Cheap eBay winforce lipo

[Deleted member 4366]

I think part of the problem is that once you get to 3.6v per cell, they go down very rapidly. Most of the Winforce cells in the table are showing about 3,3v, and that's after recovery, so they probably went a lot lower under load. Do you know what the minimum pack voltage was, Scotty? For £30, we can't really complain. I expect that they're not as robust as the more expensive ones, so I think we need to be a bit more careful in how deep we cycle them. My original 5S packs are holding up OK after about 20 cycles, but my 6s ones went out of balance and are difficult to balance after I poked holes in them when a bolt wore through my panniers. I guess I was lucky that they didn't catch fire.

I think that these cells are good for testing new motors etc because you can get a lot of power from them and they're cheap. Once you've found out how your system works at different voltages and currents, you can choose an appropriate long-term battery. It would be terrible to spend £300 on a battery and then find out you want/need something different.

 

[Scottyf]

I got 3 months use out the pack and paralleled up with the strong packs they've performed well.
Never a glitch in balancing or using them.

It's only when I've started pushing them and burning up capacity they've started to collapse.
Like all cells if abused.
The failed cell is actually starting to be ok but it's definetly destroyed it's capacity.
Again it's only the one cell so I will take it apart and remove it.

No massive loss and I've still brought another pack as I think for the price you can't go wrong.
Just don't expect them to take the full rated capacity.

Maybe at 0.5c they might hit that.


The voltage was virturally straight after I used them. A few mins after I disconnected myself from the bike. Not much time to recover. It did go back up to 3.3v itself. But the damage was done.

 

[piotrmacheta]

I can confirm that lightly used they are great. I use two 5700mAhr 20C packs in parallel and connect this to an ezee battery in series to get 48V and have been using this everyday for over a year and the Windforce batteries are still going strong. The added bonus is that they fit into the ezee bag where the controller sits so very neat.

 

[cwah]

These cells safely have about 4400mah so shy 800mah compared to whats written on the packaging.

Just some comparison with the Zippy cells from Hobby King:
- Purchase zippy 5S8AH at 148WH:
Cost: 71.79$+23.59$=95.79$ or £63.83
Cost/wh= 0.64$/wh or 0.43£/wh
Weight/wh= 148wh/1.054kg= 140wh/kg

- Zippy 6*5S8AH at 888Wh:
Cost: 430.74$+103.99$= 534.74$ or 339.58£
Cost/wh= 0.60$/wh or 0.38£/wh


- Winforce 6S5.2AH (adjusted to 6S4.4AH) at 97.68wh
Cost: 30.59£
Cost/wh= 0.31£/wh
Weight/wh=*97.68wh/0.79kg= 123wh/kg

So globally, the zippy are 20% (if you buy 6) to 30% (if you only buy 1) more expensive than the Winforce. They are however 15% lighter than the Winforce because they hold 100% of their advertised capacity.

So getting the cheap Winforce are not that much a good deal compared to their disadvantages.

 

[Scottyf]

Yeah it's as I said previously unless you buy bulk in one hit then the turnigy packs or zippy packs are expensive. Even more so when you get from the Europe warehouse.

Where as the winforce lipo does not change on postage or cost. Intact if you was to buy 6 you can get it even cheaper if you contact the supplier direct.
Which again if you don't mind the extra kilo of weight to make up the capacity in mah they still come out better.

I don't know how long they will last cycle wise. But there still Lighter than most cylinder cells and still offer up to 15c discharge. Not at good as the zippy or turnigy and sag more. But much better than standard ebike cells.

I've got a couple cycles on the damaged cell now. It's actually starting to come back to life and more online with the other cells. It's still slightly weaker though.
Still have to retire it though.

If I was to create another lipo pack I'd buy a load of these in one hit and slightly over capacity to what I need. It would still be lighter than plug and play and offer lots of head room. Even if it only last a year.