[Byte1]

I have a small Nissan Leaf battery pack that I put together, with an electronic cell balancer and a charger with an automatic shut off when finished charging. It works fine, except it takes off like a bat out of ***** before peaking at about 20mph when the cart controller works like a governor and won't allow it to go any faster. It does not heat up when I charge it. I use my cell phone to make adjustments to the BMS to control how each cell balances the charge before it will cut off any additional charging. It was an experiment because I got tired of adding water to lead acid batteries every week, and the stains on my driveway from the acid.
You can purchase a simple drop in replacement lithium battery for about the same price as six 8 volt lead acid batteries. Mine was just a simple gathering of Leaf cells that I purchased on Ebay. Not even enough to go much more than ten miles on a charge. By the way, lithium batteries hold a charge when sitting, whereas lead acid lose charge as they sit. If you have a lead acid battery system and need to go away for a substantial period, you need to connect a battery maintainer. Lithium doesn't require a maintainer.
Just things I have learned by messing around with my experiment AND reading. My system is not the ideal setup, because there are more things you can add to make it more efficient. But, that means that I would have to mess around with some electronics that I have very little experience with. Ideally, I would purchase one of those drop in replacement lithium battery packs that have all the electronics built in.