TSDZ2, can I use an aftermarket charger?

I recently installed a TSDZ2. It came with a fan cooled charger, which I don't like. It's bulky and shouldn't need moving parts at that power. I don't expect it to last.

Can I use an aftermarket charger? Or, could this cause problems with overcharging? If it's a smart battery with a dumb charger, I don't see an issue. The adapter for my wifi router fits, although it is only 12v 1.5A. It would take longer to charge, but at least I could carry it around on the bike.

First, basically, yes. Nothing at all to do with the motor, only your battery.

I am reasonably certain that the wifi plug MIGHT work just fine, IF you had a 12V battery.

Do you have a 12V battery?

Having a charger that is the correct voltage for your battery, AND is designed for your battery's specific chemistry, is very important.

There are at least three different voltages, any one of which might be required, for a battery labeled as "48V". Quite a few more with slight variations in the battery chemistry.

Do you know your batteries chemistry formulation? Lithium, sure, but Lithium and Iron, or Manganese, or Cobalt, or which one of multiple variations? Some have the same voltage requirements, but some are rather dramatically different.

Using the wrong charger can be a very expensive mistake, and possibly dangerous. Is that fan really that loud? Also, unless you spend a lot of money, if you want a charger to charge a reasonably powerful battery in a fairly short period of time, it is going to need a fan. Unless you really really like the smell of burning electronics and melted plastic.

Thank you, I will reply in turn:

AngryBob said:

Do you have a 12V battery?

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No, I have a 52v battery and a 750w motor.

AngryBob said:

Do you know your batteries chemistry formulation? Lithium, sure, but Lithium and Iron, or Manganese, or Cobalt, or which one of multiple variations?

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The battery is Lithium Ion.

AngryBob said:

Is that fan really that loud?

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No, the noise isn't a problem. I would prefer a charger which is more compact and solid state; because I can take it with me. IMHO a fan is liable to break in time.

AngryBob said:

if you want a charger to charge a reasonably powerful battery in a fairly short period of time, it is going to need a fan

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Let's say I want a smaller, portable charger; and the charge time is irrelevant. What do I need to look for in a charger? Does it need to be 52v to match my battery?

Yes, sort of. 54.6 would represent a full charge for your battery, assuming it is 13S. 50.4 or 58.8 are also possible. Multiples of 4.2, plus you MUST take into account Chinese math and standard advertising hype. Charging a 13S battery to only 50.4 is not horrible, but less than ideal. Charging a 14S battery to that same number is fairly bad. Charging a 12S, 50.4 battery to 58.8 is very, very bad, like GET YOUR KIDS OUT OF THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW type of bad. Yes, it needs to match the battery voltage, and no, you cannot depend on sales literature to specify.

One reason this is important is that balancing, or equalizing of all cells in the pack, with almost all systems, only takes place at full pack voltage, and not doing this for prolonged periods of time can lead to very bad results. A fried or worthless expensive battery pack is not at all the worst thing that can happen.

All of the batteries I described are Lithium Ion. Including some that have a very different per-cell charge than 4.2. But, that is likely what you have and I'm not the one who might be in danger, so we'll just go with that.

Bear in mind that your existing charger may not be correctly specced for your pack, so measuring its output may not provide a certain answer. No that should not happen, but has been reported on multiple occasions.

Grin has the Satiator for just over $200. Designed to travel on a bike, no fan, multiple charge profiles, like 80 and 90 percent charge, useful for prolonging battery life. Hi-quality components and capable of rapid charging.

SFAIK, that is the only one designed for the purpose at that voltage level.

I have seen some using laptop-style power supplies, to be fanless means low amperage, like 2 or less, so a 20 amp battery takes over 10 hours to charge, and these are NOT meant to be taken on a bike. If you are charging at work, just get a second standard charger and leaved it there.

Thanks for the advice. It will be easier to understand once I know what spec my charger & battery are:

Battery: 52v, 10Ah
Charger: 52v, 2A

This is on a label with a list of possible numbers and a red dot beside the numbers I quoted here. I bought it from AliExpress.

AngryBob said:

Charging a 13S battery to only 50.4 is not horrible, but less than ideal. Charging a 14S battery to that same number is fairly bad.

