IF MY HEAD WASN'T ATTACHED..........

Over the last several weeks I have been rearranging the garage to get the Fiero back in, so work can continue when the weather gets cold again. It was time to start bottom balancing the other two Better Place modules, so I made some jumper wires and needed another connector to connect the center two cells that originally had external connections going to them. I remember the bag of connectors being in the trunk of the Fiero when I made up the connections on the first module and remember moving it around, all the time thinking, I need to put these somewhere I can find them again when needed. I finally found the bolts in the shipping crate but the connectors were no where to be found. So all of the work I did rearranging the garage will need to be moved back out until the connectors are found.

Not to worry, the show must go on and I can still look for the connectors while the second module is being bottom balanced. I am using two 150 watt quartz lights for the initial drain and just putting a volt meter on the lowest half cell to monitor the voltage.

QUARTZ LIGHT FOR RESISTERS

After the voltage on the lowest half cell gets down to 2.8 volts or so, a smaller light is hooked up to keep a constant drain at a lower amp draw.

40 WATT LIGHT FOR RESISTER

Finally, after the lowest cell settles below 3 volts, I hook up a small night light to try and drain the battery at close to the same rate as it is trying to recover at.

SMALL NIGHT LIGHT FOR RESISTER

Once the small night light is connected, I take readings on all of the half cells and keep draining until the highest cell will settle at under 3 volts.

The final step is to use the Powerlab and charge all of the cells back to 3 volts. The LiMn2O4 cells seem to work at a higher voltage that the LiFePO4 cells and are charged to 4.2 volts before settling back to around 2.9 volts and at 3 volts are pretty much done when pulling higher amps when driving, so 3 volts as the bottom balance voltage should be fine.

The shifting is still not correct so I pulled the shifter so I could give it a good inspection for wear.

SHIFTER

After an inspection of the shifter, I could not find anything wrong, so put it back in the car and and attempted to readjust the shift cables. It seems that the select arm keeps changing when the adjustments are done, almost like something is not returning to the same position inside the transaxle so my next step is to try and remove the pin holding the select pivot to put now bushings in it. If that doesn't work, I am afraid the transaxle is goint to need to be pulled and sent to a transmission shop to be gone over. 

So as the batteries are draining, the search continues for the lost connectors. As I said in the title; If my head wasn't attached, well you know the rest of the story.

Thanks for visiting,

Randy