Anyone else running reconditioned forklift cells on the cheap? Share your BMS setups

I've been running a 280Ah bank of reconditioned 3.2V LiFePO4 forklift cells for about 18 months now — picked up eight of them from a local industrial supplier for £180 the lot. Capacity tested around 240Ah usable after a proper top-balance, which I'm more than happy with at that price point. Paired them with a Daly 200A BMS (the smart version with Bluetooth) and it's been mostly solid, though I did have one cell drift badly around the 90% mark until I sorted the top-balance properly.

The weak link I keep coming back to is the BMS. The Daly does the job but the cell-level data logging is rubbish compared to what I've seen from JK units. Tempted to swap it out — the JK 200A active balancer BMS is sitting at around £65 from UK sellers, which isn't bad. Anyone running JK on forklift cells specifically? The internal resistance figures on older cells can be a bit all over the place and I'm wondering if the JK handles that gracefully or throws fits.

What I'm really after is BMS recommendations that won't cost a fortune but give proper cell-level monitoring. Running it with a Victron SmartSolar 100/30 and a secondhand Multiplus 500, so DVCC is in the picture — ideally something with a proper Victron comms interface, but at this budget that might be wishful thinking.

@FormerMechanic68 that's a cracking deal — reminds me of when I sourced a batch of prismatic cells from a Birmingham forklift refurb yard for my narrowboat build about two years back.

The BMS piece is where it gets interesting with these older cells. I'm running a Daly 100A Smart BMS on mine, paired with a Victron SmartShunt for actual capacity monitoring — the two together tell a much more honest story than either alone.

Worth mentioning: reconditioned industrial cells often have surprisingly mismatched internal resistance across the bank, which means your BMS passive balancing will be working overtime. I noticed one of my cells drifting noticeably during bulk charge until I let it run several full cycles.

What voltage spread are you seeing at top of charge across all eight cells?

Ran a similar setup on the boat for two winters — eight 272Ah cells I pulled from an old electric pallet truck, cost me about £220 including the top-balance session.

The BMS choice is where people go wrong with reconditioned cells IMO. I went with a Daly 200A initially but swapped to a JK BMS after it couldn't handle the passive balancing demands on mismatched cells. Night and day difference — the active balancing actually brings drifting cells back into line rather than just bleeding off the top.

Worth doing a proper capacity test on each individual cell before you build the bank. I used a DC electronic load from eBay — found two cells in my batch were only hitting 190Ah real-world. Kept them separated as a standalone 12V bank for lighting circuits rather than binning them.