Hello,
How can I connect 6 Bonkas, without having to open the unit and soldering any new leads?
Can I connect them via 3 in series or this will create too much voltage?
Thanks
3 in series is too much voltage, you can make another parallel addapter so you don’t have to open up and solder anything.
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Do you know anywhere they sell them?
Won’t this drain the battery that is not in parallel faster than the others?
1-Connect one set of three batteries in parallel.
2-Connect second set of three batteries in parallel.
3-Connect set one to set two in series
4-Connect to PPG and go fly.
Disclaimer-I’m no battery expert
It would be better to have three 2S pack combinations, and then put them in parallel. That way the single wire is not carrying all the current.
To be more clear, put 2 of the batteries in series. Repeat this three times. Now put those three sets in parallel so they tie in at your switch or buss bar or whatever.
OP, I suggest you seek out help locally if you have confusion about how to do this, or the quality of your joints etc. Accidentially shorting a battery can have disasterous consequences.
Exactly. Good diagram. You probably don’t need the intermediate set of connectors though.
Perhaps this will help some of you. We need 12 cells to get the voltage correct but the Bonkas we use only have 6 cells. If you connect the red of one to the black of the other it essentially becomes a 12 cell pack:
This is your series connection. Notice it is now like a single battery and has one red and one black wire coming out of your now 12 cell pack.
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Thanks. So on the PPG frame I will use only one pair of the connectors?, instead of using 2 pairs, is this correct? Right now with 4 bonkas, I am connecting to both pairs (red/black) on the openppg frame.
Thanks
My understanding is that batch 3 is wired with one pair of connectors that goes to two motors and one pair that goes the other two. So both sets need to be used. That arrangement works fine for four batteries but for six you will need to make some type wire harness that will take 3 pairs of wires and merge them together then split to two pairs.
Not sure I am liking that idea - you could have one set run out of juice before the other.
I will wire them so that 2 series ( for your proper voltage) get connected to a paralleled bus(for your AmpHrs) no matter how many 2 paired series cells you add. I
I want to be able to have up to 12 bats when I am in trike mode1 but I dont want worry about changing a wiring configuration to do this.
And no, I have not figured out how to do it yet 
when I get the motor I will get inspiration once I have it together.
Cheers
I wired mine with two switches but all power is tied together in parallel:
The two black wires through the middle tie it all together (one should be red but I ran out of red).
Yup, looks good.
Bus bar minimum should be 150A capable minimum. I’d add some buffer on that though.
You could create a Y harness with the AS150s if you didn’t want to have to deal with a bus bar. First Bonka pair connects to OpenPPG Lead #1. Second and third Bonka pairs connect through your custom AS150 Y harness to Lead #2.
Remember that Lead #1 goes to two motors and Lead #2 goes to the other two motors so you don’t want to do that.
The bus bar in the diagram is carrying all of the current for the whole system and should be rated for 360 amps
Ah, my mistake, that’s what I get for not owning one. I thought they were all connected.
Then yes, bus bar is the best method.
Why are the main leads not connected internally? Redundancy?
It’s because they go through two switches. However, I re-wired my batch #2 with two switches and connected the circuits together inside the machine after the switches. Scroll up to see a picture of my wiring. The two switches are the new standard because they only have to handle half the current.
Ah yes, got it. I’ll be keeping everything connected, better for load and charge balancing.
Instead of the bus bar you could do something like this with 5 connectors instead of 4:
Make sure the bolt is really tight to make a good contact between the connectors.
Note: the 3 wires going into the junction will have up to 120 amps each and the 2 wires going out will have up to 180 amps each.
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