Hi Steve,
I hope you get good service from your re-celled battery. Like you, I got very short shrift here and dire warnings when I first posted about the purchase of a second hand Somerby ebike by my partner so she could come with me on ebike jaunts. It really got up my nose to be lectured by 'experts' in doomsaying when I explained that the second hand barely used bike would not accept a charge because it had been left un charged for a year or more and that the BMS had shut down. I explained that I got past this by carefully monitoring current and voltage as I charged it for ten minutes via the output connectors. You would think I had found a nuclear reactor in a scrap yard and re-purposed it, judging by the hysterical warnings that I got about fire and brimstone, explosion and lethal consequences., along with warnings that no battery having got into a no charge state could ever work properly. What actually happened was that the battery charges perfectly, holds its charge well and the 10.5 Ahr ebike has run for thirty miles and never ever performed below par even at that kind of range. She loves it and it was a total bargain buy (£350). It flies up the steep hills around here too, easily keeping up with my 14 ahr crank motor set up - although it should since she weighs about 8 and a half stone while I weigh a third more.
Anyway - more power to you mate. Too much sour grapes and 'the computer say no' attitude around here from some posters. Obviously - you take a chance with a re-cell like yours. My purchase of an ebike conversion from a one man band outfit is the same (my bike not my partner's). Mine came from a guy in Durham called Billy Milburn. I've had huge enjoyment and some pretty long rides from the battery he made me and about a thousand miles covered so far without any major issues. He instantly replaced an LCD that started showing dead pixels and advised me how to sort out another minor niggle and solved the issue. I got a great bike conversion for £1099. Like yours, we will see how it goes in the long term.
Batteries are chemical devices so not entirely predictable. You were lucky, the majority in similar situations are not, and the people you insult know that from long experience. So they warn of the worst possibilities because that is being responsible. Would you prefer they tell everyone the best possible outcome like yours when that simply isn't true for the majority?
It's precisely posts like your that have lost us large numbers of expert advisors over the 15 years of this forum when they get fed up with being unjustifiably maligned and give up.
It happened to me. As the first ever pedelecs member when this forum first opened and having power assisted bicycle experience in the trade from as far back as 1950, I was the principle advisor initially and continued helping over the following decade or so.
But all to often I found myself being contradicted, abused and/or insulted by new members, often with little or no experience, that I too increasingly withdrew from helping. Being a lifelong unassisted cyclist and with over 70 years knowledge of assisted cycling I still pop in out of interest and see posts where I could help. But most often I think "why bother?", knowing the aggravation that can result from time to time.
This discussion started with Chris advising use of a receller on the strength of no experience of them whatsoever. Now he's kindly come back to say the recelled battery is performing well, after 5 weeks use in very short trips of 4 to 5 miles, so no test at all as yet. We'll know far more when the battery has given two years of regular service, if it does.
We've seen a number of recellers come and go, failing even when charging far, far more than the £80 in this instance. The only company that has lasted does an excellent job to new battery standards costing around two thirds or so the cost of new battery. The principal there just makes a reasonable living, not from exorbitant profits but from a continuous flow of work using best components at fair prices.
So based on many years of experience that is our reliable knowledge on recelling and therefore the advice we normally give. But we couldn't in this instance since Chris had already ruled out such prices as unjustified.
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