Help with spliting pack and connecting BMS

(sigh...) I need help please!
I bought a 48V20ah battery from a local ebike shop and unfortunately its too heavy... 30 lbs. So I removed the cells from the case and found 32 flat cells, 2 x 16 at 10ah. Makes sense...
http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-Liao-lifepo4-battery-3-2v_1719915740.html
It seems well built and they used copper strips to connect the cells in parallel / series configuration, I assume for efficiency. see attached pic. So there is a copper strip connecting 4 terminals, 2 brass to 2 silver and then alternating. I think the silver are positive and brass are negative? Connecting the positive lead on my voltmeter to the silver terminal and black to brass shows +3.6v. So please correct me if I'm wrong.
So, because of the way they built it, I had to dismantle the entire pack. I took 16 of the cells and alternated positive to negative back to back and cut the copper strips in half, trimmed them which I will use to connect all 16 of them in series.

Here's my questions...
1) The pack has a voltage of 57.x volts.. is this too much for a 48 volt controller? Crystalyte 4840. Should I remove a few batteries to lower the voltage?
2) The BMS has 17 balancing wires and from what I read, I can't just Willy-nilly attach any BMS wire to any battery in the row... they need to be in order so that the correct voltage at that point in the pack goes to the proper wire... am I right so far?
3) If the question above is correct: From the picture attached, I'm assuming that we start at the negative wire where it is 3.6v after the first battery, 7.2V after the second battery, etc. But how do I know which BMS wire to connect? The BMS connector has "CN1" on one end and "GND" at the other... Can I connect everything together except for the BMS wires and measure the voltage at each BMS wire before I connect it? and if so, where do I measure it to? the black wire or red wire...?
4) If each battery gets 1 BMS wire and there are 16 batteries (or less, re question 1), what do I do with the loose wires? Just tape them up?

Thanks for any feedback!
Vinny

Are your plans to make 2-10AH 48 volt batteries?
otherDoc

Hi Docnjoj,
Right now I just want to get it running with 1 only 10ah pack, but yeah I could definitely build another.

if you cut a 20Ah pack in half it will not be strong enuff for the controller you have. those prismatic cells have about 2C limit.

Thanks dnmun

the plastic case is heavy so that is why it ends up weighing so much. if you can balance the weight by using each 10Ah section in panniers or mounted on each side to help balance the load then that might help.

the wiring is straightforward. you have 17 wires for 16 channels so the first or black wire goes to the bottom of the first channel. it is the ground or B- of the battery.

each wire sequentiallly then goes to the top of #1-#16 with the red wire on top of 16.

wire up the wires first before plugging the sense wire plug into the BMS. before plugging the plug into the BMS, take your voltmeter and measure the voltage on each pin on the sense wire plug to verify the voltage increases sequentially on each pin and that none of the wires in the sense wire plug is accidentally reversed. mistakes here will destroy the BMS when you plug it in.

if you mount the two batteries on each side, you can connect them in parallel with a wire loom from one side of the bike to the other and your BMS sense wires would connect to the wiring loom and could be on either side, does not have to be in the middle.

the two main leads, B+ and B- from each pack would then be soldered together (no connectors) so the two halves would then function as one pack. if you wanna use connectors then they need to be beyond the link between the two sides.

never use connectors between the B- spot on the pack and the B- spot on the BMS. never.

HI dunmun,
its actually a steel case... heavy!
Yes, I've looked at the topeak rack/bag with panniers. I haven't quite decided yet.

I have another question... What's the usual gauge of the bms wires? they look pretty thin...

Thanks so much for you replies!
Vinny

the sense wires are usually 28AWG, 26AWG on some better ones. they only carry the balancing current so they can be tiny.

you should not need a steel case with these prismatics, but they should be held in compression.

That's great dnmun! Thanks very much for all the info!