Is there a company that can rebuild a battery into a new configuration?

kiltedcelt

100 W
Joined
Aug 19, 2015
Messages
158
Location
Chicago, IL USA
Specifically what I have is a an EM3EV triangle pack that I purchased back in probably mid-2016 if I had to guess. It actually doesn't have a lot of use on it despite being that old. In fact, the 2 1/2 years it's not been in use at all and all I have done is regularly put a charger on it at the 90% setting to make sure it stays in a healthy state of "storage charge." However, the issue is this - I don't have any "regular" bikes anymore. I ride a recumbent trike and without going through a LOT of trouble to fabricate a hard case and mount, I don't have any easy way to mount the battery to the trike. I can put a crappy case on top of the rear rack and stick the battery in there, but that's just a sorry-ass design, and not really that great for weight distribution, not to mention I use my trike to commute on and frequently carry a lot of groceries and I just don't want a bunch (15 pounds), of extra weight on the top of the rear rack.

The trike is a Sunseeker Eco-Tad SX, and Utah Trikes makes a pretty nice custom battery mount that will accept typical "shark" style batteries and mounts to the chainstays. I've been seriously considering just buying another EM3EV jumbo shark battery, as they're now cheaper than they were back when I bought this triangle pack (which is 52v 18Ah), and if it installs easily - well great! However, I have this other battery that has nice quality Samsung cells in it and ideally, if it's even worth it, I'd rather see if there is a way to send it somewhere and have the battery disassembled and maybe rebuilt into new configuration like another jumbo shark case. The other alternative is to sell it used locally in the Chicago/northern Illinois area, but again - a used battery without stats on number of charge cycles, etc. ? Do people even buy batteries like that? I mean it literally has probably been charged maybe less than 50 times since I bought it. It had the ability to give me as much as 100 miles of range which meant it would get charged maybe once a week.
It's just such an awkward form factor for anything other than stuffing in a padded bag in the main triangle of a regular bike. SO NOT EASY to figure out a way to mount it on the trike!
 
A local pack builder person maybe if you ask around, but not companies, too much liability
 
HiC Patrick Duggan

There are several.
 

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The problem is how are you going to get the battery to them. Federal regulations (as well as international regulations) make it darn near impossible for an individual to legally ship a Lithium Ion battery of any any significant size. Thus one is limited to local vendors.
 
LewTwo said:
The problem is how are you going to get the battery to them. Federal regulations (as well as international regulations) make it darn near impossible for an individual to legally ship a Lithium Ion battery of any any significant size. Thus one is limited to local vendors.

There are several vendors nationally shipping and receiving rebuilds. Batteries are properly labeled and shipped ground service for rebuilds daily. Don’t ship a damaged battery. Be certain to ship ground UPS DHL or FEDEX. Make sure your shipment is properly labeled. It’s against regulations to ship USPS.
 
The problem is the cells are used and over 6 years old . Is best to use the pack as is and buy a new pack as the em3ev pack was never made to be taken apart. And may easily damage some cells. Only bolt together packs can be easily rearranged. Money better spent.
 
:bigthumb:
999zip999 said:
The problem is the cells are used and over 6 years old . Is best to use the pack as is and buy a new pack as the em3ev pack was never made to be taken apart. And may easily damage some cells. Only bolt together packs can be easily rearranged. Money better spent.
 
I want to say the pack is something like 18 Ah? That's what I remember. The more I thought about, the more it just seems like making it work as-is, is currently the best option. Use it until it's used-up and buy a new pack. It's just going to be a LOT more hassle trying to devise and fabricate a case and mount than just buying a new battery altogether.
 
52V18AH. So that could be a 14x6 matrix, using Samsung 30Q's. which are a 3AH cell rated 10-15A, The cells are from 2016. So 84 cells. Are they even worth a dollar each? Just thinking out loud. Maybe, A year ago, I bought Samsung 30Q's for a dollar each. They were brand new, but quite old. I have no idea how old but given that new cells are usually 5.99, they must have been old. They did test very well, and I made a battery that says the cells are giving 90% of rated capacity, which is good, in my opinion.

A commercial refurb guy isn't going to bother harvesting those cells to re-use. It's too much labor to harvest the cells. You have to pull off the welds and then test them. The shop will use new cells.

Best bet is to sell it to someone that needs a triangle battery and maybe get $150-200 for it? EM2EV might have some name recognition.
 
