JUST ANOTHER LABOR DAY WEEKEND

If I have any hope of taking the Fiero to the Drive Electric - Columbus event, the battery charger must be installed, as there is a possibility the car will need charged to make it home. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were spent working on the car and the bottom trim has all been painted satin black, there is now plexiglass over the top of the front batteries, and the battery charger is mounted in the motor compartment.

BOTTOM MOLDING PAINTED SATIN BLACK

PLEXIGLAS OVER FRONT BATTERIES

CHARGER MOUNTING BRACKETS

CHARGER MOUNTED

In addition to working on the Fiero, I was able to finish the drywall in the bathroom, got it all painted, put up the new light bar, and installed the new mirror.

The interior paint for the SLK230 also arrived late last week and I was able to wet sand and touch up all of the places where the paint had pealed off on the passenger side of the car. After all of the nicks and scratches are pre-painted, the whole console and dash will be wet sanded again, wiped down with alcohol, and a good coat of paint put on all of the surface.

It has been a busy weekend but a lot of work was done. I signed up for Chargepoint, so as soon as the charger is wired up, will take a trip to Walgreens to make sure the J1772 plug and module are working. I may need a little charge next Saturday to make it back from Drive Electric, so want to make sure everything is working properly.

Until Next Time,

Randy

SECOND BATTERY MODULE MOUNTING PREPARATION

Thursday evening I took a trip to ACE Hardware and picked up some thin steel plate, fasteners, and 12 in lengths of 1/4 in threaded rod. I had made a template of the battery module end last week and used the template to make two steel end plates. After the end plates were cut, drilled, and fitted, the strap holding the half module was loosened enough to slide the plates onto the ends and the threaded rod was inserted through the holes on each corner. Then a large clamp was used to compress the half module enough to get the nuts started on the threaded rod. There is a bit of a recess on the edges where the threaded rod comes through the end of the module, so the hardest part of getting everything bolted up was getting a 1/4 in washer behind the plates, so the plate would seat nicely on the end of the module. 

STEEL END PLATE BOLTED TO MODULE

There will be an insulated terminal bolted to the steel plate and a copper bus bar will be bent to connect the battery terminals to the terminal on the end  plate. This will be where the cables going to the rear pack will connect and a hole will be drilled between the battery terminal and the insulated terminal to connect the third module, that will be mounted in the front area where the radiator used to be mounted.

Aluminum angles will be drilled to bolt to the bottom threaded rod on the modules, then will be bolted to the deck plate that was just installed. I may put a piece of rubber sheet under the modules so they will have a little padding, instead of just sitting on the deck plate.

EXAMPLE OF ANGLE MOUNTING

Tomorrow I am going to calk and finish painting the outside of the new French Patio door I put in last weekend and will probably do some touch up painting around the inside molding but then plant on going back to ACE Hardware and picking up some more 1/4 in threaded rod to get the other half module ready. I am also going to need to order some more insulated terminals, as it seems all of the ones I had, have already been used.

It is a little exciting as the second module will allow me to drive the Fiero to work, so once the module is installed, I plan to drive the car into Columbus, OH on the weekend to test it. There is a public J1772 charger about 11 miles from home, so if it looks like I am running out of juice, I can stop there to put enough charge in the modules to get me home.

Thanks for visiting,

Randy

READY FOR WINTER

With the four day Thanksgiving Weekend, I was finally able to drive the Fiero a few miles and found that first and second gears are engaging where third and fourth should be, so will need to readjust the shifter again. I had first second and fourth engaging pretty good with just third gear out of sync but want to get all four gears to be usable. Eventually I will get it but still fear the transaxle will need to be pulled out and rebuilt.

After I returned from the drive, the garage was cleared out and the Fiero is now parked inside, to continue work on the gauges and interior.

