# What did you do to your EV today?



## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

This is a shameless theft of an idea from another forum I frequent. People there use it to update the community about their activities. It is one of the most popular threads on that forum. I hope people find this thread useful!

I will start off with what I did this weekend. Which was to fit the J1772 plug to my car.

The first photo shows the port with just a little metal work. The before photo was unusable.

The second photo is the 0.030" carbon fiber plate with masking tape on both sides to prevent it from getting scratched up. The two holes allow alignment dimples to hold the plate in place. I used a bench disc sander to shape the piece to fit the original mounting space.

The third photo is the plate drilled and cut out for the connector. There is some sheet metal on the car to be removed.

The last photo shows the connector in its final placement. I have it apart again now since there is still bare metal needing a little paint to prevent rust. The connector is recessed to allow the door to be closed and this minimized the metal work needed to be done on the car. The bolts are M5 x 35mm and are used as the standoff to space the connector back.

I need to find a cap to cover the J1772 connector and keep the elements out. Anyone seen such a thing?


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

I got my motor controller demo panel installed. Re-setting up the Fast DC charging and another video will be coming this Wed or Thursday. Two others are also doing the Fast DC charging with the Synkromotive as well. We are setting up other methods to get your DC power to the controller without batteries. Things are once again moving along nicely. Anyone with a Synkro that is interested needs to contact me and we will get you the proper information for trouble free setup. 

Pete


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Not a bad idea. There is a what did you do on the Fiat and Landcruiser forums I look at. I got my car back on the road a few days ago. It is a Fiat but it was starting to think it was British because the trans was leaving big oil puddles on the garage floor. I pulled the motor and trans and after going through the gear box and putting on new gaskets and seals I checked the motor coupler and did a thorough inspection of the motor. Brushes and com look fine. Put new rotors on front and replaced dust covers on front ball joints. Did some minor rust repair. Its a Fiat remember? I am still doing stuff but at least I am driving again.


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## evmetro (Apr 9, 2012)

I have seen this thread in other forums as well, great idea. I put a lot of miles on my '95 metro lithium upgrade. One 55% dod, and a 70% dod. Lots of fun. I have gotton over lighting up the tires finally, and only did it once. I ran the heater for awhile so I could see how well the 110v ceramic would do with the new 144v system... the JLD404 never drops below 12 amps when my foot is off the pedal, so it uses more than the 1500 watts that it is supposed to.


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Went to a garage sale, bought a ten speed Raleigh racing bike and an old 80's? hair dryer.Showed the wife, she said " I'll have that ". (the dryer). So now I have her new Chinese junk dryer. Connected it to 84v, will work well inside the heater box of the Sirion as the cheapie ceramic heater is just above body temperature. The bike works well too. Other than fusing, what do I need to do to run this ( the hair dryer, not the bike ) off the traction pack? It is a non-earthed type pastic case connecting through the ceramic heater on/off.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

poprock1 said:


> Other than fusing, what do I need to do to run this ( the hair dryer, not the bike ) off the traction pack? It is a non-earthed type pastic case connecting through the ceramic heater on/off.


You might start a thread in the technical section with photos of the guts of the hair dryer so more people will read about your query.


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Thank you.


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## Nabla_Operator (Aug 5, 2011)

Today I calculated the eigenfrequency modes of the subframe (motor + diff).



Motor runs 6000 rpm on topspeed, so I am for 200+ Hz frequencies.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Re-did the controller harness today. Cleaned all ends and relabeled them. New shrink-wrap too. Now all the wires are labeled and easy to see. 

Pete


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

My last charge cycle put a lot more energy back into my batteries than I expected. So I guess it is time to be the BMS and measure all the cell voltages and check the state of balance. Probably nothing because it was a cold day and I drove farther and more aggressively than normal. Too cold out to do it today so the plan is to not drive it tomorrow and check it out right after I get home from work.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

With the warming weather my range is a bit better than last month. Sucks that the weather is as nice as it is but we really need it to be cold and lots of water. Neither of which we have now. It really was a spring day here today. Trees are starting to bud out waaaaaay to early.


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## epyon (Mar 20, 2008)

Looked at my new carport an nails in my rear tire .


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Working on my new improved battery layout and new wiring, 
Need to get the damn thing back together for the Cobra Drag Races on the 16th of February


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Installing two microswitches activated by heater cable. first activates one heater element as soon as cable moves. Second activates second element when turned to full heat position. Will still have illuminated red button on dash to show power on ; at present it works when accessories is on. Will re-connect so it is activated only in run position of ignition switch.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Went ahead and drove the car yesterday but did not get to measure the voltage. With 16 miles of range used I decided to not charge it last night and check voltages this morning. Lowest cell after resting overnight was 3.2960 and highest was 3.3021 volts. A difference of 0.0061 volts. Average voltage across the pack is 3.2988 volts. Since the pack is bottom balanced the cell with the highest voltage is the one with the lowest state of charge in theory. I am going to read the voltage again after I put on another days worth of miles which should take it down to 30% SOC. And then check it again after the charge. I will know more tomorrow but I don't see any issue. This is two and a half years and one bottom balance at the beginning only.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

After taking the battery voltage readings (see posting above) the temperature shot up to the point where I could work on the car in the driveway with just a sweatshirt on. I think it reached 61. I took the opportunity to replace the front brake pads. They had been on the list since I got back from EVCCON. I had replaced the rear ones before EVCCON because they were howling. I noticed a tiny bit of play in the right front wheel bearing so I adjusted that. Then I took it for a drive. I am at 36 miles on this charge and I did not drive gingerly so it could be as low as 30% SOC. I am going to let it rest a couple of hours and then take another voltage reading. The balance should be closer since the pack is bottom balanced. And then I will charge it up and check it when it is close to full. I only charge it to 3.43 volts per cell (175 volts) to keep it a little away from the top.

I hope everyone sees this one day of nice weather as it moves east across the country. Supposed to suck again tomorrow.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Got the controller all wired up and zip tied for my charging test again. All I have to do now is connect the throttle, main key, and main battery pack. Main pack should be done tomorrow as well as the throttle and main key. 12 Volt aux pack is ready too. Getting there. Planing on cleaning a bit in the motor compartment and hosing it with rhino liner. Make it black and it will just disappear. Just what I want.


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## twright (Aug 20, 2013)

Removed the 15 8 volt lead acid batteries.

Installed 40 100Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries!

Mounted the new battery charger.

Mounted the Orion BMS.

Let the wiring begin!


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

The contrast with yesterday is pretty extreme. It started snowing about an hour ago and it is getting white out compared to yesterday's upper 50 and low 60's temps.

I took the low state of charge readings last night and then charged the pack overnight. I put in 79 AH which combined with not completely charging the pack means I was just a little below 80% DOD for these readings. I had never taken a set of readings at a low state of charge (since the bottom balance) so I was surprised the the cells showed an increase in voltage variance. The lowest cell had a voltage of 3.1298 volts and the highest was 3.2207 volts for a difference of 0.091 volts. Think I will take one more set of readings later today to give the pack a chance to settle down after the overnight charge. This one will be at a nominal full state of charge. After I see those readings I may decide to take the pack down to a low state of charge and then re-bottom balance. I think this can be done in such a way as to determine what was left in the cells in order to determine if they were still reasonably in bottom balance.

Later all!


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## octagondd (Jan 27, 2010)

I drilled mounting holes and mounted my new fiberglass grill/header on the CRX. I also temporarily installed an ammeter in the car so I can see what the draw is. 

Very nice to have a meter in the car for the first time. In a couple weeks I would like to make that permanent, as well as add the volt meter and the Expert Pro AH counter.

I spent some time tweaking the Open Revolt controller settings but have not found what I like yet. I emailed Paul to see if he can shed some light on which parameters I should focus on.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

I continued troubleshooting brake issues, and pulled the main disconnect to eliminate the discharge of the pack. the weather has been brutal with temps below zero, had a decent day of 35 today, now digging in for minus 14. 
Not much getting done...


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Put in battery tray where the rear seat used to be. i can fit 46 100ah CALB SE sells. I currently have 35 installed. It will fit great. I can fit the rest up front. I plan on putting in 60 cells. For now 35 will do. Anyone with some good priced lightly used 100ah CALB SE cells? I need 30 so I can have a few spares. The battery tray will be easy to remove. I installed the cells so they lock together like lego bricks to help make the pack stronger. For the current testing I will just strap them together. They won't be seeing the road for awhile. I may actually move the controller and contactors completely out of the motor compartment. So the only thing you will see is the motor. No wires no nothing. But it will all be connected. 

Pete 

Motor compartment looks just too busy and crowded with all that crap in there.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

I haven’t done anything to my car since my last post except dust it off. It is to freaking cold outside to do much except make sure the water lines to the house don’t freeze. The coldest I have driven in is 25 degrees and besides the low performance the heater didn’t keep me all that warm. The main reason I even posted is I would like to see this thread stay active.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Switched my battery layout a bit and put in 34 cells (again) and cleaned off the tops and connected them all up. The space available still allows a full 46 cells if needed. Extra cells can be put up front for some extra front weight which should be done for balance. For now its not needed. I am not making it permanent yet as I will need to remove the battery again for cleaning and welding in the car. There is still much to do with this little project. Testing of Charging should commence today or tomorrow. Battery pack is NOT bottom balanced but it WILL be when we put it in. I did not do that work because the pack is nearly balanced anyway and I won't be driving it except on the property. So no worries there. I will tap into the pack for power. 

More firmware upgrades coming for the Synkromotive and more things to do with them. All being documented and schematics made and will be posted for those interested in the next few days. 

Pete


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Fitted Volvo S40 vacuum from US; cost $100 delivered; could have gotten cheaper here maybe but didn't have time to scour yards


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## wessss77 (Jan 4, 2013)

Installed the new 1000A 75 mV shunt for the JLD404. Checked the configuration of the JLD404 today as it was finally warm enough to sit for a few minutes and walk through it. Attached the small Anderson connector to the heater and got that ready to try.


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

THIS is my kind of thread! I will get back with some info about the wiring of my EV Mini-T.

Daily work is small, but the steps make the EV. I've got the body off and propped up on the floor of the garage so I can slide under to wire the dash. I have been liking the Anderson Powerpoles as a way to build up connectors with any number of different contacts. The big ones have been used for the traction packs on EVs for years, the 10 gauge to 20 gauge size make great connectors for the 12 volt and low current traction voltage systems.


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

onegreenev said:


> Motor compartment looks just too busy and crowded with all that crap in there.


Another option is to put just the controller in the engine compartment and then dart out with the wiring so you see a motor, a controller, 2 cables to the motor, 2 cables leaving the engine compartment, and a single bundle of wires in split loom leaving the engine compartment. They will ask about what controls power to the motor.

It's the idea behind this. There was some tidying up left to do. Sorry, I don't have a good shot with the body on:


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Good idea. I was wanting to put the controller out of the compartment too because the louvers in the deck lid don't have a cover on the back side to protect the motor compartment from water spray. But since I really won't be using this beast in the water It really is not an issue. I guess putting the controller in view would be good for those that like to see. Yours looks nice and clean. Pleasing to look at. 

Pete 

What did I do today? Well I want out and got a new multimeter. Mine crapped out. I purchased one last summer that did not work out of the box. Sucks. Hoping this one will last a bit. They should last for years and years. Not days or weeks.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

Body work: welding, grinding, and hammering. Still doing rust control, mostly because I'm pretty darn slow getting this thing worked on.  But I did spend about 3 hours out in the garage today.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I am gratified that people are using this thread. I sure like reading about the stuff others are doing.

It was marginally warm enough to drive it today so I drove it to the car wash. It is on the charger right now. With this drive I just passed 2200 EV miles.

Not actually EV centric but somewhat related I am fixing the dings in the factory sun roof so I can make a mold and pull fiberglass or carbon parts off of it. Best guess is this would only save about 10 lbs but that is more than the weight of a battery and it is weight at the top of the car where removing it does the most good from a performance standpoint.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

34 CALB SE Cells. All but two are at 3.32 and two at 3.27. Going to bump them to 3.33. New multimeter works. Woooo Hooo. Has Amp clamp too to check amperage draw while testing. Perfect. Has temp probe too. Hunting for a good place to wire up the Aux Battery. Got cold. Came in to warm up. Hate having so little time to work on my beastie. Little bites at a time.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

The Device has been off the road since I blew a cell at an autokhana last year,

Putting it all back together with;
New cells 
New wiring
painted front - frog green - will add photos when its together

Currently top balancing my cells, wiring in new battery boxes


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Been mucking with the 12 volt system for the VW. Found it was pretty crappy but most of the original wiring is present. That gives me hope and some good solid wiring. I do however need to be sure the VW has excellent ground to the body and chassis. It is usually pretty crappy. Not hard to fix. I spent a good amount of time replacing wire ends with better ends and good shrink wrap. For the 10-12 AWG wire I needed to get some more blade connectors. The problem is that most of the blade push on connectors are really cheap and crappy and usually have that crappy plastic on the ends. Its not even shrinkable. I remove the plastic ends and do a clean crimp and then shrink wrap the ends. Sometimes even doubling the wrap. The 10-12 AWG push on connectors were no different but for the heavy power wire. Today I found some good thick metal push on connectors that are actually galvanized. They still have that crappy plastic ends but that was easy to fix. Just remove them. I then crimp them to the clean wire end and then shrink wrap them. Now I have some clean and strong connectors even though they are the push on spades. That is what the VW fuse box requires. I hate crappy connections. I have a bunch of wire that is still too long but that will be changed when I do the final install. For now excess wires will look like crap but will have excellent connections. So I now have head lights. Both Hi and Lo work and the rear tail lights and blinkers. I have the dash lights working too. Tomorrow the pack connections are going to be done as well as the throttle. Power will be put to the motor tomorrow. 

Wooo Hooo, getting rain. Rain dancing works.


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## ev99saturn (May 5, 2009)

Working on motor / transmission coupling today. I originally built my performance EV with direct drive, but decided to add a two-speed powerglide transmission to improve launch performance with the 1.76 low gear. (0-60 in 4.2 seconds just isn't fast enough ) Also replacing the motor with a custom-built 11" drag racing motor built by Dennis Berube.

The motor, transmission and couplers are now on the bench to complete the initial build and do some testing, then figure out the plan to mount it into the car.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Moved the car into the garage after 5 years on the car port. Wooo Hooo. Worked on the car today and got forward movement once again. Now to set for charging. Nice to be in the garage out of direct weather. Nice n dry. Cranked up the lights and set up a table and chair.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

This winter has been a particularly unpleasant one so I have not done as much to my EV as I would have liked. However this last week we have had temps in the 40's most days so I have driven it pretty much every day. Friday I practiced burnouts. EV's make these so easy. I think I could leave a stripe of black parallel lines as long as I wanted. Well at least until the brake rotors melted or the tires are gone. This was however the worst MPGe day on record for my car (63.5 down from a more typical number in the 90's). Should I be proud of this or embarrassed? I feel a little of both.

Yesterday I gave a demo ride. Supposed to be nice today again so will probably see if I can place my vacuum pump and reservoir. Yeah, I've been driving 2300 miles without vac assist. It is not as bad as you might think on a little car like this. I can lock up the wheels in a panic if necessary.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Not too much work getting done on the car, auto accident injury and weather kept me from the garage. I did manage to find a deal on some TS 40ah cells for the motorcycle and Equad lithium upgrade.
Doing some work on a bms setup for the motorcycle conversion.


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

One thing I gotta appreciate about the 40ah cells is that for the most part they are staying the same size over the improvements and changes. They may get shorter or lighter, but generally the different makers have all kept them is the same footprint. That is not so true of 60ah cells. For now I'm fine with my 60's, I've got 60 of them and only 39 installed. If I had perfect hindsight I may have chosen 40ah cells.


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

dougingraham said:


> I am gratified that people are using this thread. I sure like reading about the stuff others are doing.


I like these types of threads. There are build threads that I follow, but a lump-all "what I did today" thread is a great way to watch more builds, and slower builds. 

My last update was so small it really should have been posted here and I should trash my rebuild thread. For me it has been the whole work vs. time thing -- too much work is good for the family budget but bad for actually working on my EV. Still, I really want it back on the road for the _XXX Rootbeer Spring Electric Vehicle Show_ on May 11, 2014. I make that my goal so I can enjoy the beach buggy all summer. I'm hoping for the _Greenwood Car Show_ again this year. The _NW Vintage VW Car show and Swap Meet_ is another event this summer that Seattle area VW enthusiasts should never miss. In Snohomish County (just north of Seattle), I'm hoping for a good Kla Ha Ya Days show in Snohomish and another Rat City Rodz show in Everett. I don't see much about these events yet, but I hope at least for a 4th of July Everett car show. Early this fall I hope to attend the first annual Kill-Billet Rat-Rod show in eastern WA.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Took the Device to the Cobra Rodders annual 1/8 mile drag races yesterday,

I have been having some trouble with an intermittent fault in the controller (cuts out)

But on the day it went perfectly - drove to the event - did five runs - all good - drove home

Won the prize for the quietest car there,

I think I was the slowest as well at 14 seconds

Today I went out to the shed and my intermittent problem seems to have become permanent 
So its off with the controller!

Still waiting for the Open Source 1000 amp one


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I gave a demo ride to a guy who had never been in an EV before. When he got out he was sporting an EV grin I was afraid was going to split his face. Imagine what would have happened if I had let him drive it.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

I have only had my car out for a couple short drives in as many weeks. Today it was in the 60 degree range so I made my morning trip to the post office and back. I had put an extra support bracket on the end of the transmission while I had the car apart this winter. A bolt head on the end of the trans was just barley touching the body mount and it was making an annoying little metal on metal vibration. After my morning run while the car was charging up I pulled the bracket loose and then as soon as the little charger light turned green I took my lady for a drive in my Ev. No vibration! It was a fun trip. I have to do some grinding on the bracket for clearance and reinstall. Sometimes I feel like I just have a fancy NEV with all the short routine trips I make each day but after the drive I took a little over an hour ago it feels like a sports car again.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

The Device at the drags


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Interesting Device you have there Duncan. What is it? Is that a custom fiberglass front or from an actual kit car of some kind? Can you list the specs again for your device? Please? I like that you call it a Device. I can see why.  Looks fun.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Hi Onegreen

It's "Duncan's Dubious Device"
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forum...-dubious-device-44370p2.html?highlight=duncan

The front is home made to cover the Subaru front struts - Something I would do differently! if I did it again

And its great fun when its going


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I drove 27 miles round trip (without knowing if I'd make it home because I still don't have my e-meter setup) to my appointment with the Colorado Motor Vehicle Emissions Technical center, and they signed off a form DR2365 I needed to get my E type registration/title! I was pretty nervous, and some things went wrong before I arrived. 6 blocks away my car lost power due to my old rickety 12v battery dying off (still no dc/dc converter). So in the parking lot next to the one I 'rolled' into, there was a meineke auto shop which happily stocked and sold me a new charged battery ($120 later) and I installed it there in the beautiful Colorado winter sun, and arrived at my appointment three min early. (with the convertible top down!)
Things that went right?
1) I didn't get pulled over for my 3 month expired temp tag.
2) They signed the form needed.
3) I made it home without running out of electricity in my traction pack!
4) my new battery didn't die.
whew.
Josh


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

For that reason I intend to trailer mine. The trip is 40 miles return, and Murphy's law applies in such situations.


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## wessss77 (Jan 4, 2013)

Spent two days this weekend putting together a wooden battery box for the bug out of dexion and plywood, lined with 1 inch of foam insulation and two 13 watt pet bed heaters to house 21 cells of the traction pack, re-routed some of the 12 volt system and put in a charge stud since it is so difficult to get to the 12v system with the 400 lbs of lithium sitting on top. Installed the last 4 cells in the luggage area, installed additional soundproofing in the luggage area.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I received my Colorado license plates today, along with a new little EV sticker they started in 2014 that is placed in the front window in order to park in spots where chargers exist (without getting a ticket).

I also purchased a Raspberry Pi with a 7" screen to install into my EV so it can show live data from the SolitonJr and the Orion BMS on the dash, yet another project latching onto me! 
side note on the Adafruit website for stuff about Raspberry/Beaglebone/Arduino etc.., they accept Bitcoin as payment, so I used part of the single bitcoin I purchased back when they were $20 each, hehe.
-josh


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

bwjunkie said:


> I also purchased a Raspberry Pi with a 7" screen to install into my EV so it can show live data from the SolitonJr and the Orion BMS on the dash, yet another project latching onto me!