The thing that makes me wonder is what the performance of this battery is going to be once I start using it again. It's effectively been at an 80-90 percent storage charge for nearly two years now. When I fired up my BBSHD a few times recently as I'm installing it on this new trike, plugging in the battery shows it still has a 58v charge so I'm guessing it'll be fine. I let a 36v battery I had go down to a low enough charge (BMS draining it), that it would no longer charge up. I ended up throwing that battery away even though I'd planned on using it as the power supply for an emergency powerbank device I was building. I guess the worst thing that happens is that I find that the cells are degrading and the battery will deplete faster or something. If I can swing buying a new battery from EM3EV then maybe I'll go that route. Although, I've been seeing these videos from Grin showing the new battery modules that they're building and honestly, I think the modular design of those is WAY better than buying something like a Shark case battery. Also, getting servicing for a single module for a battery is going to be a lot easier since you'll be able to ship those single modules back to Grin, whereas sending a whole giant Shark battery back to EM3EV in China, or even trying to ship one back across the country to Luna is going to be next to impossible. I'm just thinking still to use the battery and cross my fingers that it still works fine, or at least well enough for me to continue to use it until these new modular batteries are available from Grin.
 
kiltedcelt said:
It's effectively been at an 80-90 percent storage charge for nearly two years now. When I fired up my BBSHD a few times recently as I'm installing it on this new trike, plugging in the battery shows it still has a 58v charge so I'm guessing it'll be fine.
Just curious:

If it's a 14s pack with 4.2v/cell full charge, then 58.8v is full pack voltage. I'm sometimes terrible with math, but if it's now at 58(.0?)v, and if it has a 42v empty voltage (3v/cell) then it's at 58-42v / 58.8-42v = 95.2% charge. (a simpler but less accurate calculation of just 58/58.8v gives over 98.6% full).

What process/equipment was used to calculate and give it the storage charge originally?


Regarding using hte existing pack on the new system, if you can post a pic of your physical setup as you will be riding it, it may give us ideas for mountings you could use for the existing pack.

If it is this trike (found via google image search on the name in the first post), my first guess of a spot for it is behind the seat in front of the wheel, but I don't know the dimensions of the pack for sure, or the space available there. I've attached an image of an EM3EV triangle pack with dimensions found in a google search, if they are correct we can use those.
14S9P-Triangle-with-Dims[1].jpg
ECO-TAD-SX-670105-blue-side-view-Sun-Seeker-Recumbents[1].jpg
 
Amberwolf - When I first got the battery I almost always charged it to 100 percent to get the maximum range available and even though I knew that charging to 80 or 90 percent would give longer life via more recharge cycles. I justified that with logic that even though I was charging to 100 percent I was only doing it once per week which meant I'd get plenty of recharge cycles using it on my daily commuter before I needed to replace it. Also, I intended to charge it at only 80 percent, and my EM3EV charger will basically do 100 percent or 80 percent according to documentation I've seen and it has a High/Low switch for charge mode, but basically that never materialized until I stopped using it and wanted it in the best state for storage (long-term). I had been charging it to 100 percent, but then when I wasn't using it during the pandemic lock-down and afterwards, I started setting the charger to the Low setting knowing that was better for long term storage. Currently the voltage reads at about 57v.

The image of the battery you found is indeed what my triangle pack looks like, and the trike is the same as my model - albeit mine has been upgraded with the the machined extensions that allow for a 26" rear wheel and I've rebuilt the front wheels around 24" rims. Utah Trikes sells a custom version of that trike that is part of their UT Custom "Annihilator" series where they take basic model trikes and upgrade the wheels and other components beyond the stripped-down stock configuration. My trike is following their Eco-Tad Annihilator format, but my component choice is entirely my own. Not totally relevant to this discussion, but my setup has my Rohloff hub as the drivetrain, with the BBSHD in the front with custom Luna chainring mount and a 52t chainring on the front and a 16t on the Rohloff. Additionally, 180mm rotors on the front hooked up to Paul Components Klamper disc brakes. About the only stock thing on the trike is the frame, seat, and steering.

Utah Trikes does make a battery mount for the Eco-Tad, but it's designed to bolt onto the chainstays of the frame and the battery mounting shelf extends out from those machined clamps that wrap around the chain stay. I use a couple of large Ortlieb recumbent panniers on a Blackburn Outpost rear rack though, and the way they hang on the frame means I can't use the Utah battery mount because the pannier protrudes right down over the chainstay on both sides. I have been thinking the battery could be mounted not to the chainstay, but directly to the side of the main frame behind the seat. Obviously having the battery with the pointy end facing forwards is the most compact way of fitting it to the frame. Additionally, I can't leave the battery in my bike room and frankly, there's nowhere down there to charge it anyway, so I have to be able to carry the battery up to my apartment where I can charge it. Also, it's just less likely to be stolen if it's kept in my apartment. I take a chance leaving the trike in the bike room anyway, especially with the Rohloff, but I think anyone that has ever stolen a bike wheel or even a whole bike from the bike room was only doing so because the owners did a crap job of locking up. Also, I seriously doubt anyone looking at all the crappy bikes in the bike room is going to know what a Rohloff hub is to begin with. Even then, it's locked to a support column in the basement with the heaviest Kryptonite chain I own.

