Flipping Instructions
How do you connect the battery in the BR1xxxG? You open the cover, pull the battery out, flip it front to back (the perspective does not look quite correct on that arrow), put it back in, and reinstall the door. There's no messing around with high-current connectors. Surely I'm not the only one who has owned a UPS long enough to require a battery replacement and injured himself in the process. Can you guess how APC got rid of the cables inside its battery compartment with a simple flip?
Label
As expected from a unit with a 3x#16 cord, the input and total output ratings are 12A. Want to bet that we are going to find a 15A breaker inside anyway?
In another break from what I'm used to seeing, there's no bilingual text in the notice and caution paragraphs. Other changes include the total harmonic output increasing from 45% to 50%, the single harmonic dropping from 35% to 30% under 25% load, “no user-serviceable parts inside” returning to the caution area, and no more risk of an exploding battery. Of course, any of what was removed may still be on the instruction sheets.
Battery Door
These are some of the deepest reinforcement ridges I have seen on a battery door, which is to be expected in a unit using a pair of substantial batteries. Slides at both ends of the door, two tongues at the top, and three more at the front edge share the burden of keeping the door and batteries in place through shipping.
If you're wondering why the battery door seam takes an odd turn to the right above the label area, it's to cover the screw well near the middle. And did you notice that hole between the batteries?
The Trick
How does the BR1xxxG’s battery flipping trick work? Simple: the “disconnect” end of the spacer between batteries is a blank hole, while the other houses the spade connectors. Initially, I worried that the battery could be inserted backwards by flipping it left to right instead of front to bottom, but I quickly realized that the guides on the top and bottom of the spacer are offset to one side just enough to make this impossible by mere accident. Even if you pound the battery pack all the way in, the spades are also offset to one side and wouldn’t line up.
Battery Pack
Like the old BX1000, the battery pack consists of two batteries stuck together using thick labels and a plastic spacer in-between to hold them in the correct position, while also providing space for wiring and terminals in-between. When my only reference was photos from the Internet, I wondered if the “RBC123” was some odd proprietary job. But with the hardware in front of me, guide bumps and the lack of an external cable aside, this looks suspiciously similar to the BX1000’s battery pack. It even has a similar 7 Ah, 24 V rating and a CSB sticker visible in the bottom-right corner.
Are we going to find the same GP-1272 as the BX1000 hiding under the stickers?
Behind The Battery Sticker
What do we find covered by APC’s sticker? As suspected, the same CSB GP-1272 batteries used in the old BX1000, except that these were manufactured in the Philippines instead of China.
This time around, we also find orange squiggles instead of blue ones.
Battery Bay
With the spacer’s guide pins restricting movement from front to back and the snug battery door preventing vertical movement, the only axis with some slack left is side to side. A pair of leaf springs visible on the top side take care of that. At the bottom of the bay, we find the spade connectors’ counterparts mounted in a raised housing, waiting for the battery. A simple, neat, and very functional arrangement.
Now that the battery is out, the real tear-down fun begins.
Hitting A Snag
After removing all of the visible screws and popping all of the snaps, I hit an impasse with the front trim (the glossy piece straddling the seam on the left). Using plastic cards as shims, I couldn’t get either the top or bottom to pop off. Before breaking out the crowbar for extra leverage, I needed confirmation that there were indeed screws I needed to gain access to. Here is that confirmation: slight circular depressions in the battery bay wall betraying the presence of screw stems on the other side. When plastic injection quenches the molds to solidify the plastic, plastic shrinks and large uneven masses on the other side of a flat surface cause the surface to get pulled in.
Prying Harder
After more prying, I finally managed to get the front trim to disengage from the slots it hooks into, but not before partially ripping out the top slot. I had to insert a pick behind my crowbar to separate the front trim from the broken plastic piece. An actual tear in a tear-down? What a novel idea! To remove the front trim without damaging either the trim or the slots it snaps into, some form of custom tool needs to be inserted in the center slot to lift the pins straight out from inside.
With the bottom end freed up, the rest of the front trim slides up to unhook from its other retention points.
The Prize
Aside from the tabs snapping the bottom shut and locking the front trim into place, it is also held in place by a pair of sideways tabs, a pair of sliding hooks near the middle, and a reinforced bar that hooks in across the top where the buttons are located. Many of those areas show cracking and strain whitening from all of my prying efforts. Thankfully, none of it is readily visible when the trim piece is installed.
