Thanks. I did the remote wiring on my Shay. 3 cells in the boiler and one cell in the air tank. Worked perfect on the bench, but when I took it apart to put in the loco, I triggered something on the PCB and it wouldn’t work. Ended up finding a way to reset the PCB, then all was good.
When my Porter batteries eventually give up the ghost, I will change to one of the 4 cell balancing PCBs. For now, I won’t fix what I can’t see (cell voltage variation).
This is the battery I was hoping to install in the 3 truck shay tender. The original NiMH batteries were two 7.4 volts put in series…each battery was slender and was siliconed at a slight angle against the side walls of the tender. This allowed space for the speaker. So my question is can I split this battery in to two parts and but not touch or mess with any of the wiring or circuitry? I’d Shrink wrap the two pieces again and install like the original two batteries…The key point for me is not touching the wires, rewiring, messing with any of the PC board stuff…
Thanks,
Richard
Short answer: No.
The cells inside are spot welded to metal bus bars which in turn are soldered directly to the PCB. To split the cells you would need to un-solder the PCB from the cells and completely re-wire. Not something I would suggest for someone with no experience.
That 8 cell pack would give you a very long run time. If a pack half that thick (same width) would fit without modification, then you would do just fine with a 4 cell pack. I run 4-cell 3500Mah packs and I get many hours (sometimes days) of runtime from various locos. If you are roundy-round you would get less time than me as my trains sit idling more than they move, but still should be good for 3-4 hours of continuous operation from a 4 cell pack. One made with the same cells would be about 3350 Mah.
Thanks Jon!! I think I’ll heed your advice and leave it all alone. In the meantime I’ll search for a different battery so I can get this engine up and running again.
Richard
Not that it matters, but who is HJE? I see a lot of dealers sell this brand, but can find no manufacturer info. I buy MTO batteries from Don Sweet, RCS of New England. MTO has a website with technical data on their packs which can be helpful.
HJE is the brand sold by RLD Hobbies where I purchased from. I’ve also seen them on the Reindeer Pass site. I’ve thought about it just purchasing future batteries through Tenergy. But I’ll check out Don Sweets site