Enough about that though. My idea so far for mounting this has been to buy 3/16" thick aluminum angle stock from McMaster-Carr along with some other aluminum angle pieces and square shaped U-bolts to affix a 4"x4" section of angle to the frame of the trike - one leg of the angle against the frame and the other extending out like an L-shaped shelf to set the battery on. The battery itself needs to be encased in something more durable than the shrink wrap, so the idea there is to build a plastic case around it using some 3/16" thick HDPE material I have that is called "Starboard." Starboard is UV and salt resistant so probably the most durable plastic material for all-weather. The other thought is to build a metal battery case attached to the frame mount and have a hinged, locking door and simply pull the battery in and out as needed. I had a setup like this built into the main frame triangle of a Surly Troll I used to have and it worked *pretty well* for holding this triangle pack, but some of the limitations were that it was difficult to build the locking door and the locks I used were never going to be secure for any longterm security. Also, the entire case had to be considerably bigger than the battery to allow me to have the locking door and also be able to remove the battery easily.

For this latest version I was considering building a somewhat tight-fitting case around the battery and having something like an enlarged foot section that would somehow slot into/onto the shelf mount attached to the trike frame. Somehow I'd have the locking/securing mechanism that holds the battery (via that enlarged foot) be the part that somehow can be locked to the frame bracket. This "foot" could be as simple as an extension fore and aft of the longest length of the battery case and at the front it could slide through a slot of some sort and at the back there might be some kind of corresponding tab or something or maybe something as simple as a hole and a protected shackle padlock or something similar could secure the back portion of the foot/tab. It's probably all pretty difficult to visualize just from words, but suffice it to say it's a non-trivial amount of fabrication and buying materials to get something to make it all work, when just buying a damn battery and mount would honestly be the easier (if more expensive), option.
 
If they are good cells. they'r'e probably going to give you 14-15AH if it was 18 originally. . I say that because I bought a 39 cell 52V Dolphin pack from Luna in 2015. Samsung 30Q's. It was used a lot the first 3 years, charged/stored at 100%.

It runs my fat tire bike, so it gets very little use the past 3 years. I recently ran a 3A load test, drained it down to 42V, and the cells are at 2.6Ah, which would suggest 7Ah riding at 15 mph.
 
Good numbers doc :bigthumb:
 
Specifically what I have is a an EM3EV triangle pack that I purchased back in probably mid-2016 if I had to guess. It actually doesn't have a lot of use on it despite being that old. In fact, the 2 1/2 years it's not been in use at all and all I have done is regularly put a charger on it at the 90% setting to make sure it stays in a healthy state of "storage charge." However, the issue is this - I don't have any "regular" bikes anymore. I ride a recumbent trike and without going through a LOT of trouble to fabricate a hard case and mount, I don't have any easy way to mount the battery to the trike. I can put a crappy case on top of the rear rack and stick the battery in there, but that's just a sorry-ass design, and not really that great for weight distribution, not to mention I use my trike to commute on and frequently carry a lot of groceries and I just don't want a bunch (15 pounds), of extra weight on the top of the rear rack.

The trike is a Sunseeker Eco-Tad SX, and Utah Trikes makes a pretty nice custom battery mount that will accept typical "shark" style batteries and mounts to the chainstays. I've been seriously considering just buying another EM3EV jumbo shark battery, as they're now cheaper than they were back when I bought this triangle pack (which is 52v 18Ah), and if it installs easily - well great! However, I have this other battery that has nice quality Samsung cells in it and ideally, if it's even worth it, I'd rather see if there is a way to send it somewhere and have the battery disassembled and maybe rebuilt into new configuration like another jumbo shark case. The other alternative is to sell it used locally in the Chicago/northern Illinois area, but again - a used battery without stats on number of charge cycles, etc. ? Do people even buy batteries like that? I mean it literally has probably been charged maybe less than 50 times since I bought it. It had the ability to give me as much as 100 miles of range which meant it would get charged maybe once a week.
It's just such an awkward form factor for anything other than stuffing in a padded bag in the main triangle of a regular bike. SO NOT EASY to figure out a way to mount it on the trike!
Mail it to AW, or one of the other E-wizards on here? That's what I would do. I just started building batteries and can't afford to pay for the job. I will DIY
 
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