THE THRILL OF VICTORY, THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

The temperature has been in the high 50's the last few days and all of the snow has melted but it has been constantly raining, so I was glued to the weather channel watching for a break in the weather. I had the charger hooked into the batteries in front of the shunt, so the amp hours on discharged were counted but not when charging. This was a good time to change the connection, so now the amp hours are counted on both the charge and discharge cycles.

Finally around 4:30 pm, the rain stopped and it was time to test drive the car. I tried to set up a video camera but should have taken the time to charge it earlier in the day because it just kept shutting off with a low battery warning. I climbed in the car, switched on the power, pulled up the Synkromotive user interface, and carefully backed out of the garage. So far so good! Pulling out of the driveway onto the street, the Fiero seemed to accelerate nicely in second gear so I depressed the clutch to go to third. That was pretty much when the wheels fell off of the test drive. The motor was no longer responding to the throttle request but I coasted down the road to a motel, just up the street, and pushed the car into a parking spot. This was not good because the hood was not on the car and all of the batteries in the front were exposed. It had been raining all day and the weather radar was showing another line moving in within the next hour. Fortunately, my neighbor was home and brought his truck to pull me home. Once back in the garage, I calibrated the throttle again, and the motor started turning.

I pulled up the log file but could not see what fault shut down the controller, so will need to make sure I have the log settings configured properly before the next test drive.

Sunday, the rain had stopped and the temperature was in the low 60s, so I decided to try again. The car seems to work fine as long as the throttle is slowly depressed and released but trips the controller when it is depressed quickly. I sent the log files to a fellow builder in California and after looking at it, he sent it to Synkromotive. I believe the throttle upper fault limit just needs raised and may try that next week.

Randy