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Three years ago, my good friend Lawrence showed me an XT60 male connector that shorted out by hitting a metal object in his pouch. I laughed so hard at his sacrifice and thought “this could never happen to me because I was too careful”. It happened three years later when I removed the battery from my backpack. My XT60 male charging connector hit the backpack zipper and let out a lot of sharks and soot that scared the shit out of me. This article explains a few ways to troubleshoot the XT60 male charging connector, and why you shouldn’t be a fool (like me) and ignore this safety issue entirely.
Doesn’t look good? it is.
There are 3 ways to go about this, which I’ll cover in order from easiest to most complex:
Any XT60 cover that won’t fall off will work fine
Buy XT60 Hats
You can get 5 XT60 hats from eBay or Hobbyking here Priced at $2.90, about $0.58 each. This is by far the easiest option. If you want to find them, just search for “xt60 caps”
This shows the homemade XT60 lid for the Luna Wolf bag, yes I know it’s dirty and will be in the dishwasher soon
Build XT60 caps using all the XT60 connectors you have lying around
It takes about 30 seconds and I build 5 at a time. Since you don’t care about the quality of the XT 60 connectors (they don’t transmit power through them), just buy the cheapest one on eBay. The cheapest I could find was about $0.20. Below is a video of the entire process for your entertainment. I need to get 1000 subscribers to embed a link in my video and become a “Youtube Partner”, so please firmly click subscribe to my channel, please add cream and sugar to it. I know, I can barely stand watching myself talk, you don’t have to watch multiple videos, just subscribe to my channel and ignore all my future videos. I really don’t mind.
Go all out and swap the XT60 men’s for women’s because women are always right no matter what
My wife has trained me well and I’ve learned to recognize that she’s always right, so on this point, I rarely argue (unless she threatens me to eat cheese). If you want to cut out the male connector, I recommend cutting and soldering one side at a time (I started with the red wire). When you cut the red wire, you should wrap the entire other connector and wire inside a nitrile glove for safety. The last thing you want to happen when using a soldering torch is accidentally touch two wires and short out the battery. If you wear nitrile gloves, it smells bad and you have to burn it before killing yourself. I’m pretty paranoid when using any e-bike battery because I know too many people who have had problems (lose an eye, start a fire, burn down their house, the list goes on).
Soldering e-bike batteries is no joke.
You can see other connectors and wires wrapped in gloves to keep them safe
When replacing any wires on the battery, take a moment to finish whatever you’re doing and heat shrink it before replacing the other wire. The best way to screw yourself up is to cut and strip both wires at the same time, and hope your tools and gun don’t touch both wires at the same time (they will).
In conclusion, the XT60 male charging connector should be capped or replaced. If you get “bitten” you can’t say I didn’t warn you.
ride.
