I mean think back to when you were a kid
What sounds more fun than like one of those cool ride-on power wheels things?
I've noticed the fact that this is not a brand name power wheels
This is a cheap Chinese knockoff, but that's not the point of today's video. The point of today's video is what's more fun
than one of these power wheels ride-on things a
souped up one and as it turns out
You can make them go double triple or even quadruple as fast
Simply by overvolting them
Now you could do that by just buying yourself a in this case
This is a 6-volt model so a 12-volt battery at the hardware store and plugging it in
But this is Linus Tech Tips so instead of that I decided to order myself a
DIY
lithium battery kit
Let's
see how this goes
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Now I hadn't originally planned to do a video about this
So you guys are gonna have to forgive me if I am not as prepared as even I normally am
But I am going away to Disneyland in three days
And I need to queue up enough videos for a while. I'm gone
Real talk real talk right now
And I was telling Ed about this plan that I had to sort of trick out one of our power wheels
Not actually this one and he was like, oh we should we should do a video about that and I was like, oh, yeah
I mean, I'm still kind of like learning and I really don't know if this is the most optimal way to do it
And he's like, oh, yeah. No, it sounds like a video
so
basically what I've ordered here
So these are 18 650s. These are 3,500 milliamp ones. I think they're from
Samsung it's either Samsung or LG chemical on or whatever. They're like
Chemicals like division is there's either Samsung or LG cells and then these are high current ones because
Not on this one, but actually on the two-seater that I am planning to have all of this end up in
You can actually see some pretty impressive peak power draw so I got a bunch of these
Then I picked myself up
this puppy so this is the
charging
Controller board that you need any time you're building a lithium battery
And I can't remember if this is a balance charger or not
So I'm gonna have to look that up so I can determine exactly what type of charger I need to use on it
I do have a balance
Lithium battery charger at home, but I forgot to bring that today
All right.
Ah, yes, you can see here,
this is for seven cells in series.
So parallel determines how much capacity you have
and series determines what the voltage is gonna be.
So this is a six volt model
and I'm gonna be hitting it with about 24 volts.
So we're gonna burn it out pretty quickly,
but realistically I was gonna get rid of this one anyway.
The idea is to make the Jeep power wheels
that I have at home go twice the speed
and we'll making this one go four times the stock speed.
This is one of the kits from Veruzend,
V-Ruzend, I don't know what they,
I don't know how they pronounce their thing,
but basically resists vibration loosening.
It's safer.
Hey, it's safe.
Oh, yay.
What we're doing today, building a lithium battery pack.
It's a modular lithium battery pack kit.
Just chill.
It's all good, don't worry about it.
Fully customizable.
Where's the guide?
Don't we have a bunch of like 12 volt batteries
just like sitting in one-on-one?
Yes.
Well, A, I'm building a 24 volt battery,
which yes, I know.
And B, I wanted the weight and quick charging
and I just wanted to do it this way because it's fun.
Okay.
To turn this bunch of cells into a battery,
we need to wire together all of the cells correctly
to get our 29 volts and 30 amps at full charge.
To do this, we'll be creating a 7S3P battery,
meaning there'll be seven cells wired in series
and then three of those wired in parallel.
Construction of the battery is pretty simple.
Although if we wire up one cell incorrectly
or even just drop a nut or touch a screwdriver
across the wrong place,
we risk causing a ShortCircuit that could electrocute us
or at worst cause the battery to explode.
Someone's going to blow themselves up.
Okay, I think we should do the things first
and then put cells in.
So then theoretically, we can take your whole thing
and blippity bloppity.
Hold on, let me help you get that aligned.
Okay.
Do we have a rubber mallet here?
No, we're not rubber malleting these.
Why not?
Because we're not.
Because that's not a good idea.
Well, I don't know, maybe.
It's pretty hard to push on.
We did this three more times
and got what seemed like should be a ready to wire up battery
until we actually thought about it.
It's really easy.
Before you begin though,
make sure you understand how series
and parallel electrical connections work.
I want to brush up on the subject,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Don't ShortCircuit, that's bad.
Got it.
I wanted series.
Parallel.
Wouldn't I need to go from here to here though?
Oh, that makes sense.
In order to do that, you need to do every row.
Oh, this is easy.
Oh, maybe.
Well, let's find out.
Oh, they have videos.
Okay.
We'll be back in a minute here.
We're gonna watch some YouTube to learn.
Tinted that if we flip around every second cell,
creating the connections will be super easy
by just placing the bus bars across the top.
So the good news is we weren't that far off.
Pretty much these bars go on
and we make all the parallel connections between ourselves.
Oh, yeah.
Like it ain't no thing.
I'm, hold on.
I'm just trying all my contacts here.
