I’m in the Market for a New Charger. I have seen a few people recommending the Quick Charge octopus charger with 6 “10amp” individual charge leads. What I have found is this
Quick Charge Multi Bank Industrial Charger MB1210x6
My questions are.
#1 is this the charger people are recommending.
#2 is installation going to be fairly straight forward.
#3 what if any functions will I loose by going with this charger Vs the other recommended chargers (ride4Fun) or Quick charge clone.
I plan on getting a Batt Six SOC meter in the future.
A parallel individual charger for each battery sounds like a great idea. I have used other Quick Charge products and had good results. They also have good customer service. You would want an interlock relay to connect the red and green wires to. The odd shape may not fit under the dash. Also, I’m not sure how the charge LED would be connected to this charger. The series chargers made by Quick Charge use a standard LED like the Zivan. It is possible this parallel charger also uses an LED.
Daniel
Daniel thanks for your reply.
A little bit behind my reasoning. The other recommended charger R4F & or Clone charger only charge at 10 or a larger Model that can charge @ 20 amps. The Multi bank charger can charge EACH battery at 10 amps. So the R4F can only provide 1.5 amps or less to each battery totaling 10 amps. One of the Multi chargers output is as much charge as the R4F chargers total output. So one of the benefit a will or should be quicker charging.
#2 a charger that only has one output can’t address or balance and entire bank. So if you have a week battery in the pack you need to first find it and then either repair or replace that battery. The Multi bank charger should fix these types of problems
Don’t know about point 1. There is only so much amperage you can put in a battery before it boils over and/or short circuits. In any event I suspect the circuits in ALL chargers except the very simplest are calibrated/limited to prevent that from happening.
I completely agree with point 2. I had my GEM’s OEM charger replaced before I bought it with a Quick Charge Corp OBX7210 (72v 10A) unit. Didn’t know about their octopus charger at the time or I’d have gone that route. My OBX7210 does NOT support the GEM charging LED but that might be an optional circuit that wasn’t ordered with the replacement charger - I’d ask. I can confirm that there is an interlock circuit which locks out the ignition when the charger is plugged in. I’d also confirm the octopus charger can be set for your battery type (FLA, GEL, AGM) as well.
Their customer service is very good. I blew out their charger when a battery shorted but they covered it under warranty and had it back to me in short order.
Al
AR: I placed the order for my Multi Bank charger today. I spoke with a guy named John @ Quick Charge, Super cool guy willing to help and answer any questions. I was told they build the multi bank chargers by order only. They don’t have any in stock laying around. Normal build time is 7-10 days.
I was able to have them add the ignition Lock out (disables the car when plugged in). I was also able to have them Add remote charge indicator lights. (The stock charger has the 6 Lights mounted on the charger itself)
Each charge bank has a LED light very similar to what’s on your dash.
that turns RED YELLOW and then Green for a fully charged battery. My charger will have 6 of these LED lights as leads to show “State Of Charge”. The 6 LED lights can be remotely located some where with in eye sight so you can see how your charge cycle is coming along or if you have a week or slow to charge battery. I can mount them in the dash or some place else. So that’s it for now the waiting game begins.
Here is a link to the charger.
Multi Bank Chargers
I got the octopus charger today. First impression is, this thing is Long! And I hope it’s going to fit. I have some Ideas on how it’s going to mount. I decided I get a Quick Charge fuel gauge. The Circuit board with the 6 LEDs is the remote SOC meter
The more I use my gem the more I can see justifying a accurate SOC meter like the BattSix. If you can’t “trust” your SOC meter then it’s going to be hard to find out what if any problems your having
Here are a few pics of the install this is was what I started with
I took all the electronics off the firewall
Then the charger was mounted on the fire wall in the same place where all the stock electronics used to mount
Then I made a new mounting plate that dropped down into the space between the new charger and the dash support
Nice fabrication, very professional! You weld aluminum too?
AR; unfortunately I couldn’t weld any of the new fire wall. It’s all either pop riveted with stainless rivets or bolted together. The reason is because if I need to take the charger out the new firewall will need to come apart. If it’s all welded together it would not pull out
Hey I finally got my charger fully installed. I decided to mount the six LDD lights In the lower dashboard section. The reason I went with this location was I felt like it was a part that would rarely be removed in general operation of the gem originally I wanted to Maui on the gray dashboard peace and thought the constant on and off could possibly Create a loose connection.
Very professional installation! Well done.
Please post your results w/ the octopus charger once you’ve had it running awhile.
P.S. What’s in the glass sitting on the dash!
And to wrap this up. If I was to do this all over again I would just install the charger in the trunk and Avoid lots of work. You could make quick disconnects so that if you needed to remove the trunk you could undo the quick disconnects.
