Things I have learned about LiFePO4 batteries… balance your pack BEFORE you assemble them. Foolishly I assumed that since they all read 3.29v out of box that they were all somewhat at the same SOC. After several adjustments and consulting with the experts. What you are supposed to do is, parallel up all the batteries and charge them at constant voltage 3.6v. Right now I have them all around 3.45v, but it took 3 days to get here… if let the balancing continue this way it could take another week to get them all perfectly balanced. So I have ordered a variable voltage high current PSU, so I can hit individual cells and bring them inline with their brothers.

Got home, had be very gentle on the throttle. Pack is very unbalanced at the moment. Adjusted Vmin to 2.7 and UV to 2.5 to give a better safety margin. Will tweak some more once I get used to it.

Geek Freak : Charger CV cutoff voltage for my AGM batteries was 14.4v per battery, 12 batteries – so 172.8v total.

OK for the Lithium (LiFEPO4) spec is 3.6v, 48 cells = 172.8v

Got to work! Woohoo. couple of cells reached minV. Talking to Justin at evolve, seems initial balance was not completed and SOC is not be trusted until you have a few cycles under your belt.

First commute did not go so well… Didn't even leave the garage… Was late for dentist, so only had time for a couple of troubleshooting steps , mainlyconsisted disconnecting the vacuum servo, figuring that the last thing I connected so therefore was causing aux circuit to drop to 6v? Turns out all the complex BMS, control logic, uP, etc were undone by old fashion corrosion on the aux bat terminal.. Doh!… Cleaned it up no volt sag, all systems good now… School boy error. Oh well tomorrow's another day…

Lithium test drive! – Started out with all default settings… Hit 343A on a hill and the safety kicked in… the defaults are very conservative… the limit was set to normal 100A, peak 200A. Batteries can go to 300A continuous and 1000A peak, will set peak to 500A for now.

Pack getting first full charge…! eeee!

All monitor boards connected, first test with monitoring software…

Battery layout

Shorter bars arrived – all fitted… total pack reads 158v! Finished BMS for bank A, D and half of B…