Josh,

I am interested in what you come up with for this and I am certain others will be as well. Please post updates on your progress.

Grats on your inspection!


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## wessss77 (Jan 4, 2013)

Finally got the bug back on the road. After adding the 4 new cells, I adjusted the ElCon charger to pump up the volume from 36 cells to 40. When I ordered it, I asked for my 10 algorithms to be cell settings so as i increase my cell count all i need to do is select another algorithm. Felt good to get my EV grin back on. Gonna work on some motor tins and figure out a cleaner way to re-mount the throttle pot closer to the pedal to remove the cable play and make it more accurate next.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Pulled the glove compartment so I could pull the AC evaporator so I could get a look at the heater core without pulling the entire dashboard. Made the executive decision to use the AC evaporator box for my ceramic heating elements. The box is larger and will house the elements better. The heater core in addition to being difficult to get to is too small to hold ceramic elements. This of course hammers the nail in the coffin of the idea of ever restoring the AC on this car. If I am honest with myself that probably was not going to happen anyway because there just was not room for the condenser or compressor anymore. I guess AC will be on my next conversion. I will have to plan for it better. Cleaned out the evaporator box of 30 year old material and started fitting the stuff in place. Hot water heating is looking more attractive all the time except it is heavier and takes longer to get going.

I will post some pictures in a couple of days when I have something worth taking a picture of.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Got my Redline Synthetic Gear Oil put into the VW Transaxle. Only a couple more things and we are on the road in the VW Roadster.


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Finally hooked up my Volvo vacuum pump and Viot VS switch. Pump is mounted on original rubbers but is very noisy. I now understand that I also need a combination switch ( cut in at Minimum pressure then cut out at Maximum.) The viot switch cycles every 5-10 seconds. Pump supplies sufficient vacuum and stops the car equally as well as my ICE Sirion.. I do not know if there is an internal non-return valve either in the Daihatsu Sirion booster or integral to the Volvo pump. One step closer to the engineers inspection..


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## wessss77 (Jan 4, 2013)

Started a fire in my battery box last night when the terminal on one cell got so hot it ignited the rubber drawer liner i had laying over the top of the cells. Kinda freaky cause I didn't have a fire extinguisher...thought I was gonna have to piss on it but i managed to put it out by smothering it. Now I gotta find out why that one cell gets way too hot on the positive terminal...connections were tight and i have just top balanced all the cells. grrrrrrr


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Urinating on an electrical fire is not a recommended procedure: then again, it could resolve any prostate issues


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Ordered the Premium Edition of the Juice Box from Electric Motor Werks, Inc. It will be a month out but I needed one. I can get by with my current 110 EVSE from Nissan. The SPX EVSE I had been using crapped out just after the warranty ran out. This happened twice. Up until then the unit was running perfect. The first time it happened within the warranty and they replaced it. Not so with the second one. In a nut shell they said so sad, too bad. I decided to go another route this time.


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## bLdC (Jan 21, 2013)

Started discharging my battery back, using the motor, so I can then balance it. 
It is 164v at this point. When the voltages of the individual cells start to fall below certain point I will continue the discharging one by one.

Made a short video... spinning weels and sound. 
http://wikisend.com/download/509432/hirpm160v.avi


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

dougingraham said:


> Josh,
> I am interested in what you come up with for this and I am certain others will be as well. Please post updates on your progress.
> Grats on your inspection!


re: Raspberrry Pi (or Beaglebone) running Orion bms utility + evnetics soliton web screen.
I've been working at this quite a bit, made some difficult progress and got the orion bms java utility full working on the Raspberry Pi Linux distro (also general Canbus utility code that might be useful for anyone). Along with research on small screens and other hardware out there to make this all work nicely as a dashboard multimedia / EV feedback center!

I'll put up a thread soon with the first of the experimental "how-to videos".
-josh


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Just purchased 27 CALB SE 100ah cells to finish the pack for my VW Roadster. Now I can run at 192 volts. I will limit the voltage to 156 volts and set my motor amps to 900 and battery amps to 500. I will then be able to charge directly from any 110 source or any DC source. Fast or slow charge abilities. 

Pete 

Should be moving the vehicle this weekend. Tomorrow starts my three day weekend.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

bLdC said:


> Started discharging my battery back, using the motor, so I can then balance it.
> It is 164v at this point. When the voltages of the individual cells start to fall below certain point I will continue the discharging one by one.
> 
> Made a short video... spinning weels and sound.
> http://wikisend.com/download/509432/hirpm160v.avi


Nice little video. You need to figure out how to send them to youtube. Will keep others from having to download on a slow network. 

Pete 

Nice to get to that point. You forgot to get a shot of the EV Grin


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Readjusted my drivers door so the door opens and closes just right.


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

onegreenev said:


> Readjusted my drivers door so the door opens and closes just right.


 Riveting stuff.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Yea! but it is something I did to my EV today. I hope to have some video of the vehicle running here real soon. 

Pete 

I could do another riveting video of me charging my battery pack using a DC source and my controller. I have no other charger in my car or outside the car.


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## jddcircuit (Mar 18, 2010)

bLdC said:


> Started discharging my battery back, using the motor, so I can then balance it.
> It is 164v at this point. When the voltages of the individual cells start to fall below certain point I will continue the discharging one by one.
> 
> Made a short video... spinning weels and sound.
> http://wikisend.com/download/509432/hirpm160v.avi


bldc,

That is great. 
So I assume your control of the Prius inverter is working. Perhaps you need your own thread keeping us up to date on your build. I would hate to miss out on your progress using the Prius components.

Thanks
Jeff


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## bLdC (Jan 21, 2013)

I'm happy with the results so far.

It has plenty of torque up to base speed. I am extending the rpm range(almost 3 times higher) by using field weakening, but the torque drops a lot. 

Next to do is use the votage booster to rise the base speed and efficiency at high rpm. I have 8 more cells(another 27V) for the battery pack but I need to at least double the volage for good high speed perfotmance. 

Now I'm working on a new version of the prototype boards.


jddcircuit said:


> That is great.
> So I assume your control of the Prius inverter is working. Perhaps you need your own thread keeping us up to date on your build. I would hate to miss out on your progress using the Prius components.
> Jeff


Thanks! 
I may star new thread, and may need some help on specific things on the build. 
It is a test platform, at this point. Here the part with the registration is not clear.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Been another week of excessively poor winter weather. I did continue to work on the heater and today I drove the car to work (still without heater). It looks like the weather will remain good enough that I can continue to drive it from this point on. I will get the heater buttoned up this weekend and I can test out the ceramic elements to make sure it will work without melting the ductwork. Then I can do the control electronics for it.

The three main remaining goals are to get the heater in and working. Install the vacuum pump for the brake assist and build a weatherproof box that has venting for the charger and mount it to the car.

After that it will be cosmetic and weight reduction stuff. With care I can probably reduce the weight of the vehicle by a couple of hundred lbs (8 percent). The weight reduction will come from replacing the sunroof, hood, hatch glass, and windshield with carbon fiber and poly carbonate versions.

Continue plugging away at your conversions everyone!


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## loopylupine (Jan 1, 2014)

Today I got the ICE out!
I figured that is a milestone worthy of this thread...


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

today I installed vents in my new battery boxes


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

The fab shop just installed my motor and cut a huge hole in the back for the battery pack...


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I've mentioned it before but I don't run any EV related instruments in my car. Because I don't have special instrumentation I have to rely on my charging measurements to know if anything is trending towards a change. I have been keeping a spreadsheet since early Jan of 2013. The spreadsheet has the date, start mileage, stop mileage, AH put in from the EMW charger and the kwh that went into the charger. From the mileage, charger AH, and wall kwh I compute several numbers. Yesterday I obtained my highest mpge figure and highest miles per dollar figures of merit. The mpge number is 104 and I was able to travel 32 miles on a dollar of electricity. The other figures of merit are 1.83 AH per mile and 323.61 wh per mile. I know I don't do as well as I should, I expected about 20% better than this. I think I have a rear wheel bearing going out and I know I need an alignment. I am still working towards getting both of these things corrected.

Have a good weekend everyone!


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Averaging as few miles per day as I do, I reached the 3000 EV milestone today. Now that the weather permits I will be driving it almost every day. I have a little front suspension work to do and then off to the alignment shop. Still working on the heater.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Looks like you'll have the heater done by mid summer.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

onegreenev said:


> Looks like you'll have the heater done by mid summer.


As long as it is done by fall.

I am going to build some sort of electronic control for this but at the moment I am going to do it all manually to prove the concept. There are four elements in the ceramic heater core so I will have a switch to turn each of those on and one switch to close the contactor. I have some 200 volt FETs so the switches will turn on the FETS and the last switch will turn on the contactor directly.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Ran a couple of test runs with new setup and batteries

http://youtu.be/R-3oFUfHrPE


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Slim, That link takes me to youtube but not to a viewable video.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

sorry i fix the link
http://youtu.be/R-3oFUfHrPE


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## loopylupine (Jan 1, 2014)

Built a mock up of my control board using plywood to get the layout figured out. Now need to fab up a nice aluminum plate.










PS- Slimdog- what is the motor on that kart, and what's the traction pack? Do you have a build thread? I'm working on a little 48v kart with my son.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

7.2 inch forklift motor

8 leaf cells

Sorry no build thread did think there would be much interest but I am working on my photo album


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Hi everyone a great day working on my conversion. I have a 1992 Subaru Justy and today I was working on the adapter plate. I would post a picture but my I haven't been able to upload it. Today I finished drilling the bolt holes and this enabled me to mount the motor in position and see how the other components are going to fit and it looks like there should be plenty of room for everything.
Over the past 4 months I have been acquiring components as money has come to hand and I am at a stage where I have most of everything I need. The donor vehicle was picked up in February with excellent bodywork but the CVT transmission had packed up so my first task was to replace this and convert it to a manual. This was a great test run of removing the engine, mounting a clutch, and familiarizing myself with some of the wiring.
I picked up a curtis 1221 controller and ADC 8" motor from another conversion that was being disassembled and received the coupling and adapter plates that had been used with them and I have since set about modifying them to suit my vehicle. I have access to a reasonably well set up workshop. The main tools I have been using so far have been a bench drill and an angle grinder. For more advanced stuff my neighbour is an engineer with a lathe and a mill and he has been working on the coupling and flywheel.
The motor only just fits it is a cross mounted front wheel drive vehicle and the engine that is being replaced is only three cylinder so fairly short. Looking at this today I think it should be fairly easy to fabricate motor mounts bolted to the end plate of the motor on one side and the side of the engine bay on the other. It looks like the tailshaft will be unusable though although the only thing I had considered using it for was mounting an rpm sensor on it. 
I'll try to get some pictures up in the days and weeks ahead and start a proper build thread as my technology and skill in using it hopefully improves.

David


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Adjusted the slew rate on my Soliton. In second gear only I was seeing a violent surging which was made worse when someone else was driving the car. If you were really careful you could avoid it but a first time driver could not. My first thought was to turn down the slew rate. I started at 2000 amps per second and reduced it to 1000 amps per second. If anything this made the surge problem worse and added a new annoyance. The new annoyance occurs when you shift at high power levels. There would be a pronounced delay before the torque would come back up after the shift. The reason for this is clear. When you shift you remove all pressure on the throttle thus reducing the torque demand (current) to zero. You then have to wait for the slew rate for the current to come back up to the 1000 amps everything was seeing preshift. I next tried 3000 amps per second and the delay is almost completely gone and so is almost all of the surging. Upon reflection the torque delay was there at the 2000 amp slew rate but not too severe as the worst delay would have been half a second. At 3000 amps the delay is 0.333 seconds which is getting down to human reaction times. I will probably bump it to 4000 amps per second before I drive in to work this morning. It is not clear why this made the surging go away (mostly.)

What I need to do is borrow a laptop and run the Evnetics logger program and see what the controller thinks it is doing during the surging with the slew rate set to 1000 amps per second and the car in second gear. In first gear you can't even load the motor up to 1000 amps. And third gear is high enough that the motor stays loaded at 1000 amps until you get to about 50 mph. Best guess is that the controller is hitting the slew rate amp limit and backing off and then releasing the limit and this is happening 5 or 6 times per second.

Who knew I would still be tuning after driving the car for 1.5 years and 3100 miles?


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

"Hi everyone a great day working on my conversion. I have a 1992 Subaru Justy "
Hi, David. I have the Aussie 84 Sherpa 2 cylinder. I bought this for an ev conversion, but it has the 2 cylinder wasted spark motor in good nick. I would like to see progress pics to help decide whether to keep the ice or convert.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Hi Poprock thanks for your interest. I'll put photo's in once I become photograph capable. I thought the Justy was a good choice for my conversion and skill level with the added bonus of being cheap and completely rust free. It is a light vehicle around 800kg has manual steering, the electrics are relatively simple, wind up windows, even a choke cable to connect to the emergency stop. So far as I can see no off the shelf adapter plates and couplers exist and I think for non engineers they are quite a good idea as it is quite a critical area to get right and the costs involved in paying machinists can quickly approach or exceed the price of a ready made one. I was hopeful of being able to use the OEM rev counter but with the car being three cylinder there are one and a half pulses per revolution being sent to the gauge (formerly from the distributor) and it is not possible to put one and a half magnets for a hall effect sensor on the tailshaft and as mentioned earlier there is not enough space to put anything on the tailshaft.
The last two days have seen a lot happen progress wise my spacer ring has been made and I sent plans for the rear mounting plate after deciding on a design. The flywheel has been lightened and mated to the coupler and after talking to the engineer I will have a go at balancing it myself.
The other great news is my batteries have arrived all the way from Kwai Fong in China. They are 31ah lithium polymer pouch cells that I intend to connect up similar to how RWAudio did in another post in this forum. Tonight I will be sorting through them checking all the voltages. My plan is to mount them along with everything else in the engine bay avoiding running long high voltage cables down the length of the car and keeping the back all usable and I hope to keep the vehicle weight much the same as previously so this way the location of the weight should also be the same and not require any suspension upgrades. 
I hope to mount the motor this weekend and see if I can move the car around with 24 volts hooked up direct to the motor.









David


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Today I picked up a set of new seats for my VW. Mount rails will be in on Tues. Time for a drive when the seats go in.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

I paired the 2 chips/stars in the windshield with a patch kit, results were pretty good and saved buying a new windshield at this time. I adjusted the controller trying to figure out why I can't get full current, I adjusted the slew rate and made things worse, more adjustment needed. I also made a cover for the rear battery box and installed it, this will allow me to finally install the interior in the rear of the car.
I took measurements to mount a few more batteries and the PFC-50 charger upgrade.


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

Today my son and I took off the front bumper and lower body panels, prepped and painted the front of the frame, the driveshaft and touch ups of yesterday's epoxy on the rest. Posted a ton of pics so people can get excited, and tell me what I'm doing wrong! Next, the body bucket comes inside, I cry a bit, then we start trying to find the limit of solid metal so I can fabricate some floor pans and patch up the rest of the rust-sodden body. No real EV work for weeks I'm afraid!


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I calculated the monthly totals for charging in April. I drove 523.5 miles over 25 of the 30 days in the month. I used 191.2 kwh measured at the wall giving a wh/mile figure of merit of 365.23 (We aim to misbehave! Bonus points if you know the reference.) This works out to 92.27 MPGe and 28.52 miles per dollar of electricity. Additionally the charger reported that I put 1048 ah back into the battery giving an estimated charge efficiency of 92%.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Got to drive my Roadster for the first time today! Sweet. Short but sweet. Shifting sucks. Rrrrrrr. Time to dig in again. 

Pete


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

DougIngram, channeling your inner Malcolm Reynolds, eh?


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

onegreenev said:


> Today I picked up a set of new seats for my VW. Mount rails will be in on Tues. Time for a drive when the seats go in.


dope seats! do you know what chassis style those work for? I have mk1 and have been looking for some new seats. or perhaps I should be asking, where did you get the VW style rails?
-josh


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

The rails are generic but are sized to fit for the VW chassis. They just bolt through the floor. I'll get pictures of the rails before I mount the other seat. I wanted better seating but for now this will be fine. These are suspension seats. They do not recline. I need to shorten the rails to lower the seat about 1 1/2 inches. With the cut off window part of my head is over the window. So I will figure out what I need to do and then cut off sections the re-weld on mounting tabs.

Got the seats and rails at Bugformance in Sacramento.


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## loopylupine (Jan 1, 2014)

Did some work on the aluminum plate that the controls will mount on. Had a plywood mock-up that I practiced with first. Measuring, cutting, grinding, etc. Installed the studs it will be secured with, drilled some holes and mounted a few components. Great sunny day here in AK, enjoyed just being outside and working on the project.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Got brake lights working properly and my hood release fixed. The car is also now off non-op and is insured and ready for the open road. Still lots to do but had to get it running and road enough worthy.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Drove the EV again today. This time further and on the freeway. Acceleration is brisk but nothing to right home about. Will do freeway easy even with a small 34 cell pack. I have my motor current set at 900 max and my battery set at 700 max. In first gear the motor amperage is really low as is when starting in second. In third however I can pull a solid 800 motor amps and that is with a pretty depleted pack at this point. Time for another charge.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

A few more pics. Got the Moon Hub Caps installed. Looks much better. More pics and vid on my site tomorrow. Video and Pictures up on the Blog.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Your VW looks great Pete!

Malcolm Reynolds (Firefly) is correct.


While not strictly speaking EV related I did do this to my EV this week.

Fixed the horn button. What had happened was the spring mounted ring is held in place by three insulated screws with spacers to the steering wheel. Two of these three screws backed out last week. I took it all apart and cleaned up the 30 years of crud which was not nearly as bad as I was imagining. Cleaned the switch contacts. Soaked the slightly rusty spring in Evaporust for a couple of hours. Oiled the spring and then put it all back together using blue thread locker. The burgundy color of the switch cover has faded over the years, some areas and materials more than others but for this car there is a solution in the SEM interior paints. The horn switch cap had faded to a brownish greenish color and this paint put it back to close to original. I think it all turned out well as you can see in the photo.

Lots to do this weekend that is actually EV related. More to follow.


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## eldis (Sep 3, 2013)

Started cutting out my very first adapter plate - since the coupler is ready, it's about time to put it all together! (The groove is there just to match the shape of my motor flange).


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Fitted the motor and gearbox back in the car, connected 2 12volt batteries direct to the motor with jumper cables and drove down the driveway. my first 300 metres in an electric vehicle


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

I drove the buggy today! The new 12 volt system went together and worked without a glitch. The GPS speedometer works great without any concerns about gears or tire sizes or programing the number pulses. The body has been off the frame for most of the winter. I built everything around the idea of making body removal in installation a simple procedure. The BMS system was removed over the winter and the cells charged to 3.42 volts per cell (133.5 volts for the pack of 39.) I posted a few new pictures online.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Bottom balancing my cells. Using the PowerLab 8 is tough on cells that are 50% full. I decided to setup my JLD meters again with a contactor and switch and connect the cells to two motors in series. That way I get an 85amp current draw consistent and when my cells reach 2.6 volts the contactor shuts off then back on at 2.65 and it will cycle until it can't recover to 2.65 volts. I actually did not wait until that happened but generally got a cell down pretty fast. As for the PowerLab, at 30 amp current draw it is hard on the wires. At 20amps it works much better but its slower. But I get to graph all the data. For my other setup I can log amp hours out and I can if I want monitor the voltage via the PowerLab and log the voltage over time. It is a pretty slick setup. If you need a way to drain your cells and you have a way to disengage your motor from the transmission, just use your motor for the current load. It will drain your cells post hast but keep an eye on them. My setup is a plug and walk away affair. Even if my power supply crapped out the setup would shut off the contactor and the whole thing just shuts off. I like it. I was doing a video of the setup this evening with my iPhone and I got a call during the video and then I just kept talking until I was done. Ooooops, the call interrupted the video and it just shut off without being able to tell. Now I know. I was using an after market video program and not the default camera program on the iPhone. Damn. Lost a bit. Will have to do that later. I find using the motors for my current load has been great. I like the fact that a little 3.2 volt battery can actually run those big suckers. Its quite effective and anyone doing a project must have a motor or two lying around for use as a current load to drain the cells for bottom balancing. 