FIERO BACK IN THE GARAGE

My wife's old laptop, that is going to be used, to control the SKYRC iMAX B6 Balance Charger, would not allow me to download files and kept giving me messages that the security settings would not allow this file to be downloaded. After spending Saturday and Sunday on the internet looking for a solution, Internet Explorer 9 and then 8 were deleted and the internet settings were modified to make sure the download files was enabled. Finally, I was able to download files using Chrome. I am going to hook the laptop to the iMax B6 Charger next week and continue bottom balancing the Better Place module.

LAPTOP WORKING AND READY TO GO

As I have drained the batteries down a little, I am also going to test the new Pic Chip that Mark Weisheimer programmed for me. Hopefully it will give me the ability to adjust the voltage to 137.5 volts so the charger can be installed in the car again. Everything is hooked up to be able to charge on a J1772 charger but has not been tested yet.

ZIVAN NG3 CHARGER

PIC CHIP INSTALLED

The temperature was in the 60s today but the weather in Ohio is supposed to to turn cold again next week, so today was a good day to get the Fiero back in the Garage, so work can continue. Hopefully by spring, the two additional modules will be installed, all of the gauges working,  and I can focus on giving the car a new paint job. Maybe this year I will actually be able to get it to EVCCON.

Until next week,

Randy

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOLLAR... WELL ALMOST!

After taking the car on the 20 mile interstate test drive, the voltage had settled around 119.5 volts and even though, there should be another 9 watt hours in the pack, according the the JLD404, I  decided to go ahead and charge. At $0.15 per kilowatt hour, it cost me $1.04 to put 6.786 KWH into the pack.

The voltage and current were lowered last week at the end of the charge, so this charge dropped from 18 amps to 17 amps. I watched the end of the charge a little closer this week and the charger still is not shutting off as soon as I would like. At 138.2 the average half cell voltage is 4.312 volts or 0.112 volts over the recommended cutoff voltage.

I decided to stay with the Zivan NG3 charger because it only weighs 15 pounds and it fits neatly in the space on the engine side of the trunk, tucked away and barely visible. The drawback is it can not be programmed without sending it in the the manufacture rep in California, paying $75 and hoping they program it the way you want it programmed. Enter DIY Electric car and a thread on putting a PIC chip in the charger that can change the voltage cut off. I got one of the chips but have never programmed it because the original HiPower cells I purchased were never going to work. Now that I have the Better Place modules, it is time to put the Pic chip in the Zivan charger, get it back in the car and hooked back up to the J1772 and 220 volt sockets.

PIC CHIP AND CIRCUIT BOARD

I left the chip with Mark Weisheimer when he worked on the Zivan charger after I blew one of the IGBTs., so contacted him to see if he had ever loaded the code. He has been heavily involved with reverse engineering the CAN commands for the Lear charger, used in several of the OEM electric and hybrid cars, so I was a bit worried he may not have time right now to program it but was relieved to get a reply telling me he would program the chip and help set it up in the charger. He also gave me some good recommendations on setting up a back up system to shut off the charger, just to be safe. I have a JLD404 and a spare contactor, so it is just a matter of wiring it up to shut off the charger if it's programming fails to do so.

A couple of the rollers on my garage door had pulled loose and the door would hardly close, so I made a trip to the hardware store for some new rollers. After working on it for a couple of hours, it is opening and closing just fine now. Also, the garage cleaning continued to try and set up space to charge the other two Better Place modules and still get the car in when it gets cold. Shouldn't be long and I will be able to get the car back inside for winter.

Until next time,

Randy

PIXELS PER MINUTE POD CAST

My son Shane and his friend Eric operate the website Pixels Per Minute, dedicated to video games and every couple of weeks, host a pod cast. Last week, they invited me to talk about electric car conversions and I must admit, it was very enjoyable being interviewed, while having a couple of  Great Lake Brewing Company brews. Below is the link to the pod cast, if you are interested in listening.. Shane, Vanessa, and Eric are really quite entertaining.

