BETTER PLACE BATTERIES

This week one of the modules from the Better Place battery pack was removed.

FIRST MODULE THAT WAS REMOVED

Yesterday, the other two modules were removed and placed in the garage. The shipping crate is now filled with all of the parts that were left over. As I reported earlier, the pack looked in new unused condition but the bolts holding the base to the crate were all missing, meaning the pack had been out of the crate in the past. The dates on the tags on the modules were dated 06/26/10, so the modules are almost 4 years old. The voltages ranged from 124.6 volts to 125 volt and are the lowest of any I have seen so far. That is still in an acceptable range, so we will see how they look after some testing.

REMAINING TWO MODULES REMOVED

I received a new 200 volt digital volt meter today and it is quite a bit smaller than the meter the origninal builder had in the instrument panel, but I believe I can make it work. To be able to install the same size ammeter, I may have to order a 100 amp 75 mv meter and hook it to a 1000 amp 75 mv shunt. It should read the correct amps but you would just need to know to add a zero to the meter reading. Since the face plate has a larger hole cut in it than is necessary for the new meter, I ordered a new face plate. All of the instruments need to be hooked up and tested before I can put the instrument panel back in the car.

My son and one of his high school class mates have a video game website and asked me to do a pod cast with them on the EV Fiero conversion. We had a great time and I will include a link in a future post if anyone is interested. In the future I want to have them help me host a webcast to answer any questions about the build. 

My son's fiance is very good with needle and thread, so tonight she was recruited to help with the interior. The head liner needs replace and I have material, it just needs sown together to have enough.

Some pictures will be added later.

Randy

THE HOLE IN WINTER

Last week the weather turned with temperatures in the 40 - 60 degree range and Saturday is supposed to get up to 50 degrees; So I am going to use this opportunity to get some more cleaning done on the garage and work done on the car.

My garage had become cluttered with components boxes and parts removed from the Fiero, so it was past due to clean it up before  starting to remove the interior. The main reason for cleaning though, was because I couldn't find the hood bolts and the hood was taking up quite a bit of room, so wanted to put it back on the car. After about an hour, sure enough, they turned up in a screw package sitting on the back of the work bench.

FRONT BATTERY PACK

HOOD INSTALLED IN CLEANED UP GARAGE

So on to moving the car out into the driveway but when I turned the key to activate the controller, the fan would ramp up, go off then ramp up again. I had unhooked the computer and it seems the controller lost the pot calibration but as soon as I re-calibrated, everything was back to normal. I pulled the car out into the driveway and proceeded to put the hood back on. When I was testing the pop-up lights, the JLD404 suddenly started blinking and finally shut off. I had plugged the DC-DC converter into the battery pack but forgot, the key has to be turned on to operate the contactor, or the converter does not get any pack voltage. Operating the pop-lights a couple of times had run the battery down enough that there was not enough power now to operate the contactor, so I had to plug it back into 120 ac to charge it back up.

It was good to sort and inventory all of the part I have collected that will be needed down the road and after a trash can full of clutter and and disposing of all the empty boxes in the fire pit out back, was finally able to pull the car back into the garage feeling ready to tackle the interior dis-assembly.

The amp meter for the 12 volt system arrived Saturday, so today I started to clean up the pod and mount the meters. I wanted to get it completely done before posting but didn't quite make it. It was done enough to put it together and get a picture though.

INSTRUMENT POD WITH DIGITAL GAUGES

Winter returns tomorrow but it felt good to get some work done on the Fiero the last couple days.

Until next time,

Randy

RELOADING

The LED lights that were ordered from Ebay arrived this week and I am gearing up to start on the interior and instrumentation. Did some garage rearranging to make some room for the panels and dash when they are removed and cleaned out the clutter on the passenger seat and floor of the car.

All of the battery connections were checked and I was surprised to find loose connections on about 1/3 of them. After all of the connections were checked and tightened, the pack was topped off again. I had the charger pretty close but it is drifting up to 137 volts which is close to 3.7 per cell, so I am going to need to lower the voltage a little the next time I charge. The cells are settling at 3.36 volts after setting overnight after the charge.

