FABRICATING BATTERY MODULE HOLD DOWN CLIPS

The pack is going through the final bottom balance with the JLD404 set up to turn on a small flash light bulb at 2.7 volts and then discharge until the battery reaches 2.5 volts. The cells all seem to have pretty much settled out at just under 2.7 volts.

While bottom balancing the cells, I am fabricating steel end plates and have welded clips on the plate to hold down the module. On the inside plate, the angle is long enough that holes will be drilled and the plate bolted down to the support angles. I wrote about them it the last post but here is the completed inboard end plate.

INBOARD MODULE END PLATE

On the outboard side of the module, the end of the angle used to make the rack is not long enough to bolt the clips, so the clips will be turned around and will hook under the rack angle. Below is a rough diagram and a picture of the cell in place to confirm that the clips will hook the end of the angle.

OUTBOARD HOLD DOWN CLIP DIAGRAM

CELL WITH CLIPS UNDER RACK ANGLE

With any luck I will be able to start mounting the module tomorrow, if I can find a metric tap to thread the holes for the tie bars.

Thanks for visiting,

Randy

PACKING HEAT

Sunday, work started on the heater control. The original build had a separate switch to turn on the heating element, that was mounted on the side of the instrument pod. Over time, the switch started pulling out and the vinyl around the opening was starting to split. The hole was covered with electrical tape and some grained sheet was heated with an iron to melt the electrical tape into the original vinyl. Then the dash pod was painted, with charcoal interior paint. It isn't perfect but covers the hole and looks pretty good.

INSTRUMENT POD VINYL PATCH

There is a micro switch on the pot box that is no longer needed because the Synkromotive controller will not start if the accelerator is depressed, when turning on the ignition, so it was removed and will be used to turn on the heating element when the heater selector is slid to the hot position. After placing the micro switch in several different positions, while operating the heater selection slide, a good placement was found and holes were drilled to mount it.

HEATER TEMPERATURE SLIDE

MICRO SWITCH NOT ACTUATED

MICRO SWITCH ACTUATED

One of the pods that house the duct door actuators was in the way on the bottom of the surface where the micro switch was mounted so the hole was drilled a little smaller and the bolt was threaded into the housing plastic. You can also see the washer that had to be used to keep the bolt from pressing on the duct door actuator housing. When the micro switch is removed for final wiring, some contact cement will be applied to assure it will remain in place.

Then the heater fan schematic was used to figure out how to power the switch so the element would only energize if the fan was running. Diodes can be used to power the heater element control so no matter what speed the fan is set to, the element can be energized. After thinking about the system for awhile, a small led light will also be added so you can see when the element is energized. Also, a fuse will be added from the pack to the element.

HEATER ELEMENT CONTROL SCHEMATIC

Documentation is getting a little behind, so I am trying to catch up a little, as when the car is finished, it will have a service and operation manual.

When looking for the ground leak, the first row of cells had to be removed, so while they were sitting in the garage, the voltages were checked. They were all 3.34 volts and within thousandths of a volt of each other. If any of you follow John Hardy's battery work, he has documented this behavior in the LiFePo4 batteries. As they are cycled, the voltages seem to come closer to each other.

BATTERY VOLTAGE READING

This has been a very productive weekend and all the known bugs have either been fixed or components ordered to fix them. The Better Place battery module is about half way through the second bottom balance and with some of the cells out of the car, I can survey where it can be mounted. 

Until next post,

Randy

MOONSHINE FESTIVAL

Friday night we took my son and his fiance to the New Straightsville Moonshine Festival. New Straightsville, OH was an old mining town where the minors had gone on strike for more wages and ended up setting the underground coal on fire, more or less shutting down the mining operation. After the mines shut down, the locals turned to making what was considered special moonshine because of the quality mountain water. The moonshine became very sought after, both nationally and world wide. Because of the notoriety of the moonshine, the state of Ohio granted New Straightsville a special permit to operate a still during the annual festival, as long as the liquor was not consumed and discarded after production.  Once a thriving town, now New Straightsville is a remnant of the past. 

MOONSHINE FESTIVAL SIGN

STILL

When we arrived in New Straitsville, all of the free parking was taken but one of the local residents was allowing visitors to park for $3.00. Not wanting to walk a mile, we pulled in and gave the owner his fee. We were parked next to a 1965 convertible Corvette roadster and notice that the owner was packing a 9mm pistol. Now this is a pretty good deal. In Columbus, it would cost me at least $5.00 to park and I have never been provided with an armed guard to look after my car. Only in New Straitsville!