Pete


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## loopylupine (Jan 1, 2014)

Worked on battery boxes today. Finished welding, insulated, and applied heater pads with high temp silicone to the bottoms of the boxes. I'm using an Elitech 1000 temperature controller, and I tested it on one box today, worked great. Tomorrow I hope to get a couple of the boxes secured, and do more work on the control panel- but it's mother's day, so I'll have other priorities for much of the day


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

davidmillin said:


> Fitted the motor and gearbox back in the car, connected 2 12volt batteries direct to the motor with jumper cables and drove down the driveway. my first 300 metres in an electric vehicle


Grats on your EV grin!


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I had a couple of things on my list for the last weekend. I had a clearance issue with a hole in the power board that sits above the motor/transmission and the bleeder nipple on the clutch slave cylinder. Under hard acceleration the motor/transmission will move about an inch on the motor mounts allowing the bleeder nipple to just touch the power board and eventually it loosened and the clutch pedal sinks to the floor. I removed the power board and hogged out the hole and painted the fresh edges black.

While I had the power board off I replaced the cables between the Warp 9 and the Soliton with 2/0 instead of the 1/0 I put on it 2 and a half years ago. The reason I originally went with 1/0 was that I didn't get enough 2/0 lugs but I had 1/0 lugs. In reality the difference is minor. The worst case losses with 1/0 cable at 1000 amps is 491 watts which comes from 5 feet of 1/0 cable and a voltage drop of 0.491 volts. An equivalent lenght of 2/0 cable will see a .390 volt drop and a loss of 390 watts. A savings of 101 watts. In the grand scheme of things this is insignificant. If you used 4/0 instead you would see a voltage drop of 0.245 and a loss of 245 watts in the wires. So you would save 246 watts at 1000 amps vs 1/0 cable. So is it worth the extra cost to use 2/0 vs 1/0 even with a system that can do 1000 amps? Probably not. At least not anywhere except the motor loop because it is the only thing that can see high currents for any length of time (normally.)

I also replaced the Tyco EV200 main contactor on the power board with the Gigavac GV200 which has a little better specs. The Tyco will go in my charger as a precharge relay.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

In between other projects I managed to fabricate and install a proper cover for the rear battery box, now I can get the interior back in. I messed around with some apps for monitoring the controller as I drive with little success.
As always still lots to do...


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

More bottom balancing. My setup is working great. JLDmeters connected to a contactor and shunt and set to cycle from 2.6 volts and 2.65 volts. I terminate when there is about a minute before it can recover from 2.64 to 2.65 volts. I then set up on the PowerLab 8 to CC/CV to c/3. Then terminate. Been working great. I will do a final trim later but for now it gets all my cells to within 2.7 volts per cell resting overnight. My new CALB SE cells are being discharged and falling within 48ah and 52ah per cell. Just about right. This is with a 90 amp current drain on the cell until it reaches 2.6 volts. Then it just cycles. During cycling I have been getting a few extra ah's out of the cells but no cell has shown over 52ah. 

Pete


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Today I mounted the J1772 charge port in the old gas filler and gathered the parts needed to install the interface for my charger.
I checked cell connections and measured for HV leakage to car chassis, all good.
I looked into GFCI breakers for the charge cord to replace the standard for improved safety.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Adjusted the settings on the controller for a better acceleration from a dead stop took a few hours of tweaking but happy with the results 

http://youtu.be/XIvc4_JeIBY


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

I did that too! I turned the zilla battery amps up from 300 to 360 and turned the motor amps up from 900 to 1000. It kicks off in 3rd gear a little better and is much stronger from 10 mph up. It makes using 2nd around town less desirable as it offers less performance above 30 mph.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Replaced spigot bearing in the flywheel. fitted end mounting plate drilled holes in engine bay and bolted it up. began mounting controller and potbox. All in all a great day working on my conversion


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## tchapin (Feb 2, 2011)

I finally found time to work on the electric "clutch" on my ford 8n tractor conversion. The conversion was clutch-less and after running it a while I found that the driver would get into a quick thinking position and jump on the clutch pedal first instead of closing the hand throttle causing the tractor to plow into whatever was in its way.

 I hooked up a second pot (50K) to the clutch pedal. It works more like a foot throttle that slows the tractor to a smooth stop from whatever speed the hand throttle is set. Makes it more user friendly and very similar to the traditional clutch operation.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

I finished mounting the controller and pot box and discovered some removable rubber bungs that will enable me to feed wires from the engine bay into the passenger compartment without needing to drill anywhere.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

A big day working on the car today I've taken some time off work this week and that has enabled me to get stuck in and hopefully have an EV capable of road driving by the end of the week. I fitted all the main high voltage cables today 70mm2 I think thats an AWG 2/0 and found it a bit tricky. I have a very compact system with controller, motor, and battery pack all very close to each other which means I need less then 2 metres of high voltage cable all told (not counting charger and DC DC converter wiring.) Consequently it was hard to get all those short thick runs of cable to do what I wanted them to do. The other thing I have been doing is making my battery. I have 32 Kokam pouch cells and I have cut 64 pieces of 6063 aluminium, drilled 2 5mm or 6mm holes in each and tapped all the 5mm holes with an M6 tap. Now I am punching and trimming the cell tabs and connecting them together into a 120volt string of cells which fits into an ABS enclosure which fits easily into the engine bay. I'll have photos for you all one of these days.

David
EV Novice


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

12V auxiliary battery and first module installed...


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Well today is the day I got my official EV grin on. After staying up late last night finishing my battery pack today I installed it ran the remaining cables and just before it got dark I took it for a quick spin. Top speed unknown along with a hundred other bits and pieces that need doing the speedo cable needs to be reinstalled. Actually I started off very disappointed when I went to give it a test run I rolled down to a clear space down the driveway and went to drive off I heard the contactor engage and then nothing. then followed about a quarter of an hour of checking connections and head scratching before I realized all I needed to do was press the accelerator a little further beyond where the contactors engage and the motor would start up. Anyway I'm feeling pretty chuffed after all the effort of designing, finding components and putting it all together to have a functional EV. but still have a lot of things that need to be done before certification.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Grats on your first drive David.

On mine I took it for a drive and washed it and did the clay bar thing on about half of it and waxed that half. I also looked at the car wiring diagrams in an attempt to find yet again a wire in the original loom that has eluded me.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I was able to locate the connection to the ACC position of the key switch I have been searching for. For some reason the air con control logic fuse was on the ACC position of the key switch. Now I can repurpose that fuse. It will be used to close the main contactor. Up to this point I have been depending on the contactors in the Soliton 1 so this becomes the emergency off for the car in the unlikely case where the motor controller fails on. The plan is to get that hooked up today.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Doug,
If you turn off your key to the acc position to simulate an emergency shut down will it lock up your steering column?


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

onegreenev said:


> Doug,
> If you turn off your key to the acc position to simulate an emergency shut down will it lock up your steering column?


Only if you take the key out would that be an issue. I am pretty sure all cars with locking steering columns are required to not lock up until the key is removed. (GM would have fixed their problem a lot sooner if this was not the case.) I don't ever expect this to be necessary. When you step on the brake the Soliton removes power from the motor. If it detects an internal fault it opens its internal contactor which removes the power to the motor. When I turn the key off of the run position now it removes 12 V from the Soliton and it would open its internal contactor. And finally when I turn the key off the main contactor opens and the battery negative is disconnected. I have a manual disconnect under the hood that disconnects the positive battery terminal as a maint switch. At some point I will add an inertia switch to open this contactor as well.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Doug, Don't you run an emergency pack disconnect? I don't have faith in contactors to break the connection under full load.

I drove the RX7 yesterday and couldn't pull more than 400 amps, I need to figure out if I have a connection or battery issue.
I also charged the CRV conversion that is for sale, seems something discharged the batteries, looking into that as well.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

elevatorguy said:


> Doug, Don't you run an emergency pack disconnect? I don't have faith in contactors to break the connection under full load.


A contactor that can break 2000 amps at the rated voltage is one of the most reliable ways to do a disconnect. Of course if you have to break the circuit under full load you are going to want to replace that device even if it looks like it is still working. What are you using for an emergency disconnect and why do you not trust contactors?


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Just the chance of the current continuing and arcing over the small gap between the contacts, I am using a dead front fuse holder with a buss bar where the fuse would be mounted.
I have it mounted between the seats for ease of access.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

elevatorguy I like that just have to find a spot to fit it 

my daughter and i did some gear changes and hit our new top speed of 71.2 mph

http://youtu.be/YjMTe8cLe2U


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Jerry, A fuse holder may not be a good device to use as an emergency disconnect. There is a good chance of having a plasma event in the passenger compartment if you pull that apart under load. Unless it was designed specifically to break high current and high voltage DC there is a good chance that it won't break cleanly. You really do want the stuff that they put in the DC contactors.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dougingraham said:


> Jerry, A fuse holder may not be a good device to use as an emergency disconnect. There is a good chance of having a plasma event in the passenger compartment if you pull that apart under load. Unless it was designed specifically to break high current and high voltage DC there is a good chance that it won't break cleanly. You really do want the stuff that they put in the DC contactors.


Yeah, I second this. Do not use a fuse holder as an emergency disconnect. Look at "arc flash" videos on YouTube to see why.


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

I understand it is not ideal, I would hope that the contactor in the soliton would shut things off. I will probably add a redundant contactor as well.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Showed off my electric car to my coworkers and later on used it to tow a petrol powered car out of a ditch. I went through my costings and discovered I have spent $5600 so far with a projected finished cost of $6500 plus certification charges. it was more than I thought I had spent but includes $1400 for the donor car and $600 for engineering work mainly associated with the coupling/adaptor plate. I was also able to discover the Maximum permissable weight in preparation for certification and tidy up some wiring.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

elevatorguy said:


> I understand it is not ideal, I would hope that the contactor in the soliton would shut things off. I will probably add a redundant contactor as well.


The contactor(s) in the Soliton should be enough under normal circumstances. It should detect a shorted IGBT and open up the internal contactor. But there is always the situation where it could fail to do so. In this case removing the 12 volts from it should allow the contactor(s) to open. It is really unlikely that if 12 volts is removed from the Soliton that the contactor(s) would remain closed. With a Soliton you could place your inertia switch in the 12V power line to the Soliton.

Best practice would probably be a contactor at the battery for both the positive and negative terminals. I believe this would be overkill for a system utilizing a controller with its own contactors, like the Soliton. But other than the cost of the extra contactor there isn't really a downside to it. Your maintenance switch in this case could be nothing more complicated than a small toggle switch to prevent one of the contactors from being closed.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

David,

I like your schematic. I note that you are using two contactors, one on each battery terminal. This displays several examples of best practice that are often overlooked.

I would add a fuse on the wire going to the DC-DC and a fuse on the positive terminal of the 12 v battery. Fuses are mostly there to protect against a wiring short so you want them as close to the battery/power source as possible. I don't think the 500 amp fuses will protect the much lighter wire you are running to the DC-DC converter.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Added new used rubber to the rear wheels from 6" wide to 7.1" wide 

http://youtu.be/YPl6U_ez_K4


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

Today I cut up the floor panel for the trunk to make it fit again. I have enough room for 4 bags of groceries. With a range of 44 miles and a top speed of more than 80 mph, the car is a great ride for shopping and work.
I also put on some bumper stickers. If you have an EV, you must have some bumper stickers.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Wired up the previously mentioned contactor and removed the short circuit cable I had around it. Now my key switch position 1 (accessory position) turns on the car stereo and closes the contactor. The closed contactor turns on the DC-DC which will keep the buffer battery charged from the traction pack. The next position of the key switch is the run position and this applies power to the Soliton 1 and everything else. Went for a drive to ensure it all works. Warm day so I rolled down the windows. The passenger side window jammed going back up when I went to put it away. Spent much of today taking the passenger door apart and fixing the regulator. I made the mistake of pulling the motor apart and it was a chore to get back together. Brush springs flying everywhere. I've got it back together now and the window goes up faster than it comes down. Going to work on the door card before I reinstall that. The burgundy color on the vinyl has faded and it needs a special flexible interior paint to make it match. I've painted other interior parts and it works amazingly well.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

I have to recant my previous position on FLA technology. At $0.15 USD a WH, $0.56 an AH, Li-on is WAY better than floodies and 1/2 the price/ weight of Trojan T-105 lead......


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Masked off the areas of the door card that I don't want to get paint on. 

And the numbers for May are in.

566.7 EV miles driven.
1096 charger reported AH.
199.35 kwh at the outlet.
351.77 wh/mile.
92.53% calculated charger efficiency.
95.80 MPGe
32.47 miles driven per dollar of electricity.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I changed out my hall effect current sensor. 

The one that came with my Orion BMS was max 200 amp so would get an error when under heavy accel, and then my eMeter would no longer work right. The new one of 500 amp seems to be working nicely!

josh


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

I repaired several BMS boards for a Vectrix Lithium conversion project, just need to interface a head board or build a custom one to interface with the charger on the bike.


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## crackerjackz (Jun 26, 2009)

Pictures are worth a thousand words


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I reached the 4000 EV miles driven milestone today. The chassis reached 150000 miles last week. It is likely I will reach 5000 electric miles before EVCCon 2014.


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## madderscience (Jun 28, 2008)

OK it was a couple weeks ago. Shoot me.

I constructed a partial belly pan out of an old collapsible above ground pool for my Scion xB EV. I found the plastic dumped in a wooded area.

It is 1/8" thick ABS plastic with a fiber liner (similar to blue tarp material) glued to one side. It is strong and rigid but does not crack or shatter even when folded in two.

The pan is about 3 feet wide and 5 feet long. It fits nicely onto the unibody frame rails under the middle section of the car. I used all existing holes in the frame and existing mounting brackets so no body drilling was needed.

This is in addition to blocked grille, "sport" aerodynamic mirrors, and lowered suspension.

Eventually I'll also do rear wheel skirts probably out of the same material. I might also build an engine compartment belly pan as well but that will take more work to make the mounting points for it.

despite the xB being boxy, I am easily getting sub 250 wh/mile battery to wheels on freeway drives. The aero change account for 10-20wh/mile improvement I figure; the biggest single one being the mirrors I think. I haven't done a long drive with the pan yet but will soon.


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## zapyourrideguy (Oct 25, 2012)

With the installation of 1239/ac-51 drive system completed recently:

I drove Sacramento to oakland and back today. 80 miles each way. With the DC/zilla set-up my range was about 60 miles max. to bms disable. I did 80 miles with 33% SOC on arrival and 36% SOC remaining on the return. I'm guessing 90 -95 miles to 80% discharge. and I haven't even gotten an alignment yet.


Motor has not gotten hotter than 55C controller 45C they seem to run right around 50/40 most of the time.



Under heavy acceleration I am feeling a little cavitation of the motor. It hits around 300 amps 

Any idea? Otherwise it is very smooth.


Big Ol EV Grin

92 civic hatch 45 calb ca's 180's Orion BMS elcon 5k charger. 
AC-51 1239 controller with chill plate and brake transducer regen

-Mike


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## Ivansgarage (Sep 3, 2011)

zapyourrideguy said:


> With the installation of 1239/ac-51 drive system completed recently:
> 
> Under heavy acceleration I am feeling a little cavitation of the motor. It hits around 300 amps
> 
> ...


What like a miss fire ? I would check encoder wire length (short as possible) and that the encoder wheel is centered.

Ivan


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## zapyourrideguy (Oct 25, 2012)

Ivansgarage said:


> What like a miss fire ? I would check encoder wire length (short as possible) and that the encoder wheel is centered.
> 
> Ivan


It does not seem like misfire but more like the motor is cavitating or twisting in its mounts like 3 twists back and forth over a few seconds time


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Check for a busted mount.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Did a little work over the weekend on my heater experiment for the coming year. Took the drivers door all apart to work on the window regulator mechanism. The previous owner had replaced the regulator at some point and did not get the door back together correctly. So fixing what was not done right.

Much of a conversion has nothing to do with making it an EV. It is keeping the original systems in good working condition.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Today I am putting the motor and trans back in for the second time in as many days. I have been working on this for a couple of weeks now. The car was running fine and the days are warm but I have been wanting to replace the original steel adapter plate ever since I first did the build. I also did a redesign on the coupler. I managed to shave two and a half pounds of the adapter plate but gained almost three pounds on the coupler. But that baby is balanced to a tent of a gram and run out is about as dead on as it will ever get and is probably good for 20K rpm if everything held together. Once I get rolling again I am going to replace that yellow cross member with an aluminum one I have on the drawing board.


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## zapyourrideguy (Oct 25, 2012)

I got word that CALB is sending another replacement cell. They replaced 3 for excessive IR reported by Orion BMS. This cell is exhibiting self-discharge when out of the car and won't charge above 3.38 volts. I am happy with these batteries Calb CA series 180's. and customer service and replacements thus far. I am hoping that this pack is settled down.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Calculated the monthly statistics for June.

Miles driven = 580.8
AH used = 1029
Wall KWH = 196.87
AH/mile = 1.8
WH/mile = 339
Calculated MPGe = 99.4
Miles per dollar spent = 33.7

Numbers are slightly better than May probably due to higher temps. Certainly not because I am driving it carefully.

Made a short list of stuff I want to get done before EVCCon 2014.


Install Vacuum pump for brake assist. Necessary if I am going to let other people drive it comfortably. I don't really notice it anymore.
Check the bottom balance. Its been 2 years and 4500 miles so probably time. When I do this I will add one more cell.
Make a cover for the exposed high voltage connections under the hood.
Finish the cover for the front battery box.
Touch up the paint. I bought materials to do this.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Yesterday I gave it a good bath. Should have gone on a photo mission. Rained today so now I have dust spots.

I've been fighting with a surging issue in second gear. I've got almost the car's weight in torque at the face of the tires and it was easy to touch the throttle and get into what I thought was partially drive induced oscillation. I had trained my foot so I could avoid it but if I let someone else drive it invariably they would encounter it. This morning I decided to make some configuration changes to the Soliton 1. I lowered the RPM limit to 5500 (down from 6000). I increased the slew rate from 3000 to 4000 amps per second and I dropped the motor current from 1000 to 900 amps. Surging issue is gone. Since in normal traffic I never floor it I couldn't even tell I had turned it down. I am going to have to experiment with this some more and log the Soliton data.

And this evening I mounted the vacuum pump to the car. It is in the right front corner just behind the pop up headlight. The cylinder to the right is the headlight motor. Here is a photo.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

dougingraham said:


> Calculated the monthly statistics for June.
> 
> 
> Install Vacuum pump for brake assist. Necessary if I am going to let other people drive it comfortably. I don't really notice it anymore.


oh good, I was concerned I might be the only one running no vacuum, haha, I also don't even notice it anymore. But my Cortina will be heavier due to more batteries, and since I already own a pump, I may give it a shot.

I did wonder if the pedal structure on my VW might be so flimsy as to get tired of the extra force.
-josh


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I now have a working vac pump and the brake assist is good. I am using the VBS pump without a vacuum bottle. It works great. It ran the first time perhaps 1/2 second and then shut off. I get a short run every time I release the brake pedal of maybe 1/10th of a second. I can only hear it when I am sitting still with the windows open. The rest of the time the transmission, differential and wind noise drown it out.

I need to dress the wires a little better but I think I will leave it this way for a while.

EV Grin time!


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Took My daughter and Electric go-Kart Amp-Rage to the local track 



http://youtu.be/O6-lJ4r42VE


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

we detuned it for the track do to rule for age group no faster than 60mph


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

slimdawg said:


> Took My daughter and Electric go-Kart Amp-Rage to the local track
> 
> 
> 
> http://youtu.be/O6-lJ4r42VE


That is pretty cool! She must think you are the best parent ever.


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Most of the time I'm cool other times I ruin everything :-D


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

I got my car running!

http://youtu.be/1FA0iLqPANk


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## slimdawg (Mar 7, 2012)

Congrats on completion of the build


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Nice job on the conversion.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I've been enjoying my vacuum assisted brakes. One of the things I want to do before EVCCon is get the liquid cooling installed. To that end I started repairing an oil cooler that I damaged on another RX-7 a couple of years ago. The damage was caused because the hose adaptors were glued into the cooler and when I changed them out I got them loose but split the fiting in two places. 60-90 psi oil just flows out of these cracks. I won't have near that pressure and so I have wrapped the original tapped fittings with Carbon fiber tow mixed with structural epoxy. Next I will fill in the original threaded portion and finally drill and tap the filled section and install 3/8" barbed fittings. So far I have reinforced one of the two with tow and I am waiting for cure.

