Last Saturday I put the gear lever back in and I have driven it for a week now and it does make a very slight difference range, but not much. Usually I would be in 3rd gear only.
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I exploded a battery on Friday night. I had dropped my daughter off and was on my way back home and was hooning along to try for top speed. As I had kept the throttle pedal nailed to the floor, I was pulling max current for too long (800A) and I heard a bang and lost all power. I drifted off the roundabout and was parked on a small link road to another roundabout. After about 5 minutes the battery pack voltage had recovered and I was able to drive for a few seconds. I had called the rescue service and I was waiting. So repeatedly letting the charge build up then driving forward a few feet eventually got me off the roundabout. The recovery van turned up, but they had been trained recently in how to handle electric cars and told if they were not sure then just don't touch it. He towed me home then hung around while I swapped a battery. It was all running again after about 10 minutes work. These salvage batteries are o.k for now, but I now know that they can only tolerate so much hard driving. They were originally installed in a telecoms back up supply, so not really designed for these kind of heavy loads, at least not sustained for any time. There was no visible sign that battery was damaged, but the voltage did not even register on my tester. Another lesson learnt.
231: Wednesday 2nd May 2012
I made a new panel for the direction switch and stop switch with some hardboard and black felt. I glued some hard board on the edges of the pod so the panel had something to push against. I also painted the edges of the colour touchscreen black, as I could see an annoying thin white line down the edge of my mount. I re-used the old hole for the PAS switch. At the bottom of the photo you can see the panel with holes in it where the gear lever is going to go again.
I had a result today as I found all the parts of my gear lever. It was raining so I thought that could wait for another night. In the photo below you can see this new panel is very neat this time as there are no fixings on show. I like the look of the black felt as it makes things hide.
230: Monday 30th April 2012
After having the new colour touch screen mounted for 1 day it was obvious that I had to move the location. I had to take my eyes right off the road to look at it and there was a bit of glare from looking from the side. I took the display out of the pod and removed the centre console. I took out the right side of the air vent and mounted the display there. It looks more professional and more like it was part of the original car. I had more trouble getting a decent photo. In this one the flash makes everything dark.
This photo has a nasty reflection of the flash. The display is much sharper than the photos are showing.
This photo is out of focus, but it shows more of how the brightness looks in reality.
I am well happy now. I can use the pod space to mount the forward / reverse control like I had it first time, and put the gear lever back when I can find all the bits. I have the gear lever, but it is the gaiter and the panel that goes on the back that I am missing now. I am also missing the panel that I had the switches on before, but I can make another if necessary.
229: Sunday 29th April 2012
I mounted the 2 circuit boards today. Before, they were just hanging on the cables resting on the rubber insulator, but needed fixing properly. I made up a 2 part bracket for the left and right sides of the circuit boards. This was basically 2 pieces of aluminium angle joined together to make a sort of squared U shape. In the photo you can see this going under the rubber insulator on the floor. The USB cable then runs off to the back of centre console.
At the back of the centre console is a convenient panel that is quite easy to just pull off, so I wound the cable up under there and it is now ready for a laptop to plug in.
228: Friday 27th April 2012
Yesterday I took the battery tester my friend gave me and modified it so the connections were nearer to the handle and that gave me real long tips that I could get close together to test these narrow batteries. This is called a "drop test" as it measures the voltage drop with the battery under a heavy load. I believe the load is about 200A as there is a ribbon heater between the terminals with a voltage gauge across them. I tested all 10 batteries and found 3 were running at 6v, 1 at 7v and 1 at 9v. I had 5 spare batteries, so I swapped them and now they were all reading 12v. I took it for a test drive after charging and got 15 miles straight off. Like an idiot I forget to then put it back on charge so this morning I came out and see my cable hanging up and I used the Fiat for one day (bah petrol!). I am hoping this might cycle up a bit. I was only just getting 9 miles and that is what I need if I stopped for swim on my way home form work any day. It was getting precarious getting home with almost no power left on the last stretch. Hopefully I shall be alright for a while now. I have contacted Frank at the battery salvage yard to ask him for some more swappers, but he has none at the moment. Last week we got ZEN' brother running and my friend is going clear out my Mitsubishi Pajero (ZEN) and get him round to me in the next couple of weeks to start the conversion to electric. I have started a blog, but I haven't published it yet. More details when that is available.
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Also yesterday I got my display, the processor board to drive it and the dual CAN ports board for receiving signals from the measuring boards. Ray is still working on the measuring boards and the display software needs more development, but I wanted to get it mounted in the car to move things along. I removed the fascia panel from the centre console and took out the clock module panel. I cut a slot in the top of the pod on the clock module panel and slipped the display into it, marked the bottom where the fixing lugs on the display came to and cut out so that the display could slide all the way down. I made a paper template that fitted the pod closely and marked the boundary of the display on it.
I took a piece of hardboard, marked and cut the dimensions from the template, painted the edges black and covered it with black felt using spray glue to stick it.
Very carefully with a very sharp knife I cut round the hardboard to make the new fascia panel for the display to sit behind.
As the new fascia was a tight fit, I put it in position and put the display behind it. It all lined up nicely, so I pushed the fascia into the position, removed the display and glued the fascia all round the back edges to fix it permanently in position with contact adhesive.
Once the glue was dry I put the display behind the fascia and squeezed a rubber grommet behind it to hold it in position. In the photo you can see it powered on my bench. The display looks a bit dark, but that is because of the camera flash. It is actually very bright in daylight.
I refitted the clock and mounted it all back in the centre console. I had rewired the connections from the display to the processor board with about 2 foot of ribbon cable to give me some freedom of movement to mount the boards under the centre console.
