Advice please on wiring my 36v SLA pack

[Thuktun]

I'm using 3 12v 10Ah SLA's in series on the bike but I charge them from a 12v 2A charger in parallel. Currently I switch all the connections around for charging and riding, bit of a pain so I would rather just be able to plug one thing or another in. Here is my idea.

A 6 prong connector on the battery brick with each terminal going to one prong. Then a 6 prong connector wired to make it parallel for connecting to the charger and another 6 prong wired for series in a small box with a power switch and momentary and resistor mounted on the bike.

Any reason this won't work? Any better ideas?

[Bikemad]

Hi andto the forum.

You haven't mentioned what motor you are using, but it is important to ensure the contacts of the plug and socket are able to carry the current that your particular motor is drawing.

The circuit looks fine but I suggest you add a suitable fuse to protect against a short circuit.

Alan
 

[Thuktun]

I'm using an SP4. There aren't many places locally that sell anything usefull but there is a Princess Auto here. They have 3 prong marine connectors with 10 gauge wire, I could use 2 female and 4 male. I would need to color code them though, if I plugged the wrong one in it would short.

[Bikemad]

If you used three pairs of connectors you could fit a male and female on the battery and simply bind them together near the base of the connectors with insulation tape or heat shrink tubing as indicated below to ensure they could not be plugged into each other by mistake.



I would use the female connector for the three positive battery connections and the male for the battery negatives and then reverse this for the charger connections (which should also be bound together to prevent from shorting the charger output).

If the wires for the male and female connectors are coloured the same, I would suggest that you use one colour for each battery so that it would be much easier to check individual battery voltages at the end of a ride using the connectors instead of having to directly access the battery connections or refer to wiring diagrams.

You would still need to make sure that you didn't accidentally plug the charger into the motor connectors (instead of the battery connectors) as your charger would then be trying to force 12V into the controller with the polarity reversed.

Alan