I will probably start checking my pack balance tomorrow and see if anything has happened to it in the first 5000 miles of EV driving.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Sent my Roadster to an EV shop to have the battery boxes built. Our friend here evmetro has be contracted to do the work for me since he has the proper tools and I like his work. Pics have been uploaded to my blog. 17 CALB SE 100ah cells.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Checking my pack balance continues. 23 of 51 done so far. At this point it looks like I should have done a complete rebalance when I added in the front pack as they are clearly at different states of charge. So far it looks like the rear pack (older) has about 2.5 AH more charge although the individual variation in a couple of cells was greater than this. I will get most of the way done tonight and finish it up tomorrow. It is taking about 30 minutes per cell to drop the voltage to 2.5 volts and I have 28 to go. I suspect my bottom balance methodology was not the best when I was rushing to get ready for EVCCon two years ago and then I was lazy when I mated the new front pack in and didn't get them balanced in as well as I should have. I will know more when I get done.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

You going to EVCCON this year?


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Got some Leaf Modules today.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

onegreenev said:


> You going to EVCCON this year?


Yes. Trailering the car out there again. Planning on hitting the Sikeston 1/8th mile on Sunday after the event and see just how badly I can embarrass myself.

This is just about 3 weeks away now.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I finished checking my pack balance and the front pack was an average of about 2.5 AH difference in SOC. The worst difference was 6.3 AH. I cycled the lowest cell to see if it had suffered any extreme trauma. It tested at 91 AH and when new it had 100.2 AH. I should probably test a couple of other cells to see if they are down 9% in capacity. These cells appear to have been manufactured about 3 years ago and I have been driving them for about 2 years now.

I am currently prepping a cell to be added to the pack. I found room in my front battery box for an additional cell. I hope the effort to add this in is worth it.


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## loopylupine (Jan 1, 2014)

I installed a JLD404 with shunt today, and am looking forward to my commute tomorrow to see what it tells me 
Also installed another contactor on the negative side for a little added safety.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Removed the petrol tank it was easier than I thought it would be. Made an acrylic cover for my control box. Crimped a ferrule on the old choke cable connecting it to my emergency stop. Started reinstalling the battery box. Stuck high voltage stickers on the car and component boxes. Put heatshrink on my charger cable. Fixed a charge light on the dashboard. Tomorrow I need to get it weighed in preparation for certification and finish off a number of minor details (grommets and glands for wiring, secondary spring for the potbox, fit a resistor on my DC DC converter soft start circuit, cover the hole in the transmission where the starter motor was, finish making battery clamps and fit them, replace interior panels, remove tools from the engine bay and the front seat and the back seat and the boot and then its all done sort of


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

I drove to work for the first time!

The speedo still doesn't work, but my GPS does, so I'm good...


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

loopylupine said:


> I installed a JLD404 with shunt today, and am looking forward to my commute tomorrow to see what it tells me
> Also installed another contactor on the negative side for a little added safety.


So what did your JLD404 tell you?

The two contactors is probably best practice and I would be doing that if I didn't have a Soliton which already has internal contactors.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Went to Rusher Electric Vehicles to have a look at my battery box and to have a good chat with evmetro. I want to do some video of his work and do an interview for his business. Can't wait till I get the Roadster on the road with the new boxes in place. Nice front box to hold some electronic components to keep them save and out of the way. 

Pete


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

sholland said:


> I drove to work for the first time!


Grats on your first work drive. I really enjoy my EV and have missed it terribly these last few days when I was checking the bottom balance.

Speaking of that it should be done recharging now and I will drive it this evening after checking the full charge resting voltage.

I started writing a program to simulate my car on a drag strip. I have a single gear and simulate the torque reduction in the motor. I don't have any drag effects implemented so no rolling resistance and no air drag. Matting the throttle gives the following simulated numbers:

1st gear:
R/T = 0.00
6000 rpm 29.24 mph and 1.56 sec
60 ft @ 29.24 mph and 1.94 sec
1/8 mi @ 29.24 mph and 15.93 sec

2nd gear:
R/T = 0.00
60 ft @ 36.97 mph and 2.15 sec
6000 rpm 48.45 mph top speed @ 4.30 sec
1/8 mile @ 48.45 mph in 10.77 sec
1/4 mile @ 48.45 mph in 20.06 sec

3rd gear:
R/T = 0.00
60 ft @ 30.89 mph in 2.66 sec
0-60 @ 5.54 sec
1/8 mi @ 73.76 mph in 9.55 sec
6000 rpm 74.64 mph top speed @ 10.22 sec
1/4 mi @ 74.64 mph in 15.58 sec

4th gear:
R/T = 0.00
60 ft @ 25.94 mph in 3.17 sec
0-60 @ 7.34 sec
1/8 mi @ 82.12 mph in 10.53 sec
1/4 mi @ 98.89 mph in 15.44 sec
6000 rpm 105.92 mph top speed @ 20.59 sec

The amazing thing about this simulation is how I always get an RT of 0.00 seconds.

In the real world with shifting I can get just over 6 seconds 0-60 so it isn't horribly off. I think if I added in some rolling resistance and air drag it would come out pretty close. I started on the one that shifts. I need to add in the some zero acceleration time during the shift. I also need it to figure out when to shift for me. The optimum shift point is going to be when the wheel torque is the same after as before the shift. I have been assuming this to be around 4000 rpm but it will depend on motor torque reduction and gear ratio differences.

Now that I have posted this I will probably find some stupid bug.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I mentioned in post 158 about repairing my broken oil cooler for use with the water cooling in the Soliton 1. Here are the pictures of that. I figure about half a day to get it into the car so not sure that will happen before EVCCon.

You can see the cracks in the 2 and 4 o'clock positions in the first photo.

The second photo shows the part cleaned up for the carbon wrap.

The third photo shows the carbon fiber tow wrap of the fitting.

To get to the 5th and 6th photos: I cleaned off most of the threads until I had fresh roughened aluminum inside the fitting. I made a square of 1.5 oz fiberglass and wetted it out with resin. I wetted the inside of the fitting and then pushed the fiberglass into the hole so as to make a plug at the bottom of the fitting. Once this cured I again removed material down to the glas plug to give the epoxy a fresh surface to attach to. I then filled the fitting to the top with resin thickened with graphite powder (10% by volume) which makes it really easy to work with tools. In this case that means drilling and then tapping with 1/4 npt threads. The brass fittings are 1/2 inch barbs.

Since this was the original oil cooler from an 85 GSL-SE this car never had one but the attachment points are still on the car and I will use those.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

Reclamped the cable to my emergency stop, reinstalled the panel that formerly sat below the radiator, tidied up some 12V wiring including moving my timer relay, made a cover to sit over the high voltage connections on my DC DC converter and fitted it.fixed some dashboard lights that have been playing up. Now it is all finished and due to get certified road legal on Wednesday


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Sunday evening (8/10/13) I took a nice drive with top off to a spot called inspiration point.The road is a nice stretch with some turns a couple of which are fairly tight. Got behind a Wall-mart truck whose driver must have been from California going up one grade because he pulled over and let me by. That is practically unheard of here in Arkansas. Any way as I passed I gave a couple of short toots of my new horn and my wife and I both stuck our hands up and gave a big wave. About ten miles of lazy bends in the road and we pulled off at the point. We were standing at the rail overlooking the White River watching the sun set when a few minutes later the Wal-Mart truck went by and honked and waved.As the sun glinted off beaver lake that pours through the dam of the same name into the White River we climbed back into my little electric X19 and headed back the way we came. The ride home was great. 18 miles to the edge of town with out one car in front of me. Usually there is some touron that is scared of the windey roads and driving with their foot on the brakes up hill and down.Going back I got to hit the switch backs going down hill. That can be fun but we survived making it home safe and in one piece.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I finished my motor mounts (pics coming on build thread)
Also removed the old exhaust system which was quite a heavy duty piece previously supporting a v8.

Finally removed the passenger electric seat, which will go back in after work in the rear is done. Also removed the rear bench style seat to reveal a substantial working area for my rear battery pack. It won't be going in the trunk, even though there is massive space available back there, because for now anyway, I seem to be avoiding installing heavy things outside of the wheel base.

What I'm hoping for is a final platform above the batteries that would be about 4 inches higher than the old seat. This platform would have some covered memory foam which will be a nice hang out for my black Labrador. But I think it will still be suitable for a passenger to sit there for a short drive to breakfast, etc.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Went over to Rusher Electric Vehicles today. Had a look at the rear box and its supporting structure. I forgot to take my camera today but the work is just awesome. Here is a pic of the rear box he sent me the other day. 

Pete 

PS. Almost have my VW engine ready to start so I can check output of two DC generators for charging current and voltage output. Time to get some gas to those carburetors. Time to remove a load of spider webs from the old Dyno machine. Hope to have it fired up straight away.


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## twright (Aug 20, 2013)

Changed the "clutchless" drive train in my 2000 Ford Escort to one with a clutch!

It shifts much better.


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

This last week has been busy and very satisfying with my conversion. On Wednesday I took it in to get certified and spent about 2 hours going over it with my certifier who had driven about 2 hours to come and check it. This was a good thing I'm aware of others who have had to truck their vehicles long distances to get certified as there are only 5 certifiers in the country so I was glad he was willing to travel and save me the trucking expense. Overall he was happy with the job I had done and my design complied with the requirements. He did find some issues which I have been addressing but they are relatively minor.
I was missing a spring washer on an adaptor plate bolt and 2 other bolts needed to be slightly longer apparently you should be able to see at least 2 threads protruding beyond your nuts and washers so today I fixed this.
he wanted to see cable boots on my motor terminal to prevent the possibility of an accidental short so I tracked some down yesterday and fitted them today.
My design used my choke cable being attached to an emergency stop so I could manually break the high voltage circuit in an emergency I had joined the cable to another to make this work and he wanted this changed so a single longer cable was used. yesterday I ordered a longer cable
In addition to a sticker with a lightning bolt in a triangle with "High Voltage" written underneath the standards require the type of battery and associated hazards to be on my battery box so I am going to get a friend to print a label stating "Lithium Ion Batteries, 120 Volts, Risk of electric shock".
Also required is a warrant of fitness which all cars in New Zealand need and the mechanic whose workshop I used to get it certified checked it over. The two rear tyres needed replacing as did a cracked taillight assembly. I have ordered these.
So 6 months after towing my donor vehicle home I am almost road legal
I need to send photos to the certifier to show him I have addressed the points he raised and fortuitously my sister is sending me her old smartphone which she no longer needs so I will be able to send pictures and post on this site.
The other thing that happened was I received a Zivan NG3 charger which I had purchased secondhand It isn't programmed for my pack but I am using my JLD404 to switch it off and this works quite well and is a huge improvement on my previous charging solution which had been to purchase two very cheap 60V output switchmode power supplies and connect them in series. One had released the magic smoke very early in the piece so I had been charging my pack in stages with 400W and this was not only torturously slow but also required considerable monitoring so I am very happy to have the Zivan and I am better able to establish Kwh in and out.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Brake vacuum canister and Soliton1 water cooling installed...


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## ken will (Dec 19, 2009)

davidmillin said:


> 2 other bolts needed to be slightly longer apparently you should be able to see at least 2 threads protruding beyond your nuts and washers


Really????
He actually went around and counted the threads on every F---ing bolt???


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## davidmillin (Dec 14, 2013)

> Really????
> He actually went around and counted the threads on every F---ing bolt???


Well these were quite structural attaching the motor to the transmission and it and very apparent that they ended flush with the nut rather than protruding. It was something I hadn't even considered just using what bolts I had on hand and at the end of the day about 5 minutes work to remedy.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

From play day at EVCCon 2014:

I made 16 runs down the 1/8th mile drag strip and carried 14 passengers. Find attached my results. I am about 0.7 off of the NEDRA class record (SC/D). Later in the day I put the car on the Dyno and found out why my numbers were not better. I believe the Soliton is going into thermal limiting after just a couple of seconds. I have seen lots faster 0-60 times but they were always on cooler days. If I add water cooling and lose the weight of a passenger I think I have a good shot at a record in my class.

Apparently a WarP 9 at 1000 amps can do 266 ft-lb of torque.

Today I turned the Soliton 1 back down to my regular street settings of 600 battery amps, 800 motor amps and a slew rate of 4000. They were 1000 battery amps, 1000 motor amps and a slew rate of 5000. I will try higher slew rates next time I turn it up to 10 (11?)


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## loopylupine (Jan 1, 2014)

Nice job Doug! I'm jealous... wanted to go to EVCCON but couldn't make it happen this year, but hopefully in 2015. I think you have me beat on a 1/4 mile, but I haven't timed it yet- I do know that my warp9 will smoke a clutch however 

On topic, I replaced a turn signal flasher in my bug today, so now they actually flash and don't just flicker. Installed some better stereo speakers for my USA1 radio, and also I received my EMPI front disc brake kit and a new clutch disc today, so I have something to do this weekend.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I made my EV 17% more important. How you are asking? I sold one of my ICE cars. Too many things left undone during EVCCon to get to do actual work on the EV today.


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## madderscience (Jun 28, 2008)

I installed an external emergency disconnect switch on the rear of my xB. The disconnect switch replaces the rear window wiper so no drilling needed, and it controls a contactor in series with the 12V supply to the inverter and main contactor coil. Now I have now excuse but to lay down some screaming 27 second runs at the drag strip


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Put a tonneau cover on the ranger. I don't care what mythbusters say, gas mileage must have gone almost to zero per mile


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Update on my E Roadster. New motor compartment bling being finished up. Heres to hoping the Garage will be open soon. 

Pete


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

onegreenev said:


> Update on my E Roadster. New motor compartment bling being finished up...


Awesome! I like it.

I test drove my Cortina last night, finally got the canev adapter plate and coupling installed correctly with no rubbing of the clutch lever on the pressure plate.

I'm still amazed how ambient chassis and transmission noise seems amplified when running a quiet electric motor. 
Josh


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

I have been top balancing my 36 LIFEPO4 cells, I improved efficiency by 20% with an experimental circuit, I am preparing to build a battery compartment in the front of the car to hold 36 more smaller cells. All in all, the car should have a safe range of 65 miles. It goes 47.7 miles on a charge now. I love driving it around town and to local car shows. It really makes some people angry that I am part of the electric car conspiracy. Others are thrilled to see me drive around town. Either way I am having fun showing the car to people! Soon my car will have everything except dancing hamsters.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

New Images of the Motor Compartment. There is more to go but its looking great. A true ONE OFF for a ONE OFF Roadster. Custom all the way. Can't wait to see it polished.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Got the Roadster home yesterday. Looking good but we still need to fit components then polish. Not sure how to fit. I will be doing a video showing the work done and see if I can fit the components or do trial fits without drilling. Its so nice I hate to drill into it to mount something. Here are some new pics.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

That is excellent work Pete!

On my own EV:

I turned off the maint switch.
I disconnected the cable between the rear battery box and the front box.
I took all the cells out of the front battery box.
I pulled the high voltage board so I could remove the front battery box.
I removed the Soliton so I could remove the front battery box.
I removed the front battery box.

All that took about 2 and a half hours.

Installed the oil cooler from an 85 RX-7 GSL-SE which I had repaired. This fits perfectly on the original mounts that were never used on my variant of the car.
Plumbed up the coolant pump and filled it with coolant. I am letting it run a couple of hours to see if the oil cooler leaks anywhere since it is several hours to get to.

Started making the clearance for the bolt heads that hold the oil cooler in place on the bottom of the battery box. The Soliton box will also need a little work.

It would be so much easier to mount stuff to avoid these problems if the EV was a full sized pickup truck.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Its not my work but thanks. I sent to EVMETRO's shop for the work. He and his helper did this and its great. I just did not have the time nor did I have this in mind. I learned some stuff and just love it. He's going to teach me how to polish this stuff.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I continued to work on the cooling system for the Soliton 1. I have the Soliton back in the car and have it in the test cooling loop now. At full flow rate it draws about 1.8 amps and is pumping a couple of gallons per minute. I am going to turn it down to about an amp and see if that is adequate. I don't know where I am going to mount the pump/reservoir yet.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I needed to use the car today so I put it all back together yesterday. I had wanted to get the battery heating system installed. The plan was to place a strip of 4" wide Flex watt tape under the rows of cells. I think the vibration and pounding will eventually kill the tape. The new plan is simpler. I am going to install it in the insulated battery box lids and it will act as a radiant heat panel. The one advantage of having it in the bottom of the box would be that the air would be heated and circulate some of the heat via convection. But there is not much airflow between cells so this probably would be a minor effect anyway.

The previously mentioned cooling pump is installed and plumbed with 50/50 coolant. But the pump is not hooked up. I ran it for 12 hours Saturday night and no leaks. I would like to let the Soliton turn it on and off but while the Soliton 1 output drivers are limited to a generous 1 amp the pump draws 1.8 amps at full flow and I don't know what the starting surge is. So I will make a solid state relay for this that can handle the current. I have some logic level N-FETs that are 0.010 ohms with a 5 volt gate. They can handle a 20 volt gate and are probably about 0.009 ohms with a 12 volt gate drive. So a 2 amp current will produce 0.036 watts in the FET which can be dissipated in the wires but is almost negligible anyway.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Spent the weekend working on my heater. As previously mentioned I am installing two ceramic heater cores re-purposed from cheap space heaters. The cores are going in the AC evaporator box because it is easier to access and has more room. I have wired the ceramic elements as two resistors per unit so four total and I used 250 volt N channel MOSFETs to control each element.

The first photo is of the air intake side with the cover off. It is near sunset and the box is sitting on the glass sunroof on the car. The switches are for testing control. The leftmost switch is the master switch and removes all power. The other four switches control their respective heating element.

The second and third photos show the control board as it is currently. The little black box on the far left is a DC-DC converter that takes the cars 12 volt and converts it to an isolated 5V. The FETs are sitting in the airflow and are 250 volt logic level parts capable of handling about 15 amps each. At the moment they will only be asked to switch about 3 amps. This gives about 2000 watts. If this is not sufficient I can rewire the ceramic elements to double the current. Once I determine what I need I will add a microprocessor to control the FETs and adjust the temperature as desired.

I didn't get a photo of the box with the cover on. I will show that later.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I cut a massive hole in the rear trunk area sheet metal of my Cortina, where the old gas tank hole was. The new much larger hole runs in-between the leaf springs and just behind the rear differential. 

Cut, bent and welded a bunch of 16 gauge steel sheet (wore a respirator for the galvanized pieces). Thus creating 5 horizontal boxes which hang down 5 inches from the original trunk floor. The boxes hold horizontal parallel rows of batteries, which finally appear like one square pack, except for a small gap for the final row making room for the leaf spring shackles.

The leaf does not pass under the boxes, the edges of both are 1 inch apart.

I also removed the leaf springs and delivered them to Denver Spring company to have one leaf added. I had previously lengthened my spring shackles which made my car driveable but the leafs were flat, not good. pics coming on my thread. 

one pic: 








josh


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Over the weekend and continuing on this week I worked on adding a fuse panel. I ended up placing it on the left front strut tower using the original mounting points that I think were for the air conditioner hoses. The reason I needed another fuse panel is because I have a developing rats nest under the hood and part of that will be cleaned up by splitting out the individual circuits on their own fuses. This panel is powered by the original key switch On position. There are six fuses (and six grounds) and at the moment I will be using three of them. One for the Soliton 1, one for the vacuum pump for the assisted brakes and one for the water cooling pump for the Soliton. I keep adding things that I only want to work when the key is in the on position so this makes good sense. Hopefully I will get this wired up over the next couple of days and that will clean up some of the mess.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Cabin heat works, need to build dc switch for trip home. Adding home despot pipe tape to the battery box.

Nice to be toasty on the way to work

Have 2500 miles on conversion as of trip home last night


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

More tweaking...

After bending a wheel on a huge pothole, I changed the wheels and tires out for some lighter, more efficient ones. They are ~4lbs lighter per corner, abd I've already noticed almost 10% less Ah consumed in my commute.










And, today I added a belly pan that runs 3/4 the length of the car.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

Today I addressed the issue of driving the car in cold weather. I have tried two 12v DC electric heaters which used a lot of power, but they never put out much heat. One of them is the type that plugs into the lighter socket, the other is the type that is direct wired to the battery. It has always been easy to heat up the car with an AC ceramic heater before I drive. I have long wished that I could run the same kind of heater while driving the car, but most of those things draw 1500 watts AC and don't fit well in a car unless I were to open them up and remove the heating elements and then refit them somewhere in the car. AC ceramic heaters are made for home use and most will not run well on an inverter. The other issue is that a heater can take 10 miles off of the range and I want the wheels to turn more than I want heat. I recently found a very small AC ceramic heater that runs very well for an hour on a premium car battery and an 800 watt inverter. I hooked it up and watched it run today. It produced an impressive amount of heat while supplied only by the 12v accessory battery. I have a DC to DC converter as well to keep the 12v battery charged up so that all the accessories will have power. So, soon the car will have 3 heaters. One which will run when the charger is plugged in to preheat the car. Another heater which will run as I just described. A third to replace the heater core which will keep the windshield clear. Then add in a heated seat cover and I should be quite comfortable this winter. I should still be able to drive at least 40 miles if the roads are clear of heavy snow.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

This is all very impressive work that I am seeing here. It looks like you have everything worked out and it looks like a high performance car. What is the range of your car?


