today I wanted to show you how to
upgrade your battery on a bike like this
now you might think this is fairly
simple because you just need to go to
the manufacturer and buy a bigger
battery or one with a higher capacity
right wrong you see the rad power bike
is one bike of many that uses a
proprietary battery that means that you
cannot go buy another one of these
unless you buy it specifically from rad
power this is a 48 volt 14 amp hour
battery and they don't have a bigger
option you can't buy that cradle
separately and you can't buy another
battery that will plug into it and
therein is the problem you can't buy a
generic hai long style battery the
manufacturer of this case and put it on
this bike so today I'm going to show you
a few different ways that you can get
around this problem now before we get
into this video I know that 85% or more
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free Bolton ebikes t-shirt so what are
the reasons you would want to upgrade
the battery in the first place well we
have the upgraded controller and display
on this bike right now and that means
this bike is capable of way more power
than stock if we use more power we're
gonna use more battery so there's two
reasons two reasons we would want to
upgrade the battery if we go to a bigger
voltage like a 52 volt which this
controller can handle we can get a
little bit more top speed and if we go
increase the amp hours or the overall
capacity we can get more range so not
only can we go a little bit fast
but we can go further than what this
battery can currently do so what are we
gonna put on this bike we are gonna put
on a triangle battery which is so named
because it's shaped like a triangle now
how do we get this triangular shaped
battery to fit on here and mount as you
can see there's no mounting plates or
anything that come with a battery this
large that's okay because a triangle
shaped battery comes with a triangle
shaped bag so all we need to do is put
the battery into this bag it has a whole
bunch of velcro straps to keep it in
there nice and tight and then as you can
see this bag has straps all the way
around on all three sides so we can
tightly strap this on to the bike and
it's possible to make this look nice and
neat in fact in some ways it makes the
bike a little bit more stealthy so some
people may not even realize you have an
electric bike once your battery is
hidden inside of a bag like this now I
did say the battery was proprietary and
that causes one other problem which is
that the connector they use is an a
standard connector this is a XT 90
anti-spark connector on our triangle
battery I say anti-spark you can see the
little green part on here that's what
indicates the anti spark function
basically what this does is when you
plug in a battery sometimes you get a
really big spark right there but because
of the special design of this it slows
that process down a little bit so you
get a little spark and on 48 volt
batteries or larger and eventually that
will wear these connectors down the
starts turn black they don't connect as
well so this is an ideal connector the
controller of course and the battery
that are on the bike don't use this they
use something that looks like this so we
have a handy little adapter to make this
entire thing plug and play now if you
don't have a rad power bike that's okay
because this same process can be used on
other ebike
if you have another brand of electric
bike that has what appears to be a
unique battery or maybe it's not that
unique and they just charge a ton of
money for it this is a way to easily
replace just about any bike and at most
you would have to change the battery
connector so first things first we need
to get this battery off you just need to
unlock it okay now that we've got the
battery off we need to pull off this
cradle right here
so we've just got three bolts right
there we're gonna pop that off and put
our start putting our bag into place now
while I'm getting these bolts out
there's one other thing I should mention
what if you have a cradle or a battery
design where it's somewhat integrated
into the bike but you still want a spare
battery that doesn't cost as much as
whatever came on the bike well there's
still an option and that option is to
mount it somewhere else now you might be
wondering how can I mount a battery
somewhere else and still have it work on
the bike and the answer to that is
simple and I actually have a product
that works very well for this we are
totally out of stock at the moment but
I've got more on the way and it is a
parallel battery connector so there's
two different ways you could do this if
you're using the same voltage of battery
so let's say the stock battery that we
pulled off is 48 volts and the new
battery say we're gonna mount it on a
rear rack on the back say that's also 48
volts we could have a single connector
going from our controller to both
batteries now a standard parallel
connector means you could yes use both
batteries but you'd have to monitor them
both carefully make sure they're both
equally charged because if you were to
plug both batteries in at the same time
and one was fully charged and one was
low the voltage is going to very quickly
cause a rush of current to go from one
battery to the other potentially
damaging both of them and we definitely
don't want that so the special parallel
connector that I've got
actually accounts for that and corrects
it basically it's a special circuit
that's built into it so it prevents that
rush of current from happening from one
battery to the other so you can use two
same voltage of batteries and they can
be different amperages so they can be
different capacities as long as they're
the same voltage you can use them both
interchangeably and it doesn't even
matter which one is charged more than
the other it will drain either from both
evenly or it will drain from the fullest
battery first until it reaches the level
of the second battery in which case it
will drain both okay we've got be three
bolts off of our cradle now we have a
couple of zip ties right here we're just
gonna clip that zip tie off and then
unplug this cradle and get it totally
off the bike
now that the stock cradle is removed we
have two option for this piece and the
stock battery the battery's has have
some reasonable second-hand value so if
you don't intend on using this or the
battery I would recommend selling them
to someone else who needs it but you
don't have to do that let's say I want
to put not only our triangle battery
right in the middle but I want to keep
this as a spare what I would do if you
have a rear rack or you can put one on
mount the cradle to the rear rack of
course mount your battery to it now you
can mount this right about here
obviously not going to be right on the
tire so if this is sitting on the rear
rack once again this is a 48 volt
battery the one we're putting in here is
