Love the irony of dismantling a Ryobi with possibly the only non-ryobi drill/driver you likely have

I think the damage done by selling a 5K mower that will be useless in a couple of years is even worse than you stated. If someone who doesn't know about battery chemistry buys that thing and has to replace the pack after two years, they are going to be soured on battery powered equipment as a whole, not just Ryobi. Shame on them for selling something that is so obviously not fit for purpose.

I love how we’ve slowly seen you go from “batteries in a car?!?” To basically nearly an expert on battery chemistry and what’s the best battery type for each use case.

After watching Louis Rossmann and other talk about repairability, Ryobi is actually a good guy here. They do price gauge, but you actually own the mower and everything is labeled and easy to replace.

This is why right to repair is so important. You not only saved yourself money, you improved the product you purchased and were not stuck having to take whatever nonsense manufacturers want to sell to you. The product may be terrible and overpriced in its original configuration, but I do have a few points to give to Ryobi for having seemingly nearly ZERO anti-repair nonsense in there.

We argued with the guy at Home Depot. He swore up and down that Ryobi had lithium ion. When we asked for proof, he looked it up and they absolutely did not have them. We ended up getting a Cub Cadet. I saw the new Ryobi this week. I didn't see the price! Our Cub Cadet is still going fine after a couple of years.

I left an inverter connected by mistake and it discharged my 280Ah Lifepo4 cells to under 1V each. I was devastated because I just knew that my batteries were dead. Then I charged them, top balanced them and measured how much I had lost. I hought, yep, I lost most of the capacity, but they kept going. Until about 260Ah! Lifepo4 is SO underrated!

I appreciate the moments you leave in of just you being a human; we make mistakes, we do goofy things, and we aren't perfect by any means. (And thanks for having the bravery to add that blooper at the end, it was very funny and something I think would happen to me too 😂)

Okay, "horseless carriage" gladiator races need to be a thing now.

$5k is an insane price for that when you see it broken down, it seems like a well enough made thing (apart from the choice of batteries) but not $5k worth.

I love this! I converted my ICE powered lawn tractor last year to fully electric and LifePO4 was the way to go. I easily get thrre cuts of my yard on a charge!

Thank you so much for doing this. I plan to update my Ryobi soon and glad to have some REAL info on how to do it.

You should have hung a chainlink fence over your yard, so the Ryobi cordless didn't need batteries, like a bumper car. Red Green has a good instruction video.

Easy to disassemble? All the fasteners are the same? Good engineers! You don't have to make everything difficult! I knew an old mechanic who worked mostly on Fords & Lincolns, starting in the early 1970s. Aside from the frustrating madness of reverse bolts (not righty-tighty, lefty-loosey), Fords back then had needlessly bewildering types of bolts holding things together. If you needed to, say, remove an alternator from a '70s Ford, you could guarantee that the three bolts attaching it to the motor used three different sized bolts (1/2", 5/8", 11/16", etc.). Compare to working on something like a Hyundai where nearly everything is held together by 10mm bolts; easy!

Thanks for this update. I've been waiting for it for like 10 years. 👍

I replaced the SLA batteries in my mower with the Big Battery 48V FALCON ELITE and couldn't be happier with it. Dropped right in without any modifications to the mower needed other than drilling a couple small holes for screwing the battery to the sliding tray. I'm using the built in charge port, but I am using a LiFePo4 specific charger, as it is not recommended to use the Ryobi charger with LiFEPo4 batteries since they don't need a trickle charge. The original battery meter still works well enough, and the battery has an LCD display on it showing the current voltage, so I don't ever need to guess how much charge I have left. Best news is that I can mow my 1.1 acre lawn in two directions and only use about 15% of the battery. The lower weight and ability to use more of the battery's capacity make these batteries a must-do upgrade. Thanks for the thorough video of your experience!

The router incident and the oversized hole made me burst out laughing. The amount of times I've had or have seen a die grinder spazz out inside a hole is shockingly hilarious 😂😂😂

Just started watching the channel. Every video so far reminds me of the Malcom in the Middle episode where Hal starts by trying to replace a lightbulb and ends up rebuilding the whole car engine. Great videos!

This is amazing! I especially appreciate that you mention the "spend $1,000 on drop in replacement batteries" because then the value prop there is $5k for the mower, a year of use, and then another $1k after that year which is still less than the new Li+ mower!