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

sirwattsalot said:


> This is all very impressive work that I am seeing here. It looks like you have everything worked out and it looks like a high performance car. What is the range of your car?


Thanks! I estimate I get around 80 miles range, though I've never pushed it that far. The furthest I've done is 65 miles, with about 20-30% left.

This car is so much fun


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

This weekend saw the completion of the wiring of the new fuse box and the addition of the DIY solid state relay to turn on the cooling pump for the Soliton under the control of the Soliton.

Photo 1 shows the wired up fuse box.

Photo 2 shows slightly less of a rats nest. Note the terminal strip on the Soliton 1. The left most terminal is Out 3 which I have defines as Cooling pump. This is the on signal for the Solid state relay mentioned above. It is in the black heat shrink just to the left under the tubing with the coolant in it. This relay breaks only the negative line and has a diode for reactive loads like a motor. It consists of a 0.01 ohm logic level N-FET, a diode and a resistor to force the FET off if the signal wire is disconnected. It will handle up to 15 amps. The pump pulls a little under 3 amps when set to its top speed. I forgot to take pictures before I put on the heat shrink tubing. I guess if I build another I will take some pictures. Made from left over speed controller parts.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Did weatherstripping on drivers door. Added battery heat with modified water pipe tape. 

Checked battery voltages. After 4 months and 1300 miles, perhaps 100 abusive cycles volt battery pack is all within .01 volt NO BMS, NO TOP or BOTTOM balancing. 

Still awaiting, with eager anticipation, the nuclear holocaust that occur maybe momentarily because I'm not balancing a hazardous chemistry in the volt battery.

Motor comm picture with 2500 miles


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## crackerjackz (Jun 26, 2009)

Ruined the hood .... Yep instead of doing something positive tonight sucked :s .... Went to get groceries verified something under the hood two days ago but it must not have ketched properly  ... Fail ...


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

I had a hood latch fail on me at 115 km/hr in the left lane of a stretch of the QEW without a left shoulder...in a 1985 monkey-shit brown Plymouth Reliant K car with the cheesy beige vinyl roof- winter car when I was still driving the Spitfire. Thank God I got to the side of the road in one piece, across three lanes of traffic, totally blind. Put the hood down, corners curled but the latches latched, so I drove to my destination...always lubricate those latches!

Crackerjackz, it's very sad to see your beautiful bodywork damaged! Better luck this winter...


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Oscilloscope arrived today. Now to learn how to use this sucker on my inverter project.


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## Ivansgarage (Sep 3, 2011)

onegreenev said:


> Oscilloscope arrived today. Now to learn how to use this sucker on my inverter project.


Where is the picture, of the scope, Pete

Ivan


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Gotta get it out of the box first. It's old but should do the job I need. I'll post a pic soon


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

piotrsko said:


> Did weatherstripping on drivers door. Added battery heat with modified water pipe tape.
> 
> Checked battery voltages. After 4 months and 1300 miles, perhaps 100 abusive cycles volt battery pack is all within .01 volt NO BMS, NO TOP or BOTTOM balancing.
> 
> ...


right on!

is it possible the pack was already top or bottom balanced and this is actually a testament to how good it works?

josh


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

bwjunkie said:


> right on!
> 
> is it possible the pack was already top or bottom balanced and this is actually a testament to how good it works?
> 
> josh


Very possible that the pack was well balanced already. Each of my Leaf packs were all in sync but not between packs so I must balance them. They are holding well at 7.1 volts. I have about 20 to charge up a bit then discharge to my specified volts. Then they should do just fine. All the modules are balanced within each module. As you know the Leaf modules are 2 series and 2 parallel. So far all are well. Just need both packs to be within a small window. Should be good to go for mine. I think the Volt packs are well balanced. I'd trust them.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

O-Scope Pics. Now to find some stuff on the tube to see how to use this sucker. Did not let me upload one image. Its a bunch of probes that are stored in the front cover. Also includes a bunch of fuses. This is not terrible heavy but much longer than I expected. I have power on but the tube did not light up. Can't tell if the tube is working. 

Pete 

Got the box of goodies up.


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## crackerjackz (Jun 26, 2009)

Moltenmetal said:


> I had a hood latch fail on me at 115 km/hr in the left lane of a stretch of the QEW without a left shoulder...in a 1985 monkey-shit brown Plymouth Reliant K car with the cheesy beige vinyl roof- winter car when I was still driving the Spitfire. Thank God I got to the side of the road in one piece, across three lanes of traffic, totally blind. Put the hood down, corners curled but the latches latched, so I drove to my destination...always lubricate those latches!
> 
> 
> 
> Crackerjackz, it's very sad to see your beautiful bodywork damaged! Better luck this winter...



Gotta see the positive ... Only the hood and windshield were damaged and the winshield already needed replacement ... And i still have plenty of paint left over so the color match will be easy at least lol ....


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## Ivansgarage (Sep 3, 2011)

onegreenev said:


> O-Scope Pics. Now to find some stuff on the tube to see how to use this sucker. Did not let me upload one image. Its a bunch of probes that are stored in the front cover. Also includes a bunch of fuses. This is not terrible heavy but much longer than I expected. I have power on but the tube did not light up. Can't tell if the tube is working.


Pete here is some interesting links on the 453 scope.

http://www.diyguitarist.com/TestEquipment/Tektronix453.htm

http://www.reprise.com/host/scopes/

http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/453 manuals


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Note: I wrote all of this and then when I was proofing it I realized you said Volt battery. Most of what I wrote still applies and I added a paragraph at the end to clarify the differences.



piotrsko said:


> Checked battery voltages. After 4 months and 1300 miles, perhaps 100 abusive cycles volt battery pack is all within .01 volt NO BMS, NO TOP or BOTTOM balancing.
> 
> Still awaiting, with eager anticipation, the nuclear holocaust that occur maybe momentarily because I'm not balancing a hazardous chemistry in the volt battery.


The voltage difference indicating a state of balance is relative to state of charge. Between 0% to 5% and 95% to 100% a difference of 0.01 volt would be ok. At a 50% SOC a voltage difference of 0.0004 volts is about 1% difference. A 0.01 volt difference at a 50% SOC could be as much as a 25% difference in SOC between the cells.

If you are not overcharging too much (top cell does not go over 4.3 volts) the SOC of the cells will slowly converge over the next several thousand charges. You will eventually end up with a well top balanced pack. This is because the charge efficiency near the top is progressively poorer at the higher voltages so the cells that get there first don't accept the charge as readily. This is a subtle effect as the efficiency is probably different by less than a tenth of a percent. (I am trying to come up with a way to quantify this.) It is the cell heating near the end of the charge where this comes from. The energy is converted to heat instead of charging the cells. And since they don't heat much while charging even at the end the effect is minimal but present.

The problem comes when a cell goes much over that 4.3 volts because the electrolyte will start to break down and that cell will start to swell up. If it is only one cell you will end up with a gradual loss of capacity in that cell. No fireworks. But if you have an over discharge event that cell will be the one that will brick first because it probably has the lowest capacity and will reverse causing all kinds of internal damage. Without measuring the voltage all you might notice would be some swelling. But your pack voltage would be down by several volts and under load that cell will be a big resistor that will get hot.

If you want to do some easy science and get a better feel for the actual balance of your pack just park the car for a couple of hours after your next typical drive. Don't charge it. Measure all the cell voltages in such a way that you know what voltage goes with what cell. I think of my cells from most positive to most negative as 1, 2, 3, ..., 50, 51, 52. You can do it the other way if you want to. Whatever is most convenient. Go ahead and charge the cells. While the pack is charging you can look at the data you saved and find the highest voltage cell and the lowest voltage cell. Those are the ones to keep an eye on. If you were near a 50% SOC there should be very little difference in voltage. I mean less than 0.001 volts. After the charge completes wait a few hours and the repeat the measurements. Any cells that are still over 3.45 volts are probably getting overcharged a little. The highest and lowest cells are probably going to be the same ones as you saw with the earlier readings. You can help the balance process along by draining a little charge out of those few cells that are getting overcharged. If it is a lot of cells resting over 3.45 volts you should probably consider turning down the Constant Voltage point of your charger. Alternatively, if you have no cells resting over 3.36 volts you might consider turning up the chargers CV point just a little.

When my batteries were brand new I measured the initial voltage of (almost) every cell and stored that so I could tell how much difference there was once I had a chart that told me what the SOC is for a given voltage. I found that there was a worst case difference out of the box of 0.0052 volts (3.3089-3.3037). This is about a 13% difference in SOC. I ended up using both of those cells as there was nothing special about them They were in the middle of the pack as far as capacity goes. It just happened that the machines that do the forming charge left them at those voltages. When I eventually correlated this data I was glad I had balanced the pack because I would have pretty quickly ruined a cell during charge or discharge. Obviously your initial SOC might be a lot closer to the same than mine was.

Oh you said Volt battery! That probably came much more closely balanced. But instead of 3.4 volts being fully charged those cells are fully charged at 4.2 volts and the SOC voltage is more linear although it still has somewhat of a nonlinear nature. It also still will display the self top balance behavior. I saw a convergence of about 0.0015 volts over 30 cycles across a four cell pack when I was doing some testing of that kind of cells in 2004. At the time I though this was an anomaly but I have seen the same behavior in all three of the lithium chemistry batteries since then.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

So far today I have read the meters and punched the numbers into the spread sheet for October and found the following.

Miles traveled 676.5
Charger AH 1367
Wall WH 262.0
Average AH/mile 2.02
Average WH/mile 387.21
Estimated Charger Efficiency. 89.6%
Calculated MPGe 87.03
Cost to operate in miles per dollar 29.50


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## Baratong (Nov 29, 2012)

onegreenev said:


> O-Scope Pics. Now to find some stuff on the tube to see how to use this sucker. Did not let me upload one image. Its a bunch of probes that are stored in the front cover. Also includes a bunch of fuses. This is not terrible heavy but much longer than I expected. I have power on but the tube did not light up. Can't tell if the tube is working.
> 
> Pete
> 
> Got the box of goodies up.



Wow, there's a throwback! I had a 453a 'scope 20+ years ago. Very nice scope and quite a workhorse. I used it for about a decade without a single problem. 

If yours works I'm sure you'll get a lot of good use out of it!


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Baratong said:


> Wow, there's a throwback! I had a 453a 'scope 20+ years ago. Very nice scope and quite a workhorse. I used it for about a decade without a single problem.
> 
> If yours works I'm sure you'll get a lot of good use out of it!


Pretty cool old thing. Mind if I pick your brain on a few things. I have zero experience with these tools.

IT turns on and I can get the screen to lighten and dim but I see no sign of any dot or line. I'm supposing I need to connect something first. I was thinking I'd at least see. Blip or something.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

onegreenev said:


> ...IT turns on and I can get the screen to lighten and dim but I see no sign of any dot or line. I'm supposing I need to connect something first. I was thinking I'd at least see. Blip or something.



Press the "beam finder" button; you should immediately see a dot in the center of the screen. If not then there are all sorts of potential problems. I'd next try to see if the filament (aka "heater") for the CRT is working and then from there it gets hairy (check for 2nd Anode voltage, etc.).

All that said, an ancient 453 would not be my first choice of scope for someone that has never used one before. Which one to go with, however, very much depends on what you want to use it for and how much you are willing to spend.


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## Baratong (Nov 29, 2012)

onegreenev said:


> Pretty cool old thing. Mind if I pick your brain on a few things. I have zero experience with these tools.
> 
> IT turns on and I can get the screen to lighten and dim but I see no sign of any dot or line. I'm supposing I need to connect something first. I was thinking I'd at least see. Blip or something.


Yes, first thing is to try the 'beam find' push button to see if the CRT is working at all... These old scopes were more touchy about being setup properly than a modern scope. 

Next you need a signal that you know the parameters of. I don't remember exactly on the 453 but usually there is a 'reference' or 'calibration' signal the scope puts out for you, usually around 1khz and 5v. (Maybe on the side of the scope? should be a metal 'loop' you can hook a probe too). Using that signal (or that type of signal) set your volts per division on channel A to 2 or so. Next, you need to get your trigger setup (the trigger settings tell the scope where to start the sweep).. Usually the easiest is to set it to the same channel you are tracing i.e. set to channel 1. Trigger 'level' needs to be set to inside the amplitude of your signal so it'll trigger on an edge. 

Anyway after you have a known signal source you should be able to dial in the trace. There are always a lot of unknowns with an old scope like this. As Tesseract says you may need to make sure the CRT heater element is even lighting up, as there could very well be a power supply problem.

If you're meaning to do some electronics development or trouble shooting, you'd be better off picking up a lower-end 'scope .. something like a used TDS 210 or similar light duty oscilloscope - they can be had for around $400 used.

And old scope like this in unknown condition will probably be out of calibration and not horribly accurate. But that being said sometimes something is better than nothing!


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

When I get home I'll check a few things out and report back.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

No luck getting a trace signal to show. Hunting for the filament for the CRT. Being very careful. Looking in books and on line for help there.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

I don't have any pictures uploaded yet, but I yanked the ICE out and pulled the transmission off it. It was actually a very painless process. I'm not going to miss all that grease and oil...

B


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

sholland said:


> Thanks! I estimate I get around 80 miles range, though I've never pushed it that far. The furthest I've done is 65 miles, with about 20-30% left.
> 
> This car is so much fun


Excellent! It looks fun. I am working on my heaters now that cold weather has arrived.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

I have been working with AC heaters today. I ran two small heaters off of an 800 watt power inverter in the back of my car. It heated up to 71 F in a reasonable period of time however, since it is powered by the 12v battery and a DC to DC converter, I was afraid to turn anything else on. After 30 min the 12v battery was getting low and the DC to DC converter was getting warm. It looks like the only real solution is to power the heaters from the main batteries. I plan to modulate the 120v DC at 60 cycles and to run 3 small ceramic heat elements. The AC heaters just need to come apart so that I can remove the heat elements and mount them on a plate that replaces the original heater core. I already have built a circuit that produces positive sign waves and allows adjustments for pulse width, freq., and amplitude. I really dread pulling everything apart to get at the heater core. I almost have to stand on my head to get at all of the screws.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Well I got some help today setting up the old o-scope and we actually got it to show a trace. After about 30 minutes it went away. It took a bit of wiggling of a couple knobs to get it to show. Weakly at first then it got stronger and easy to see then just went away. So I know things work but it is old. Was recommended to let it sit on for a few hours to see if it may come back. I will mess with the knobs again but will leave the settings alone for now. Making headway. If it ends up being a door stop I did not spend much so I won't be disappointed.

Just found that the fuse in the back blew. Put in a new one and it blew and then another and it blew. The other two on the side did not blow. Hunting now for causes for that.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Knowing that it was going to get cold and snowy this week I was determined to get my heater working. On Saturday I mounted everything and threw the switch and yes, there was heat. Turned it off and one of the elements would not shut off. I have four resistive elements controlled by 250 volt 15 amp NFETs. I pulled it all apart again on Sunday and found one of my FET switches had failed. I don't know why yet but it needs to be addressed.

And as it turns out I would not have driven it today as we had freezing rain and then a couple of inches of snow on top of that.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Got my heater working too. runs 110 vac, 240vac, 200vdc with auto switching. Those 200 amp mains relays out of my Volt battery pack are impressive, shrug off switching 10 amps at 200 vdc. I would guess they don't have an issue switching AC either. We'll see if the contacts pit on AC. worst case, run a 400 v 40 amp bridge on a heat sink for Relay #2.

Apparently Kyoto SSR relays are not capable of running more than 1/2 rated capacity. I had a 40 amp @ 240 dc cycle twice and then shorted open on a 10 amp load. It wasn't hot, just let the magic smoke out on 120 rectified VAC. Had a 40 amp 280 Vac do the same thing on the same circuit.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Haven't done much on the car for a while. It has simply been too cold. I did finally get the heater hooked up yesterday afternoon and buttoned up everything this morning. We are having temps in the upper 40s to low 50s for a couple of days. I did find some really neat DIN mount fuse holders at EVWest and installed those as part of the heater upgrade.

If you look at the photo (lens flare in lower left) I will describe what you see. The orange cable is the 2/0 positive feed to the Soliton 1. The little white box just to the right of it is the heater fuse and has a 10 amp fuse in it. The fuse holder to the right of that is the positive fuse for the charger. The little contactor is a 50 amp device and is the safety for the heater. If the fan is off that contactor is open. I like the fuse holders so much I am going to get several more and replace a couple on the negative side.

I had calculated that I would get about 1200 watts out of this setup which is not really enough to heat the car. It raises the air temp about 12 degrees with the fan on the lowest speed. I may have to rewire it for more heat. I am going to drive it this way and see. I can go out and preheat the car for 10 minutes and I think it will be adequate. If not it is easy to rewire it to give 4600 watts. Not sure the ceramic elements will take that so I would need to PWM them to let me turn it down.


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## z_power (Dec 17, 2011)

Fuse holders - you can get triple ones for example here. I use these to split DC between all circuits except traction (charger, dc-dc, heater, precharge etc.)


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

I installed a LED headlights in place the the H4 Halogen bulbs in my EV Buggy. I run with an old Todd PC-20LV DC to DC converter and no 12 volt battery. The Zilla controllers are very sensitive to any brief sagging in the 12 volt system, as they where designed as racing controllers where not holding the main contractor on hard could result in it welding (i've got mine turned down to 360 battery amps, so it isn't likely.) Filament headlights have a very low resistance when cold, about 0.4 ohm each. The brief demand when I turned the headlights on, an attempt to pull around 60 amps, caused a brief sag in my 12 volt system that always wrote an error in the Zilla controller log file and on a few occasions shut the controller down. 

Now I have brighter, whiter, headlights and no more errors from the Zilla when I turn them on or switch between low and high beam. The new headlights on low beam draw about 3.5 amps, where the 55 watt Halogen headlights demanded about 8.3 amps. Using the high beams the LEDs are 5 amps and the old Halogen lights about 9 amps.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I joined NEDRA so now my car can go drag racing. With my playing at EVCCon last summer I found that I was about .7 seconds off the current record for 1/8th mile SC/D class. I believe I have fixed a cooling problem which was causing the Soliton to taper back the power so I can probably beat that now. If I want to stay in the SC/D class there is very little I am allowed to do to the car to reduce weight. You need to keep pretty much everything stock. I will remove the charger and I am looking into making a lightweight battery pack. My current LiFe pack weighs just over 400 lbs and I think I can make a pack that will put out more power that weighs around 50 lbs. The car with me in it weighs 2600 lbs so removing 350 lbs is huge. With that in mind I ordered a few cells to experiment with. I dont have a 1000 amp load so the plan is to insert the cells in series with the regular pack and then instrument the cells to see how they behave under drag racing load conditions. I will let everyone know what I find out.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I've done something on the EV project everyday for the past 2 weeks now. Either mounting parts, building brackets to mount parts, or painting parts. It is actually starting to look like an electric truck now. I will be mounting the accelerator pedal and regen pedal during the upcoming week.

I will be taking next weekend off. But in February, the plan is to hook up the vacuum power brake hoses, controller coolant hoses, and 12V battery connections under the hood. Then it will be mounting the battery pack and running the wires for that.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

I have been working on a circuit to reduce voltage sag. A small PC board and some really big capacitors in the trunk just might do the trick.
I will finish building it this weekend and then I will install it in the car to replace the previous prototype that worked well for me last Summer.
We all know what a performance killer voltage sag is.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

Can you post a picture of your truck? I would like to see that. I would like a small pickup for local driving if I could get good range and utility with it.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

Here is where it stands now. Although I am planning to do some work on it tomorrow before the commercials, I mean big game.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

That truck looks very impressive. S10 pickup? It looks like you have the same AC-50 motor and Curtis 3 phase controller that I have in my Saturn. The regenerative feature is excellent on this controller. 