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Is there a simple way of telling which of these the battery is? Hook up a multimeter? I would rather go through the hassle now and know what I'm dealing with. (The AliExpress profile says 14S for the 52v spec.)

AngryBob said:

One reason this is important is that balancing, or equalizing of all cells in the pack, with almost all systems, only takes place at full pack voltage, and not doing this for prolonged periods of time can lead to very bad results.

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There must be a Battery Management System to organise this. Is this firmware in the battery?

AngryBob said:

I have seen some using laptop-style power supplies, to be fanless means low amperage, like 2 or less, so a 20 amp battery takes over 10 hours to charge, and these are NOT meant to be taken on a bike.

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When you put it that way, yes speed does matter! I have a 10Ah battery. Suppose I pair that with my wifi adapter (1.5A), it takes 7h30 to charge. In whatever case I need to use a charger kept on the bike, 7h30 will be far too long. Not that I'm ready to spend $200 on the Satiator either, though.

The labels and markings are fairly close to meaningless, you simply cannot trust them for accuracy.
They are likely in the ballpark, but marked as what they are, and being what you should have,
who knows.

Yes, the BMS is a circuit board mounted in the battery. Almost all, and all the cheap ones, do not start to equalize charge until maximum charge voltage is reached. An out of balance battery will keep getting worse until eventually something bad happens. Simply not working any more is the best outcome of those possible.

A multimeter MIGHT tell you what you have, IF repeat IF the battery is fully charged and IF repeat IF you have the correct charger and IF repeat IF that charger is functioning correctly. Quality control is just not a Chinese specialty. Cheapness is. 14 times 4.2 is 58.8. 13 times 4.0 would equal 52. Which do you have? It's a crapshoot. What you can do is partially open the case,The BMS is usually mounted on one end and partially outside the inner battery cover, and take a photo of the BMS board, there while be a multipin connector with a number of thin wires running to it, one for each series string and, I THINK, one more. This is getting a bit out of my area, post the photo and others can confirm. SFAIK, 15 wires means 14S, etc., but this needs to be verified. Typically one black and 14 white, but, again, Chinese.

Bear in mind charging times are approximate and assume complete efficiency, which is not happening. also the full charge amperage is not delivered the whole time. Add about one third for real-time estimate. That is also assuming totally dead battery which you should never, ever do. Do not go below 20 percent remaining, 30 is better. Also better is do not charge over 90 percent, especially if not riding right away. Battery will live much, much longer. Em3EV is a reputable vendor who has good chargers with an 80 and 90 percent charging switch available. Highly recommended. If they spec a voltage, you will get that voltage. Grin also has standard chargers. These are not meant for transport. They will likely work OK, taken on the bike, and probably more than once. Five days a week for two years, I would not bet on that, at all. Maybe if you have really smooth roads and really good suspension and a really good waterproof bag, I would still not transport my only charger.

Some types of batteries, most especially but not exclusively cheap ones, should not be charged at a high amp rate.

I should add that if you open the battery enough to get a picture of the cell markings, these can be used to determine the relative quality of the cells you have, whether name brand units or generic, chinese cells. Might not be good news, but info you do not yet have is always good info.

Just a cautionary comment..
Incorrect charging methodology can result in houses being burned and lives put at risk.
Judging from the OPs questions and comments, i would strongly advise against encouraging changes to the charging set up, without detailed , “hands on “ assistance.

Fans keep chargers cool. If you want a charger that can travel get one of these.

https://www.ebikes.ca/product-info/cycle-satiator.html

:wink:

If you're looking for a weatherproof and vibration proof bike mountable charger then either the Cycle Satiator (which is programmable for whatever battery pack you have or get in the future, and you can setup different charge profiles, etc), or a Meanwell LED PSU of the HLG series.

They'll both be the same size and close to the same weight for the same power output (around 300w for the Satiator).

I have a Meanwell HLG-600H-54A mounted on the SB Cruiser trike, adjusted to 57.8v to charge my 14s 40Ah pack at 12A.

A 52V battery is a 14s pack, and is 52v average, about 58v fully charged, close to 48v empty.

A 48V battery is a 13s pack, and is 48v average, about 54v fully charged, close to 44v empty.

