# Darn!



## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

I don’t really like to share my problems but I figured this would give you something to look at for a few seconds. The pack is 144V of 8V Trojan batteries. They just turned five and a half years old. I was hoping to get through the summer with them before possibly getting new ones. I had twisted the lug shown about a year ago and repaired it. I checked it about two months ago and it still seemed tight.  I make my daily run to the post office early and traffic is usually pretty light. Wouldn’t you know the day the thing decides to give me grief would be the day after the 4th of July and I get a late start and town is packed with tourist and traffic. I had just stopped for some tourons Jwalking in front of me and I stepped on the peddle and got nothing but a soft PFSST. There was that split second of WTH? I was heading up hill and luckily there was no one behind me so I rolled back down a few feet into a miraculously empty parking space. I had just washed and cleaned out the car and forgot to put my small took kit back behind the seat… “My Kingdom for a horse”… There I sat for the want of a 9/16 end wrench. Had to call my son to brave the traffic and run a wrench to me. Luckily the parking spot I rolled into still had 45 minutes on the meter. Asked a passing local cop if he had any tools but he said he was on a call so I waited for my son. He showed up I bypassed the crapped out battery and headed home on 136 Volts. The parking meter hade 2 minutes left as I pulled away from the curb. I had already driven 10 miles and was surprised that the car still responded fairly well on 136 volts of old batteries. I stopped at the NAPA store on the way home and there was the cop and a back up with some guy spread eagle against the cop car. I will have to wait till Monday to get the full story on that episode. It made my day not look so bad after all.  All in all right after the initial meltdown I was blessed with a series of small  lucky breaks.


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## quickcharge (Aug 15, 2009)

Feel good that you squeezed every bit of life out of those batteries. 5 1/2 years is very rare.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

I got a close to four years on each of my previous two packs. I got new ones because the old ones had dust on them.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

quickcharge said:


> Feel good that you squeezed every bit of life out of those batteries. 5 1/2 years is very rare.


More common than you would think. Most long term FLA users get fairly long life with staying inside tight charge discharge cycles and quality maintenance. We just don't advertise this much because of all the flamers saying it is impossible.

Btw. That is why the craftsman 1/2 - 9/16 combo wrench NEVER leaves the glovebox


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

piotrsko said:


> More common than you would think. Most long term FLA users get fairly long life with staying inside tight charge discharge cycles and quality maintenance. We just don't advertise this much because of all the flamers saying it is impossible.
> 
> Btw. That is why the craftsman 1/2 - 9/16 combo wrench NEVER leaves the glovebox


Thanks Piotrsko, Yep That tool kit is back in place with a note on it reminding me to not touch it except in case of need. I got a new pack of batteries today and made a pledge that the next ones will be Lithium or what ever is out there in the next three or four years if I am still alive. I really contemplated it this time but have had a bit of bad luck heath wise this last month and am still a little wobbly so not in the mood to even think about redoing the suspension and alignment plus have the chargers reconfigured. Just going the twenty miles and back getting the batteries and then installing them with the help of my son put me down for a short nap. Darn! I quit taking naps when I was two years old! Well I just put fifty bucks in the kitty towards the next pack. Meow!


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

It's possible (although unlikely) that the other batteries may yet have some useful life in them, but 5 years is pretty good. I would be interested in doing some extensive testing on the remaining batteries to see if such a demise might be predicted. I think a lot might be determined by doing a load test on each of them to calculate ESR, and a charge/discharge cycle to estimate the capacity. This could be built into a BMS designed for lead-acid batteries, and could be done automatically before each charge cycle or according to a less frequent schedule.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

PStechPaul said:


> It's possible (although unlikely) that the other batteries may yet have some useful life in them, but 5 years is pretty good. I would be interested in doing some extensive testing on the remaining batteries to see if such a demise might be predicted. I think a lot might be determined by doing a load test on each of them to calculate ESR, and a charge/discharge cycle to estimate the capacity. This could be built into a BMS designed for lead-acid batteries, and could be done automatically before each charge cycle or according to a less frequent schedule.