Today I finished assembly of my Performance Enhancer circuit and bench tested it. Everything is working well. I have a bank of caps in the trunk rated at 200v and 130,000 uf. I might get a supercapacitor module with 5.6F to replace the aluminum caps. Supercaps are very expensive though.


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

Just a few pictures to show where things are currently at in my Saturn SC2.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

It is an S-10, but with an AC-75 motor. Overkill for this project right now, but it leaves a future option open.

I have been driving an SC-2 for 18 years now. But, the transmission isn't doing too good on mine right now.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

I've replaced a cell I popped and got it (Duncan's Dubious Device) ready for our annual 1/8th mile drag races on the 15th

I did 14 seconds last year I'm hoping to get it down to 10 seconds this year
Then I want to go from 130v to about 190v and try and get down to 8 seconds


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I have the Netgain throttle position sensor in my car. I was driving the car and heard a sound like that of a spring breaking and the throttle pedal got really light. One of the springs on the TPS broke. It is a very good thing that this TPS has two springs. ACE Hardware happens to have quite a selection of springs so I was able to find a replacement. At least I hope it is a good replacement as I have not been able to put it on the car yet.


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## mizlplix (May 1, 2011)

Today, I converted from my lead/acid 12VDC Aux Battery over to two smaller 12VDC SLA batteries in parallel.

It not only cleaned up the box area, but relieved me of having to check the electrolyte.

Miz


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

All of the vacuum hoses have been attached. 

I am debating whether to paint tomorrow or on Saturday...


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Hit 3000 miles since conversion. Turned the max power to motor down, saved 4 AH on commute but couldn't outrun bosses leaf. Getting turned back up to 200 HP.

Glad to see miz is around and still putting with his roadsters.


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## mizlplix (May 1, 2011)

Hi, P:

As with everything, life intervenes, but I eventually got back to posting a little.

BTW: We have ran through about 12 different motors in the car and settled on one. Ivan is now winding a brand new core motor and it should plug that gap in AC motors. About 30% bigger than the AC50. Which runs well with the 1238-7601. (And my pack) Pack sag is now my limiting factor. Need 250-300 AH units to do justice to this motor (Give a longer acceleration time.)

Miz


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I prepped things for painting on Saturday, and bought some parts. It will get to 50F (10C) on Saturday, so I am planning to do a lot of work then.

I also talked to a guy about 3D printing some pieces that would be a finishing touch on the interior door panels.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Yesterday was 70 degrees and I was able to replace the spring in my TPS. I ended up replacing both springs as the other one was going to fail in the same way in the not too distant future. So I am back on the road again!


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I did 24 hours of painting and prepping last weekend... (some of that time was waiting between coats and walking large fiberglass parts between the warehouse at work that I used to paint and my house.) I am a big fan of truck bed paint using an air compressor. It is very easy and forgiving as long as the psi is over 50. I used it on the bumpers and bottom half of the door panels/truck bed panels. I am not going to quit my day job and spray regular car paint however. It didn't turn out that bad and white is forgiving. It will look just fine on my truck. It should polish out and a layer of wax would help things too. But, I probably should have looked into having a professional company paint the panels if I needed them to be 100% perfect. I would grade myself at 92%, the clear coat and having stripes in the paint from drying at different speeds were the issues.

At least the paint is all done now. 

Now, on to mounting the accelerator pedal and connecting the coolant lines. Then it is wiring, gauges, and batteries.


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## Nathan219 (May 18, 2010)

Put a rear seat in the green van and got new tires last week.


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

Purchased my Zilla Z2K this week from Richard in the UK, revised plan for drivetrain to eliminate transmission (Ampahaulic dual nine Netgain warp 9 with reversing contactors), and finished (mostly) the inner fender patch on the El Camino. I was lucky to check the Argon canister when I did as the tank was pretty much empty. Also lucky I didn't fry my air-cooled TIG torch.
Time for a fresh tank, fabricate the outer patch panel, and mix up some tiger hair to deal with some of the problem areas.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

I sold my 2011 Leaf and purchased another 2015 Leaf today. Stoked at the quality and changes from the 2011 to 2015 model. Range is better than the 2011 when it was new. Right now its sitting on 52 miles so far. 

Pete


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

I was wondering how your battery issue worked out, but I see you went a different way. Any idea what the dealership will do with the old one? 

My vp bought one used and already is complaining about lack of range. Hmmm, desert leaf, hot battery storage, what could go wrong???


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

More bodywork completed, but more to go. Here is the blog with pics:

http://electriccamino.blogspot.com/2015/01/bodywork-exploration.html


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I mounted the body panels and bumper back onto the truck that I had painted last weekend. It actually looks halfway decent now.

More work will be done tomorrow. Mounting tail lights, mounting accelerator pedal, mounting vacuum switch, and hooking up coolant lines.


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## mizlplix (May 1, 2011)

Assuming yours has that tool box in the bed, just behind the cab in the bed floor....how is the rust there?

That is the first thing to go in most models.

Miz


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## sirwattsalot (Aug 27, 2012)

Today I am balancing my new set of LIFEPO4 batteries. I am connecting them all in parallel and charging them to the top.
I am also preparing 36 mini BMS boards that connect to each cell. 
I am working on a book of all my CAD drawings and electrical schematics which I will copyright and distribute when I am finished.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I drove in this morning and it was cold out. I've not driven it when it was this cold before. While it was 13F in the garage it was -1 outside. On the way down the hill to the main road I goosed the throttle in second and tripped the undervoltage cutoff on the Soliton. I have 52 cells and have the cutoff set to 90 volts (1.73 volts per cell). The batts sag badly when it is this cold. I guess I better get the heater for the batteries installed. I didn't have any problem making it to work, I just had to be careful with the throttle. I was still able to get ahead of traffic and had no trouble getting up to 50mph.

I may need to upgrade my batteries. Would have been smarter to do 94 60ah cells instead of 52 100ah cells. Get the voltage up and the sag would not be noticeable.

Stay warm everyone.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

If you can drive plenty fast and just lower the controller's cutoff then what is the main concern? (or maybe you just don't like the cutoff to be that low?)
-josh


dougingraham said:


> I drove in this morning and it was cold out. I've not driven it when it was this cold before. While it was 13F in the garage it was -1 outside. On the way down the hill to the main road I goosed the throttle in second and tripped the undervoltage cutoff on the Soliton. I have 52 cells and have the cutoff set to 90 volts (1.73 volts per cell). The batts sag badly when it is this cold. I guess I better get the heater for the batteries installed. I didn't have any problem making it to work, I just had to be careful with the throttle. I was still able to get ahead of traffic and had no trouble getting up to 50mph.
> 
> I may need to upgrade my batteries. Would have been smarter to do 94 60ah cells instead of 52 100ah cells. Get the voltage up and the sag would not be noticeable.
> 
> Stay warm everyone.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

bwjunkie said:


> If you can drive plenty fast and just lower the controller's cutoff then what is the main concern? (or maybe you just don't like the cutoff to be that low?)
> -josh


The low voltage cutoff is already set as low as is practical because to set it lower is to risk problems with the DC-DC converter. The first year I had no DC-DC and set the LVC to 1.6 Volts per cell which did work well although I had never driven the car after a several day cold soak on a day this cold.

It was all good and I have a plan to warm the batteries for days like this. I just haven't got round to it yet.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Today I ordered my Adaptor Plate for my VW Bus. I ordered mine from EVTV because they currently have the best available for the VW and it is designed for the HPEVS motor and will allow the connectors to be on top of the motor rather on the side like other adaptor put the HPEVS motor. It will hold the flywheel better than most and yes, it is a taper lock system. I am using an adaptor from RebirthAuto but they are no longer in business. Bummer. So I won't bother getting any left overs from them unless they want to sell that dual adaptor for a decent cut in cost just to get it off their hands. Good for a good dual AC 50 setup in a nice race bug. 

The adaptor plate also happens to be the lowest cost for quality available too. Available off the shelf. No waiting. I'll be plugging in my AC-35 to this adaptor.


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

Finished TIG welding all of the holes in the Electric Camino's body (trim and antenna mount). Next step will be smoothing and filling all of the rough spots from the welding, then primer. Still debating on whether I should get the single piece fiberglass front clip or not. Would like to see it in person before I do...

At this pace, I should be ready by springtime to get the motors and couplers, and begin mounting them this summer with the help of my boys.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I finished cutting and connecting the vacuum lines for the DC pump to the truck's brake system.

I purchased a few parts yesterday. Although I should have done more, it was too cold to get really motivated.

My goal is to do something everyday for the month of March.


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

So, it turns out that I wasn't quite done with the welding, after all.
I had noticed some of the trim/badging holes were sealed, and others were not. My curiosity (or OCD) got the better of me, and I ended up finding a total of 14 holes that needs welding, many of which had simply been hidden under body filler and primer. I sanded them down to bare metal and out came the TIG welder...

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-...2bsQ52BzjY/s640/blogger-image--1995083004.jpg

After grinding and sanding the welded patches with 80-grit, I finished the quarter panel rough work and got that ready for filler, as well.

Lastly, I mocked up the dual motors in cardboard and my 9-year-old son and I swapped out the hydraulic power steering unit for a manual one.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-...KUVIjaDZAw/s640/blogger-image--1269579853.jpg


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

While not related to the conversion of the vehicle I did replace the rear shocks because they were making noises. I know I had not ever done it and I have had the car for about 54000 miles of its 153000 miles. The ride is better so it was a good thing.


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## poprock (Apr 29, 2010)

Finally got engineers approval. A few changes made, engine bracket welding strengthened, dc-dc upgraded, low vacuum warning light fitted and rear battery carrier strengthened and tectonic brake pedal pressure test. Now awaiting paperwork.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

My truck has a hall-effect accelerator pedal now! All custom mounted and ready to be wired up to the controller.

It took probably around 6 hours to modify the bracket, shorten the existing threaded post, modify the old pedal bracket...just to make sure that it is perfect, because it is a very important part to get just right.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

Vacuum tank for power brakes has been mounted securely. I also connected the first wires for the encoder between the controller and motor.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

And over this last weekend I spent about 8 hours total replacing the front strut cylinders. And even though I knew what to expect I had the usual 30 year old bolt removal issues. Ride is much improved. The ones in the car for at least the last 54000 miles were probably a sears replacement tube. Whoever said EV's dont need maint don't know anything about cars.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

On my drive this afternoon I broke 7500 EV miles. Cost of electricity to travel this distance was about $248. The car as an ICE averaged 16 mpg in town so this would have been about 469 gallons of gasoline. Assuming $3 per gallon that works out to $1404 or a savings of $1156. My battery cost me about $7500 including the shipping so I am well under a dollar per mile spent driving the car for the batteries.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

dougingraham said:


> On my drive this afternoon I broke 7500 EV miles. Cost of electricity to travel this distance was about $248. The car as an ICE averaged 16 mpg in town so this would have been about 469 gallons of gasoline. Assuming $3 per gallon that works out to $1404 or a savings of $1156. My battery cost me about $7500 including the shipping so I am well under a dollar per mile spent driving the car for the batteries.


Excellent news. I was able to share that with two co-workers today. An excellent testimony. 

Thanks for sharing
Pete


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I haven't posted in a while. About the only thing I have done to it was replace the hatch seal. I am over 8600 miles since conversion at this time. Car has been ultra reliable until last week. Glitched on me when I powered it up and didn't want to arm. Tapped the throttle and it woke up. Did it again a couple of days later only worse. Figured I just needed to recalibrate the throttle. Unfortunately I am having problems talking to the motor controller. Still trying to figure out why. It may have to go in for a service if I can't figure it out this week.

Still trying to decide what to do for my next project. At the moment I am building a drag racing specific pack so I can hopefully set some NEDRA Street Class records. I will show photos when I am further along.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Finally got my EV over to my Son's shop. It will be a better place to work on the beastie. It will be much cooler and I can help him get it running again. It will be good for him to get his hands on the EV. I let him know what I want. Im open for his suggestions and changes. He has some room for his own liberties on how to install the HV components. He is good at designing and I know where I want the components mounted. He gets to choose how.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

I think I finally got the last of the ICE stuff out of the EV-to-be. I pulled the fuel lines out and tossed them aside. I'm still working on the adapter plate and I am also attempting to rebuild the water pump cover from the Leaf. When it got wrecked, it broke off the inlet so I am epoxying it back together in the hopes that it will work and not leak. I don't want to spend $199 for a new pump and I'm not sure how to go about acquiring just the cover. 2015 parts are very rare.

B


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

I haven't posted in a while... I just installed a new rear splitter and tow hook, and started replacing the old coraplast belly pan with aluminum sheet.

Now it'll be clear there's no exhaust


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I got my car back on the road again last night. Been down since May 26. A week or so before this I was driving home and I had a hitch in my gettup. Motor controller dropped out. I was on a hill so I turned around and started coasting back to my office parking lot. On the coast down I cycled the key and it came to life. I drove home without incident. When I got home I plugged into the ethernet and was not able to get a link light. The Soliton line of controls is good about telling you what was wrong but if you cant talk to it it can't tell you. I drove the car for a few more days while trying to decide if a non working ethernet port was enough reason to send in the motor controller again. Eventually it happened again. This time I also had to jiggle the throttle pedal to get it to wake up. Ah Ha! The throttle end points need resetting. But you have to talk to the controller in order to do that. So I contacted Evnetics and got an RMA. I drove it a couple more days and then decided to bite the bullet and ship it. I drive it into the garage and pulled the controller out. Put it on my workbench and then played with it on and off for a week trying to get it to wake up so I wouldn't have to send it in. But to no avail. Finally shipped it and Evnetics confirmed receipt. About a week later I was told it was repaired and to call in to arrange for payment. I was told they replaced the driver board, both IGBTs' the Ring cap and the main control board and wanted $1256 for the repair. Since I know the IGBT's and Driver board had to be good as I was still driving it when I pulled it out of service I was a little upset. Clearly they just changed out anything that could have been bad and billed me for it. I reluctantly paid the bill and asked for the parts they replaced to be returned with the controller. This didn't happen. In fact I had to wait more than 2 weeks before it was shipped back. Their technician was out sick was the excuse. Get another technician or perhaps a manager could get their hands dirty shipping it back. I expected something like this when I heard that Evnetics was no longer making the Soliton. It looks like they are having a company called Techni-Solus doing their repairs.

The Soliton 1 is working correctly so I did get it repaired. My other options were to buy a Zilla, build an Open Revolt 1200 amp beta kit, or design my own. I don't consider the Netgain Controls control an option. My friends are pressuring me to design my own but I do know just how hard this is to do properly.

So what was the root cause? They told me it looked like moisture got inside the box and cause a short between the high voltage bus and something else. I did see a poorly taken picture of a burned motherboard. I have my Soliton mounted on its side so the terminal strip is on the top. I did have a leak in the cooling system so I am guessing that there was a pool of coolant around the terminal strip and a few drops managed to get inside. If it had been mounted on its back like most people do this probably would never have been an issue. I am going to come up with some sort of cover for this area before I hook up the cooling system again.

And I am going to come up with a spare of some kind because I didn't like being without my EV for over 2 months. Granted part of this was avoidable but more than a month was Repair time.

Next project is the terminal strip cover and getting the cooling system back online.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Hmm, I was just thinking in the last week with all the reports of more rain this fall to come up some kind of protective cover for the terminal strip. I don't really see any kind of mounting points though...

I'd be interested to see what you come up with. I'm going to think a bit on my own as well, and if I come with anything worth sharing I'll let you know.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I have some pourable RTV for mold making. I may just build a wall around the terminal strip area with masking tape and pour in the RTV. Then again this makes it a pain to work on. I may just cover the area with a tent made from Gorilla tape.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I gave it a good wash and wax. This might have been a mistake because there are a lot of paint chips and little dings that need fixing. The car was repainted a couple of years before I got it, probably in 1997 making this still an 18 year old paint job. I guess it looks pretty good for an 18 year old daily driver.

I have 52 LiFe cells in the car. I have a purpose built LiPo pack 42 cells deep and 4P (18AH) wide. This give a full charge voltage of 176.4 volts. 176.4/52=3.392 volts per cell on the LiFe cells. If I take one LiFe out then I would see 176.4/51 = 3.459 volts per cell. This would actually be reasonable for both chemistries. So if I just parallel the LiPo pack with my regular pack (reduced to 51 cells) I will see an additional 9 miles of range at an increase of about 50 lbs to the car and a much stiffer pack. I should be able to get about 150 kw out of this combined pack. With just the LiFe batteries I can get 120 kw on a warm day. With just the drag pack in the car I would lose about 350 lbs off the car and be able to get 145 kw. The car currently weighs 2424 lbs without me in it so a loss in weight of 350 lbs is huge.

LiFe only 2424 lbs and 120 kw (120000/2424) = 50 watts per lb.
LiFe + LiPo 2474 lbs and 150 kw (150000/2470) = 61 watts per lb.
LiPo only 2074 lbs and 145 kw (145000/2074) = 70 watts per lb.

For comparison a Tesla S weighs 4690 and does around 416 hp (310kw) which is 66 watts per lb. Apples vs Oranges comparison because I expect the Tesla numbers are wheel HP and mine are input to the motor. My 70 watts per lb drops to an estimated 42 watts per lb at the wheel. But I have a transmission so I will get some of it back in increased torque at the lower speeds. Racing Jack Rickards Tesla at last summers EVCCON I was ahead for perhaps the first 50 feet and that was with just the LiFe batteries and a wheel HP of just over 100 hp (75 kw) or an effective 31 watts per lb.

I have arranged things such that I can reorganize the LiPo pack to work in different drag racing voltage classifications. I have a 42S, 48S, and 54S arrangements. The specific output is estimated at 145 kw, 154 kw, and 174 kw respectively. Without pushing the motor beyond my comfort level I can't even do the 174 kw. I will probably set the Soliton 1 to 170 kw max output.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

I replaced a front strut. Since it is 1965 not surprising that it already had "inserts" so my new inserts were easy to get in there, but I failed to realize the new Koni's are harder to change the dampening, meaning you have to do it before you install them, where the old Spax had a knob on the top. Oh well.

Doug: that SUCKS about your evnetics repair charges, but I'm glad you posted about, I now can be more prepared if I run into issues, and maybe line of a spare for myself as well since I'm selling off my gas car soon.

-josh


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

dougingraham said:


> ...So what was the root cause? They told me it looked like moisture got inside the box and cause a short between the high voltage bus and something else. I did see a poorly taken picture of a burned motherboard.


I happened to be at the shop one day not too long after your angry email came through and I took a look at your controller (despite that the Soliton line was supposed to be sold months ago and I have not received any compensation from Evnetics for providing technical support since May 5th). What I found was arc damage between the bus plates and extensive corrosion, much of it obviously from galvanic action, which strongly suggested that more than just condensation got inside and that the controller was operated for some time in this condition anyway.

In such a case the standard procedure is to replace everything inside the controller except the contactors because it is unpredictable where the water might have gotten to _while the controller was turned on and had traction voltage supplied to it_ (regardless of whether it was enabled/operating). Yes this results in a rather large repair bill, but so would individually testing every component to ensure it was still within tolerance and then baking everything at 80C for 6+ hours to ensure all water was driven out. 

Note that the usual way water gets inside the controller is from leaving the ethernet cap off or leaving an ethernet cable plugged into the controller without a waterproofing boot installed.


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## ken will (Dec 19, 2009)

I recently built a sidecar and today I decided to narrow an old boat trailer fender from 8" to 6 1/2" wide, for the Monkey wheel.
I made one cut, overlapped the two sides, and used the first cut as a guide for the second cut. Then a few tack welds to hold it together.


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## ken will (Dec 19, 2009)

I finished welding the 31.5 inch seam, ground it down, and was debating whether to go old school with a torch and lead, (maybe in the winter, it is just too darn hot today,) so I went with body filler. After 3 coats of filler and one coat of primer it looks okay. The last inch of the seam needs a little more work.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Motor removed and turned so the terminals are pointing sideways and re-installed and a bronze shifter bushing installed. No more plastic shifter bushings to replace. EVER. The motor compartment will now be clean of any obstructions and will be a sweet little half can poking out of the aluminum coverings and firewall. All electrical components will be hidden from view. Just clean and tidy. Pictures later.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Continued working on the Drag racing battery pack. 

The rest is not EV related but I did this....

Replaced the front struts a few months ago and I was hearing a rattle from the right front wheel. Jacked it up and found the retainer for the strut tube was not tight and that was causing the rattle. Checked all the other suspension/steering components while I had it up and everything is ok to go on this 30 year old car. 

