I Killed the Kings Lithium battery...

6 months ago I bought a cheap King's lithium battery for $400 and installed it on the underside of my niss and Patrol 6 months later and after our big trip to Queensland it's dead and today we're going to find out why oh oh yeah that's righted all right so we managed to get the battery out of the car uh it's not the easiest J in the world but we did it and just quickly before we start tearing into this thing I just want to touch on a couple little things speculating about um what I think may have happened to it so as you would have seen when we're up in Queensland one of the things we did with go through an underbody car wash now when you're comeing off the beach you don't want any salt left on your car so you go through they have these special uh washing stations or Car Washers that shoot 5,000 PSI pressure water from Jets up through the bottom of your car to wash all the salt off now obviously this is mounted under my tray meaning it is exposed to all the elements uh and I think in the process water has worked its way between the top of the battery and the floor of the tray and then seeped into the Gap uh well the join where the two separate half of the casing meet now as you can see here there is dirt um and sand caught on top so if there's dirt and sand there they definitely water got there at some point and so I think water seeped in and I think it's potentially fried the BMS because what essentially was happening is I could still draw off the battery while it's still had charge but it wouldn't charge so and that's from what I think is up to the BMS to tell the battery when to accept chargeing not to so that's my speculation anyway now when I bought this battery I was fully aware that Kings did not list this battery with uh waterproof rating essentially it said on their website and I'll actually quote to you what it said uh Adventure Kings lithium batteries are made from a durable ABS casting that is dust proof and water resistant now there is a note as well here that says Adventure Kings lithium batteries are not recommended for marine or under Bonet application so I didn't do the under Bonnet application I technically didn't do marine application although it was exposed to water um so I guess that is Marine in the word so if we do find water inside just note that they don't say that this is a sealed lithium battery now another thing that I do want to touch on is the way in which you mount your battery and its orientation now I know when I first put this in there were a few people talking about the fact that I'd mounted mine on its side uh and when I bought this battery there was nothing on the website to suggest that it needed to be mounted in a vertical position on its base um and from what I or my understanding of lithium ion phosphate batteries because the cells don't have any liquid inside them uh there shouldn't really be any which way you need to mount the battery now another good way to think of that is if you take like a lithium ion phosphate battery Bank just like one that King sell for example think about a portable battery Bank you're never worried about which way it's orientated when you're charging your phone and you can flip it on all sides whichever way and it's never an issue so I don't see how a battery like this could be any different in that regard however another aspect to that is how the battery itself is constructed and this can differ between different manufacturers of battery depending on where the padding is located in the battery whether it's on the site or on the base uh where different components are located within the casing could all determine whether it's actually safe to mount on its side or if it has to be mounted upright so with that all covered let's start tearing into this battery and see if we can figure out what went wrong and note that when I start pulling this thing apart uh it is going to avoid the warranty because look if I really wanted to I probably could have almost got it replaced um I haven't had it for that long um but this is in the name of Science and honestly I just want to see how it handled at all because it was a good battery and I want to see whether it's worth getting another one if this one is fried so anyway start point it apart oh yeah there's moisture in there oh yeah there's a lot of moisture in there and corrosion on the BMS oh je oh yeah that's fried oh yeah you know what is funny though and i' like like I've seen pull down before it's crazy how much smaller the battery itself is in the whole casing yeah I know the batter is just yeah that it is isn't it it's crazy but maybe it's because they need to fit in protection around it which is how wet the BMS is yeah that's got so it is glued but it's not it's not waterproof yet which is funny too because obviously they don't want to Warrant it being waterproof cuz just a whole another thing to look after but they could very easily run a bait of silicon through there when they assemble it and it would pretty much I can seal it see like that's double-sided tape to the casing you kind of realize how cheapish all put together yeah all right so we got the casing off the battery and the first thing that is very obvious to see is there is a lot of moisture inside here uh not just droplets but I can see like puddled water in the bottom of the casing it has had a very significant effect on the BMS there's a lot of corrosion and rust so what we might try and do is see if I can pull some of these components out and then explain to you as I pull them apart um and we might be able to have a better look quite different in construction to the uh 120 A batteries that's obviously how they make it slim line so this is what I'm talking about as well in terms of the battery orientation determing which way it can be mounted this appears to have padding on every side of the battery so to me that says that you could theoretically mount it in any way possible because it can't the Cs inside the case and can't jiggle around um there is all lots of packing which actually makes the battery a lot bigger than it actually than the cells actually are too there's a bunch of squiggly stuff down there which looks like some sort of adhesive that they've probably put in the bottom and just set the battery in there yeah true oh my God there's a lot of water coming out oh we actually kind of have to be careful here cuz if this gets punched and water gets into the lithium cells then you can start a crazy big fire too so this is not ideal essentially don't home is that what you trying to say yeah pretty much we're pretty much playing with fire there's a lot of moisture in there oh jeez look at it coming out of and yeah they're not Prismatic cells they're pouch cells so all the the reason I so I went into this thinking that these were going to be Prismatic sales because all the other battery tear Downs on the Kings 120 and 200 amp hours have been Prismatic and Prismatic pretty much means they got a hard casing but these are actually pouch cells so like a soft case which makes them much more susceptible to being punched for one but yes these are are pouch cells actually and let's have a close look now as well while we've got it out if I carefully the BMS is absolutely caked this see they got like some sort of insulation that's disintegrated into nothing because of the moisture oh yeah jeez like