My wife finally got to take a ride and was impressed with the LED headlights. The car ran pretty smooth but is going to need more batteries to fix the voltage sag problem. There are some lithium packs coming on the market that are going to be offered at a good price, so I may just try to pick up one of them to fix the battery sag problem.

EVTV did a live webcast test on YouTube tonight and I was lucky enough to tune into the last couple hours of it. It looks like Jack may try to do live webcasts on Sunday afternoons to discuss the Friday show each week.

Randy

METER

This week I have been working on getting current and amp meters for the 12 volt system. Awhile back, I got a 3-1/2 inch voltage/current meter so dug it out of hiding to test. The instructions are a little vague but I was able to get the voltage hooked up.

TESTING VOLT PANEL METER

I also purchased a separate current meter on EBAY, so there will be one for voltage and one for current.

100A 3 ½ BLUE CURRENT METER

The pod that goes above the dash will be a good location to mount the 12 volt system meters and will allow me to look at both the current and voltage simultaneously without having to select between views with only one meter.

GT BATTERY VOLTAGE AND OIL PRESURE POD

The interior is next, so I spent some time this weekend reading instructions on the best way to remove the instrument panel and dash. I want to mount a micro switch on the heater controls to operate the solid state relay that will be used to turn on the heater and will need to get to the wires under the dash to do so. Hopefully I will be able to do this with out disabling the car just in case I need to move it.

Until next time,

Randy

COMPONENT WARRANTIES

 The Ballistic 12 volt LiFePo4 battery I purchased last spring does not want to hold a charge. When the battery arrived, it was around 11.5 volts. When measuring the individual cells through the balancing port, three of the cells were in the 3.2 volt range and one cell was around 2.5 volts. Using a JLD404 and a small light bulb as a load, all of the cells were taken down to 2.7 volt, then the battery was charged to 13.6 volts. Everything seem to work fine all summer but when fall arrived and I was not working on the car every weekend, the battery seemed to start loosing capacity. When the DC-DC converter was turned on, the battery would go to the 13.2 volts but as soon as it would turn off, would start dropping until finally leveling off at 11.5 volts. After the initial charge the battery would light all of the interior lights and operate the traction pack contactor after setting for a week or so but now it would not.

BALASTIC LIFEPO4 12 V BATTERY

I tried to contact the ebay seller who sold me the battery but it appeared they were no longer an EBAY member, so wrote Ballistic Battery to initiate a warranty claim. After several months and many emails, they finally replied to inform me that their warranty only covered the battery being used as a starter battery in an ATV and that using it to power up the interior lights and operating the traction pack contactor, was not covered. Seems like my application would put a lot less stress on the battery. I did try to use it a couple times to start a 10 hp John Deere garden tractor but it did not do a very good job at that.

Several month ago I sent my Powerlab 8 back to REVO after it quit working only to be told that the damage was from misuse and was not only covered under warranty but was not repairable under their repair program. Their only offer was a 10% Black Friday discount that they were giving everyone anyway, so really, no warranty and not help in replacing the broken unit.

POWERLAB 8

When looking at controllers, I almost eliminated the Synkromotive because they only offered a 30 day warranty. The controller has been trouble free and what I consider one of my better component purchases. Had I bought a more expensive controller with a lower amp rating and 1 year warranty, I would have ended up with a more expensive controller with less features and if something had gone wrong, would probably not have been covered under warranty any way because of something I did wrong.

I guess the bottom line is, don't put too much hope into getting any warranty claim honored when purchasing your components, and you won't get disappointed, put more time in researching the product and find out if other users have bee having any problems.

Randy

FINALLY,,,, A GOOD TEST DRIVE!

Yesterday, my son and I were able to get a good video of the car going down the road and after plugging in the jumper that raises the voltage to 14.2 volts, I can not get the Synkromotive controller to trip. I was on very narrow country roads, so have still not been able to get the car up to 60 mph but the controller is limiting the battery pack voltage to 90 volts, so is not putting out the power it is capable of.