I was going to start to correct some things but my god you've splurged on so much cool stuff that I just don't care anymore. Please make more of these videos whenever the opportunity arises. This is 100% awesome.

Robert, you never fail to put a smile on my face. Your imagination, engineering, videography, editing, and humor are the tops!

I love things that use standard batteries because it can be replaced with a drop in lithium battery. A lot of things use proprietary batteries or controllers that make it difficult. Second hand this is a great machine for someone who knows what they’re doing.

This is a GREAT video! I am looking at buying the Ryobi 42", and learned a lot watching your work, plus got some laughs to boot. Thanks

Just found your channel today and after watching the episode on the Citroen Ami and now this I’m hooked. You are my kind of people so I of course subscribed. Looking forward to all your content.

I won't say I am excited to build a lifepo4 pack for my Ryobi electric (same 54" you have)... but I know that it is the right answer for when the lead-acid batteries no longer are tolerable for our needs.

Robert spends too much money to fix a problem that buying a completely new product could fix? Today is a good day. This is why I love this channel.

Wow, even the ad for the sponsor was perfect, I see why you own it, looks decent- I understand everything you said MPP solar etc, and it has 12volt input. Sick. And using it to run a heater on holidays at night on the road is genius. I like your mower too.

Nice. One of the things I really, genuinely appreciate about Japanese brands is the standard fasteners. 6, 8, 10, 12, and maybe 14mm sockets are almost all that you need.

Nice job on that conversion ... but way over-complicated. Glad you added the disclaimer at the end I just replaced the 4 Leoch (dead) batteries in my Ryobi RM480e with 4 Redodo 12v LiFePo4 100AH batteries. Totally a drop-in replacement for about $1400. Really brought the mower back to life and ought to outlive me... Ryobi should NEVER have put lead-acid batteries in any of their mowers. SLA just can't support the kind of extended current draw required by a lawn mower.

One thing to keep in mind with LiFePO4 chemistry is that they can not be charged if the temperature is below freezing. That will damage them. Very relevant for some countries.

learning about LFP batteries in this video was super enlightening! Awesome content

Dude, you are by far my favourite project channel. If I had the money and time I'd be doing the same things.

Now I'm kinda wondering what kind of horsepower you could have gotten if you stuck the Escape drives and batteries on this thing instead 😂

I did the same thing to my 42 inch Ryobi mower that I bought for $3200. I used 2170 5kwh pack. It made the mower so much better and has a ton of power. I can’t bog it down in tall wet grass while mowing up a hill. It also doubles as my mobile power wall with a 48 V inverter.

I liked this video so much when it released that I've come back for a second watch. Thanks for the great educational content man :)

Never thought you'd actually do this after you mentioned it. Amazing work😊

Maybe a a better repair to the "woops hole" (16:25) would have been to mount the charging gage to a (plastic or metal) plate larger then the hole and cover it. Just sayin ;o)

I’m really proud to see your channel growing. It’s guys like you that give the rest of us the knowledge and the skill to take task on for ourselves. Make On Brother

Great video, Thank you for the breakdown of the parts inside.

I work at home depot, and these went on sale once for $500 on a clerical error... was tempted on getting one and making a profit by doing the lithium swap you mention in the credits😂

I recognized that dc-dc converter because I also got the same one to put on my electric mower. It doesn't have a DC-DC converter, instead it just tapped the middle of the battery pack to get a lower voltage at the cost of battery balance. Additionally I recognize that little LCD battery display because it's ALSO the same one that I stuck on my electric mower to get an idea what the battery level was because the built-in gauge is useless. Also when I installed a charge port onto my mower I installed a C-14, no point going with anything bespoke or special, whatever the heck that ryobi had on that mower to begin with is gross overkill. My mower has an excuse for being lead acid, though. It was built in the 1970s.

I hope this means you'll revive the wheego pretty soon. I cant wait for it to live again!

Awesome video. Love the upgrade.

Great video and I admire the effort! I have one of these mowers (54") and love the thing, mowing 3 acers of non-flat yard for 2 years now. I have noticed a degrading of the lead-acid batteries from a year ago. Still can mow the whole thing on one charge but next year I think I will change out the batteries to LiFeP04 . As for the price, I could not have spent $5000+ on this mower but with some searching, I ended up getting one from a liquidator, new, fully assembled and delivered (from Alabama to upstate NY)for a flat $3600. For this money, it is well worth the purchase and the upgrade to the new batteries. These are rugged mowers with fabricated decks and perform amazing. I'll never go back to gas!