Use a voltmeter to check what voltage your battery actually is when fully charged, to know what voltage charger to get (or to set a programmable or adjustable charger to).

Either one can be charged by either the Satiator or the HLG series.

If it's a cheap 10Ah pack, 2A charge rate is best, but you are probably safe enough charging it at up to 3A, maybe up to 5A (but that depends on the cells in it and how good they are, as to how taht affects it's lifespan). For a generic pack of unknown cells, I'd personally stick with 2 or 3A at most. 2A is going to be over 5 hours to charge, just like it is right now. 3A is going to be around 4 or more.

Balancing (which happens after charging is done) can take a lot longer, and is dependent on the BMS--some take hours to days to balance, if the pack is badly out of balance, which usually only happens after deep discharge (running to empty).

If you just want a 3A charge rate max, you can use the Meanwell HLG-150H-54A, which will be about half the size of the Satiator, and weigh less. To adjust the charging current and voltage you'd need a voltmeter and current meter, a cheap harbor freight multimeter will do. Then there are two little adjsutment pots inside the HLG under little rubber caps (put those back after adjsuting), one for voltage, one for current.

Some possible places to buy; I'm sure there's lots more.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Meanwell+HLG-150H-54A&source=lnms&tbm=shop


None of these chargers are likely to have the same plug that your present charger has, so you may have to remove the plug from your present charger and move it over to the new one. Or if you are not using the wifi power adapter (whcih cannot be used as a charger) and it's plug does correclty fit the battery socket, you could remove it's plug and put it on the new charger. To do this, you first have to determine which part of the plug is positive, and which is negative, on your oriignal charger, and then figure out which wire on the plug's cable goes to whcih of those. Then you have to connect the plug's wires to teh new charger's wires with that correct polarity. (if it's wrong, it could damage the charger, or the BMS, or both, or potentially set the battery on fire, though that's unlikely).

The Cycle Satiator has an option for a compatible plug right on the product page; just order that with the Satiator and you're set.

Platypus - First, if Amber says one thing, and I say something else, you listen to HIM, and not me, OK?

There are a dozen or so such people here and he is in my top 3. Practical experience. Also, please make note of his sig line.

I should have mentioned Meanwells as they are very highly regarded however I am not well versed on their requirements and technical differences.

However, note something - if 14S is labeled as 52V, and 13S as 48V, then how is 12S labeled? SFAIK the same as 13S. Also, mislabeled and mismatched batteries and chargers are maybe not "Common" as in every third one, but compared to something that should never happen, yes. One out of ten or twenty might be a decent ballpark.

Remember that due to the user paying very high shipping costs, most Chinese vendors are simply not concerned whatsoever with warranty return issues.

I think Grin sells just pigtails for charger connections, meaning you just have to strip and connect two wires, not the connector itself. The Vruzend guy also had some pigtail connectors, as well. You do need to correctly identify pos and neg wires, and depending on color coding is, IMO, not good enough.

The guy who owns Grin is also the sponsor for this website, which is not plastered everywhere with ads and shills. Dwell on that for a moment. He is also a tremendous developmental asset to the hobby in general.

Also, I agree with the statement made that incorrect charging procedure can be extremely dangerous, if you have not seen any battery fire vids and read the stories, take some time and seek them out. They go from hot to smoke to multiple roaring unstoppable blowtorches in seconds.

One of those stories is from either Amberwolf or Dogman Dan, another guy in that top 3 list. Garage totally destroyed.

AngryBob said:

However, note something - if 14S is labeled as 52V, and 13S as 48V, then how is 12S labeled? SFAIK the same as 13S.

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I'm not all that familiar with everything that's out there, but based on what I've read here I don't know of many (any?) commercially available 12s ebike batteries, *except* for RC LiPo. Those are usually marked as 44v packs, or are just 2x 22v connected in series.

There probably are toolpacks that people use as ebike batteries that are 12s, and what they call those will vary depending on the brand--some marketers will give the fully charged voltage just so they "sound better" than what others have.

Also, mislabeled and mismatched batteries and chargers are maybe not "Common" as in every third one, but compared to something that should never happen, yes. One out of ten or twenty might be a decent ballpark.

