Replacement Battery for my Bustin Gen 2

Hey guys.

I'm in a sticky situation. I bought a Bustin gen 2 a few months back in Australia second hand to get a feel for an electric board, but am moving overseas permanently. Trying to get a courier to take it for decent money is nothing short of a mission, i've rung several couriers who once saw the MDS basically outright said no, and a couple of others gave me some large prices. My baggage on the the flight is limited, and Emirates aren't keen on taking the eskate.

So with that in mind, I'm thinking of dumping the battery here in Aus and buying a new one when I reach the UK. I contacted Evolve in the UK and got a price for a new battery, which also wasn't cheap. I probably would punt at it, but it's at least four weeks for delivery and is more than the courier, but not by much. Another reason i'm thinking of dumping it is due to the fact its now two years old and starting to feel it's age, it discharges fairly swiftly and isn't great on range. I've been informed it's the same battery as the GT Bamboo which is a 10s 36V/7ah, 252w/h battery.

I honestly have never thought about DIY until today, my electronics isn't bad, and my soldering skills are fairly decent. But i wouldn't know where to start. I've only really used the board rather than get into any communities with it so don't know how i would go about getting a non-genuine/aftermarket battery and tbh haven't found that many esk8 forums.

Does anyone have a suggestion at all? i heard of the Sanyo NCR18650GA but only really in passing. Does anyone know of any tutorials for battery building or suggest anyone that can sell me a aftermarket battery at all?

I appreciate your input, i need to get this sorted as flying end of next week and am half tempted to sell the board which i don't really want to do!

 

There's definitely a lot of info around. If you search for Whitepony Evolve, he built a battery for a gen2 carbon a while back and put together a really solid guide including his battery choices (ran with no BMS though).

Endless-sphere.com • View topic - Evolve Carbon AT with 50km+ range

Endless sphere seems like a more mature group than the es8k builders forum, though both probably have good info for how to build a custom battery.

There's a fun fat bike blog as well if you want to read some more about it as well (but mostly about electric fat bikes).
I Got The Skills : Building A 18650 25Ah GA 50Amp Soft Pack From Scratch

 

Hey Skully, I appreciate the reply. I had found endless sphere, and agree the group is pretty cool, and clever when it comes to this stuff. I posted here thinking that someone may have come across a similar issue and solved it. But alas.

I think i shall build a battery when i get to the UK, I'm not scared of having a go and could knock up a arduino spot welder pretty quickly. Maybe when i'm done i'll post it here for future reference! Thanks for info about whitepony, that'll be my next thing to checkout, cheers again!

 

I've definitely thought about it, but right now I'm leaning towards having someone else build me one for my Gen2 Carbon that is getting a bit tired. I don't think I'd make them often enough that the effort/cost of building it would pay off for me.

I'd definitely look for someone who can ship it to you relatively easily though, so, I don't really have any specifics unfortunately. . . For me in the US, probably either LHB or ChiBoards.