Boosted Rev: Battery Cells Replace - Part 1

It all began when I had an opportunity to buy old Boosted Rev from my company. Sadly the battery is dead and the scooter can go for a maximum of 4km. This is unusable. I decided to take a closer look at it and replace the battery cells.

The first step was to get the battery out of the scooter. This was the easy part. The standing cover is held only by four screws. You can easily take it down.

Once I got the battery, things started to get interesting. It was inside a metal case that could not be opened anyhow. I always aim for the less destructive way. I saw some guys open it with an angle grinder. What an ugly way to do that! First I had to get down the covers from both sides. You will need to apply a lot of force when doing it. You need to go all around with your screwdriver, to remove the silicon. Then you can take it down, again, by force.

Battery cells and BMS are held inside by silicone. This took a lot of time with a thin long sharp object, to get as much silicone as possible out of there. (Really, this took me hours!) Once I felt comfortable with the amount of silicon left, I took the hydraulic jack, and inside doors, and pushed the battery out of the case. Be gentle and have a bucket with water ready in any case. During the whole process, take a real case about the yellow ribbon cable. You do not want to damage it.

Once the battery was out, I cleaned all silicon leftovers from the battery and the case, so the battery could be easily pushed inside and outside the case now. Here is a closer look at the battery.

One of the myths I read was that the scooter gets bricked once the BMS is disconnected from the cells. I decided to try it as my first step. I soldered off the negative wire from the BMS, next I disconnected the yellow ribbon cable. Getting the yellow cable out was difficult and required a lot of patience (the same applies to getting it back in).

I waited for a few minutes, and I connected the yellow cable back in and soldered back the negative wire. I connected the battery to the scooter, and the scooter is still functional.

I would call this a success for today. Next time I will take the battery apart, and probably try to change all nine battery cells in one of the four parts.