Recently Gifted an old PL250 BionX system

As mentioned above I was recently given a PL250 BionX HubMotor in a 28” Wheel, a dead teardrop battery pack and all the bits and G2 display. Being a retired Electronics Tech I was able to fire up the motor and test before messing with the dead battery using a bench power supply with the wheel mounted in a vice. It worked as expected. The battery hadn’t been charged for a few years and had been in storage, reading of voltage was zero !! Obviously a ‘smart charger’ refused to charge it.....so I connected it to my bench current controlled supply and monitored the temperature carefully for 2 hours......by that time the pack had come up to a suitable level to return it to the smart charger.......after an overnight charge the pack had come up to the expected full level.
I looked around and purchased a heavy duty alloy mountain bike frame and mounted the bits and she runs like a charm !!
The other day I mentioned my progress to the original owner and was surprised to find out he had put 35,000 km on that old motor / battery kit !! Not too shabby me thinks ! Dave (va7db) Vancouver Canada

Welcome to the forum.

Sounds like an awesome find. Despite the hate Bionx gets for their locked down proprietary systems, they did have one of the best integration of pedelec systems ever. Having the strain gauge on the axle sensing the torque from the sprocket directly works far better than just about any other system made.

You may want to keep a close eye on that battery. And by close eye, I mean sit with it holding a fire extinguisher. Lithium cells suffer physical damage when their voltage drops below their minimum. 2.5 volts for most Lithium cells, though it might be 2.0 volts for those cells. Once that damage is done, a fire during or after charging becomes likely. it doesn't need to be the first time, or the third, or the thirtieth.

IIRC, the brain on the PL250 is proprietary and the controller must see it present to activate. So replacing the battery is a problem. However, you're an E.T., so swapping the cells for new ones should be nothing more than an afternoon project.

Agreed my friend, It ran fine on the bench but the throttle and brake cut-off are intermittent on the bike, I just located the issue, the grounds of both cables are torn, opened up the throttle unit and found no connection to either plugs, A little job for this afternoon

You might be interested in using a homemade battery or one from a manufacturer other than BionX. This thread has a bit of info about how I did that on an older BionX I2C kit, while others have done it similarly on Canbus BionX systems.

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=100791

Have fun with your new ride!