Replace your car battery with capacitors! - Page 34 - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum

Ecky · 03-23-2019, 09:18 AM

I'm thinking of giving away my 400F cap pack, if you're willing to cover shipping. It will start an engine on its own but not a whole lot more. I believe it will need more aggressive balacing but I also have two extra capacitors which could be swapped for the ones that get most out of balance.

teoman · 10-01-2020, 05:15 AM

I just installed the capacitor bank to my motorbike (bmw r1200gs)

Carged it up to 15v and it fired right up. Was very pleased with myself. Bike runs great.

Unfortunately when i stalled the bike and immediately hit the starter, no joy, it turned once and did not work

I will see what i can do to charge it up to 15-16v from a battery (lithium ion, with a boost converter)

Maybe a usb c powerbank that can deliver 12v and 100 w may be a good multi purpose choice.

RedDevil · 10-01-2020, 07:31 AM

That does not sound good. The alternator of your bike should have kept the bank charged.
Even if it were just around 12 Volt it should have enough to

Did you do a load test on the bank to see how slow it drops under load?
Did you test the voltage of the individual capacitors afterwards?

redpoint5 · 10-01-2020, 01:18 PM

I've found my 600cc motorcycle will start from the 400 farad bank as long as it has at least 10v.

I had bought a 350 farad kit from Ebay a while ago that included a printed circuit board and all the components for LED balancing. I found 1 of the LEDs had died, so I soldered in a new one. Then I found 2 of them dead a few days later... long story short, I think I need to figure out a better way to balance the capacitors. They will get out of balance when some have balance circuitry on them and others do not. It's worse than having no balance circuitry at all.

I've found balance boards on Amazon that might work, but the mixed reviews makes me think there's a good chance it would just fry.

https://www.amazon.com/Acxico-Transf...569009&sr=8-45

I'm starting to see 3v rated caps, which means you could use 5 in series to get a 15v rather than using 6. Reducing the number of capacitors in series increases the overall available energy.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...AwvXVNzQ%3D%3D

I don't know why pricing is continuing to stay so high, and I'm not seeing as many Maxwell products offered now that Tesla owns them.

teoman · 10-13-2020, 04:49 PM

While starting the bike, i saw that the voltage sagged to 8V.

redpoint5 · 10-13-2020, 05:46 PM

Here's my 400f 6s capacitor video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qweEl8Wypzg

Quote:

Originally Posted by teoman

I just installed the capacitor bank to my motorbike (bmw r1200gs)

Carged it up to 15v and it fired right up. Was very pleased with myself. Bike runs great.

Unfortunately when i stalled the bike and immediately hit the starter, no joy, it turned once and did not work

I will see what i can do to charge it up to 15-16v from a battery (lithium ion, with a boost converter)

Maybe a usb c powerbank that can deliver 12v and 100 w may be a good multi purpose choice.

I let my friend ride my 600cc bike once and he turned it off with the kill switch rather than the key. The headlight drained it down to the point it could no longer be started with the starter.

I was able to barely get it started by coasting down a hill and popping the clutch. It sputtered quite a lot before finally starting fully. I've got fuel injection, so fuel pumps, ECU, and spark coils need sufficient voltage to run.

What is the farad rating of your caps, and how many did you put in series? Are you running any balance circuitry?