ANOTHER TEST DRIVE 

There are currently 37 100 AH cells in the front of the car and the pack settled to around 123.6 volts after the last charge I gave it, over the weekend. Under heavy acceleration, the pack drops to the 90 volt limit I have the Synkromotive controller set at and the 12 volt system voltage drops sometimes all the way down to 10.9 volts. The Synkromotive controller seems to trip when the 12 volt system gets down to 10.7 volts, so I am going to need add some more cell to the rear of the car so the pack voltage will stay above the 106 volt lower limit of the IOTA DC-DC converter. Above 100 pack voltage, the DC-DC converter seems to hold the 12 volt system in the 13 volt range.

After the drive yesterday, I forgot to plug the IOTA DC-DC (AC-DC) converter into 110 volts but was happy to find that the small 12 volt battery had enough juice to supply the JLD404, Synkromotive controller stand-by mode, a 12 volt dc to 100 volt ac inverter, and a 15 inch laptop that was plugged into it for 24 hours. It's good to know that the car can be parked for several hour without worrying about draining down the 12 volt battery.

It is good to be making some progress on keeping the controller from tripping and to have some ideas to try to make the car perform even better.

Thank for visiting,

Randy

CONNECTING THE CONTROLLER

The Synkromotive controller comes with a pre-wired unterminated assembly that plugs into a 23 position AMPSEAL Connector on the side of the case. It looks like spaghetti and has wires for forward and reversing contactors that are not needed in my build. I considered removing the unused wires but was afraid I would break the connector, so will just hide them in split loom. The placement of wires in the connector do not group the wires going to different components very well causing them to tangle but I believe I finally got all of them straightened out pretty well. 

CONTROLLER WIRING

AMPSEAL CONNECTOR

Hopefully, next weekend I will be able to install the main battery connectors and charge the pack. I have also been working on contactor and fuse placement and am looking for a place to put the shunt, so I can measure pack current. I don't want to cut the battery cables in the engine compartment as battery packs will eventually be installed there and I don't want to have to splice them, so may leave them a little long for now. With the transaxle and motor cradle installed, it is a bit awkward getting to the motor compartment wiring.

Reading the controller manual and prearranging the wires has slowed me down quite a bit but I hope to pick up the pace in the coming weeks.

Until next week,

Randy

LABORING ON LABOR DAY

With the cradle back in the Fiero, Labor Day was spent installing the struts, brake lines, and parking brake cables. After cleaning the bolts and coating them with never seize, the struts were bolted up. I could see the marks where the bolts were riding originally and made sure to tighten them down in the same position, so my alignment should be pretty close to where it was..

Next the brake lines were installed but I wanted to use new bleeders and banjo bolt washers, so off to Advance Auto. I thought maybe they carried a vacuum pump brake line bleeder but said they did not carry anything like that. Advance is really high on bleeders & copper gaskets and I probably should have just gone to NAPA to get them. The brake line goes up across the top of the rear engine compartment and with the car jacked up, am afraid that is where all of the air is going to collect. I thought if I could pull a vacuum and get a little brake fluid flow going, maybe it would pull the air out the drivers side bleeder, that is the furthest away from the master cylinder. I pumped the brakes all day but still do not have any pedal. I did use the power brake vacuum pump to get the fluid to start moving but had it hooked up directly to the bleeder, so once the fluid filled the tube, it started going into the pump. I plugged the IOTA DC-DC converter into AC and used the 12 volt battery to run the pump. This also gave me a chance to monitor the voltage which seemed to go as low as 12 volts and as high as 13.9 volts.

MONITORING BATTERY

Also I hooked up the parking brake cables and had to spend quite a bit of time getting the adjusting screw freed up, so the final adjustment could be made. I spent a little time on the internet reading a couple articles on how to adjust the parking brake, as I have been told it can be a little tricky to get it working correctly.

 Tuesday I took a half day off work and continued to work on bleeding the brakes. The new bleeder valves did not seem to tighten correctly and I ended up twisting one off. They had Teflon tape on the threads and you could not feel when they seated. After drilling out the broken bleeder I tapped the threads back out with a 3/8 nc tap and just used the old bleeder valve, that was still like new.

