LAST POST BEFORE EVCCON

Tuesday around 4 am I am going to leave for EVCCON. That should get me to Cape Girardeau, MO
by 11 am central time when the shop opens. My Hotel room should be ready by early afternoon so I can check in and rest a little for the open house that evening. Al Gajda's 39 Dodge ev conversion was at the EVTV Shop over the weekend and you could see him installing the batteries on the EVTV WEBCAM . He must have got them in and the truck running because it is off of the lift and no where in sight now.

Getting the 12 volt power hooked up has been my main priority this week and I cleaned and installed the new C500 right half connector.

 

C500 RIGHT SIDE CONNECTOR

The battery was connected so I had my wife turn on the key so if there were any shorts, I could have her shut off the power and could quickly disconnect the battery if needed. She turned the key and nothing happened. I plugged in the IOTA DC-DC converter and the lights came on so I was a bit confused. From inside the engine compartment I could not see the top of the battery and when I stood up, found I had not hooked up the negative  battery  terminal and was out of crimp terminals, so finishing the 12 volt connections would have to wait until the next day. As there is no starter on an EV, I probably got a little carried away on the battery and battery charger cables, but I had them already and figured, they won't hurt anything.

The next morning I was off to ACE Hardware to pick up the crimp terminals and got the battery hooked up. The little Ballistic battery was able to power up the headlights and all of the 12 volt systems seemed to work just fine, so I went to the wires on the C500 connector and checked voltage on them.

LIGHTS POWERED UP

C500 CONNECTOR PIN OUT

Just as I suspected, pins B! & E3 were connected to the pink wire that had been spliced in the wiring harness and are 12 volts when the switch is turned to the run position.. Pin A4 is connected to the purple wire that was spliced in the wiring harness and is 12 volts when the switch is turned to the start position.

The basic 12 volt wiring is done and all that is left is to put loom on some of the wires going to the terminal block on the front firewall and to tidy up the main battery terminals. The ground terminal is an aluminum nut rivet and I picked up a stainless bolt and washer to connect the terminals to it. Also I put one of the solid trunk panels in that is from a 1884 Fiero, to see if it was going to provide enough protection from the elements for the DC-DC converter, battery and contactors; It appears it will.

COVER FROM TOP

COVER FROM BOTTOM

The wires coming in on the left harness go to the AVC2, the one on the right is the positive and the one on the left is the negative. The harness coming in from the bottom is coming from the Zivan Charger. The left wire coming out of the loom is the positive to the common terminal on the charger contacts, the one coming out of the loom on the third terminal from the left is the normally closed contact and the on furthest right goes to the normally open contact. The terminal above will go to the relay that controls the main battery contactors. The two wires on the top left are the positive and negative.

 

CHARGER CONTACT TERMINAL BLOCK

CHARGER CONTACT CONNECTIONS

   

The original build had a wire running under the car to power the brake vacuum pump so I will look for a switched 12 volt wire  in the front of the car to turn on the pump when the key is switched. on. There is also a wire to turn on the heater contactor running underneath the car that I will try to power form an existing harness wire. If I don't need the starter wire, I may run it to the heater switch under the dash and use it to operate the heater contactor.

The battery bottom balancing continues and I have about 25 to go. The capacity information will be good when I start putting the pack together as I may just leave out some of the lower capacity ones. Since I am bottom balancing, I think real low capacity cells will keep me from fully charging the good ones.

As I said last week, I will try to do a post or two from EVCCON and will post some links from some of the other converters who are posting from the show.

Thanks for  viewing,

Randy