I'm very inexperienced with electronics, but I've bought this kit to convert my bicycle into electric. As for now I'm thinking of using three lead-acid batteries that I have already. Two of them are "gel" type and one is a "maintenance-free" type. I already have a quite expensive and beefy 12V lead-acid battery charger, and my motor runs off 36V. So I attempted to wire the batteries both in series and parallel, but that resulted in smoke.
I want to run them in series for the motor and simultaneously have a parallel connection where I'd hook up my charger, is this possible? Would two beefy diodes work?
Thanks.