Hooking up 48v what will happen?

ady347

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Oct 30, 2012
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Hi looking at battery upgrades, but wondered what will happen to my powabyke euro 24 if I hook up 48v instead of standard 36v
 
D

Deleted member 4366

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Your controller will make a big bang about 3 seconds after you connect, and then you'll see lots of smoke and get a rather nasty smell. If you inhale the fumes, there's a small chance that you'll die of cancer in about 20 years time.

Best to get a 48v controller. You might get away with a 36v one.

With the right controller at about 20 amps and 48v, you'll go nearly twice as fast. Keep an eye (or hand) on the motor temperature. As long as you're sensible, it should be OK. Holding full throttle for too long will probably cause the motor to smoke ratger nicely.

48V 500W Brush Brushed Speed Controller for Electric Scooters and Bikes | eBay
 

ady347

Pedelecer
Oct 30, 2012
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I'm looking to get the speed to 20mph, distance isn't a issue. This is for off road purposes so no law breaking
 
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morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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You can't dump twice the voltage into a controller eh and expect it not to go bang, although motors are tolerant to "over volting" (i.e. 36V motor will take 48V) controllers are not...they're intended to take a certain limited voltage range usually I think.
 

morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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I'm looking to get the speed to 20mph, distance isn't a issue. This is or off road purposes so no law breaking
Well if I were you, I'd replace the controller with a 36V-48V one.. upgrade your gears to 11T and a big chainwheel 52T or bigger, and that should take you up to 20mph-22mph zone,..unless you/your bike weighs a ton. You can over volt the motor..gearing works wonders, you should try that now if you're having trouble keeping up with motor at full whack..you'd be surprised the difference it can make.
 

morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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Using 48 volts will increase your speed by one third, to 20 mph as you want. As d8veh says though, it's debatable whether you present controller will accept that, so you may need the 48 volt controller.
Controllers are so cheap (< tenner?) may as well just play it safe and replace it for 48V rated...you can even sell that 24V one and recoup some of the cost eh.
 

flecc

Member
Oct 25, 2006
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The present controller is 36 volts on the Euro, not 24 volts. The quoted 24 is the number of gears on that model.
 

ady347

Pedelecer
Oct 30, 2012
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This is my bike, so if I upgrade controller to 48v and fit a 48v battery, without gearing bike I should get 20mph on a flat surface I currently get 15? From motor power only. My main concern is not to smoke the motor for when I put it back to standard

Are these controllers easy enough to wire into place of current original wiring loom.
 
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Old_Dave

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Sep 15, 2012
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Without knowing the 36v controller wot you have, its not possible to guarantee that all will be 100%

However.... I'd stick 48v up it :p
 

morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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This is my bike, so if I upgrade controller to 48v and fit a 48v battery, without gearing bike I should get 20mph on a flat surface I currently get 15? From motor power only. My main concern is not to smoke the motor for when I put it back to standard

Are these controllers easy enough to wire into place of current original wiring loom.
I would say you would do 20mph easy on 48V, depending on the watts rating of motor and Ah rating of battery...you got to think how far you want to travel, if there's hills etc.. that looks a heavy bike so you may not be able to maintain that speed for long unless your battery has the capacity?

I think it would be fairly straightforward to replace the controller, if the controller and wiring is like most regular e-bikes.. I'm sure someone here will be able to take you step by step through it. You might need to do a bit of soldering perhaps. Maybe check though, before you put out any money.
 

morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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Without knowing the 36v controller wot you have, its not possible to guarantee that all will be 100%

However.... I'd stick 48v up it :p
Well since they're so cheap its worth risking under normal circumstances eh. But the thing is, this bike doesn't look like a regular e-bike.. and if it blows up and he needs to replace it, could be costly if parts aren't readily available and/or he can't adapt this bike to an BMS Battery controller? That's why I'd be more inclined to take it out and put it to one side and try and upgrade approach..its gonna cost £15-£20 quid?

If it blows up and it turns out this bikes motor requires a very specific type of controller, he'll have turned the controller into a very effective permanent immobilizer? In the same way some people brick their phones/tablets/cameras doing firmware upgrades.
 
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morphix

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That bike could actually be a serious contender for a 21st "mod-ped" if it was over-accessorised with sufficient mirrors and lights on it.
 
D

Deleted member 4366

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Sorry for my mistake about the voltage. I thought that they were 36v, but I assumed that you must have had an old one.

You'll probably be alright with your present controller so it's worth trying, and if it smokes, get a new one. They're not expensive. Your battery state LEDs will always show full if you use them. Other than that, you'll go faster and have more power.

I'm not sure how you're going to do it with the battery replacement, but it''ll be easier to replace the SLAs with lipos, and I would use four 5aH 6S packs, two in series and two in parallel (12S2P), which will run at about 48v. If that gives you what you want, you might be able to fit 6 in for 12S3P 15a to give speed, power and range. You need to check exact sizes. They come in a lot of different shapes.
 

Jeremy

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Oct 25, 2007
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I'm looking to get the speed to 20mph, distance isn't a issue. This is for off road purposes so no law breaking
Unless the off road riding is only on private land from which the public are excluded (difficult to find now, under the "right to roam" legislation) then using a non-approved electric bike will be technically illegal.

If you want to ride on tracks, byeways, in fact pretty much anywhere you can think of that the public have access to, then you have to use either an approved ebike or a suitably registered, insured etc motor vehicle (and a non-approved ebike is a motor vehicle in law) if you want to stay the right side of the law.

Whether you'd get caught is a separate matter, the chance of getting caught are very slim indeed in my view. The main issue is that if you were injured, or caused damage or injury to someone else, then someone in authority might decide to do something.
 

ady347

Pedelecer
Oct 30, 2012
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I think I have a 250w brushed motor in it. I'm goin to remove controller, post sum pics and go from their
 

morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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I think I have a 250w brushed motor in it. I'm goin to remove controller, post sum pics and go from their
Your bike looks immaculate unless that's an earlier pic? You looked after it well.
 

ady347

Pedelecer
Oct 30, 2012
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That was the pic I took when I got it home couple of months ago, purchased off an old guy for £220, he bought it new hardly used it as it was too heavy to lift on his motor home bike rack. Then bought a foldable version
 

morphix

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Oct 24, 2010
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That was the pic I took when I got it home couple of months ago, purchased off an old guy for £220, he bought it new hardly used it as it was too heavy to lift on his motor home bike rack. Then bought a foldable version
Neat, you got a bargain at that price. Did you test out the range it can do yet? I assume the speed is legally restricted to the 15mph in that controller as you said you can do 15mph max.. perhaps there's a potential for it to go faster on the existing battery if you could "de-restrict" it from 15mph and make it go faster without needing to pump more volts in? 24v packs less punch usually, but some more conventional looking bikes of this brand (I think) I've seen can really move still and perform well on 24v...for a heavy bike like this probably would be a case of upping the voltage to get more from the motor.. I hope someone can identify the controller and/or the motor for you and tell us more about the performance and spec potential. That motor does look quite big for 250W don't it? Must be a loads of latent potential in it.

How much does the big battery weigh?
 
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