Chosen Solution
i bought my jbl xtreme decemeber 2015. my problem is it keeps going on off and on within plays even on full charge. recently however even on full charge it doesn’t last an hour. I’ve been to too many forums and i haven’t seen any1 share the same problem as me. am i alone?
First off im from germany, so i apologise for my bad english in advance. I recently had the issue that the battery was running shorter and shorter and in addition to that, the unit went off with a loud knocking sound. So i opened the xtreme. I removed the totally debalanced battery. Its a 2 cell battery, one cell was at 3.29V and the other one at 4.26V!!! overcharged. My guessing is that the circuit board from the battery was faulty and it was not balancing the battery cells, but i dont know if the board is designed to balance. But i found a bad solder spot also, so who knows. The good news is, 18650 cells fit barely. I spotwelded 4 sony 18650V3 (drift free) cells together as a 2s2p pack and threw the original battery circuit board together with the old battery in the trash. The sony cells wont need a bms board, i use them for years in ebikes, they dont drift. I was a bit concerned that the xtreme would not boot up without the battery board but it did. You can also swap the original battery but these 18650 cells are way better in therms of quality and long time stability. Another problem is that i didnt found the original battery in europe, so i need to order it from china…….too much time. You get these 18650 cells everywhere. The xtreme is playing while im writing this……… ;-) EDIT!!! The unit wont charge without the circuit board from the original battery. The internal charger checks the temp probe which is on the board from the battery. But its quite easy, just give the charger a ~10k Ohm resistor between the minus from the battery and the temp cable coming from the connector. My xtreme is charging now. Next step is tune it up with 3500 mAh 18650 cells. With my old 2250 ones the xtreme was playing the whole night, so i guess with new 3500mAh cells this thing will run way longer. Also i will try to extend the base/foot/pedestal for 20mm so a whole pack of 18650 cells will fit underneath the unit. I just need to get a cable to the outside and isolate it to get it airtight. With this the xtreme will run half a week i guess.
If anyone is still looking - the OEM battery is a GREATPOWER GSP0931134 7.4v I was unable to find a replacement, or a suitable Lithium Polymer alternative, so I decided to give the 18650s a go like sebatianmeyer1 recommended. I am attempting to use the factory BMS board, and will post my results as a guide for others. EDIT #1: This is how I wired the batteries:
I am using the original BMS board, and Sony VTC6 3000mah batteries that I purchased from imrbatteries.com (there is a lot of concern with fake Sony 18650 batteries and they seem legitimate). The unit now charges and functions great! Haven’t tested runtime of the batteries yet because of my issue below. I made a major mistake - to get the batteries to fit after my hefty coating of electrical tape, I had the brilliant idea to remove the firewall from the clear plastic cover thinking it was for water resistance only - big mistake!!! Do not do this, as it also seals the air for the woofers to function correctly. Air now flows out the ports and the bass muffles. I put a red line on the image below for reference. I am now figuring out a way to seal it back up, thinking of pumping silicone or hot glue in there..
I am no expert, so if someone finds an issue with this method please let me know!
If anyone is still looking for help I decided to do some digging as well. I didn’t want to rig up a bank of 18650 cells and resisters etc lol. So I found a battery that was similar in dimensions and hoped would fit. I got the battery and it does barely fit. It is only 4400mah (8800mah @ 3.7V) which is almost the clamed OEM battery in the Xtreme. I wired the colors up the same and left one red off from the Xtreme. So far so good. I’m getting roughly 10-12 hours of playtime and its charging fully and shutting off automatically. My Xtreme used to charge forever and never stop and it also would only last an hour off of a charge. Anyways, I love JBL but when I contacted them they basically told me there’s nothing they could do as I’m from Canada which is absurd. Anyways, here’s a link of the battery I bought and it works well. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00FYWM… Hope this helps for anyone still needing it.
Hello guys. Maybe someone of you had problem with soldering 2of4 bms plates. So as you see i’m too had this problem and i solved it. I want to share my solution. So after few hours try soldering my wires i got idea. I took female connectors and i made some kind space which i can soldering and it will be to conduct electricity. I it works. My battery again is charging 3.5 hours. I add pictures with my solution this problem. So about battery which i used it was 4xSONY US18650VTC5 2600mAh. At the pictures you will see about what i’m talking .
Update (05/02/2017) So about how to make this connector. First you must clean it in something (in my case it was alcohol). And rest you have on my pictures, but you have to be carefull during grind this connector. It is realy gnetle. I destroyed 10 of this connectors before i make 2 proper. And to make proper shape of this connector i used thin screwdriver.
And about broken bms, you can avoid it but you have to buy battery like that (protected battery) http://www.bto.pl/produkt/43723/kp-icr18… But then it will be bigger problem with put it in.And then you have to use 10k ohm resistor, only then.
Pls can you do a video of the entire process pls would be very much appreciated. akhihbedavid18@gmail.com send me a link to this email tanks
