@QualityThyme
I suspect there is nothing wrong with your Revel Kit or battery. Instead, I think you may just need to modify the way that you ride on the last power bar.
As a heavier rider, I interpret the fouth bar as being essentially the same as out of power. On the last bar, I would have to ride extremely gentle and not up hill in order to avoid a power down. If a heavy rider or someone with oversized tires accelerates hard or tries to climb a hill on the fourth bar then rapid voltage sag culminating in a cut-out would be the most likely scenario. Accelerating more moderately, the expected outcome would be a graduated power reduction and vibration alert.
Keep in mind that there are certain combinations that don’t go well together. The ingredients of a bad mix include:
Heavy Rider
Oversized wheels
Steep terrain
Hard Acceleration (Rider likes to accelerate hard all the time)
Standard Range Batteries
Rider has only one extended range battery (no spare)
Pick any two or three of the above ingredients and you should not expect much when you are down to the fourth and last power level indicator.
Heavy loads on low battery levels can cause voltage to drop so rapidly that there is no time for a speed controler to reduce power and issue an alert.
This is not specific to the Revel Kit. It can happen on any Eskate.
Just remember that the 2WD Revel Kit is optimized for battery swapping. It is a medium range vehicle if you are a medium weight rider who accelerated moderately. Its a short range vehicle if you are heavy and accelerate full throttle and have oversized tires and have to climb lots of hills and don’t have any spare batteries.
Does that make sense?
Returning to the list of bad ingredients… 4WD is something that you should consider if three or more ingredients apply to your rides. Sticking with 90 mm (or smaller) wheels is another way to sweeten the mix. Extended range batteries and lots of spares also sweetens the mix.
As a heavier rider, I have very low expectations from the Standard range batteries. I have them on hand incase I want to board a plane. But I don’t count on them for distance or hard acceleration.Standard Range batteries and Oversized tires are a poor combination.
I live in The Netherlands (flattest country in the world)
I do like to accelerate, but not when I’m below 25% anymore
So on one hand I’m inclined to follow your logic, but on the other hand, only two of us reported this issue thus far, you yourself for instance haven’t had this, or have you?
Despite it being the lighter battery, I wanna feel like I can trust it. And even it being the tiny second that it is, of it throws you off balance, it sucks.
The accumulating voltage sag seems like it’s it. I just wasn’t sure if it was an esk8 thing, a revel thing, or isolated to my kit thing. All your points make sense, and modifying the way i ride is the best way to prevent this, but sometimes i come across steep hill on the way back home and have to just walk up along side the board back up the hill
It’s one of the big reasons i pulled the trigger on a second battery, is that it’s just no fun on one bar. So i’d rather take both batteries down to 25% and then charge them afterwards. Ideally i’d only be charging to 80% as well, but i’m not that cautious. I also would consider 4WD just for the torque increase. But i would way rather save up for a premium board like the MetroboardX.
I run 85mm caugamas, extended range battery and am 185lbs. But the killer factors are definitely the steep terrain and heavy acceleration. It makes sense, and with lithium it’s really not a huge deal as it was with ni-cads. But like @Matts said, we both have the same issue so it’s concerning but not deal breaking.
Thanks for helping provide some clarity on this issue! Just goes to show, there’s still a ton of things that can be improved on in our hobby and there’s great days ahead when everything will be improved and better!! One of the cool things about esk8 is how much there is to learn and to fix because everything isn’t locked down and hard to service by yourself.
On a side note, my solder joint broke today in the same spot. I suspect it’s because the join’t wasn’t very thick, and i was attaching it directly to another solder point that is higher temp, so i couldn’t meld the two together nicely. So i will have to spend some time de-soldering the old joint a bit and prepping the surface better to attach a larger bead. I was actually running some family friends kid’s on the board and one of them missed out on their turn poor kiddo.
Cancel your order and get the 105mm version of the airless rubber tire wheels which does fit revel’s kegel adapter. There’s an abec style adapter coming out for the 105mm and 120mm discovery cloud wheels For direct drives and the revel kit (what I was told) in the near future too if you want to wait.
I don’t find myself being thrown off balance by any revel kit power downs. For me that’s true of both the SR and ER battery. However, you and I face circumstances that may be different in a few ways:
I have an oversized deck (Tarib). Your deck is not small either but I do have the benefit of a wider stance.
You are much lighter than me. That means you will experience faster accelleration. So the unexpected change in accelleration for you could be more pronounced when you drop below a voltage threashold.
As a habit I would not attempt to accelerate hard on the 25% battery level. So I’m less likely to experience what you have. Also, I could be wrong but I don’t think most eskaters would either. When I do group rides, I see most other riders being even more cautious than I am in terms of gently throtteling a semi depleted battery. I think most riders eventually adopt a habit of having thier full throttle fun when the battery is full and shifting to conservative acceleration deeper into the ride.
I could easily be wrong in my speculation but my gut tells me that the solution to your SR battery concerns might be as simple as modifying your throtteling and swapping practices. I do the vast majority of my riding on XR batteries. If I exhaust every XR battery and have to resort to my SR batteries, then I switch to power level two and ride like a granny to streach out the range.
Sorry to hear your battery repair did not last. based on the pictures you posted, I thought you nailed the repair. You should still contact revel support about the broken connection. Also, perhaps try to locate someone locally who has the equipment to spot weld battery tabs.
I think you’re right here. My deck is little narrower and shorter than yours, but at a 100 cm still no little puppy. With regards to weight, sounds logical as well. And your last point I think is indeed fair too, I must start to incorporate slowing down after the 25% notification as well. I’m already doing that, but just maybe not enough.
Different question: I haven’t ridden a battery that far past the 25% notification, but is it correct that if you keep riding, it will give a 10% notification and then you should really stop using that battery? To avoid risk of over depleting that battery? In other words, is it safe to keep riding (slower) past the 25% notification but really stop at the 10% mark?
No worries! I thought i had fixed it great too. Everything works great in how i fixed it, just need to make the solder connection stronger. Spot welding the metal tabs isn’t necessary in this case. Just need to properly secure the wire into the existing solder point instead of just globing more on top. I already reached out to revel about it and we resolved it
Each vibration alert is an indicator that you have dropped below a critical low voltage threashold. You are able to continue because the voltage recovers. My personal opinion is that you should not ignore more than two vibration alerts. Its how I treat my lithium batteries. My six year old lithium batteries are still running strong and I attribute it to this practice. Prior to adopting these habits I damaged a few batteries including Chain saw batteries and Landwheel Lipo batteries.
The Revel Kit batteries seem to be more resiliant than the old Landwheel batteries. But My recommendation is to minimize riding past the vibration alerts. The best way to do that is to have lots of spare batteries and carry enough spares. Also avoid grossly oversized wheels and expect much lower range in cold weather.
I have never seen a 10% notification. Instead, the vibration alerts are usually accompanied by some tiny text that flashes on the screen with not enough time to read it. the text says that you battery has dropped below the critical low voltage threashold.
I guess it is possible the remotes had a firmware update at some point in the production line. I know one of the new batches will have some slight improvements
