sla batteries

[electric.mike]

just a quick question do sla batteries need a few disharge and recharge cycles before they reach there best or is it there straight away.
mike

 

[Beeping-Sleauty]

Hi Mike
i have SLA on my Whirlwind and found that i get better mileage after leaving the charger on for a couple of hours after the light has gone green, this may be due to the batteries rebalancing, but at the moment i get better range now than i did when the bike was new four months ago.

i get the impression from other electric bikers that SLA are old hat, but having seen the range they quote, i get more miles per charge, double on average and this bike weighs in excess of 40kgs, perhaps this is because i always pedal and never allow the battery to do all the work, but i'm not really sure.

hope this helps,
beeps

just a quick question do sla batteries need a few disharge and recharge cycles before they reach there best or is it there straight away.
mike

 

[electric.mike]

beeps
its just i have had my two 15 month old sakura packs rebuilt, and one seems to be better than the other, i didnt want to complain if they may need time to settle in.
thanks
mike

 

[Beeping-Sleauty]

Mike,
you could try leaving the batteries charging overnight, i read this somewhere else and tried it out of curiosity, something to do with cell balancing and the improvement was about 10%,
good luck,
beeps

beeps
its just i have had my two 15 month old sakura packs rebuilt, and one seems to be better than the other, i didnt want to complain if they may need time to settle in.
thanks
mike

 

[flecc]

I'd agree with Beeping Sleauty about that long charge.

There's no obvious reason why ordinary lead-acid batteries should need other than an initial single charge to reach full capacity, but since SLAs use a paste electrolyte it''s quite possible that three or four charges would improve capacity as the electrolyte evened out the charge content.