We good, we good, we good, we good.
Yep.
Beautiful.
Now we have to attach the...
These ones?
Yeah. I don't know.
I don't know.
So let's, we're gonna watch,
we're gonna watch this other video now.
BRB.
All right, so we ran out of time yesterday.
It's day two, but there's some good news.
I was able to bring in the actual car that I intend to use.
So this one shouldn't fry immediately
when we hook this battery up, but there's some bad news.
So I had planned to either hook this up
with the battery management system
for a single input charging, or I had planned
to hook it up with this doodad
and then use a balance charger like this one.
But I forgot this is a maximum 6S balance charger.
So this won't work,
which means we're gonna have to use the BMS,
except for one small problem.
We can't find a single power adapter in the building
that is, so you don't take the 3.7 volt nominal voltage.
You take the 4.2 volt charge voltage.
So this thing can't take magically like a 12 volt input
and turn it into 30 volts.
You need an actual like 30 volt charger.
And 7S as far as I know is a pretty oddball configuration.
So I'm not sure how we're gonna charge it,
but I'm gonna start to wire it up anyway.
I found a 33.6 volt one.
Do you think it would work?
33.6?
Yeah.
I don't know.
What do you think?
What do you think the tolerances are like
on something like this for input?
Probably fine.
We have 29.4, is that what we were looking for?
29.4, yeah.
I knew those stupid hover shoes
were gonna come in handy for something.
We're gonna cannibalize the charger.
Cannibalize it?
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah, cause I don't have a socket for this.
So first things first.
All the balance wires are on.
There we go.
And my negative,
I believe this is negative.
Negative charging, yep.
My negative charging wire is soldered.
Now what I need to do
is throw on two positive wires
to the opposite terminal here.
So to the positive terminal
at the other end of the battery.
One of those will be for charging.
One of those will be for discharging.
Now I realize I'm opening myself up
to some soldering technique critique here,
but this is how it's going on.
Alex, do you wanna solder me?
I'm sorry.
Let's go for a solder bath.
Okay, that's lots.
Oh man, I can feel the cringing.
Just wait till The Verge does this.
That'll make me feel better.
So we've got our eyebrow tweezers
and our butter knife.
Okay, don't include that last bit.
We don't wanna be too mocking of The Verge.
We're not trying to make enemies in the industry.
I don't have Captain Tape.
We really need to get some more electronics project crap.
So I'm gonna go get packing tape
just cause I need to keep those wires out of the way.
For all the viewers out there
who know what they're doing with this stuff,
make it better or worse,
that in many cases I know the right way,
but I'm doing it this way anyway.
Now they say in their guide,
you don't have to solder this,
but I think that's really stupid personally.
I think advertising, stop it.
Okay, stop doing that.
Oh, nice.
Now typically hat nuts aren't reusable,
but I managed to kind of crush it back on there.
Okay.
All right.
So we can test then.
Well, first I'm gonna have to show you guys
the before of course.
Here we go.
See, pretty boring.
This is not the recommended way of doing this.
Again, if you wanted the recommended way,
would you be watching my video?
Oh, we're gonna ruin our floors.
Here we go.
There's no steering on this floor.
How's my phone?
Is my phone okay?
Oh, it sticks out of my pocket sometimes.
It's okay.
So that hat nut, not a great solution,
just bending it back.
So this is our pre-test.
This is with the original battery,
which has like a somewhat fresh charge.
It's not super fresh, but it's not like the worst either.
So reverse, first gear, second gear.
Now it's really important for a reliable operation to install,
people do either 30 amp or 40 amp breakers in these things,
but I'm gonna do that later
when I do my whole ESC upgrade
with the sewing machine pedal and all that kind of stuff.
So this stock connector no longer has any use.
We are wired up now, baby.
Oh, that's reverse.
It's definitely faster.
That's first gear.
And we need to move over to unit 101.
Let's turn it up to high gear.
Woo!
Oh! Oh!
That was an undesirable.
This is really hard.
I can't even use, I can't even use my foot.
Oh really?
No, I'm just using my hand.
Oh Lordy.
There we go.
Oh yeah.
J-turn.
Oh, I tried to throw it in forward.
Wow, the traction's actually pretty good out here.
So there she is.
She's a little toasty.
She's definitely ready to be left to cool and then charged.
And that's it.
That's a DIY battery for better or for worse.
And this whole mess is brought to you by Memory Express.
Memory Express is the place to go
if you need any kind of electronics products in Canada.
They've got computers, tablets, phones, home theaters,
pretty much you name it, and they've got it.
And with their Uber price beat guarantee,
they will beat any price both in-store and online
from a Canadian retailer.
So go check them out.
You can get them at the link in the video description.
So thanks for watching guys.
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