Ok, you are wondering what a moonshine festival has to do with electric cars. Well the Friday night feature of the moonshine festival was a garden tractor pull on asphalt. I have seen tractor pulls on dirt but never on asphalt. The tires squealed when taking off and again as the engine was bogging down at the end of the run.These were very customized garden tractors, with most of them having body mods, chrome wheels, and show quality paint jobs. While walking down one side of the street I saw a guy sitting on the steps of one of the businesses, watching the tractor pull and thought to myself, I know that guy. When returning, I saw him again it and it dawned on me that I had seen his videos on Youtube.  It was Greg Grubb who runs a conversion shop in central Ohio. I approached him and said is your name Greg? He answered yes and I told him I had seen his videos on Youtube and had contacted him awhile back. We discussed EVs for awhile and he told me his wife pulled garden tractors. So that is what a moonshine festival has to do with EVs. You can see his Youtube videos at  GREG GRUBB YOUTUBE CHANNEL

ASPHALT GARDEN TRACTOR PULL

Ohio has legalized making moonshine (not technically moonshine because it is legal) and the Straitsville Special Moonshine Distillery has opened it's doors in the town. I got one of the jugs from the first batch and although only 90 proof, it is rather tasty, especially with a little cider added.

STRAITSVILLE SPECIAL MOONSHINE

Last week the garage was cleaned and all of the scrap metal put in the Better Place shipping crate, so Saturday morning I decided to take it to the scrap yard and turn it into cash. I checked the hours on the internet to make sure they were open and sure enough, their hours were listed as 8 am to 12 noon, on Saturday.. All of the scrap metal was loaded in the car and off I headed off to the scrap yard. A truck, loaded with old aluminum siding, was ahead of me as we drove down the dirt road to the salvage yard but when we got the the entrance, the gate was closed. I drove through Hebron, Buckeye Lake, and Baltimore, OH but the other scrap yards were all closed down, so I headed back home. A couple hours shot and a bunch of work loading and unloading some heavy scrap metal, wasted.

On to the car. The bottom balance continues, and I have about 12 cells to go in the first bottom balance. The remaining work needing done before installing the dash was surveyed and the wiring harness for the dash meters was started. About 2 pm, I kind of hit the wall.,as I was a little overwhelmed with the wiring, soI went inside and ended up taking a nap to collect my thought on how to proceed. About 5 pm, I went back out to put different connectors on the instrument pod gauges, and finish running the harness from the front battery compartment to the instrument pod. It is in place now with all of the connectors made up, so all that is left is to run a harness from the motor compartment for the 12 volt system. The Venue 8 Pro was mounted in the holder and the mini USB was connected to help figure out how to run the wiring. Then work was done on getting the solder off of the speaker connections and putting connectors on the wires, so they can be easily removed if the dash needs to come out again. Even though I got a bad start, quite a bit of work got done on the wiring by the end of the day. Even though I was in a 2 year electronics technical program in high school, wiring remains my weak spot, and progress on the car slows when I am wiring.

HARNESS WIRING FOR METERS

INSTRUMENT PANEL WIRING FOR METERS

SPEAKER CONNECTORS

Tomorrow we are going to my parents but hopefully there will be more work done on the car, Sunday evening and Monday because I am really anxious to get the interior back together and the first Better Place module mounted.

Mission accomplished for the day, it was time to relax a little and sip on some Straitsville Special moonshine applejack!

Until next time,

Randy

CONTACT

The bottom balancing continues with 20 of the cells rebalanced to 2.6 volts. News came on Friday that my Powerlab 8 would not be covered under warranty and in fact, was so fired, they would not even repair it for the standard service fee. I asked them if they had a program for replacing a damaged charger at a reduced rate and their only offer was a 10% Black Friday discount, so I will wait and try to pick up another refurbished one. I am going to have the old one shipped back so I can take a look at the inside.

BOTTOM BALANCING WITH JLD404

The DC-DC converter and battery was reinstalled but I had to flip a couple wires as the controller came to life as soon as the battery was connected. With the wires connected correctly, the controller now comes to life when the key is switched. on.

 

DC-DC CONVERTER & BATTERY INSTALLED

  The cooling fan relay wires were pulled through the division and the grommet was reinstalled on the front lighting wires. Then the cooling fan relay wires connected to a Bosh relay, the vacuum pump and main battery pack contactor. When the ignition switch was turned to run, the vacuum pump roared to life, and the contactor showed continuity when checked with an ohm meter.