ERIC, SHANE AND GUEST

SHANE AND VANESSA

PIXELS PER MINUTE

ELECTRIC EV POD CAST

Hope you enjoy,

Randy

ALMOST READY TO TEST (CONTINUED)

We had snow in Ohio this week and the temperature was in the 20s so I decided to take my time and try to wait for a little warmer weather before taking the Fiero out on the street for a test drive.

BATTERY LEADS CONNECTED

A regular 110 volt plug was used in the original conversion for the DC-DC converter and I really do not like the way it looks but decided to keep it for now, so wired a 110 volt female plug to pack voltage. This way I can plug the IOTA DC-DC (AC-DC) charger into an outlet to keep the battery charged. There is a drain, probably from the radio, and  the Synkromotive controller has a lead that is hooked to 12 volts all the time.

 

110 VOLT PLUG FOR DC-DC CONVERTER

 I am going to email Synkromotive to find out if I can just have the hot lead energizedwhen the ignition is turned on or if it is needed to save the settings.

The charger cover was still hanging below the car, so I removed the grommet so the wires could be pulled free of the cover. I am going to leave the charger out of the car until I get the voltage set properly and am certain it will shut off without overcharging any of the batteries.

I started moving the JLD404 inside the cabin so I can monitor voltage and current while testing the car. There wires are hooked up the the traction pack and run inside of the car, so all that is left is to hook up the meter.

The last items that need done is to put the seat back in and hook up the cigarette lighter socket so I can plug in  a 12 volt dc to 120 volt ac inverter to run my laptop. I want to be able to monitor the motor and controller during the test drive.

The weather report is calling for more snow tomorrow so it may be a few days before I am able to take it on the road for a test drive.

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

WEEKEND OFF

I have been working on the Fiero several nights a week and almost every weekend since March, so I kind of slacked this weekend.

We took my wife's sister to the airport for her return flight to Florida after a weeks visit, then I picked up my son and his girl friend and we went to National Plug In Day Columbus.

They had the Tesla Model S, and Roadster, Nissan Leaf, and Chevy Volt well represented but none of the local converters brought their builds. They also were not giving any rides when we were there but I guess they did give rides later in the day. As you can see in the picture below, there were quite a few people showing interest in electric cars.

 TESLA MODEL S

 NISSAN LEAF

TESLA MODEL S

TESLA ROADSTER

CHEVY VOLT

After about an hour at the car show, we decided to get something to eat. I work in Columbus every day but never just walk around the city, so my son suggested we to to Dirty Franks on 4th St. Our plan was to get something to eat and go back to the car show but when we got there, we ended up having to wait almost 45 minutes to be seated, had to walk a block to where the car was parked to feed the meter, and by the time we were done eating, the show was over.

DIRTY FRANKS

 When we got back to the car, we had over an hour left on the meter and noticed Uncle Sam Pawn Shop across the street from where we were parked, so decided to go in. (Been watching too much Pawn Stars on the History Channel)

 

One of my coworkers, Tony,  moved to Columbus from a small Ohio town and the first year he was here, his friends in his hometown put on a surprise "Martini Party" in his front yard, to commemorate his move to the big city. It became an annual party and the second year Tony decided to burn down a pine tree that he no longer wanted in his front yard. The tree is gone but burning something is his front yard has become a Tradition of the Martini Party. Tony even had a projector and large screen for all the Buckeye fans to watch the football game.