 That would be a lot of work for nothing. The battery pack was on its last leg when that post went. I was barely getting twenty miles out of them and that was dragging them down to near the critical point. I was hoping to make them last the summer but the melt down made up my mind for me. I never did anything special to these batteries except keep water in them, keep them clean and try to never drag them down below 144 volts. I had sold my little Delahey toy car in June ( picture in garage) and had enough money for lithiums but had other things I wanted and still had enough left over from it to pay for a new pack of leads. Like I said before I am now saving for liths. I figure in three years if I am still interested in electric cars I will have enough saved for some lithium. If the lithiums last ten years after that everything will come out close to even.


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## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

I'm having a hard time believing someone still using lead batteries, yes I know its about money, but very unwise in the long run.

$6000 for 44 cells and charger, and you will never have to buy batteries again. Not to mention weight reduction and difference in performance that will give you a real ev grin.

Ask me how I know.

Roy


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Roy Von Rogers said:


> I'm having a hard time believing someone still using lead batteries, yes I know its about money, but very unwise in the long run.
> 
> $6000 for 44 cells and charger, and you will never have to buy batteries again. Not to mention weight reduction and difference in performance that will give you a real ev grin.
> 
> ...


Please explain never have to buy batteries again.


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## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

Well I don't know what vehicle you have, but if you do all properly, the odds are they will outlast you vehicle. At least they will be cheaper than your lead.

Unless your planning to get rid of you vehicle soon, otherwise replacing with lead is a bad choice

Roy


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Roy Von Rogers said:


> Well I don't know what vehicle you have, but if you do all properly, the odds are they will outlast you vehicle. At least they will be cheaper than your lead.
> 
> Unless your planning to get rid of you vehicle soon, otherwise replacing with lead is a bad choice
> 
> Roy


 I will start off by saying yes lithium batteries are lighter, have a better energy to weight ratio and are supposed to last longer, although I haven’t heard of anyone that has had a pack longer than four or five years yet. As for batteries out lasting the car you are talking to a guy that drove a 1975 Fiat 128 for 37 years. I still have a 1970 Land Cruiser that I bought forty one years ago in 1973. I have been driving my electric X19 since I converted it in 1999. I put lead in it then because that was all that was sanely available at the time.  I just put in my forth pack and to date have spent a total of $7,300 over fifteen years so it is a close argument on which is cheaper. When I built the car I redid the suspension so the car sat at stock height with the batteries in it. I then lowered the car in the same manner as an ICE. I didn’t rely on the batteries to do the lowering.  Got the camber and alignment all worked out for the weight (2760lbs) so it handles well. If I shave weight I will have to redo the suspension and everything so laziness might be one reason for sticking to what I have. I really do not want to get into a pissing contest seeing who can pee lead or lithium the farthest but I just can’t understand why a person goes off on batteries just because someone else does not do it the way that person does it.  Lead is by no means superior but it is not totally dead like many that have lithium batteries say. If I run my car on rubber bands I can’t see why it should bother anyone else except maybe for being on the wrong forum.  We are all interested in electric cars and here and for what I thought was sharing ideas. Not one-upmanship.


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

I agree. I don't have much experience with lead batteries or EVs, but I do have a 17 Ah SLA battery with (I think) a 1999 date code and even though I have left it outside for many months at a time, it still holds a charge. And I bought a deep cycle 100 Ah 12V battery for about $80, which is about $0.07/Wh, while the cheapest LiFePO4 are about ten times that. Even considering a 2x Peukert factor and perhaps a 3 year rather than 10 year lifetime, the lead is cheaper. It's OK for short range vehicles and ideal for tractors, and can be recycled, and obtained from US manufacturers. Meanwhile battery technology is advancing and the cost of lithium may come down to where it is a no-brainer.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

_which is about $0.07/Wh, while the cheapest LiFePO4 are about ten times that_.

I though that the cheapest LiFePO4 were about $1/Ah = $0.31 / Wh - about 4 times that price (not 10 times)

When you take Peukert into account about it goes to twice the price_, _
add three times the life and you get 2/3 of the price


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## PStechPaul (May 1, 2012)

You may be right. The prices I found are about $1.10 to $1.30 per A-h, which includes Ocean freight (8-12 weeks):
http://www.electriccarinternational.com/Lithium-Prismatic-Batteries.php

My cost was for store pickup. Lead recycling gives back about $9/each for about a 10% discount. 
http://www.earthworksrecycling.com/prices/index.html

However they also bring $0.23/lb, so these 65 pound batteries will return about $15 each. That brings the cost down to about $0.054 / Wh

Depending on the system, the BMS and charger may be less for lead.

