BATTERIES, BATTERIES, ADD MORE BATERIES!

The last Better Place battery module is currently being bottom balanced so it can be synchronized into the Fiero's battery pack and I thought it would be good to show you where I gained my knowledge on bottom balancing lithium batteries.

Below is the presentation on lithium batteries from EVCCON 2014:

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

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  

SYNKROMOTIVE

Last week ended with problems getting my old laptop to connect to the Synkromotive Controller. I kept getting errors telling me the program could not launch. I went to the event viewer and there was a message that .net framework 2 was not starting, so I tried to remove it from the program menu so I could reinstall it. Both the uninstall and Repair would not work so I decided to just load it again. The Synkromotive control panel still would not work. I tried several procedures from the Microsoft site with no luck. I even tried to restore the computer back to an earlier date and just managed to wipe out the drivers for my wireless internet connection and the link to the Synkromotive Control panel, so I restored it back to the most recent restore point and got everything back, including the inability to open the controller control pane. When I got home from work on Tuesday, the updates ready icon was there and sure enough, it was a .net update. I ran the update and to my surprise, the control panel came up. I had other things to do and was not able to try and connect to the controller, but when I got home Wednesday, 12 volts was hooked up to the controller, control panel was opened, but I still was not able to connect.. After reading the manual and adjusting the port and baud rate, it finally did connect. Still no word on my connectors from CALIB but one menu shows 24 volts as the minimum voltage for the controller, so I may hook up two 12 volt batteries just to test the set-up and make sure everything works when connected to the motor.

SYNKROMOTIVE CONTROL PANEL

 Saturday a new platform was fabricated to mount the controller on top of the Warp9 motor. Two of the three stator bolt holes were used  Two counter sunk bolts were drilled out to 11/32 and the threads cut off to make a counter sunk washer, then a 1/4 inch spacer was made. A plate was made to go on top of the spacers that the controller will bolt to. Button head 5/16 inch stainless steel bolts were used to fasten it all together and hold the stator windings in place. The fan on the Synkromotive Controller was turned to the cabin side of the engine bay, so the wires will be visible from the rear of the car making them a little easier to get to.

 

CONTROLLER RE-MOUNTED 

My wife went with her sister to a class reunion, so after getting the controller mounted, it was off to J.Gumbo's in Baltimore, OH for a bowl of gumbo and a glass of Southern Tier Pumking 2013. Both were very tasty and it was nice talking to Fred and Heather Baughman, the owners.

 

J GUMBO'S BALTIMORE, OH

Sunday, I kind of took a break from the Fiero and went to get a hair cut, them watched the NASCAR NAPCAR, race. I saw the beginning and end but felt pretty refreshed after it was over, so I went out and spliced in the speedometer connector I purchased on EBAY. The old one got tangled when I dropped the cradle and ripped off. The wires on the new connector were a different color so I had to find the diagram to make sure I hooked it up correctly.

 

SPEED SENSOR DIAGRAM 

SPEED SENSOR CONNECTOR 

MOTOR COMPARTMENT 

Until next post,

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