I did not work on the car Wednesday night but went back out Thursday and was able to finally get the brakes to bleed. Then I started adjusting the parking brake. I got the leaver to tighten but will need to get the wheels back on the car and drive it in reverse a couple times to do the final adjustment, so on to hooking up the clutch slave cylinder. I painted the bracket and will put the wheels back on the car and lower it before installing the bracket, painting the slave cylinder, cleaning up the slave cylinder rubber and reinstalling it. The car shifted hard when I bought it but I moved the flywheel closer to the transaxle which should give me a little more clutch travel. Hopefully I can get the shifter adjusted so it shifts better than it used to..

PARKING BRAKE ADJUSTER

Once the car is off the jack stands, I will be able to reach everything to finish the wiring. I am going to install all of the batteries in the front bay for now to get them all charged and find out if the charger can be adjusted down far enough without having to install the new chip. I am going to remove the charger from where it is mounted now and just use it from the bench to do the first charge on the batteries. Once everything is set up, I will install the rear battery boxes and mount the charger back in the rear of the car.  

FRONT BATTERY BAY

Every time I cycled the HiPower batteries, I seemed to get a little more capacity, so hopefully after the full pack is put together and cycled a couple of times, they will come a little closer to their 100 ah rating. My plan was to drive the car back and forth to work at AEP in Columbus, OH and with 40 100 AH batteries, may have been close to making the 44 mile round trip. With the batteries in their current condition, I may make it the 22 miles to work but will need to charge there to get back  home. A co-worker with a Volt was finally able to get a parking place with a charger for $10 extra/month, so that would be a pretty good deal if there are any more spaces available.

I took another 1/2 day off Friday and cleaned up and put away tools. After getting the garage back in order, the rear wheels were mounted and the car lowered off of the jack stands. I cleaned up the front bay and did some measuring to make sure the 38 batteries would all fit in the front, and they will.  

Work continues on hooking up the clutch slave cylinder and shifter cable brackets and by the end of the weekend, should have them mounted.

CLUTCH SLAVE CYLINDER

THROW OUT BEARING LEAVER

I still have the remainder of the weekend to get some more work done but am going to go ahead and post, since I started writing it on Memorial Day. The car is getting closer to testing but I still do not have battery connectors from CALB yet. To help keep the build under $10,000, I am going with the solid copper connectors but will use zinc terminal paste, Nord Lock Washers, and SS bolts. I have a company in China that says they can make the flat braided copper connectors but need to send them a detailed print before they will give me pricing.

Thanks for reading and hope to see you back for next week's post.

Randy

ROCKING THE CRADLE

Over the last week I have been cleaning up under the car and preparing to lift the motor and transaxle cradle back into the Fiero. I purchased some solid cradle mounts from Rodney Dickman but when I tried to hammer out the old mounts, found that they were not going to just pop out.

SOLID ALUMINUM CRADLE BUSHINGS

I got on the internet and started looking for information on how to remove the front cradle bushings and on Pennock's Fiero Forum, found a post from a guy who had made a simple tool to remove them.

CRADLE BUSHING REMOVAL TOOL

I had a tail pipe adapter but did not have any all-thread that would work so stopped at Home Depot on my way home from work to pick up all-thread, washers & and nuts and Saturday morning I started the bushing removal. After applying  tension, a little heat was added to the center of the bushing bore with a propane torch and the bushing started sliding out. Ok, getting the bushing out was one thing but cleaning all of the rubber stuck to the inside of the bore was another! I had to heat and scrape, and heat and scrape, (of course being careful not to breath any of the smoke coming off of the burning rubber.) The solid bushing kit came with a flapper wheel to put on a drill, so after most of the rubber was scrapped off, was able to get it down to metal. The new aluminum bushing were machined perfectly and went right into the bore with a few light taps from a rubber mallet.

It was in the upper 80's with high humidity in Ohio on Saturday, so after getting the bushings installed in the cradle, went into the house to cool off and get a dry shirt. When I got on the computer to check  my email, my hands started cramping, I guess too much work in too much heat and not enough water caught up with me! After resting and watching a little of the Ohio State football, I went back out and started rigging up the jacks to lift the cradle. My wife wanted to go to the Millersport Sweet Corn Festival, so I wrapped up work on the car, got cleaned up, and we put the top down on the Miata. After walking around the festival for several hours, we had a very nice top down night ride through the country on the way home.

