Battery Power for Lawn equipment -- is it time?

We had a corded 18" dual blade mower when I was a teen in the 1950's. It had a great feature, the handle flipped over so that the power cord always stayed on the same side which made cord management easy.

JeffD

 

Neighbour had one of those, I was impressed: get to the end of the row, flip the handle, go the other direction. This was in the nineties.

 

I remember Black & Decker having a model with the flipping handle. The downside was in not having a bag.

 

thanks!
any fire risk? his links are around $1,000. materials?

 

No, there is not any mire fire risk than with lead acid batteries. LiFePO4 batteries are a lot safer than the lithium ion batteries used in cars like Teslas.

You don't need a 100 ah battery. A 50 ah LiFePO4 battery has more than twice the capacity as the original look lead acid batteries.

I got an Eco worthy 48 volt 50 ah battery off of Amazon for less than $400.

The new charger was less than $100.

 

I have thought about a 120 VAC to 80 VDC power supply that would fit in the battery socket. Corded for bulk mowing and then battery for edges.

Bob Wilson

 

Or get a corded mover and a battery 'generator' sized for use where the cord is a hassle.
Think I'll stuff one of those battery power supplies into a backpack if I ever decide to ditch the extension cord instead of replaced my corded tools.

 

Thanks,
I watched a pretty comprehensive video last year, but there was a lot of custom work.
My level of diy would require some sort of kit and tutorial.
Or at least links to all the required parts.

 

The conversation is absolutely easy. I did extensive research. I did no drilling or cutting.

All I needed was a 13 and 14mm socket and the same two sized combination wrenches.

Almost any YouTube video covers the most complicated part of the conversion, which is the disassembly.

The toughest part was lifting and transporting the four 65 pounds each lead acid batteries to the city recycling yard.

The only other thing I used were some wire ties, an 8 ft long luggage strap and a roll of 3M double stick tape.

The new LiFePO4 battery weighs 58 pounds, but has two convenient carrying handles with one on each end.

A smart LiFePO4 charger is available to directly plug in the original charging port. Only two plastic tabs need to be snapped off with a pair of needle nose pliers.

That's the entire conversion on the basis of my experience.

Before my retirement, my expertise was to find the simplest and least expensive method to service aerospace components and systems.

 

that puts you way above my pay grade!
does the battery or charger have a compatible bsm?

 

If I was going to start with cordless, the first one I might consider is hedge pruner, this sort of thing:



I've lost count of the number of times I've "cut the cord". I'm careful as heck now.

 

Yes. The Ezgo golf cart battery charger shown in this picture for about $100 works perfectly with the LiFePO4 Eco Worthy battery conversion.

A company called Delta Q made the original charger for Ryobi with a variation of the Ezgo 48 volt golf cart charging port.

 

Over the past weekend, I shorted the wires in the charge port. The port's embedded 30 amp micro fuse was blown.

The replacement charge port is a $70 part, and the mower is locked out from running by a relay originally designed and manufactured by Delta Q for EZGO golf carts to prevent golfers from driving off with the charger connected.

Since the original lead-acid batteries required that the charger to be connected when the golf cart or mower is not in use, this feature was important.

Since this is not really important with LiFePO4 batteries, instead of restoring the original complex charge lock out system, I removed the entire lock out and simplified it and added a fuse holder with a 50 cent removable fuse.

The charge port connector now uses a cheap and widely available Xt60h connector used for solar panel system controllers using the LiFePO4 batteries.

Now, the charging system is much cheaper to repair and much more reliable.

 

Here's why the 48 volt lead-acid series of Ryobi riding lawn mowers have a future advantage over the newer mowers using expensive proprietary batteries. The smaller RM300E he references uses the same system components as the RM480EX that I have.

Zero turn models were also available using the same system.

 

that's what I have

 

The only other important mod is to cut the wires off the black cubic charger lockout relay and to connect the red and yellow wires together.

The Xt60h cables and sockets shown on the photo below are really cheap off if Amazon. About $20.

The extension cable cable plugs directly into the charger I referenced in a prior post.

 

I cut my full 1/3 acre lawn today with the new LiFePO4 battery conversion.

Even when new, it sometimes beeped and cut off going up the hill or in heavy grass.

Nothing like that happened today. I cut the entire lawn nonstop.

I had measured the battery voltage at 53.2 Volts before cutting.

The voltage after use was 52.0.

Using the chart provided be Eco-Worthy, I used about 12% of t h e battery's capacity, going from 90% down to 78.

I am really impressed.

I connected the charging cable to the original place with the blue Anderson. This means that the charging circuit is disabled with disconnecting the main battery.

On second thought, I might con̈next the charging cable directly to the battery instead. This would allow me to charge the battery with the mower discon̈nected and fully isolated.

 

Here's a video on the under $400 ECO-WORTHY battery I used.



This is apparently the ideal battery for converting 48 volt lead-acid battery equipped riding lawn mowers. The more expensive 100ah batteries are a bit heavier and bulkier, more expensive and not necessary, unless if needed for commercial use.

Here's a photo af someone else's conversion, Thai I simplified.

 

I wish this guy had done a complete removal and installation video, with product links:

watch

 

Yeah, they would work, but that's over $800. You would need four of those and they would have to be wired in series and would have separate battery system control boards that need another controller to synchronize them.

The $400 one I used has all of the batteries synchronized in one complete unit that connects to the mower with the original cable.

The complete battery was developed to simplify the installation.