this is all like you can't really use that it's all cooked it's all had moisture all through it if I lift up this flap here you can see all of the individual lithium cells here now they've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight cells which makes up our you know 12vt battery and yeah these are the these like a pouch style cell so they're soft casing another thing that I found pretty interesting when I was researching about uh cheaper lithium batteries that a lot of them use secondhand uh lithium cells so even though we've got eight cells here and they'll make up your you know 100 amp hour capacity you might have found that when these sales were brand new they might have made up 200 amp so essentially the companies buy secondhand sales and just get enough of them to make up the required amount but you know if they were new you could have had half the amount so with all the different cells of the battery exposed I can actually go along and test the voltage of each cell and then see if it adds up to the whole voltage rating that I'm getting off the battery now the job of the BMS is to keep all these cells equal in voltage uh so what we're going to do now is use the multimeter to test each one and we'll see if it's doing its job I suspect that it is isn't and because these all connected in series uh essentially you're adding the voltages of each cell as opposed to it being in parallel and each um one being already at 12 volts so starting with the first cell 2.68 so this next cell should be the same voltage 2.68 as well 2.42 next cell again should be around that 2.5 region let's see8 volt already that's uh very scary that's not good and our last sale. 3 so there you go so if you sort of do a quick math on that 2.6 + 2.4 is 5 +8 plus3 we should be looking at about 6 volts you know give or take if I measure the whole battery and let's do that now 5.6 so you know roughly but you can see there what I mean this the cell voltages add up um but the problem is obviously that they're not even and that's because the BMS isn't working properly so I think it is fried in terms of what that means for the sales now I spoke to a mate of mine who has built his own lithium batteries before and he pretty much told me that as soon as one of these sales drops below 2.4 volts that's when they started to degrade um and being at8 and3 uh these two are pretty much Cati this he said pretty much look you can try revive them but they won't perform as well as they used to they may not hold charge as well um they won't discharge the same and it can also lead to issues even if you did get a new BMS which we did think about potentially being able to do having two dead CS in there would mean that the battery won't balance properly and yeah if I wanted to rebuild this battery I'd need a new BMS as well as two new sales to go with these ones but I have to try and find sales that are you know the same size um just to make everything fit together nicely so yeah essentially for a $400 battery it's becoming a lot more work uh than it's worth essentially and it is at this point that I can't help but think to myself do I should have just walked into a king store and said can I have a new one and they might they might have said yes who knows although saying that me and Patrick have been watching these batteries very closely because um they must have sold out so well that there's no longer any stock in the country and I think they're not due back until like it was like end of May or something ridiculous um that they don't have these batteries back and they've gone up in price I paid $ 399 for it now they're $5.99 so see that we've established that these sales are dead and are no good to us we're actually going to pull one apart and see what's inside I've always been interested to see what's inside here and I'm sure you guys will be too so we're going to pull it apart and just see what they made up of it's like Slice on open from the chicken all right there you go battery Bank oh thank take that to charge my phone later I don't think it's the right voltage unfortunately people probably look at me with a knife and a lithium battery like you idiot oh that's that's what I'm used to seeing so we just pulled apart a couple of the SS out of one of the peirs and we've noticed that they've actually got a sticker on them which has a amp hour rating and also a date now this date date could be the DAT it was manufactured or it could have been the day it was purchased or perhaps it could even be the day that it was sold or bought secondhand we don't know now since this sell has no charge in it Patrick and I wanted to open it up to take a closer look at what makes up a lithium battery now disclaimer do not try this at home because if you do this with a charge sale it could end very badly I'm really tempted to just put the knife in Liam I don't know what's the worst going to happen it's a Willy Wonka bar might find a golden ticket in here I might win the lifetimes of King's batteries so many people are probably looking at this video right now like cringing like what are you actually doing you idiot this is why women live longer than men so here we've actually opened up our dead lithium cell to show you the elements that actually make it work now disclosure do not try this at home because opening up a Charged lithium cell like this and exposing the elements to the atmosphere could cause it to suddenly combust so as you can see inside the cell here we've got all these different layers here now the copper looking layer is our cathode and anode and that conducts the electron and then we also have this black electrolyte um separator layer and that actually stops the electrons from passing through and forces them to run around through the circuit and power your appliances and that's pretty much how these batteries work the take-home points are pretty much King's batteries are not waterproof or even water resistant um so make sure you keep them in a place that is dry and away from moisture two I need a new battery so this is where you guys come in I'm not sure whether do I buy another Kings do I get another cheap lithium battery do I get an upper Market high quality lithium battery or do I build my own lithium battery leave down in the comments below what you reckon I should do because I will need a battery pretty soon um but yeah now we've got to find a way to dispose of this we will be disposing in the proper way at a proper waste uh facility so yeah I'm just going to toss this in landfill cuz that probably wouldn't end very well but anyway hopefully enjoyed this video hopefully you found it interesting and learned a little bit along the way too so look out for the next episode and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Aussie Arvos

Views: 136,150

Keywords: TD42, Nissan Patrol, Nissan, Patrol, Ute, GQ, 4x4, 4wd, price, cost, turbo diesel, GU, Toyota, landcruiser, diesel, stock, aussie arvos, 79 series, 80 series, 75 series, Aussie Arvos, 4wd action, Maintenance, 4wd 24/7, mud, offroad, dirt, 4wding, 4x4 challange, camping, duelcab, pickup, truck, Hilux, V8, LIFT, 12 volt, inverter, High Country, Draws, traveling, vanlife, explore, Catch Can, EGR, Coil Swap, solid axle swap, 12V, batteries, lithium, kings, lithium battery, lifepo4, test, capacity, budget, 120ah, offgrid

Id: KkK0hEDKNzs

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024