10S2P 10AH BMS or Hobby charger?

Hello I’m new to the board, but it’s been a great resource for my Lipo project. While my application is not for a ESK8 I’m dealing with the same technical challenges for a battery. Please foregive me if this needs to be posted in the general vs the electronics section I thought there might be more collective knowledge here. This is for my son’s OSET electric motorcycle so I am not nearly as space constricted as a skate board. I’m replacing the aging 3 series connected 12v10ah SLA batteries with lipo.

I have 4 turnigy 5s 5000mAH packs that I’ve configured in a 10s2p set up. I’m trying to decide if I should use the Battery support 60A BMS I ordered or if I’d be better off with a quad channel hobby charger. After reading about storage voltage and also noticing the low voltage cutoff of the BMS I’m a little concerned that the BMS will make life more difficult than simpler.

I am using a programmable speed controller and have the voltage cut off set at 32v so I hopefully the ESC will cut out before the 2.85v of the BMS. The fact that the cut off of the BMS is below the danger level (3.0-3.2v) of a lipo worries me. I have the max current set to 30A contiunious/60 burst. The controler is rated for 60/100 amps. There is also a relay and 45amp fuse protecting the everything from the battery. So there are already some protections from a short on the bike side, but the battery it self would not be fused which is pretty normal in the RC world.

Since this is something that will only be used at most a few times a week I’m always going to need to be achieving at storage voltage somehow. I’m pretty sure the BMS will not balance at a 38V charge not to mention I haven’t been able to find an adjustable power supply that costs less than a quad channel balancing charger.

So I’m at a crossroads. Do I call the BMS a loss (maybe try to sell it to someone here if I’m lucky) and run the batteries with low voltage alarms and the ESC cuttoff as safety measures while investing in a decent hobby charger? Or use the BMS and 42v5a power Brick I’ve already sourced for this project?

Like all project as I learn more the more I realize I don’t know. I want to do this safely and right now I’m thinking that not using the BMS might be the safest route which goes against everything I knew at the beginning of this project.

Thanks in advance for your time and knowledge.

you only need to leave it at storage charge if you’re not using for more than a few months at a time

serious

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