 

MILLERSPORT SWEET CORN FESTIVAL

Sunday morning, I slept a little later that normal and watched part of EVTV's Weekly Show before heading out to the garage.around 10:00. The transmission jack that I planned to use to lift the front of the cradle would not lift it, so I had to use a floor jack on the front of the cradle, the transmission jack on one rear corner, and a scissor jack on a dolly to support the other rear corner. It would have been nice to have had someone (my son) to operate the jacks while I was aligning the bushing holes but I was able to lift it into place and get it bolted up by myself. Having the cradle back in ROCKS!

MOTOR CRADLE INSTALLED

The cradle went in fairly easy but now the brake bleeding, adjusting the the parking brake, and getting the shifter linkage adjusted begins. I am going to put batteries in front of the motor and maybe a few to the rear of the motor so the motor and transaxle will be visible. During  the 24 hour film festival shoot last year, the movie crew wanted to see the car but all they could see were batteries and a table with the controller and a bunch of relays. When the Fiero is done, I want people to be able to see the electric motor.

Stop back,

Randy

READY TO INSTALL ENGINE CRADLE

This week I decided to test the charging relay and when I applied power, nothing happened. I checked the 12 volt battery and it was under 1 volt. After looking around the car I found the drivers side door was ajar and the interior lights had run the battery down. I hooked up the DC-DC converter to AC and let it charge until the voltage came up to 13.2 volts then disconnected the charger. When opening the drivers side door, the interior lights came on and the battery was still holding above 13 volts. It is good to know my bottom balance on the Ballistic battery worked and there did not appear to be any damage but may still install a timer circuit to take out the interior lights after a couple minutes, to prevent this from happening again. The battery is only 2.3 A/h but I only intended to have it power up the J1772 circuit and turn on the DC-DC converter when charging. I ran the lead acid batteries down a couple times when I forgot to unplug the DC-DC converter and wanted to have a way to shut it down when the ignition switch is turned to off.

The engine compartment is done and I am preparing to install the motor cradle. There will still be a few wires to run and some loom to install but I need to wait until the motor is in to decide on the routing.

MOTOR COMPARTMENT FINISHED

The controller will need to be removed from the motor to get clearance for the cradle to go back in and some wires will need to be tied up out of the way to keep from damaging them. The speedometer plug was pulled off when I dropped the cradle but thanks to EBAY, another one is on the way.

CONTROLLER MUST BE REMOVED

Only two batteries left to bottom balance and the pack will be ready for the initial charge. Out of the forty, four of them will not hold a charge, so that will leave me with 36 cells. None of them took more that 80 A/H and some of them only took 60 A/H. At 3.65 volts per cell, I will need to have the charger cut off at 130 volts or so but the charger is currently going to 156 volts and then doing a constant voltage stage. I changed the setting on the Zivan to "7", that is supposed to be for lithium but I will need to closely monitor the first charge.  There are a couple adjustments inside the charger for voltage and current so I am hoping the voltage can be turned down far enough using them. I have a chip for the Zivan that allows it to be programmed with a PIC3, so eventually, I want to install it so I will have a little better control of the charger. The Synkromotive Controller also has a charge function but there is no documentation on how to hook it up. There are settings in the set-up program but I am not sure anyone has tried to hook it up to AC using an inverter. If anyone has hooked the Synkromotive Controller up as a charger, leave a post and let me know how it worked out.

Thanks for viewing,

Randy

BACK IN THE SWING AFTER EVCCON

The battery bottom balancing continues and I am getting close to putting the motor cradle back in the Fiero. I

put together a Punch List of items to be completed while the cradle is still out of the car.

Punch List

1. done   Connect ground to frame from 220 box 
2. done   Straighten Negative battery lead 
3. done   Mount 2 Rear relays 
4. Redo driver side loom -  find and wire new speedometer connector
5. Remount front to back battery cables
6. done  Remove red wire from the tunnel (to heater contactor)
7. done  Remove the black wire from the tunnel ( to vacuum pump motor)
8. Remount heater wires
9. Cover computer cavity
10. done  Cut metal sticking out on front engine compartment firewall
11. done    Rotate loom on fusible link wires 
12. done    Tighten 220 plug nut 
13. 13    Test relays
14. 14    Touch up engine compartment paint 
15. done    Change charge setting to lithium (position 7) on charger

The C500 switched 12 volts (2 wires), wire from the starter switch, and tachometer wires have been spliced into the connector and it has been installed. I used plenty of wire so I should not have to splice these wires when making the final connections.

