I have been using Hobbyking's "Multistar High Capacity 4S 8000mAh" batteries on my ebike for exactly three months and now it gets noticeably physically swelled.
The runtime has halved from what it used to and not to mention that it becomes more sensitive to ambient temperature.
I use my ebike to commute to work, so, a reliable transportation is a necessity for me.
Instead of buying another battery from Hobbyking, I figured, why not just try to use recycled 18650 cells from ebay?
The seller claimed that the batteries are from some genuine manufacturers that have passed its toleratable capacity loss.
This post is intended as a log on my progress for this project.
Well packaged by the seller (bargainretailer1). I got it for £68 in the UK. I am sure I can find a better deal if I tried hard enough.
20 units of AS10D51 batteries exposed.
It was rated at 10.8V @ 4.2Ah in its previous life.
First harvest! :)
All 120 pieces of 18650 Li-ion cells successfully extracted.
Simple resistive load test reveals 68 out of 120 cells were usable. Not sure if the other half can be recovered, so, maybe an update for a future post? ;)