First Day of School

Time sure flies when you are getting old.  Seems like only yesterday, I brought my little Gixxer home from the orphanage.  After almost three years of bottle feeding and caring, he's ready to brave the world beyond his playpen in the garage.

Dressed in his new school clothes

Here he is playing with other moto-kids on the play ground.  Seems to be fitting in with the others, but still I worry.

Assembling and Installing the New Pack

Transferring the cells from the old holders to the new Cell Frame.  The rubber mallet is to disassmbled the old holders.  The batteries slipped right into the new holders without forcing them.

 I decided to put all the cells in parallel and apply a very gradual charge to equalize the pack.  They sat connected to a 1A charger for almost a week.  Voltage rose by only a couple of hundredths (3.27 to 3.30), but now I know the cells are all balanced.  

 Cells assembled into the frame in a 2P25S arrangement.  I used a stainless threaded rod (4 places), with  Allen Nuts on either end to keep the frame tight against the cells.

Time to strart making busbars.  I used 1/8" x 3/4" Aluminum flat stock.  Cut, scribe, punch, pilot drill, drill, chamfer, file.  Repeat 40 or so times.

Getting there - lots of fasteners to install

Pack is finally assembled.  Entire thing weighs in at 62.74 lbs.

 It was a very tight fit to get the pack installed into the bike.  But it looks awesome.