The paint was flaking off the wiper arms so I stripped one and painted it gloss black. Its a little shinier than I wanted now. It will flatten on its own though. Still have to do the passenger side. Wiper arms are still available new from Mazda so if it turned out terrible I have an option.

Who said EV's are low maint?


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

I stayed up until 1AM finishing up the welding on the motor frame.
I will sand/file and do a final test fit before disassembling and painting it.
My plan is to have the motors assembled with locktite and everything so that I can order the driveshaft and get it installed.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

I applied a label to the fueling port cover.


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

I like the carbon fiber panel your J1772 plug is mounted in, Doug.

What kind of battery pack and charger are you using?


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

Been a while, but I installed the Dual Warp 9 motors (coupled and mounted in the frame I fabricated) into the El Camino a few weeks ago, disassembled the front bodywork to access & remove the fan/blower & heater core in order to start modifying it to a ceramic one, and ordered/picked up the custom driveshaft from A-1 Driveshafts in Baltimore, MD (great service, very knowledgable, quick turnaround, and reasonable prices!).

This weekend I hope to paint/install said driveshaft and begin cutting/mounting the ceramic core for the heater. Might even test it with a car battery to see how hot it gets.

I still need to modify the supply for the blower so that I can switch it from outside air to recirculating cabin air (for those cold days).


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## dcb (Dec 5, 2009)

new tires (enough miles on it to need 'em, so there's that).


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Vhclbldr said:


> I like the carbon fiber panel your J1772 plug is mounted in, Doug.
> 
> What kind of battery pack and charger are you using?


Thanks! That particular piece came from one of the companies that caters to RC model builders. I think it was 0.030 thick pre-preg sandwiched between sheets of glass in a vacuum. They were having a sale and I bought a piece 4" by 12" to play with for just a few dollars. I have made my own pieces with one side good by vacuum bagging carbon to a sheet of waxed glass. This is a little heavier than pre-preg but a lot cheaper.

The battery in the RX-7 is a 52 cell pack of 100AH GBS cells I got from Evolve Electric in Boulder 4 years ago. 33 cells in the rear battery pack and 19 cells in the front pack. The Charger is an EMW 12k. I don't recommend the EMW charger in its current incarnation. I will probably replace it with a Brusa if it happens in the next year or a Volt or Leaf Charger if it happens next summer. I am going to change the battery next summer to a high voltage setup to get rid of the terrible sag I see with these cells when the temps are low. The Volt and Leaf chargers do not go below 200 volts I have been told.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

Picked up a crankshaft this past weekend and I've started whittling off (with a cut off wheel) the part I won't need. I have also been working on fitting the Leaf brake booster/pedal assembly into the Supra. It looks like the booster will go on without to much trauma, aside form some new mounting holes, but the pedal assembly is probably going to be a bit more of a challenge. 

Bill


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Ever since I got back from the drag races at Sikeston the car has not been running well. It seemed like the Soliton was cutting back power due to low battery voltage. It was cool the couple of nights before Sikeston and all I did was a little driving around Cape but I had not noticed anything out of the ordinary. The temps at Sikeston on Sunday (Oct 4) were cool. On the first run I tripped the Soliton on an under voltage (<90 volts) limit. I turned down the current limits on the battery from 1000 to 600 amps which resolved that problem. After 10 runs the batt temps were around 90 and my times were approaching those I recorded at EVCCON 2014. Since I have been back it has been cool and still running into low voltage limits. I did not charge last Friday to give the batteries a chance to settle and I recorded all the cell voltages with about 10 miles of driving (1/6th of what I consider normal range). None of the cells looked odd. The small variations you see with a bottom balanced pack when near the top. I also re-torqued the bolts to make certain there were no loose connections. One of the cells needed about 1/2 a turn on all four of the bolts on only one of the terminals to click the torque wrench. But they were not loose. I must have missed torquing that one and only tightened it with a nut driver. Saturday was warmer and I drove it to lunch and put another 20 miles on it. When I got home I put my hand on the cover over each cell and found that there were several that felt considerably warmer. I grabbed the pyrometer and found that most of the cells were around 98 degrees (outside temp was 80) but one was 114 and a few were 109. The cell with the untorqued bolts was not one of these. I waited a few hours and measured the cell voltages again. Instead of being closer together as a bottom balanced pack should be at a lower state of charge I am seeing wider variation. Most cells were around 3.19XX volts but two were at 3.0XXX even after resting for several hours. There was one outlier on the high side at 3.25XX. This does not bode well. I will at the very least need to rebalance. And it is easier to top balance so I will do that and then find the weak cells and replace them. I had been planning to replace the pack next summer with a high voltage arrangement to improve performance. If too many cells are damaged this may get moved up. I will post here as I know more. There is a lot I like about the GBS cells but I think they are first generation LiFe cells and so not even close to the performance of the CALB CA series. And I have been doing 10C nearly daily for almost 4 years now.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Over a couple of evenings I watched the pack charge. I had closely monitored the highest voltage cells while watching it charge and when the charger tripped off it came as a surprise because the highest of the cells I was watching was just over 3.5 volts. I am going to use my RC hobby charger to top off each cell and then measure the IR. The IR reads lowest when the cell is fully charged. I will replace any cells that have an excessive IR reading. I am expecting the four cells with the higher temps will have a higher IR. Only done two cells so far and I am trying to decide exactly what to use as the charge termination. The two I have done so far was to charge at 30 amps and then go into CV mode at 3.5 volts with cutoff at 3 amps. This does not completely charge the cell so I will probably try 3.55 volts as the CV point. The other possibility is to change the cutoff current to 6 amps and go to 3.6 volts for the CV point. Of those two cells the IR shows as 6 and 7. I think this is milliohms but the charger only shows integers. For comparison the John Metric modules range from 3 to 5 and that is for a 4.5 AH battery compared to a 100 AH cell. The IR is roughly around 1/40th at the same capacity.

I should get quite a few topped off and tested over the weekend.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Your GBS cells should be around 0.45mOhm each.


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

I have been sporadically working on the el Camino project and finally got the driveshaft in after cutting the transmission tunnel and flooring back last the first support beam. This, of course, meant re-structuring the support beam and hoop, which has an 'interesting' cross section. Not difficult, but tedious. I made a bending jig for the flat stock to make the process easier. A video of it in action is here: https://youtu.be/aJE6ym3ZDPg.

More details are updated in my blog below, but I got the beam and hoop done last night.

The next task is to re-skin the transmission tunnel and floorboard and finish working on the heater core upgrade.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

sholland said:


> Your GBS cells should be around 0.45mOhm each.


Where did this come from?

The iCharger 3010b tests the cells that have never been in the car at 2 milli ohms. The best of the ones in the car have indicated 3 and the worst so far is at 8. I managed to do about 1/3 of the pack over the weekend. The process consists of topping off the cell and then measuring the IR. This way I will have a top balanced pack when I am done and I can drive it. The cells with an IR of 8 sag to below 3 volts with only a 30 amp load.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Still testing batteries. What I find interesting is that using the iCharger set to charge at 25 amps with a C/5 cutoff and 3.6 volt CC/CV point I am putting about 10 AH into most of the cells. With this setting the charger brings the cell it is connected to up to 3.6 volts and then tapers the current to 5 amps and shuts off. This is the GBS charging algorithm. The regular charger brings the whole pack up to 184 volts and tapers to 5 amps. The CV phase would last just a minute. Average cell voltage was 3.54 volts in this situation. What I don't understand is why it is undercharging by about 10 AH. This will need more investigation once I get the pack top balanced and the bad cells replaced or removed.


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## bwjunkie (Jul 31, 2013)

Mounting new parking (e-brake) handle where the center console used to be. Also new dual cables running back to the two 9" rear drum brakes


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

6500 miles commuting, 600+ charge cycles at 4.10 v per cell. Doing interior replacement, found some really cheap leather that was exactly stock color, enough for doors, headliner. Got new plastic dash, replacing interior light s with LED, wow what a difference. Sprang for a new windshield.
Started using more watts on average, hmmm. Oops forgot I turned up controller to race the honda idiot during work commute. Put heavier spring on throttle, comsumption almost back to normal except on days honda idiot is at red light.

Still waiting for the nuclear explosion from not BMS and "overcharging" my pack. Pack still balanced within .010 that meter accuracy measures. Might have to give up on that. Dang.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Went for a test drive. I replaced the worst 6 cells in the pack and it is drive able again! Did a short 15 mile loop, even popped up to 70 mph on the interstate.

The cells I swapped out were all showing 7 or 8 milliohms of resistance. Under a 30 amp load the voltage would drop to below 3 volts even when fully charged. The ones I put in were extras I bought four years ago and all of them tested at 2 milliohms. I have three more cells in the pack that tested at 5 milliohms and the rest are at 3. I am charging right now and will keep an eye on it for the next few cycles.

The Soliton is now set to limit the battery current to 400 amps instead of 1000. And I have the motor amps set to 800 instead of 1000.

The cells I removed were all a little swelled. Cold weather drag racing was not a good idea apparently.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Rewired battery pack from 192 @90 ah to 380 @ 45 ah and discovered that in my case range fell 2 miles short of home. Performance went way up so I must be consuming more watts on acceleration up monster hill. Watt hr meter didn't reflect new consumption being that high.


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## east2la (Nov 11, 2015)

Blew a battery.....lol. I didn't and still don't have my low voltage cut off.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Replaced 1 more cell and removed 4 that were at the next level of badness. The car is drivable now but still sagging quite heavily. I guess I will drive it this way until it wont do what I need it to and then replace the pack. I knew I was abusing the cells. I got away with it before but not this last time. This gives me time to figure out what to put in.

Neither the Volt or Leaf batteries are suitable as they don't have enough power capability. I need about 200 kw to do what I want at a weight of around 400 lbs. I could use 8 Tesla modules from an 85kwh pack although that is a bit over weight. Finding room for them could be a problem. The easiest would be 96 of the 60AH CALB CA cells although this tops out under 200kw and weighs over 400 lbs. Anyway, I have time to think about it.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

dougingraham said:


> Replaced 1 more cell and removed 4 that were at the next level of badness. The car is drivable now but still sagging quite heavily. I guess I will drive it this way until it wont do what I need it to and then replace the pack. I knew I was abusing the cells. I got away with it before but not this last time. This gives me time to figure out what to put in.
> 
> Neither the Volt or Leaf batteries are suitable as they don't have enough power capability. I need about 200 kw to do what I want at a weight of around 400 lbs. I could use 8 Tesla modules from an 85kwh pack although that is a bit over weight. Finding room for them could be a problem. The easiest would be 96 of the 60AH CALB CA cells although this tops out under 200kw and weighs over 400 lbs. Anyway, I have time to think about it.


That's a lot of power for a small pack... The Tesla modules are just not designed for that. EIG NCM_C020, A123 AMP20M1HD-A, Samsung INR18650-25R or LG HG2 will all do it. Even Enerdels can do it. How much do you want to spend?

What kWh are you looking for?


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

sholland said:


> That's a lot of power for a small pack... The Tesla modules are just not designed for that. EIG NCM_C020, A123 AMP20M1HD-A, Samsung INR18650-25R or LG HG2 will all do it. Even Enerdels can do it. How much do you want to spend?
> 
> What kWh are you looking for?


My original pack of 52 100 AH cells has adequate range for 95% of the time. In fact now that it is down to 48 cells and I am limiting it to just 300 amps it gets me where I have to go. Originally it was 16.6 kwh, now it is probably between 12 and 13 kwh. If I could find room for 8 Tesla modules I will consider that. This would be 42 kwh and would give me a range of 140 miles at a small weight increase. The 85 kwh Tesla modules will do approximately 1500 amps peak. I would only demand 1000 peak. They would do just fine. Someone is asking $1300 each on EBAY right now. They aren't a perfect solution though because my car is small and they are pretty bulky. And my preference would be to get the empty voltage over 170 volts which requires 57 cells which means 10 modules. I think 8 is barely possible, no way to fit 10 and I would not want the weight.

I already built a pack just for drag racing using the Ampahaulic cells. I wish I had it ready that day. The drag pack consists of 4.5 AH cells configured into a pack of 54S3P and capable of delivering about 214 kw for the duration of a drag race. This pack weighs a little over 50 lbs and is about 2.6 kwh. That means a range of only 10 miles if I drive sanely and on the drag strip I appear to get about 1000 wh/mile so 2.6 miles. On a 1/8th mile strip that would be about 5 runs, maybe 3 on a 1/4 mile strip.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

I don't think 8 Tesla modules are going to be able to give the power you need though... I have read that the P85 Tesla packs are only rated to 4C, which at 74x 3.1Ah = ~917.6A max. The link here somewhat agrees...

When I was at the track they were all slowing down after 2 laps due to battery temps, so I wouldn't trust even 4C. 

Smaller capacity packs require lower ESR batteries, thus higher cost. There's a reason Tesla dropped the 45kWh version of the Model S... Because they couldn't build it, without dropping it's power output. It was actually a software limited 60kWh battery!


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

My 51 160Ah cells are still going strong, but I have 5A active balancing baby-sitting them 24/7. There are a few weaker cells, but they are being kept in line...

I am currently building a new pack with Enerdel CE175-360 17.5Ah cells, in 70S6P, mostly just save some weight, and make space for a rear motor. It should be ~520lbs for 26.8kWh (20 - 22kWh realistically usable) and 288V. Even at full load at min SoC, it should still be ~170V, perfect for the Warp9.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

sholland said:


> I don't think 8 Tesla modules are going to be able to give the power you need though... I have read that the P85 Tesla packs are only rated to 4C, which at 74x 3.1Ah = ~917.6A max. The link here somewhat agrees...


That post predates the P85D which adds a couple hundred more horsepower to the mix without claiming to make changes to the 85kwh battery. 

70D has 2 motors each capable of doing 259 HP but battery limits to 328 HP instead of 518 HP.

85D has 2 motors each capable of doing 259 HP but battery limits to 417 HP instead of 518 HP

P85D has 503 HP rear and 259 HP front motor but is battery limited to 463 HP instead of 762 HP Ludicrous mode option ups this to a battery limited 532 HP.

They don't say why the battery limit is different in different cases except that ludicrous speed requires the 90 kwh range upgrade.

Assuming that the 417 HP is the limit for the 85kwh battery (at least for a couple of laps) and the battery voltage for that is a nominal 355 volts then the current to obtain that would be at least 875. At 3.3 volts per cell it would have to be 982 amps. The 463 HP mentioned in the P85D would require at least 972 amps and at 3.3 volts per cell it would need to be 1090 amps. And those numbers assume we are talking about input power to the motor, not output power. I would expect an increase of around 10 to 15% to those figures if the specs are for mechanical output power.



sholland said:


> When I was at the track they were all slowing down after 2 laps due to battery temps, so I wouldn't trust even 4C.


Does the car tell them why it is limiting performance or is this just an assumption? Seems like it could also be inverter and motor over temp issues too. I read somewhere that in cold weather power is limited until the batteries can be warmed up using waste heat from the motor and inverter. I thought this a clever way to deal with the cold battery situation but there also needs to be another way to warm the cells before charging. And obviously there is a way to cool all of this as well. At full HP of 417 (311 kw) there would be around 10% losses in the motor/inverter meaning 31kw of waste heat. I would be interesting to know how that compares to the waste in the batteries. And on the street you can't usually misbehave at those power levels for very long. Different matter on the track.



sholland said:


> Smaller capacity packs require lower ESR batteries, thus higher cost. There's a reason Tesla dropped the 45kWh version of the Model S... Because they couldn't build it, without dropping it's power output. It was actually a software limited 60kWh battery!


I read that the reason they never built any 40 kwh packs was almost no demand. They decided to do the software limit thing for the handful of people who ordered it as a less expensive solution.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

Hi Doug

Have you seen this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYrhykqpyj4

350Kw from a Volt pack!


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Several of the drivers mentioned battery temp limit... In fact all the cars - Roadster, AC Propulsion Scion driven by Tom Gage, an eGolf, Focus, Fiat 500e - were reporting the same. 

Tesla does not use the lowest impedance/best 18650 cells, therefore they do heat up rather quick. All the 18650s are higher impedance than the available pouch cells. The Panasonic cells are 44mOhm, so at 74p a 'cell' is still 0.6mOhm. 

You can build a better 18650 pack yourself but it will be expensive, and you'll have to find a cheap source for LG HG2 or Samsung 25R cells... The vape shops buy them all up and sell them for high prices...


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Duncan said:


> Hi Doug
> 
> Have you seen this
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYrhykqpyj4
> ...


Yabert and I have been saying that for 2 years. Actually I'm configured at 200 kw as a daily driver. On top of that it is factory water cooled. 

No BMS either


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Duncan, I had in fact seen that video and I have looked at the INL testing. And admittedly it does look like the Volt packs might be able to do what I want. I have not excluded anything except a pack similar to my original LiFe pack which was inadequate for the way I wanted to daily drive the car. If I had purchased a Soliton jr instead we wouldn't even be having this discussion because the batteries would still be fine.

Do I need 200kw on the street? No I don't. Do I want it? Hell yeah assuming the cost is not too high. For a while I was considering going to a Warp 11 HV and switching to a Zilla UHV 2k so I could raise the current to 1400 amps and get the 288 volts giving a peak power requirement of 400 kw. Who knows what I will do after this next year when I actually go try to set a NEDRA SC/? record. A single WarP 9 when driven like John Metric does is good for about 400 kw input. I have the battery that can do a little over 200kw right now. Next upgrade would be increasing the current which means a high voltage Zilla 2k. And then adding a few more ampahaulic packs to allow for the increase in current. I have 28 of the ampahaulic packs and can configure as 7S4P, 8S3P, 9S3P, 13S2P with each configuration delivering more power to the motor than the previous one. Each ampahaulic pack is a 6S 4.5 AH 100C LiPo pack so the 7S4P is a 155.4 V 18 AH. The 8S3P is 177.5 V 13.5 AH. The 9S3P arrangement is 199.8 V 13.5 AH and the 13S2P is 288.6 V and 9 AH.

A street pack just needs to be able to keep the motor at a reasonable power level and have adequate range, not go drag racing.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

The INL data shows some good numbers at max SoC , but not over the entire SoC range. They even mention the design goal for the Volt was 38kW power and you can see in the plot on figure 4 of http://avt.inl.gov/pdf/phev/batteryVolt3929.pdf that at min SoC, the peak discharge power is only just above that. This will mean that you will have full power capability only near top of SoC, and probably abusing the batteries if you ask for too much power anywhere below 40% or so.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

sholland said:


> The INL data shows some good numbers at max SoC , but not over the entire SoC range. They even mention the design goal for the Volt was 38kW power and you can see in the plot on figure 4 of http://avt.inl.gov/pdf/phev/batteryVolt3929.pdf that at min SoC, the peak discharge power is only just above that. This will mean that you will have full power capability only near top of SoC, and probably abusing the batteries if you ask for too much power anywhere below 40% or so.


38 kw continuous is probably around 80 mph on the flat so really not a terrible limitation.

Thanks for your comments!


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

No problem. I've been trying to think through my own battery design... I don't always need the power, but there are times when I want all I can get no matter what the SoC (usually blowing the doors off an unsuspecting Leaf ). And I really want to do better at Laguna Seca next year.

One thing you can be sure of is there is going to be better and better batteries as time goes by. You are already sporting multiple packs which is more than most have invested...


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I wired up a DC-DC converter. It wasn't my best showing, but it is done and shouldn't fail. Although my Mandarian is a little rusty so I'm not sure what this says.









I also tightened the regen pedal mounting bolts with a friend's help.


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## GoAhead92 (Dec 16, 2012)

I drove my Wheego on a 20 mile round trip to my local Electric Auto Association monthly meeting. The regular location is beyond my battery range, but this month we met at a https://www.k1speed.com/ indoor electric go cart track about 10 miles from home.
It was interesting and informative to get a behind the scenes tour and hear from the technicians about their carts. 4 X 12 Volt Optima Yellow top lead with Curtis AC controllers. I didn't see if these have a transducer on the brake lines, but I observed regen while coasting which felt about like the 9% neutral braking in my car. The workers said tires don't last a month, batteries a bit longer and he's never had to replace a motor or controller. Lots of bent axles or worn wheel bearings, but no motors / controllers. 
Racing was a blast and everyone's lap times dropped a second or more from the 1st heat to the second. Instead of caring who crosses the line first, the electronic timer records lap times and the lowest single lap time is declared the winner. EV owners probably wouldn't be surprised by a lot of low end torque and brisk acceleration. I'd recommend K1 to anyone willing to risk driving on a go cart track.
Though the meeting turnout was only about a dozen, we had fun. Racing indoors was quite comfortable inside instead of a cold morning with a strong cold wind form the north. Well, cold compared to our normal. I feel this would be even more appealing to escape the oppressive heat we have here in July & August.


