GrahamP

Mark, There is no major maintenance, other than keeping your batteries topped of with distilled water and maintaining a charge. Not limited to the Intimidator, if you have one battery go bad, you will have to change all eight of them (ask me how I know!) Grease here and there and you're golden. It's been a workhorse for me. Much better than the Polaris EV I had before it. The decal stickers will come off!.

8 x 6v deep cycle Trojan 605s. Remember, disconnect the negative to the controller first before removing the old batteries and then connect the same negative last when reconnecting.

So, I finally chose to go back with flooded Trojan 605s. The extra cost and untested gamble with LiFePOP4 was not feasible. I was quoted $3k for a set of three Relion 48v LiFEPO4s and ended up getting 8 x 6v TRojan 605s for around $1400. The reinstall was arduous, with each battery weighing in around 70 lbs. In addition, fiddling around in and under the vehicle to reinstall the battery brackets was a PITA. However, the final result was that I have my wonderful EV Intimidator back up and running to full capacity. On a side note, I aslo had to send in my DualPro charger for refurbishment. The circuit board was corroded. DP repaired it but charged me $157 because they said that corrosion was not covered under their 3 month warranty. My point is that the casing should be waterproofed and, in future designs, they may wan to not have the circuit board at the very top of the charger and horizontal. Even a slight angle may have let an water or condensation run off. With regards to LiFePO4, I did get some excellent information from tech service at Relion. I was told that the Intimidator EV should use 3 x 48V Relions (Insight) in parallel, and would need a CAN terminal resistor and a one-button shut off. Both of which can be bought from Relion. If you do not use the on-button shut off switch you can either wait for the batteries to time out and shgut themselves off, or remove the seat and shut them off manually (not recommended as all 3 need to be shut of simultaneously, which is difficult to do with 3 batteries and two hands! - shutting two off, will probaly result in the third switching them back on again). Also, there is no need for a key in this situation. This could have security issues. For those needing any help with battery wiring, I have added some photos of my new set up.

Anyone done one successfully?

I have had a battery failure with one of my batteries, maybe another coming soon and have decided to change all 8 out to US Battery XC1800's. Just to make sure I have the correct connections, can anyone post a few pictures of the battery connections and email me a copy? Just an FYI, the Dual Pro Eagle Performance onboard charger quit. I am not sure, at this point, whether it is the charger that has failed, or the bad battery causing a low voltage failure. This low voltage will cause the charger not to start, even though it may be still working. (2020 models and above have a different charger). The charger is back with DualPro awaiting a dignosis. If you need to remove the charger, to send back to DualPro, you will need to remove the electrical input port on the passenger side, and the output to the batteries. Then, remove a good number of black zip ties to free both cords. The charger itself is held on by 6 machine screws, 3 on each side of the brackets. Be careful, the charger weighs 27 lbs! The whole unit, including the cords needs to be sent back. The connections are soldered inside the charger and cannot be disconnected. Thanks, Graham ([email protected])