I was wondering if anyone ever reconfigured a battery pack to make it fit? I have a 4 cell 14.4V battery pack from all-battery that I want to take apart to change the form factor to fit in the tender of my Industrial Mogul. Anything I need to watch out for? Any other advice?
Thanks
I have but I don’t recommend it. Most good battery packs have a small circuit board built into them that limits the amount of charging and discharging it will handle. I was able to move one of the cells without disturbing any of the wiring into the circuit board so it would fit into my shay.
The only advice I could give you would be strictly my opinion. When I buy a battery pack it’s usually from a dealer I know and trust and I’ll order the R/C gear, sound board and battery, and they know what engine it’s going into and I get a battery that’s configured to fit into that particular engine.
You can use smaller batteries, placed in any configuration, (such as one on each side, “L” shape, etc).
Make sure they are the same voltage and amperage.
Hooked up in series will give you twice the voltage at the same amps.
Parallel will give you the same voltage at twice the amps.
You can still charge all at the same time.
David Schmitz said:
I was wondering if anyone ever reconfigured a battery pack to make it fit? I have a 4 cell 14.4V battery pack from all-battery that I want to take apart to change the form factor to fit in the tender of my Industrial Mogul. Anything I need to watch out for? Any other advice?
Thanks
David,
I have tried, but not very successfully. The packs tend to have metal connectors that are either silver soldered (or welded) to the ends of the individual cells. While they are easy to cut, they are not easy to reconnect or to solder onto.
P.S. Only 4 cells for 14.4V ?? Lithium I presume?
I ended up cutting up the tender to get the battery to fit, I hope I can get it all back together and looking good. Will post the results here when I am done.
I’m a little late but I have some experience with this so I’ll chime in. I think you chose the right path. Taking apart a “welded” pack is probably not a good idea for several reasons.
When you disconnect the PC Board from a Li-Ion pack you activate the bad cell protection and the pack will not work when reconnected. Most circuit boards have a reset procedure to fix this issue, but that can vary buy manufacturer. The procedure information isn’t easy to find.
A better way to make your own custom pack is to buy individual cells with solder tabs and a Protection PC Board. Just don’t take it apart once you have built it (like I did), or you will be back in the same reset needed boat!
This is a custom pack I built for a Bchmann Shay - 3 Cells and PCB in the boiler, one cell in the air tank:
