermal tape to connect the power transistors to the enclosure. A design that allows for thermal paste to be used would probably help a lot.

 

[Chris Hammond]

I have a feeling you already know this but if you replace the speed controller, it will give you more power.

I can tell you from my experience because I have a CC Air.
The CC Air came with 15A 6FET speed controller with 48V battery.
So I switched to 20A 9FET speed controller and switched the display. I left the battery and motor stock because I didn't really need to.
It did make quite a bit of difference. Did I change the voltage? No, I kept it 48V. But I went up from 15A to 20A. So basically going up from CC Air's 350W (720W max) to CCS's 650W (960W max) using 48V battery.
The CC, CC Air, CCS and CCX have same the motor.
If you change your 20A CCS controller to 25A CCX controller, I believe you will be getting 750W (1300W max) with 52V battery.

Also changing the tires was pretty effective for me.
I had the stock Kenda tires, then switched to Schwalbe Marathon Plus which was heavier than stock Kenda. Both of them were 700C x 45
Then I switched to Continental Contact Plus 700C x 32

Holy smokes the bike feels lighter and accelerates a lot more freely. When your tires are done, I'd highly suggest you trying it.
Because these tires are skinnier, it did feel different and they do tip over quicker around the corner.. but I got used to it now.

I am not looking for more power so much as more speed. So this actually does not solve the top speed problem. As these bikes near the top assisted speed you will see the real time watts drop down steadily until about 28 watts at the point the motor is no longer assisting you. The top speed is directly associated to the actual voltage of the battery at that time.
If I fully charge my 52V pack (58.8V), the top assisted speed is ~37.5 mph; at ~80% (55.4V) top speed is ~35mph; and at 50% (50.4V) its ~32.5mph. This is directly tied to the winding of the motor and voltage of the pack. I could replace my motor with a higher speed winding, and I may do that if the existing motor fails at some point. But I'd love the increased flexibility and performance that a 60V battery pack would provide.
Thus I am hoping that someone else will provide input on experience with that setup.

 

[joshuaho96]

I am not looking for more power so much as more speed. So this actually does not solve the top speed problem. As these bikes near the top assisted speed you will see the real time watts drop down steadily until about 28 watts at the point the motor is no longer assisting you. The top speed is directly associated to the actual voltage of the battery at that time.
If I fully charge my 52V pack (58.8V), the top assisted speed is ~37.5 mph; at ~80% (55.4V) top speed is ~35mph; and at 50% (50.4V) its ~32.5mph. This is directly tied to the winding of the motor and voltage of the pack. I could replace my motor with a higher speed winding, and I may do that if the existing motor fails at some point. But I'd love the increased flexibility and performance that a 60V battery pack would provide.
Thus I am hoping that someone else will provide input on experience with that setup.

https://www.ebikes.ca/c-phaserunner.html

You want to run a controller like this that is rated for higher voltage. You probably can't do it with the stock controller. If you want to go all the way you can probably do like a 72V or 84V pack with a low current limit to stay within your current power limit while still getting assist all the way to whatever speed you desire. Keep in mind that exceeding even 52V is putting you in a place where Bafang hasn't designed the motor to operate so you may end up running into the breakdown voltage of the windings or discover that some bearings are not going to survive past a certain RPM. I have seen people hotrod the BBSHD to run those kinds of voltages though so it might be possible.