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Hopefully it's a lot less than that by at least two or three orders of magnitude (or there could be a lot of fires), but yes, it has certainly happened. :/

But the average inexperienced user of these things is goign to have to trust that the stuff that came together is supposed to have come together and is correctly matched, because it may actually be more dangerous for them to open the battery up to measure things or count cells, wires, etc.; there've been a few threads over the years where someone messed up the battery much worse than it started out as, becuase they didn't know what they were doing, didn't ask before doing things (or know that they should), and didn't listen fully to advice....

I think Grin sells just pigtails for charger connections, meaning you just have to strip and connect two wires, not the connector itself.

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They don't have them listed on the website
https://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/connectors.html
but they may still have them avaialble.

They do have the premade adapters for the Satiator for the several most common battery connectors.
https://www.ebikes.ca/shop/electric-bicycle-parts/charger-accessories.html

One of those stories is from either Amberwolf or Dogman Dan, another guy in that top 3 list. Garage totally destroyed.

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Was Dogman...my housefire was not caused by a battery or ebike related stuff. It was also both not as bad regarding the house, and much worse regarding loss of life.

So soldering the right connector onto a USB cord, then trying to charge the battery from the laptop isn't advisable??

Doing that with a single cell and constant monitoring, particularly with a cell at zero cost, would be if nothing else informationally useful.

E-HP said:

So soldering the right connector onto a USB cord, then trying to charge the battery from the laptop isn't advisable??

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I realize you're being facetious, but just in case someone comes along that doesn't understand:

the USB port would only be able to output 5v, and the battery needs much more than that to charge.

Most likely, the USB port on the device the battery is plugged into would be damaged by the excess voltage (around 10x what the port is designed for) causing current flow *from* the battery back into the device. Potentially, depending on the device design, the device itself could be destroyed, and depending on the failure mode, could catch fire.

amberwolf said:

Most likely, the USB port on the device the battery is plugged into would be damaged by the excess voltage (around 10x what the port is designed for) causing current flow *from* the battery back into the device. Potentially, depending on the device design, the device itself could be destroyed, and depending on the failure mode, could catch fire.

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Yes, similar to the OP's proposed use of a 12 VDC power adapter to charge a 52 volt battery since the cord fits. I look at the last paragraph of the OP's last post from a couple of days ago, and it appears that the fundamentals of voltage may not have been clear. May be too late.

"When you put it that way, yes speed does matter! I have a 10Ah battery. Suppose I pair that with my wifi adapter (1.5A), it takes 7h30 to charge. In whatever case I need to use a charger kept on the bike, 7h30 will be far too long. Not that I'm ready to spend $200 on the Satiator either, though."

Thanks to all. That's a lot of information; more than I can process at the minute.

For now:
- I will stick to one charger only.
- I will keep my journeys short enough to comfortably make a round trip on one charge. If I need another charger, I'll look into it then.
- I can't afford a Satiator - yet. Looks like an amazing piece of kit, though.

It is important to know how many batteries and what configuration your battery pack is. Does your bms have a bluetooth setup?
Is your battery configuration listed on the manufactures web site?

If not, then opening the battery might be the only way to find out.

A aftermarket charger that charges to the same voltage as your pack is designed for is fine. If you have a place that you normally go to, like a place of work, leaving it there and charging while at work is fine. If you want to take one with you then put it in a backpack so it does not get bounce around a lot. When chargers are transported around a lot the solder joints can get broken by the constant movement. The heavy components seem to break free first.

Have you checked your battery pack voltage with a digital multi meter when it is fresh off the charger? Is it truly 52v?
The best way to do that is to connect to the positive and negative leads of the battery while the battery is fully charged and still connected to the charger. If you can get to a place on your charger or battery that allows you to test the terminal voltage of the charge, that will give you the best idea of what your charger is doing. Just be careful not to short anything :wink:

You could also get a Cycle Analyst, they will tell you all kind of good stuff. If it is out of your budget, another way to check what is going on is with an RC watt meter. They don't cost much on eBay. The ones that cost a little more seem to be a bit more accurate.

Your next assignment is to find all the specs about your battery and charger you can so you know how far you can ride, and how fast you can charge with a faster charger.

Also, post the link of where you bought the charger, it could help us see what you have. Also post some pictures of your setup. Make sure they are in good focus and the file size of each picture is under 512k so you can post it.