1 hour ago, lenny said:

I had a guy on e bay yesterday asking if I had a spare Carrera STL Battery case to rig Two X 18V Mikita drill batteries and wire into the Carrera controller . Two X 5AH gives a decent battery .

Just wondering what is the opinions as to doing this or not .

I advised him to make a battery mount and put a decent e bike battery on or buy an expensive one from Halfords .

But I see no reason Two good quality 18V batteries can not be used this way am I wrong ?? Seems like more work than making a mount.

Just now, Baz the balloon man said:

I had a guy on e bay yesterday asking if I had a spare Carrera STL Battery case to rig Two X 18V Mikita drill batteries and wire into the Carrera controller . Two X 5AH gives a decent battery .

Just wondering what is the opinions as to doing this or not .

I advised him to make a battery mount and put a decent e bike battery on or buy an expensive one from Halfords .

But I see no reason Two good quality 18V batteries can not be used this way am I wrong ?? Seems like more work than making a mount.

This is what happens when national companies make batteries then refuse to offer service of them at 500 quid a pop

1 hour ago, lenny said:

The cleaning of the circuit board by scrubbing with a qtip, was pointless and might easily have pulled off components.

I would say you should monitor the voltage carefully when charging like that and CERTAINLY NEVER EVER LEAVE it charging through an uncontrolled pathway like that.

You are only trying to raise every cell groups in the battery above the BMS low cut off voltage. To be much safer, you also need to ensure that if the battery is un-balanced, NO CELL CAN GO ABOVE 4.2v. It is certainly possible that the reason the bms stopped charging was that one cell group was very low while the others, or some of the others, are not. This could easily lead to a dangerous situation if you charge other than through the BMS - ie like this guy did. The way around that is to measure the voltage of every cell group before starting, and if any are near fully charged, check them during the process - or better still - if it is just unbalanced, only charge the low cells and use a 4.2v charger that will cut off at the safe level.

ANY cell or group of cells which is taken above 4.2 volts for usual lithium cells, is likely to go on fire and burn your place down.

I salvaged an e-bike battery on my partner's Pendleton about four years ago in pretty much the same way, but with a lot more caution, and it is still going strong. I have not tested its maximum endurance lately, but it easily does 15 miles and the led indicator on the handlebars is still showing four lit leds. She rides down to a cafe in a nearby village at least weekly in the decent weather.. The battery is from 2019 and we have had it since around 2021, or 2022. When we bought it, it had been left in a garage for a long time uncharged and refused to charge. We paid £350 for an almost unused e-bike.

ONLY do this with careful measurements of all the cells before and during the process.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Tony1951

So it seems like a lot of work doing this especially for downtown batteries V just getting a new battery from a reputable supplier or having the BMS changed in the STL batteries by a competent person or company rather than messing around with power tool batteries and 90% safer . 10% allowance any thing can go wrong and catch fire !

It will not work on the later Canbus Carrera batteries.

3 hours ago, lenny said:

Dangerous fake shite. Nearly everything he said was wrong. Don't do that.

1 hour ago, Baz the balloon man said:

I had a guy on e bay yesterday asking if I had a spare Carrera STL Battery case to rig Two X 18V Mikita drill batteries and wire into the Carrera controller . Two X 5AH gives a decent battery .

Just wondering what is the opinions as to doing this or not .

I advised him to make a battery mount and put a decent e bike battery on or buy an expensive one from Halfords .

But I see no reason Two good quality 18V batteries can not be used this way am I wrong ?? Seems like more work than making a mount.

1 hour ago, Baz the balloon man said:

You shoud be very careful when using drill batteries for ebikes. They often don't have a proper BMS or discharge control. Instead, the controls are inside the device they power, which the ebike doesn't really have, other than the controller's cut off voltage, which you'd need to check is appropriately set.

Incidentally, the battery in that video wasn't in any sleep mode. The cells were drained to zero volts. Most wouldn’t charge from that level. If you try to charge them in that state, they can catch fire. If you succeed, they'll be weak, saggy and pretty useless.

1 hour ago, D8veh said:

  3 hours ago, Baz the balloon man said:

I had a guy on e bay yesterday asking if I had a spare Carrera STL Battery case to rig Two X 18V Mikita drill batteries and wire into the Carrera controller . Two X 5AH gives a decent battery .

  3 hours ago, Baz the balloon man said:

You shoud be very careful when using drill batteries for ebikes. They often don't have a proper BMS or discharge control. Instead, the controls are inside the device they power, which the ebike doesn't really have, other than the controller's cut off voltage, which you'd need to check is appropriately set.

Thanks he is the second person that has contacted me looking to buy empty battery cases I will let any future customers know it a bad idear when there are better safer options .

2 hours ago, D8veh said:

Dangerous fake shite. Nearly everything he said was wrong. Don't do that.

Agree it’s not worth it messing when say a YOSE battery for instance will work an STL Carrera with a different battery mount .