It does appear that lithium will still be cheaper in the long run, and will be more practical for most vehicles.


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## Roy Von Rogers (Mar 21, 2009)

Look I was not trying to put anyone down using lead. The point was "whats the point". In 1920 an electric vehicle would get about 50 miles with lead, and today, guess what, about the same. 

When I bought my brand new vehicle with 6 AGM's in it, I knew from the start without ever having driven an electric car, I would replace with lithium. For I realized early by testing some A123 cells I purchased years before I even thought about an electric vehicle, that lithium was a game changer, and made an electric vehicle practical.

I want to plug my vehicle in at night, and the next morning drive it, without having the hassle of having to check every so often for balance, equalizing, and in some cases watering them, not to mention worrying about volatile gases and corrosion.

I have a lithium pack bottom balanced, a charger that shuts them off at 3.38v per cell, and a back up safety device that shuts the charger off if the charger ever fails, that's it, cant be any simpler than that.

I just drive the car daily, and every so often I plug it in, exactly they way I wanted it to be, hassle free.

Roy


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Roy, out of curiosity, what batteries and configuration are you using and what is your pack voltage?  What car and what weight? Motor and controller? What is the range? What do you use your car for? Work commute or just a grocery getter? In electric mode I have put 50,000 miles on a 1984 Fiat X19 with the ADC 4001/ Curtis 500 amp controller and three packs of eighteen T875 eight volt Trojan Batteries =144 volts.  I can usually squeak out 30 miles with out dragging the pack much below the nominal 144volts. When I first built the car I had no plans for it other than play as I do not have a regular job that requires me to drive. The last few years I have been using it as a mail truck taking packages to the post office.  I usually drive an average of eleven miles a day six days a week. I figure if I bite the lithium bullet and get a 100 ah battery pack I would see at least 40 mile range. Having one of my two chargers reconfigured plus the batteries would be a little more than I have spent on lead in 15 years.  Redoing what I said I had invested in batteries over 15 years. I said I have $7,300 wrapped up in batteries. That includes the pack I just bought. Up to the day the last pack came to an end I had approximately $5300 invested for those 15 years. The $2K I just spent will hopefully last three plus years. Lithiums are on my bucket list.  I have started an account and figure in three years I will have more than enough to do a minimum of a 100 amp pack @ 144 volts. I will be 70 y/o by then and if I am still in the mood to mess with the car or I haven’t wrecked it by then I will trade up. If the batteries last ten years I will reevaluate the situation then. I am shooting for 90 y/o and hopefully still know my name so it these new fangle dangle batteries last that long everything will have worked out ok.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Why not try a li-on pack out of a chevy volt at about $2,000, a Ford nimh pack times 3 for about $2250, or a leaf pack all out of a wrecking yard?

I just replaced my 4 year-old FLA pack with the volt pack, and be advised I am not so impressed. Charging and discharge limits are annoyingly complicated, charging is no longer set and forget, oops I see we just overcharged, darn. Won't even talk about the additional support structure, just so I could save 500 lbs. Replacement price was equivalent and I don't use a bms.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

piotrsko said:


> Why not try a li-on pack out of a chevy volt at about $2,000, a Ford nimh pack times 3 for about $2250, or a leaf pack all out of a wrecking yard?


 The volt batteries sound good but I am not that sharp when it comes to electricity. I need guide lines if not out and out directions like put tab A into slot B. When I first did my conversion I didn’t know doodley squat. Now that I have learned a little over the years I just know a bit of doodely.  I looked at what Kerrymann is doing and it looks neat. My hats of to you guys that can figure that stuff out but for me though it will have to be pretty much plug and play.


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## rmay635703 (Oct 23, 2008)

piotrsko said:


> More common than you would think. Most long term FLA users get fairly long life with staying inside tight charge discharge cycles and quality maintenance. We just don't advertise this much because of all the flamers saying it is impossible.


I am still in the FLA camp, if you have the right batteries and treat them right you get respectable life out of them.

Trojans seem to still be the best, right now I am working on an L16 48v pack for my car, will need new springs 

Best of all I can buy them at scrap rate


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