WIRES SPLICED INTO C500 CONNECTOR

Two relays have been installed and the charger relay has 12 volts connected so when the charger turns on, the normally open relay closes and puts power on the relay and when the charger is off, the switched 12 volts will be applied to the relay through the charger's normally closed contact.

MAIN BATTERY CONTACTOR RELAY

I have been putting off sliding under the belly of the Fiero to re-mount the battery wires from the front to back packs and the heater power wires. They were bundled together along with the power wire for the vacuum pump and the heater relay wire. I am going to use a relay and get 12 volt power in the front of the car for the vacuum pump and use the starter wire to get power to the relay for the heater. That way I will be using original 12 volt wiring in the wiring harnesses for 12 volt control power and the only wires running on the outside of the car will be for the battery packs. I put loom on the 2/0 battery and heater power cables, where they made any bends or contacted any surfaces and used conduit hangers to mount the wires in the tunnel.

FRONT POWER CABLE MOUNTS

REAR POWER CABLE MOUNTS

There will either be an aluminum cover over the tunnel or a belly pan to cover the wires so they will not be exposed, after the car is running and I can get it on a lift.

Hopefully by September, I will have the motor cradle back in the car and can start on the battery boxes.

EVCCON III

This year's trip to EVCCON started out at 6 am EST from Ohio and I finally made the trip without getting side tracked, arriving at my Hotel in Cape Girardeau, MO around 3:00 PM CST. Around 5:30 PM CST I made my way over to the shop to pick up my credentials and the bag of goodies provided by EVTV.

Al Gajda was still tweaking in the new battery pack on his 39 Dodge pick-up conversion and did not have enough time to bottom balance before the convention started, so was carefully monitoring after each drive. The open source crew was working to get the DEMOC 645 to drive the Siemens motor on the VW Thing, and Brandon Hollenger was completing wiring on the London Taxi, the winner of the EVCCON I, Build Your Dream  EV Contest.

As in the past, EVTV had a very nice welcoming reception with good food and an open bar for the attendees. There were four of us from the Columbus, OH area and another from Akron, Ohio, so it was good to get together again. What is surprising is how many made the convention from other countries; New Zealand, Australia, and Great Britain to name a few. The attendance seemed down a little this year and it appeared there were fewer cars this year but still a strong showing.

It was surprising to not see NetGain Motors, Net Gain Controls, and Evnetics in attendance this year. HPEVS was the only manufacturer with a booth and EVTV was the only parts vendor. It was obvious there is somewhat of a shift to AC motors in the future of EV builds and with HPEVS and Curtis Controls new product offerings would seem to be the Manufactures poised to benefit, at least in the short term. There is also talk of using an industrial controller to drive the HPEVS motors, as the Curtis Controllers are seriously limited with respect to the capability of the motor.  There also seemed to be some interest from the NEDRA drag racing group that was in attendance in the AC electric motors.

When I got to the shop there were so many builders to talk to, I just forgot to take any pictures but thanks to Jehu Garcia, I didn't have to. The link below is a recap of the first few days of EVCCON III.

 

 EVTV'S VW THING

CHARLIE AND TAMERA RICKMAN'S

1973 OPEL GT

  

 

 

 AL GAJDA'S 39 DODGE TRUCK

ILLUMINATI MOTORS SEVEN

 

HPEVS 200 CORVETTE

NAIL HANKE'S BRADLEY GT II

 

COBRA BUILD

 

JOHN METRIC'S MIATA

 

GARY BULMER'S BLAKELY BERNARDI

 

EV WEST'S BMW

 

I would have liked to put the $800 or so it costs to attend EVCCON and the week off work into the Fiero Build but felt the relationships developed at the convention will be more than worth the delay in the build.

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