Charging a scooter without a charger is not that difficult. You need to get a screwdriver, a matching charger, a power supply plug, and a voltmeter to do this. Scooters from Razor can have their deck and battery removed, but make sure that the charger’s voltage matches that of the unit.
Just as the name suggests, electric scooters run on electrical power, which means that you need to make sure they never run out of it in order to make the most of your riding experience. These handy vehicles are becoming increasingly popular throughout the world, especially in large and often very crowded cities.
The fact that they can easily slide through traffic makes them a great alternative for those who are in a hurry to get to work and want to avoid wasting time on public roads. However, there are some aspects that you need to keep in mind when riding a scooter, and the battery is certainly an important one.
In this article, we’ll discuss how you can make sure that you never have to leave your scooter behind because it ran out of power.
A bit about scooters
First of all, the engine cannot start if it doesn’t have enough power. For this reason, you want to choose an electric scooter that comes with a strong battery. Furthermore, the unit’s performance from this point of view depends on many other factors as well, such as the rider’s weight, any baggage he or she might carry, and if the roads are sloped or not.
Generally, on a full charge, the average rider should be able to go up to 10 or 15 miles, which is far enough to make this a suitable and reliable alternative for the daily commute. However, if you want to make sure that you get the most of your scooter, especially when it comes to battery life, then you should always charge just as the manufacturer indicated.
But there are those times when the charger might be broken or for some other reason, you may be unable to use it. The question is what can you do to still make this work? Luckily, there are ways in which you recharge your scooter without using the charger, so let’s take a closer look and see what steps you should follow.
Manually charging a battery
Some of us may not be aware of this, but there are ways to manually charge an electric scooter’s battery and, even more importantly, you don’t need to be any kind of an expert to get this done. It’s true that you will need a battery charger, as ironic as it may sound, but stay with us and see what the method is.
You can find a regular battery charger at any local or online shop that sells electronic components. Other tools that you are going to need are a voltmeter, a screwdriver, as well as a power supply plug. If you want to work efficiently, then you should get all of these items and then start working.
Remove the battery
The process of unhooking the battery should not be that complicated. You should look under the deck since that is where the cells are usually located. Carefully remove the screws and then proceed to remove the deck itself. Make sure that you don’t lose any of the screws as you do this. We all know how these tiny items can easily get lost and this is never fun.
Under the deck, you should find a rod that holds the battery in place using another two screws. You need to remove that as well and then see where are the two wire terminals that connect the batteries with the motor. Carefully unplug the wires from the leads, and see if there are two separate leads on the bottom as well. These need to be unplugged as well.
Once everything is disconnected, take out the battery. One thing you may not be aware of is that recharging batteries in open-air usually optimizes their performance. Charging something usually produces heat and so when the process takes place in an enclosed space, it can lead to overheating in some cases, thus affecting the unit’s overall performance.
Recharge the battery
There are several types of battery chargers out there you can choose from, but all of them should come with red and black wires, the red one being the positive terminal and the black one being the negative one. What you need to do next is connect the two wires from the scooter’s charger to these red and black ones.
Make sure that you know which one goes where based on the signs on the scooter (positive and negative indicators). Then proceed to connect it to an electricity source and it will start charging the battery.
There are some chargers that require the battery to be placed inside of them in order for it to charge, but if you are not sure which option is the right one in your case, you can always go to the local store and ask for more details on this matter.
A few things about charging the battery
Most chargers include indicators that let you know when the battery is fully charged. However, in the rare situation in which such an LED indicator is not included, you need to check the user’s manual provided with the vehicle to see how long the battery should be charged for. Generally, this should be somewhere between 12 and 24 hours.
However, you can check if the battery needs to charge for a while longer using the voltmeter we’ve mentioned before. To do this, you need to simply connect the charger’s two terminals to the measuring device and read the voltage. If this is below 12, then the battery should charge a bit more. Usually, the voltage needs to be somewhere around 12 or 13 volts.
Each scooter comes with a different type of charger (it could be a 24-volt or a 36-volt one), depending on the model, so you have to make sure that the charger you intend to use has the same characteristics to avoid any potential damage to the battery.
The temperature matters
There are several other tips and tricks that you should know, given that you most probably want to preserve your battery’s life for as long as possible. You shouldn’t charge it right after a ride since it heats up during use and recharging a hot battery is never a good idea. This may result in damaging the cells inside.
This rule goes the other way around, and you shouldn’t ride a scooter directly after charging it. As it charges, any battery gets hot, so if you take it for a spin right away, it will only end up heating more, which could affect the cells inside. The average temperature at which a battery performs best is somewhere around 68°F.
Therefore, if you just got home and you need to recharge your scooter, you may want to leave it for about 15 or 20 minutes, to stabilize at room temperature. You should also keep the batteries charged as much as possible. Lithium ones are known for not performing at their best when they are not charged enough.
According to many owner’s manuals out there, these should always be kept charged at least at 30% or 40%, and if you do this, there is also little risk of ever running out of power before reaching your destination.
Of course, rare occasions in which you may need to go under 15% are ok, but if you do this on a constant basis, then there’s a very high chance of diminishing your battery’s life and performance. After all, scooters need to be reliable in order to enjoy all the benefits that they bring.
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