It was suggested to me by vendor…I bought the 14 modules and vendor also sold the bms wired for 7 modules each.
They will balance each module discretly, but not globally. IMO
How do they control the charger?
Very strange. Do you mind telling me who the vendor is. Might explain a lot.
Don’t think they control the charger but the charge goes through the BMS so I assume the BMS controls each battery in the modules. www.techdirectclub.com
Nice. I am looking to do the same thing. Do you have a parts list or possibly be in the mid Atlantic states. I would like to see it. Thanks
I am interested in converting a hustler Zeon to lithium. Can you help me with this conversion? I would love to know what parts to source from where. I am a 30+ year European car mechanic so I am mechanically inclined but not with lithium batteries.
I can give you some basic info. First of all, steer clear of any aluminum cased cells. I had done a couple with Ford fusion batteries that are aluminum cased and after 2-3 years they corrode and fail. Instead, choose a lithium polymer cell. The ideal ones in
the US are probably Nissan Leaf cells. Preferred years would be 2013 and newer. Easy to find on ebay. You will want 14 cells in series. The Nissan cells are configured in either 2 or 4 in series, depending on year. So 7 of the 2013-2016 year batteries is ideal.
is an auction for reference. Get 7 of those and initially charge them to match exactly in voltage down to .001v. Then wire them in series. I use copper bar 1"x .125" and make bus bars with that. Once you have the cells you will see you need some 1/4" all thread
to bolt them together. Once bolted together and wired in series, install and secure in the mower as you see fit. I suggest wrapping them in clear vinyl and using high quality tape to seal the whole thing (HVAC hardcast tape is ideal).
That’s basically it. It fits really easy in the mower and weighs much less. This setup will yield about 1.5 hours of mowing time. For me this is enough but you could double the time with 14 batteries wired in series-parallel.
Charging: Absolute limit is 58.8v. (4.2 volts per cell) Preferred is 57.4v (4.1 VPC) for long life. Stock charger gets to about 58v. (pro tip- store the mower in a partially discharged state and charge the battery right before you use it, adds much battery
life) Low voltage cutoff is 2.5 VPC absolute minimum. The mower cuts off at about 2.6 VPC, so that’s good. Just don’t try and restart it to drive it back to the charger if you let it get that low. Charge it where it died.
maintenance: check cell voltages every 5-10 charges to make sure they are staying in balance. Only an issue if you have mismatched cells. A safety measure would be to use a high current balancer such as this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lithium-Battery-Balance-Board-1-5A-Active-Balancer-Lifepo4-Lipo-Li-ion-Equalizer/192730656492 in the
3.7v variety.
problems: the stock meter is no longer any good at telling you remaining battery capacity. sometimes it wont read full when they are, and empty is usually about 3 bars down from full. best scenario is to replace with a columb counter meter such as the victron
BVM-600.
Good luck,
Pat
Thanks a lot for all that info.
I am glad to hear you get 1.5 hrs on only 7 cells. That is more than enough for what I am mowing.
How long does it take to charge with the stock charger? I was thinking of doing a smart outlet and putting it on a timer so maybe after I use it later that night I could charge it for a period of time to partial charge it and then trigger the charger the night before I plan to mow. Does that sound like a good idea? I plan to use a BSM to manage them. They are relatively inexpensive and would add some piece of mind. I have been looking at the tech-direct stuff. I like the printed circuit buss bars with the pin out for the connections to monitor the cells. I appreciate a clean install. One thing I have not got a answer to is does the display go to sleep and what it’s currant draw is while asleep or when not in use. Can you have a switched power connection to it to turn it on with the ignition switch. It seems like sleep would be nice so when the charger came on it would just wake up and manage the charge. Do you have another bsm you would recommend looking at?
Most of the cells that have listed say they are 70+% capacity is that good enough I don’t want to buy new batteries in a year or two. I want to do it right the first time.
Thanks
Tioga
70% is end of life IMO. Are these some of the recalled Leaf cells? Most anything else will test >100%.
Thanks. I found someone selling some that are tested a 97%. How many amps does this mower draw? Being a mechanic I am so used to 12v systems and their current draw I am not sure at 48v what it takes to run this mower. What currant capability should the bsm have. Are their iOS compatible BSM units out there? I want a high quality BSM and not sure which one to get.
Hello Pat, Getting the Zeon 48v mower ready for 2020 and I came across your post here describing the conversion to Li NMC Leaf batteries.
Question: When you developed your Leaf battery stack, what gauge wire did you use coming from the Leaf’s battery buss for the Positive & Negative?
Hi Mikbee, I’m converting my Zeon this year to the Li NMC stack and looking at your photo, what size wire do you have coming from your Leaf stack bus bar for the Positive & Negative wires?
Thanks - Also, how did your conversion work last year?
Where did you find %97 batteries? All the ones I see on ebay are %70 or less…
Also have the Zeon in need of batteries, not seeing much in the way of leaf batteries on ebay. Any thoughts on how the Fiat 500e 6S 24v 1.4kWh Lithium Ion Battery would work?
They are 64ah so 2 in series might be little short on run capacity, so perhaps 4 as 2p+2s for 128ah or 3 with 2p + 1s would give 96ah.
If went with 2 or 4 is it best to put BMS on each battery?
I don’t know. I was going to suggest you go to techdirectclub.com, which is where I got mine, but I see they are out…I had 2 packs that fit with 2 bms as in the pics I showed. The more you can fit in the better. It looks like a bunch of individual Nissan Leaf Battery Modules available on ebay though.