Your delight with the 12 volt sla was inspiring. You are a treasure.

I like that at the end you explain a easy way to do it for people that just want it done.

Great video, thanks for the info and entertainment. I enjoyed watching!

Thank you for the honesty it is great to learn from your mistakes in addition to my own!

I loved how you made yourself comfortable on top of a pile of high density energy storage _at the first charge_ and plenty of various wiring that you had just proven is possible to accidentally short - good man! :) Great video, deserved rant at Cryobi (who I have started to buy now following your utterly unsponsored reviews, but man they f***d up here…). And as always, great entertainment. Long may you mow!

(start of video) "I call it... the horseless carriage." . o O { He's gonna hurt himself doing that. ... Oh God, it's true. I have become my father. } (end of video) "I call it... the horseless carriage" CRASH

I'm thinking of going 'large' on solar and this mower thing is inspiring me because the place is going to need mowing hard and regular.

The Ryobi 80 volt riding mower uses lithium batteries and costs $5,000 for next to the top of the line model. It uses three 80v 10ah batteries AND four of the 40 volt 12ah batteries.

I have the same dc-dc converter on my electric scooter and it’s also my second one because I too hooked it up backwards and killed it. Glad to see I’m not the only one who found the wiring to be unintuitive. It seemed like a dead short though because I was connecting with alligator clips and wow was the spark impressive.

You should publish final schematics online for others to use if they want to do a similar conversion.

Oh wow. This is super informative. I'm looking at installing a Type 2 Mennex plug for charging on my motorcycle and came across the EV Charger that you installed.

Big Congratulations! I sure would have liked to see how you finally wired up the new batteries and components.

Good work Rob! Now it makes me wonder if buying dead mowers for cheap, lithium swapping them and selling em', would be a viable business

I was considering purchasing one of those mowers, but the lead acid batteries were the reason I didn't. I ended up doing my own conversion of an old gas mower from the scrapyard and making some videos about the build and posting them on my channel. I love your videos and so enjoy your explanations, especially the car videos! You find some of the most amazing and quirky things I've ever seen!

LOVE your videos because you show all the mishaps!

This is my absolute favorite channel on YT these days. Fun, honest guy that learns as he does stuff. Maybe Abit ambitious at times but who isn't?! Keep on going mate 👍♥️

Lovely video. 1500 to fix it is a bargain versus Buying a new one.

Very satisfied at the end. The whole video i was impressed that you didn't fall over standing in the trailer while moving the mower. Glad you did, in a nice way. Ps impressive built, i wish i had half the patiance you have.

I really enjoy your content! I love that you show all your mistakes! Keep up the amazing work! Love your channel !!!!! woo woo woo

It is truly ridiculous how much enjoyment I get from watching your videos.

Even if it works, it would be good to take care of the balancing. Otherwise, the batteries might age at an accelerated rate. If some of the batteries have a higher voltage, they will take the brunt of the load.

Sorry I haven't been to your channel lately you are very entertaining and educational thank you

Great technical transition to the ad, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dude! Thank you for keeping on keeping on, and sharing how difficult and how repetitive projects can be in the try and fail and try it and fail and try it and fail loop until: success!

I love this channel because of things like this. I was hoping to see you find a good working solution for the mower! And you didn't have to spend another $7,000.00 for Ryobi to get it right!

I think it is a good idea to practice some isolation with the uncovered cell tabs. I have had few accidents and headache for shorting something or dropping a screw on them in the past, so I started to isolate carefully especially if I build something for someone else.

Thanks for the discount from Anker. I already have one with the 3 solar panels and its awesome. My buddy wanted one and he didn't need the solar panels so he used the code to pick one up at a discount.

I was amazed at how smoothly it went! And then the video kept going 😆 Always nice to see a project come together without it being a year long video series though.

I've been waiting for you to do this project! Glad to see you finally tackle it. Now we just need more woodworking videos over on Under Dunn! ;-)

Man, what an awesome project. Cool stuff!

Idk if it's sad or normal that I become overjoyed every time you post a video? I was like yes!!! You're one of my favorite people, and make my brain absorb information ℹ️

I'm so glad to see you followed through on the Lithium swap on this, thank you for sharing :)

The wiring is so neat! Great job!