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## madderscience (Jun 28, 2008)

Did my annual "A" check on the battery pack in my xB. (Recently passed 20,000 EV miles) 99 out of 100 original cells.

Redesigned my upper battery box to ride on heavy duty locking drawer slides mounted such that after disconnecting cables I can slide the box forward and up, exposing the lower battery box making things much easier to work with. As part of this rerouted some cabling and redesigned mounting brackets for manzanita charger and other components to eliminate difficult to reach screws. Now it should take one 7/16th wrench and 1/2 hour to get into the lower battery box, instead of a 7/16ths wrench, 2 hours and a shop crane.

Put a single cell LiFePO4 charger on every cell to make sure all cells were topped. The charger hit cutoff voltage on every cell within a couple minutes, which is a good sign that the elithion BMS is working reasonably well.

Removed, cleaned, and re-torqued several bus bars with high resistance issues. (Known issue from factory with GBS cells of a certain vintage; I have been slowly R&Ring bus bars as they act up)

replaced a couple of questionable BMS cell boards. Not sure they were bad, but cheap and easy to replace. 

Updated my homebrew BMS frontend display to include temperature and voltage heat map with various statistical views. (This went into the car about a month ago to help narrow what cells and bus bars needed attention)


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## galderdi (Nov 17, 2015)

I thought I had finished the mandatory wiring for my Autocross car to enable it's first fire up test. It turned out I didn't have the relay to allow the pedal to apply the signal voltage to the motor controller. I will be buying one tonight after work and plugging it in. Hopefully that will result in my first successful test. 

Still aiming for total completion by Feb 7th. If the test tonight passes I will be comfortable. If it fails I think the deadline is in jeopardy. Lucky I still have the old car as a backup.

P.S> I thought about taking a day off to do it but everyone at work knows about the project so it would have been way too obvious.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Yesterday I put down a deposit on a pre-owned Model S.

On my DIY I drove it to work today. The broken batteries do ok when the temps are above 40. We saw mid 50's today. Much below 40 and it is not much fun to drive.

Updated my drag track simulator to take into account the 1 foot rolling start that all real drag tracks have and calculate the reported speed based on the time to cross the last 66 feet just like they do on the track. Makes my numbers come out closer to reality. In particular the 60' times I was seeing on the drag tickets make sense now. For example by own car is going a little over 5 mph when it gets to the 1 ft mark and starts the clock.


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## galderdi (Nov 17, 2015)

Today I redrilled the pivot bolts on two hydraulic handbrakes. I will be running 2 hydraulic handbrakes and 1 traditional cable handbrake. The two hydraulic handbrakes will be either side of the driver allowing the choice of left hand or right hand operation depending on the direction of the turn.
I found with a previous hydraulic handbrake that the standard M8 bolt for the pivot was not sufficient and ends up bending. So I have now drilled them out to M10 and inserted an M10 bolt in each. The next job will be to extend the handle on each to provide the required leverage.


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## galderdi (Nov 17, 2015)

I attached a safety switch t my accelerator and connected it to a relay on my motor controller. It worked great. 
 
I fixed the clutch but now that I have tried driving in the traditional way I am thinking I will revert back to driving without the clutch because the motor won’t slow down quick enough to allow gear changes. By not using the clutch the motor slows down with the gears engaged.
I made a new panel to cover the gap between my front suspension and firewall.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

galderdi said:


> I attached a safety switch t my accelerator and connected it to a relay on my motor controller. It worked great.


What does this actually do?



galderdi said:


> I fixed the clutch but now that I have tried driving in the traditional way I am thinking I will revert back to driving without the clutch because the motor won’t slow down quick enough to allow gear changes. By not using the clutch the motor slows down with the gears engaged.




What do you experience when you shift normally? A small surge when the energy stored in the flywheel is transferred to the vehicle?
When you don't use the clutch you must be placing the selector in neutral and then when you force it into the next gear the synchros slow the motor down? For me this takes around 5 seconds. I can shift in about a tenth of a second with the clutch.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Might as well put in an update. While not a DIY I made the big payment so now I own a Tesla Model S. Ships tomorrow and should arrive by early next week. I guess this is a Christmas present to myself. There is a relatively inexpensive Salvage Model S on EBAY which would be a good source of parts for a DIY conversion. And relatively is the key word here. You can get two, maybe even three good Leaf's for the price of a salvage model S.


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## galderdi (Nov 17, 2015)

dougingraham said:


> What does this actually do?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



The switch is normally open when the accelerator is in the resting position. Results in no signal power to the controller, so the controller is off. As soon as the pedal moves slightly the switch operates the relay and provides voltage to the signal input on the controller and it is then ready to operate the motor. If the pedal's resistance ever goes haywire taking the foot off the pedal will result in the controller switching off and ignoring the problematic resistance.

If I attempt to change gears with the motor spinning at high speed it crunches the gears. The car is a purpose built autocross car and is only expected to do a max speed of around 60 miles per hour. So I am not planning on changing gears on the move. I will just predict the best gear for the entire run, select it from the start and not change. The real problem is that some of the courses I will be doing require reversing. Reverse does not have a syncro so waiting 5 or more seconds for the motor to spin down is not acceptable for me. Instead I will stop my forward motion with the motor in gear then with everything still I will change into reverse and then accelerate again. 

I do suspect the clutch is not fully disengaging. But even if I were to fix that its not going to solve the problem of the unpowered motor continuing to spin for 5 or more seconds. I also need to reduce the weight of the flywheel, but while it will reduce the problem I don't think it will solve it. 

Having said all that I think I will try replacing my clutch pedal (the current pedal has a shortened action) and see if a properly operating clutch comes close to solving the problem. But if it doesn't I will revert to clutchless operation, its not the end of the world.


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## TerryH (Jun 9, 2012)

I walked by it in the shop, paused for a moment and wished it was racing season instead of winter.


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## galderdi (Nov 17, 2015)

I removed all the brakes from my doner car, took the last rear hub, took both seats, took the hydraulic handbrake, took the steering wheel. 
I didn't get to the flywheel....way too hard in the time I had available
but this morning I dropped it off at the recyclers.... bye bye pulsar.

That now means I only have a handful of tasks to complete before my first event on Feb 7th 2016:
 · Swapping the rear hubs and upgrading the rear springs to handle the weight
· Brakes all round
· Panels and dash
· Belts
· Another set of batteries
· And a handful of other minor items


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Cleaned the snow off of it so if it warms up I can take it for a drive.

Before and after shots attached.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Today I removed the front pack, motor controller and charger. The transmission and motor will also be coming out to rebuild the transmission and get a higher ratio final drive. I can now start to mock up the front pack in cardboard to get a sense of how the new batteries will get mounted.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I drilled two holes and mounted my J1772 charging port that will go under the front license plate.

While it turned out nice, the sad thing was it took close to two hours to get all the holes lines up, the bolts through them, and the nuts tightened. 

Now on to wiring up the daytime running lights.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Mounted power steering pump and rack, new lower control arms with factory sway-bar end-link holes (no more end-link adapter clamps) and installed new tie-rod ends.










New transmission, back from the shop after getting WPC micro-shot peen treatment, carbon synchros and new higher final drive (from 4.25:1 to 3.25:1).










New front shocks and raised top-hats.


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## BWA (Mar 14, 2015)

Spent the day on the Interweb looking for cheaper controller options.....


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## nb_mitch (Mar 6, 2016)

Drove it about 15 miles, took daughter to work, charged


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

I got my modified original brake pedal assembly remounted onto the car, then painted over the place where I rewelded in the metal I cut out to try and fit the Leaf pedal assembly. I'll try and get the Leaf master cylinder mounted tomorrow.


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## jwiger (Oct 18, 2014)

Finally brought home my WarP 9 and Zilla 2K-EHV!


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

This was actually yesterday (or the day before) but I got the Leaf master cylinder mounted on the firewall. I found that the clevis on the pushrod is about 1-1/4 inches (~45mm) too short to mate with the hole on the brake pedal. As I was taking pictures of the master cylinder to eventually share with everybody, I realized that there was something else that just didn't look right. 

I crouched down and looked across the engine (motor?) bay and realized that the filler cap for the MC is sticking up about a quarter to half inch above the top of the hood line. 

That's unfortunate. Now I have to take the MC back off and see if I can machine the adapter plate down enough to reach the brake pedal and drop the filler cap down far enough to clear the hood without compromising the strength of the plate. 

Bill


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## Pewibo (Feb 17, 2016)

Hit the bottom: finished chassis disassembly, broke/ground off 5 weld nuts with broken bolts in them and loaded all onto my truck to take to bead blaster.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I finished wiring up the AVC2 and J1772 charging port. The charger fans all come on!


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Not realy an EV. However EV component preparation has led me to figuring out an Opel Amper/Chevy volt charger. 

-Changed the connectors to some more easily available ones that dont cost a fortune. 
-Written arduino code to test it out
-Written code that lets me input any current(0.02-13A) and voltage (200-450V) I want
-Tested the current limiting when approaching the set voltage.

Quite happy with the result, I would recommend anyone looking for a cheap charging solution to look for one of these. 0-450 volt is possible, with voltage monitoring, above 200 volt this charger just needs two can messages, 12volt and mains to do the charging.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Did a condition check at 7000 miles perhaps 700 charges, 3years. Volt Battery still balanced, still no smoking hole from lack of BMS, MIGHT BE LOSING some capacity hard to say. The electronics have gone thermal sensitive, jld404 is cold sensitive, the Sol1 is hot sensitive. I have a power steering leak that I can't find, but it drips on the driveway once a week.

Motor brushes have 1/4" left, the comm is even and a lovely golden so apparently I am doing all the wrong things correctly.

Plans for this summer are to relocate the pack to the frame rails, maybe repaint.

Other than that just drive the wheels off.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

Had to repair the emergency brake handle on my car. Have a lot of hills around here and with no compression to help hold it when I park, especially in town I really pull on the handle and it got pissed and finally broke. Luckily had a spare so just R&R’ed it in less than an hour.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I figured out how to hook up the 12V battery back to the vehicle's existing wiring, or what is left of it after a few years of tearing parts out and the wiring harnesses that all went together. I found a few terminal posts on the drivers side under the hood that is where the 12V battery needs to be connected to. I have turn signals, brake lights, vent fans, and one headlight. Both the regular and high beam work on one, but not the other. So, now I get to figure out if it is a wiring, light bulb, or fuse problem. I haven't yet plugged in the reverse light switch connector to the transmission, but it is on the short list.

Tomorrow I will tackle the accelerator pedal and regen pedal. Then I will need to work on cleaning up the wires and wrapping them in split tubing.


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## Marinette (Aug 29, 2010)

I had to send my zivan ng3 off to elcon for repair, it kept blowing the out put dc side fuse, they thought the output diode or diodes were fried


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

I have the body, front fenders, header panel, tailgate and bumper re-attached, and am starting to nug out how I want to lay out all of the under-hood components (Zilla, Hairball, contactors, relays, OBD link, etc). I have been in touch with Adam at Lone Star and he has been a huge help. As soon as I get a complete wiring diagram together, I can create a layout schematic, purchase the components, and design the enclosure (or enclosures).


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## mons2b (Nov 17, 2015)

I dont know about others. But in winter Ive found it easy to procrastinate plus after being made redundant from my day job things have felt a bit gloomy. At some point I need to put up my progress in a thread. The forum is quite quiet in regularly updated builds. Life is either busy or blah. Im sure we can all associate with that.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

Summers. Gotta love, em. In July, I got out to the garage long enough to pull the driver's side visor off. Then yesterday, I pulled the passenger visor off and all three grab handles. That's been it all summer long. but I have a plan in my head about how I'm going to get the stuff I need off the car and then get rid of the shell to free up some space in the garage. We'll see if I can stick with it.

B


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

I last posted in June, and it is now over two month later and I have made some good progress. I am down to hooking up the last six 12V wires for the push button start/stop device now. I should have been doing this in July though.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

This weekend, I installed charge ports from a Nissan Leaf, which give me a path to level 3 charging down the road. 









I also wired up the first module (14S6P) for the new pack.


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## jwiger (Oct 18, 2014)

I finished the tail light wiring on Judith, now I need to re-attache the front bumper to wire the front lights.


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

After moving all my stuff over to England, I finally had time to test out the Chevy volt/Opel ampera Charger with the new connectors.

It works as it should, however the data it spews back on the canbus is all over the place in terms of message ID and needs to be analyzed further. Since I have more space now I will buildup the complete electrical architecture on the bench before sourcing a car.


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## tommypress (Jul 20, 2016)

Great to see all these interesting updates. Wish I could keep up with the same.


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Just short of 8000 miles, the Soliton took a pfffft and now wont engage the precharge contactor. Drug it home using the deisel, thinking it is time to go looking inside the controller. Probably time for new brushes on the KOSTOV also.


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Soldered up the newest version of my balancing board and did some code tweaking on my bms (which had been done, however code was misplaced during the home moving).

Made a small video to document my results

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtWKcg2kuPk


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Since I got a quote from the maker for $1300, and it's out of warranty, I figured what the heck, and tore into the Sol1. I poked around a bit and noticed a couple of loose wires which I stuck back into what I suspected were the correct places, re installed and OH BOY good as almost new. I might want to think about replacing the Atmega controller chip since it seems to be heat sensitive. I wonder how hard it is to resolder smt 8 bit micro chips.

Fixed the precharge error with resoldering the power resistor back onto the pad. stuck a bit of ceramic spacer between it and the board to keep it from wobbling loose, again. The unit could use some wire bonding or harness ties to keep the wires from fatigue breaks. maybe next time it is open

going for 8000 miles, 4 years, 1,000 + unknown many charges without BMS and resultant mushroom cloud on 2011 volt pack or desat errors on Soliton 1


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

piotrsko said:


> Since I got a quote from the maker for $1300, and it's out of warranty, I figured what the heck, and tore into the Sol1. I poked around a bit and noticed a couple of loose wires which I stuck back into what I suspected were the correct places, re installed and OH BOY good as almost new. I might want to think about replacing the Atmega controller chip since it seems to be heat sensitive. I wonder how hard it is to resolder smt 8 bit micro chips.
> 
> Fixed the precharge error with resoldering the power resistor back onto the pad. stuck a bit of ceramic spacer between it and the board to keep it from wobbling loose, again. The unit could use some wire bonding or harness ties to keep the wires from fatigue breaks. maybe next time it is open
> 
> going for 8000 miles, 4 years, 1,000 + unknown many charges without BMS and resultant mushroom cloud on 2011 volt pack or desat errors on Soliton 1


Great work!

Did you happen to take any photos of the inside?


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Got a pallet with the rear end of a Lexus rx400h, went out and bought the essential breaker bar en WD40.

Crimped new wires onto and plugged it into my Lebowski controlled Honda IMA inverter. At first it threw some issues to get it calibrated, but after some discussion with the creater of the chip I got it working.

So now even closer to building a car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exbnxTDsoy8


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Tomdb said:


> Got a pallet with the rear end of a Lexus rx400h, went out and bought the essential breaker bar en WD40.
> 
> Crimped new wires onto and plugged it into my Lebowski controlled Honda IMA inverter. At first it threw some issues to get it calibrated, but after some discussion with the creater of the chip I got it working.
> 
> ...


Awesome! I have a MGR for a future project, though I have not yet come up with a controller for it... 

What voltage are running? My understanding is that they are really designed to work with the voltage doubler built in to the Toyota inverters. To run better at a lower voltage would require re-winding the motor wye to delta, but the wire gauge will obviously still only allow for so much current without extra heat.


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## Tomdb (Jan 28, 2013)

Right now just 110 volts for testing. Eventually looking to got to 430v fully charged lifepo. So roughly 390 volts nominal. Everyone keeps saying that performance will be greatly reduced, however there are no documented tests out there. Plus hooking up a differential cooler is easy, plenty of kits for existing ICE cars.


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## sholland (Jan 16, 2012)

Tomdb said:


> Right now just 110 volts for testing. Eventually looking to got to 430v fully charged lifepo. So roughly 390 volts nominal. Everyone keeps saying that performance will be greatly reduced, however there are no documented tests out there. Plus hooking up a differential cooler is easy, plenty of kits for existing ICE cars.


Cool! (hopefully)

I'll be anxiously watching your results... ;-)


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## mizlplix (May 1, 2011)

From reading the above posts, I am feeling like I am having a dull life.
All I ever do is drive the car and once per year touch up the cell balances.

Miz


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

mizlplix said:


> From reading the above posts, I am feeling like I am having a dull life.
> All I ever do is drive the car and once per year touch up the cell balances.
> 
> Miz


Well are you still excited about electric drive and do you still let people know about the alternative choices to gasoline? I talk about it all the time at work. Im quite sure many are tired of hearing me but I still push and many have now gone to solar and hybrid drive systems. Only a few have actually gone full electric but they do know about it. 

Pete


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## Baratong (Nov 29, 2012)

I converted the clutch actuator from cable to hydraulic. The cable had several angles and was only supposed to be temporary. It took some muscle to use it.. The new pull-type hydraulic slave cylinder works much better.


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## mizlplix (May 1, 2011)

onegreenev said:


> Well are you still excited about electric drive and do you still let people know about the alternative choices to gasoline? I talk about it all the time at work. Im quite sure many are tired of hearing me but I still push and many have now gone to solar and hybrid drive systems. Only a few have actually gone full electric but they do know about it.
> 
> Pete


Hiya Pete!

I didnt really understand what I was building. I thought it was a neat little roadster that I could drive around and enjoy......True but there was more.
I cant seem to go anywhere that it dosent take me an hour or sometimes more.
I go into the store ok, but when I come out there are 2-8 people standing around the car. Usually taking pictures. It would be impolite and just mean to get in it and drive off.
I ritually stay as long as there is anyone with a question. My car is good for that because when they look in front to see the usual V8 engine, there 
is something that they werent ready for. (And mysteries are good)

About 50% state the desire to convert a car. So I walk them around and explain/ point out everything. 

Miz


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## mons2b (Nov 17, 2015)

Yanked out the fuel filler pipe and fuel evaporation tank. Thats almost the last of the fuel related parts. The only part remaining now is the lines and orphan fuel filter under the car.


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## dedlast (Aug 17, 2013)

I finally pulled the last wire harness out of the cabin and put all the plastic cra..., I mean pieces back inside. 
I am in the process of looking for a Nissan 16" steel wheel to replace the bent one that came on the car. When I find it, I'm going to rob the tires and put them on my wife's Mazda and put her worn out tires on the Leaf. Then I'm going to drop the battery and try to find a buyer for the shell. All the glass and doors are intact and undamaged, so there should be someone in the area willing to give me some money for it.

B


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## jerronem4 (Apr 30, 2017)

Just mounted a new battery charger. I also installed my new toyo tires and got an alignment.


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## madderscience (Jun 28, 2008)

I did my annual-ish battery check. 35000 miles on conversion now.

Replaced a cell that has been known weak for a couple years. This is the 2nd cell out of 100 I have replaced. I've got 2 more spares. Both bad cells are swollen at the positive terminal and are/were working but at reduced capacity.

Removed, cleaned, reassembled more factory installed GBS bus bars with higher than average resistance. This is a known issue with certain-vintage GBS cell assemblies. This helps me pull more amps overall since the BMS doesn't trip on the cell voltages due to sag from the bus bar resistance; and the cells stay at a more uniform temperature on longer drives now.

Found some of the retaining straps on one of my battery banks had broken. Fixed that. The cells don't appear to have swollen appreciably. The broken straps were due to my making them incorrectly (made bends too sharp; fatiguing the metal)

Replaced another failing elithion cell board. This makes 8 that have failed for me, all the same way (voltage measured starts to gradually drift independent of actual cell voltage getting worse with time) They are fairly cheap and easy to replace, but wish I knew the reason since I haven't heard of anybody else having similar issues.

Car needs new tires!

Belt drive, Diff, motor, inverter, DC/DC, charger all running fine.


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## Vhclbldr (Feb 8, 2014)

Been a while since my last visit, folks, but I am glad to report that “Baby” is nearly finished (or at least almost ready to move under her own power).
Batteries are in, but need to be series connected and charged (topped off), tested, and recharged.


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