a 52 volt so we can't plug these in at
the same time so what you can do is
leave your adapter leave this somewhere
that it's fairly accessible along with
the plug on your motor controller and
what you could do is run off of your 52
volt battery if it dies then you can
simply unplug that connector move it
over to your original battery your stock
battery and plug that one in and keep
running you just don't want to plug two
different voltages in at the same time
now if you upgrade to a 48 volt here and
a 48 volt here that's where you can use
that parallel
connecter I talked about and it will
drain from both batteries you can charge
them both up pop them both on or you
could put just the back battery or just
the center battery so you have a lot of
flexibility you could take one battery
for a short ride you could take them
both if you know you're gonna go for a
longer ride now as a helpful tip if you
are running two batteries my personal
preference is to always run the smaller
capacity battery first because if that
one dies you know you have more than
enough juice to get home if you do the
opposite and you better make sure you
pedal harder on the way back now all of
these bags are gonna have a zipper they
might vary as to which side the zipper
is on maybe you get a fancy bag that has
a zipper on both sides but basically
we're just going to take this bag and
strap it to the frame now I find it a
little bit easier if you take the
triangle battery and put it in the bag
and kind of get it situated first and
that way you have the battery all tucked
in there nice and neat and then slip it
on to the bike so inside the bag to
accommodate four different sizes of
batteries so you can see we have these
super long velcro strips and they're
nice and tough these things are not
gonna let go you do not have to worry
about this going anywhere we've got the
battery velcroed inside the bag and you
can see there's actually a hole at the
back for our cable to fish through to go
to the controller so we fished that
through there we're gonna leave our
charge port up near the front so it's
easily accessible when we want to charge
this up and then we're gonna go ahead
and zip this bag up now here's what it
looks like zipped up once again if we
want to access the charge port we just
need to unzip that top portion pop that
out or plug our charger in now let's get
this on the bike these velcro straps are
probably gonna be way longer than they
need to be for your bike but they're
done longer on purpose so they can fit a
variety of frame styles so after you get
this situated on the bike you can always
trim these up a little bit with some
scissors now this battery is a very
tight fit once again this is the 52 volt
20 amp power
so you can see why the larger 52 volt
thirty amp hour battery we have will not
fit on the Red Rover bike so we've got
our battery positioned right here now we
can take our velcro straps and you can
see how this is a little bit longer than
it needs to be so we could trim that
shorter this may or may not be the
permanent home for this battery so I'm
not gonna cut these I'm gonna leave some
extra room and just tuck that underneath
in case we decide to move this battery
to another bike I'm gonna bring the
camera around to this side you can see
I've still got some extra velcro we can
snip off there but here's the battery
cable for our big triangle battery it's
exiting out of that hole right on the
back corner that I showed you earlier
now this is where the battery connector
that's on the bike is currently
different so if you're doing this DIY
you would have to take one of those
connectors and cut and solder a new one
because obviously those don't match at
all but that's not a problem because we
can take our adapter here we're gonna
plug in the black end first because we
have this nice anti-spark function on
the yellow connector we're gonna use it
so we've got our black connector in and
then we're just going to go ahead and
plug in our yellow one right here and
once you're plugged in there I would go
ahead and turn on your bike and verify
everything's working and as long as
everything powers on and looks good at
that point I would go ahead and zip-tie
this any extra cable up the other option
is instead of zip tying what you could
do is just take the excess and run it
underneath the velcro straps right here
that'll keep it nice and tight to the
frame and then any excess cable you can
actually fish back through and put it
inside the bag and on this there's
actually enough slack that we could get
this yellow connector inside the bag
have it protected in there and then we'd
be all done so there you go you can see
that's not very difficult at all it's
actually very easy
do and we have upgraded that bike in
just a few minutes from the stock 48
volt 14 amp hour battery to a 52 volt 20
amp hour so 48 volts times 14 amp hours
that's 672 watt hours for the stock
battery that we removed and then 52
volts 20 amp hours that's just over one
kilowatt hour of battery so it's a
substantial improvement because we
increased voltage we're going to see a
slight bump in top speed and then we're
gonna see a huge improvement in our
overall range now what about cost what
does it cost for battery like this well
this particular one I used in the video
of course is for sale at Bolton e-bikes
comm it's five hundred and twenty nine
dollars and that is shipped anywhere in
the continental US how does that compare
to other battery prices this is the
stock battery that we pulled off if you
want to buy one of these from rad power
that's 550 dollars so you can see how
going to a more generic style of battery
can save you some money because we're
getting a much bigger battery for less
than the price of this one you could
probably sell this one secondhand for
four to five hundred and buy this one
for just a little bit more or better yet
like I said you hang on to this one put
it on a back rack and you can still use
it you just have to unplug and plug your
connectors and swap them which is not
hard to do at all now if you have any
questions about this process of course
please leave a comment below like I said
I would give away a free Bolton ebikes
t-shirt to somebody in the comments and
of course if you want to buy shirts
there's always a link in the description
where you can check out any of the
Bolton ebike shirts these are shirts
that I've designed myself and I just
like to wear them in my videos because I
think they're cool now make sure to hit
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make you feel better thanks again for
watching I hope this was a helpful tip
and helps people to realize that some
upgrades are really not hard to do at
all and anyone can do this I hope that's
what I can really show people that are
watching my channel is that it's not
hard to work on your own electric bike
no matter what brand you have and making
upgrades can be really easy