MARTINI PARTY

Sunday morning I got my weekly fix of EVTV and it was a pretty interesting show. They are fixing rust an a Karmann Ghia that sold for a premium price on EBAY because it was supposed to be in great condition, only to find out the under body was very rusted. Then Jack introduced a new golf car project, and a new concept of bottom balancing and not worrying about how low the batteries are discharged. There has been many documented cases of the batteries going to nearly zero and coming back to full capacity when charged. All of the OEM charging equipment will be used and the battery pack will be adjusted to keep the pack from going too high. This is a neat concept, as when I sold the lead acid batteries out of the original Fiero build, I had a bunch of interest from golf cart owners and I believe that the HiPower batteries I have now would be of great interest to them when I am ready to put in the CALB pack. I have always thought that it would be fork lifts and golf carts that will help increase volumes battery sales to the point the prices will start to come down for EV converters. I don't think there is much motivation for traditional battery companies to change to a lithium chemistry because they like the business model of a battery going bad in a few years, so they can sell new ones. It will take a shift in consumer demand to change that.

Hope to have more EV stuff next week.

Regards,

Randy  

JASON HORAK'S EVCCON 2013 VIDEOS

A couple videos of the shop during EVCCON.

JASON'S DAYTONA EV BUILD BLOG

HONEY DO !

My wife's sister is coming for a visit next week, so I have been busy cleaning carpets, weed eating, and doing maintenance around the house, Needless to say, not much work was done on the Fiero. My sister in law lives in Florida and they don't get to see each other that often, so a little delay in working on the car is a small sacrifice. My wife has been pretty understanding with all the work and money I have put into the Fiero and a little payback is in order.

 

 MY WIFE AND HER SISTER

The night before I left for EVCCON, I tightened the bolts holding down the toilet and when I opened the valve back up, the packing was leaking. When I tried to tighten the packing, the nipple broke and I had to rip out some tile to get to the fitting, so most of Saturday was spent cutting and mortaring tile to fix the hole. The flange was also broken on the toilet hold down screw, so off to Home Depot to get a new 2 piece flange to tighten everything down.  When I got done, I decided to get a growler of Buckeye Lake Brewery's new Autumn Ale to try during the Buckeyes game. The beer was good and the Buckeyes did not disappoint in the game against CAL.

I was able to manage to hook up the shifter and it feels pretty smooth. Probably after I am able to drive the car, there may need to be some final tweaking, but it shifts good just sitting there.

TRANSAXLE LINKAGE

Also, the pot box was painted red and I have started to plan how to mount it in the motor compartment. This is another  item that would have been much easier to do with the motor cradle out of the car but I wanted to have the cradle in so I could see where the wires had to go.

 POT BOX AND BRACKET

I don't like the way the controller looks on the mount I originally made, so am working on something different to get the controller in the middle of the motor and away from the motor cooling air intake. I am also working on communicating with the Synkromotive Controller so I can set some initial settings.

SETTING UP THE SYNKROMOTIVE CONROLLER

Ratcheting straps were ordered from EBAY and will be used to hold the batteries in place until I get around to making the battery boxes.

BATTERY STRAP

BATTERIES STRAPPED

An email was sent to Keegan at CALIB inquiring when the 51mm connectors will arrive from China. I am ready charge the batteries and am just waiting on the connectors and bolts. The car is getting close to a test drive and I am getting a little anxious.

My son came over Sunday and helped mow the grass, so that freed up some time to work on the car. After he left, I noticed he left the driver's side door partially open and was afraid the 12 volt battery ran down but after checking the voltage, it was sill over 13 volts. He just landed a job at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, OH and I am excited for him, as the economy still has not recovered and even with a college degree, good jobs are hard to find.

Ok, I was almost done with this week's blog and decided to go out and work on the pot box. I cut a piece of flat iron and laid out the bolt holes for the pot box and bracket. Then I drilled and tapped the holes to 1/4 20 and drilled two holes to mount the plate to the side of the frame. I marked the holes on the frame and drilled holes to install nut rivets. Once everything was painted and the paint had dried, I bolted the plate with the pot box and bracket to the frame. It turned out pretty good and will be out of the way.

POT BOX MOUNTED

Still trying to get the gui for the Synkromotive controller to load on the old laptop I have in the garage and believe it  is a .net issue. I am trying to repair the .net set up but the old laptop is so slow, thought I would just come in the house and finish this week's post.

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.