I do enjoy your videos on batteries ect l am totally lost try to understand it but your delivery is so entertaining worth watching

I own one kf these. They warrantied my first set of batteries. I appreciated that a lot. Im not looking forward to having to do the conversion next time.

Great video. You inform and entertain! Would love to see a quick vlog where you talk about how normal folks would swap out the batteries for the new ones. I was just researching this the past few days and basically no one explains how they swapped out the batteries as good as you walk through steps. Some of us need a little more explaining. 😀 thanks and keep up the great work!

Though I also doubt the 10% usage figure, I have no doubt that LFP will handily outperform lead-acid (LA) despite their specifications as lead-acid batteries simply never perform as well as their datasheets claim while the vast majority of LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries presently do. Paper comparisons may suggest that lead-acid is price-competitive with LFP in some applications, but if you do real-world capacity tests you'll find that lead-acid *always* under-performs. As of the 2020's, the only acceptable use for a lead-acid battery is starting ICE engines with short bursts of high current. If your application will be substantially discharging a battery, LFP is simply the better value. NO ONE should be selling lead-acid-powered lawn mowers in the 2020's and it's borderline fraud. BUT, one must make sure that LFP batteries are never charged in freezing temperatures; not even once. This should not be an issue with a mower as you probably won't use it in Winter, but when you buy drop-in 12V LFP batteries to replace lead-acids, make sure that the protections include low-temperature cutoff.

This guy! As soon as he showed his first mistake, I knew I liked this guy! Bravo man. Great video!

I have the same mower as you. I built my own battery packs using recycled battery packs that had 18650 cells. I completely agree; it should have come from the factory like this. The performance is much better. Surprisingly, it was easy to do, with lots of DIY videos available on how to build power banks, and all the parts are easy to find.

This is really cool. My wife and I have thought about this mower, but my concern is I live on 3 acres (roughly 2-1/4 mowable), so will with this upgrade handle my land with one charge. I always anxiously await your next video. I love how you go into detail explaining every detail, even when you fubar something 😊

I've been waiting to see this and it did not disappoint. Such an improvement. I wonder if the low HP constraint was an issue with using lead-acid for power storage. And I hope your comments about the mower being underpowered mean that a future video is adding beefier motors, lol

You are the ONLY youtuber that I actually watch ALL the sponsored ads! Jesus you are...something like "funny" or "good" or "something....

Great video! I just happened to watch last years mower video just yesterday. I thought, hmm, it’s been a year, I wonder if he ever upgraded it. The today - like magic - you had.

This was an exciting project. I don't have quite enough yard to justify something similar, and as you mention at the end - there are easier ways to do this. But i still wish i could try something like this! Nice job.

A project well completed! With some minor details needed to be completed, sure, but well done.

I just picked up the 80volt riding lawn tractor, love it runs great 👍 even used the aerator with it only use 18%, and only used 15% to mow

You just show perfectly the answer to the question "why?" sometimes the why is just because you can. Don't always need a real reason sometimes the learning experience and knowledge gained from doing the work

I have no interest in a EV mower. But I just purely enjoy these videos, I appreciate the work put into these videos and honesty, the fun and the overall vibe. Aging Wheels reminds me of my high school shop teacher. Thanks for the enjoyment!

Yeah, I did some calculations from online prices without knowing they were using lead acid and they are definitely price gouging even if they used lithium batteries.

Thank you for the EV adventure. I enjoyed the journey.

lnteresting. We bought one of those and sold it 6 months later. Zero turn configuration stuffed up our backs so decided to sell and go to normal steering config ride on mower. Looks like we inadvertantly dodged a bullet. Appreciate that your missus laughed too at the end. Funny stuff.

You should really consider some blue-sea battery post fuses considering as they really improve safety

Wonderful project, and perfect fit for the LiFeP batteries, since they still provide quite a lot of capacity and are also going to serve for... Over a decade, I guess? Just a blind guess judging on how you described these batteries.

I discovered this channel because of the Fiesta ST video, I staid because of the charming narration. Keep on keeping on! Cheers.

Best ad ever. Wish more people put that much time and research for their ads.

For the next experiment, why not use that trailer to hold a generator to chage as you go? Just for the fun of it. Maybe like an endurance test between it an a regular gas mower to see which is more efficient - your electric mower with a generator, or a standard gas mower.