GROMMET INSTALLED

BOSCH RELAY

All that is left to do is make up the leads from the batteries to the contactor and shunt, then when the battery balance is done, it should be ready to test drive.

I was on 300mpg.org a couple weeks ago and read Ben Nelson's review of the book INGENIOUS, by Jason Fagone, so purchased the electronic version on Amazon. The book is about four of the XPrize entrants, and one of them was Kevin Smith. If any of you have ever met Kevin, he is quite a character and kept me laughing during EVCCON. For those of you converting cars, you can really relate to what the teams went through to get their entries ready. It is a bit sad that no vehicle from the XPrize has ever gone into  production but with a couple of the teams, the dream is still alive.

Thanks for stopping by,

Randy

ODDS AND ENDS - BOTTOM BALANCING AGAIN

This week I continued working on getting ignition power for the vacuum pump and main contactor. The cooling fan was removed during the original conversion but the relay is still in the left front corner of the car, so that looks like the best place to get power.

MODIFIED COOLING FAN RELAY CIRCUIT

The left headlamp assembly was removed and the wiring to the cooling fan relay was exposed. It would be nice to run fan wires back through the division into the the area where the vacuum pump and contactor are but the lighting wires need to stay in the front, so separating them could be a little tricky. I may just use one of the extra Bosh relays I have since the circuit is going to need to be rewired anyway.

COOLING FAN RELAY WIRING

 As the batteries are all in the front of the car, I decided to move the charger until the rear battery boxes are installed. The connections to the motor were made up and loom was installed over the wiring. Orange shrink tubing was put on all of the high voltage cable, and all that is left to do back there is to anchor the loom and install the battery and DC-DC converter..

CONTROLLER AND MOTOR CONNTECTIONS COMPLETED

 During the original second bottom balance, a couple of the batteries that initially tested bad, seemed to come back to life. During my first two full charges of the pack, I had been spot checking the pack as it approached full discharge and when the pack reached 2.9 volts/cell on the second discharge, took readings on all of the batteries. To my surprise, they were varying mostly from 2.7 to 2.9 volts per cell, with one at 2.0 and one that had reversed polarity. Actually it was the one that had originally tested bad then checked good after I cycled it a couple time and since it was on the end, I just eliminated it from the pack. Because of this, I decided to give the cells another bottom balance with the JLD404 and a small flashlight bulb.

BOTTOM BALANCING WITH JLD404

The bottom balance is going to take awhile, as it would be quicker to put a little charge in a few cells but my Powerlab8 is still back at the factory for repair, so my only option is to discharge all of them until they settle at 2.6 volts. It takes a couple hours for each cell to finally settle out where it does not drift back up to 2.7.

It has been a good week, as I have been able to finish the little odd and ends and find there are fewer and fewer things that need finished before testing the motor and controller. The interior, gauges, and heater still need finished but that can be done after I test the motor and controller. There will also be brake and possibly clutch adjustments after the car is rolling.

Until next week,

Randy

INITIAL PACK CHARGE

My charger is back (Thanks Mark) and functioning as it was programed to by Zivan. It permits me to adjust the voltage for the end of the CC part of the curve, but on the CV part of the curve, seems to hold the voltage for a brief period, then allows the voltage to start creeping up. The charger seems to be shutting down, based on a predetermined time, that was programmed for 225 ah flooded cell batteries originally used. Turning the current down effects the CC stage of the original charge, as well as the CV phase. The batteries are being drained back down so I can check the bottom balance, then will be charged again and the pots adjusted to charge at 18 amps CC and go into the CV phase around 3.25 volts/cell. This will give me some room when the voltage starts drifting up and should allow me to stay in the CV stage until the charger shuts down.

CHARGING THE PACK

The second option is the programmable chip I purchased awhile back, that will allow me to set the CC and CV levels in the software. This is my last resort as I don't want to smoke the charger again.

Currently I am using 2 flood lights to drain the pack at 2.5 amps, so it is taking a long time to get back down to where I am approaching 2.6 volts. A couple cells were shorted for a couple seconds when I was connecting the pack back up, so I hope I didn't take enough out to effect the balance. Those cells are reading a little less than the ones around them.

The 12 volt system needs hooked up this weekend so I can hook up the heater. That should give me a much better way to drain the pack if I need to do it again. Then all that will need done is to hook up the contactor and motor leads before testing the controller. 

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.