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In this photo you can see the whole centre console. Again the display looks dark due to the camera flash. I now need to mount the processor and CAN boards under the console and run a USB cable to just under the ash tray so I can program the display without having to pull the car apart every time I want to connect to it with my laptop.
Other news is that I am going to re-install the gear lever so I can try to drive more efficiently and sometimes go faster on longer stretches of road. Generally with the poor batteries I am topping out at 50 MPH and that is a struggle. I know that this would be real easy in 5th gear instead of 3rd. Also my 3rd gear will be getting very worn. I can make easier pulling away in 2nd gear too. In general it will be much easier to control how I am loading the batteries in relation to the speed I am travelling and the speed I want to be doing. I have learned a lot about this over the last months.
227: Tuesday 17th April 2012
I have not had much to post recently as not much has been happening with the Probatron. I am waiting for a number of things to happen at the moment. When I get my bonus and back pay from work, I can fit the body kit and get it in for paint. I have been doing some more consulting with my friend and colleague Ray who is constructing the circuits for my battery monitoring system. Since I last blogged the design has changed and I shall be getting a colour touch screen instead of a basic single colour screen. 4D systems do a great little 3 inch touch screen that is real cheap. It also has a graphics processor on board, so you can send drawing commands direct via serial link. I shall post some photos soon.
Very importantly though, I have secured my next project car and am nearly ready to get it home. There is a story behind this....
My daughter has a friend who she met through her sister at her football team. Her friend lives some 10 miles away, so to see each other they have to get lifts. My wife Mary had a Cherokee Jeep and loved it, but it was expensive to run and was in need of some expensive repairs so we sold it. She still pines for her 4x4, so I suggested converting a Jeep to electric, both problems solved. My daughter friend's dad had 2 Mitsubishi Pajeros sitting on his front drive looking sorry for themselves, so when he dropped my daughter off one time I asked him what he was planning to do with them and at first he said he would probably scrap them, but had not really thought about it. I saw him again at football and he had spoken to the wife and she wanted to keep one and have him get it working. I then offered to do that for him. I knew it would involve an engine swap and I would get the other car as payment for my time and labour.
He had 2 as one was working , but he got it mainly for the engine and other spare parts as the gearbox was fubar. It would be no good for me anyway as it was an automatic. I did enquire about locking an automatic in 2nd and running it direct just as a single ratio box, but the problem is keeping a high pressure flow of oil through the gears as they are very small for the amount of work they do and would get damaged after a short time if there wasn't sufficient oil flow to keep it all lubed and cool. Even if I could rig up a high pressure electric oil pump, routing the oil through "the brain" network of oil channels is an enigma in itself. In the long run it is easier and cheaper to get a manual replacement gearbox with a 4WD transfer case.
One of the objectives with this conversion is a cheap price. I have set a target of £1000 total. I have already got some batteries to get it going initially and test it. I have a friend lined up to get me an old forklift motor and I am looking at the 1000A re-volt controller for the drive. I shall make my own couplings for the gearbox, but no clutch or flywheel this time. This weekend should hopefully see the other Pajero up and running, so I can then take mine and get it home to start work. I shall have another blog for this. The new car shall be called ZEN. The number plate has CEV in it (Cheap Electric Vehicle!).
Very importantly though, I have secured my next project car and am nearly ready to get it home. There is a story behind this....
My daughter has a friend who she met through her sister at her football team. Her friend lives some 10 miles away, so to see each other they have to get lifts. My wife Mary had a Cherokee Jeep and loved it, but it was expensive to run and was in need of some expensive repairs so we sold it. She still pines for her 4x4, so I suggested converting a Jeep to electric, both problems solved. My daughter friend's dad had 2 Mitsubishi Pajeros sitting on his front drive looking sorry for themselves, so when he dropped my daughter off one time I asked him what he was planning to do with them and at first he said he would probably scrap them, but had not really thought about it. I saw him again at football and he had spoken to the wife and she wanted to keep one and have him get it working. I then offered to do that for him. I knew it would involve an engine swap and I would get the other car as payment for my time and labour.
He had 2 as one was working , but he got it mainly for the engine and other spare parts as the gearbox was fubar. It would be no good for me anyway as it was an automatic. I did enquire about locking an automatic in 2nd and running it direct just as a single ratio box, but the problem is keeping a high pressure flow of oil through the gears as they are very small for the amount of work they do and would get damaged after a short time if there wasn't sufficient oil flow to keep it all lubed and cool. Even if I could rig up a high pressure electric oil pump, routing the oil through "the brain" network of oil channels is an enigma in itself. In the long run it is easier and cheaper to get a manual replacement gearbox with a 4WD transfer case.
One of the objectives with this conversion is a cheap price. I have set a target of £1000 total. I have already got some batteries to get it going initially and test it. I have a friend lined up to get me an old forklift motor and I am looking at the 1000A re-volt controller for the drive. I shall make my own couplings for the gearbox, but no clutch or flywheel this time. This weekend should hopefully see the other Pajero up and running, so I can then take mine and get it home to start work. I shall have another blog for this. The new car shall be called ZEN. The number plate has CEV in it (Cheap Electric Vehicle!).
226: Tuesday 31st January 2012
Yesterday my body kit arrived. I had a couple of things to do when I got home, so it was late before I got to even see it in the packaging. I started unwrapping and got as far as the side skirts, then gave up. It was too dark and I need to get everything on the driveway to unpack it easily. So I left the front and rear skirts wrapped and unpacked them when I came home today. There was a slight bit of damage with a couple of chips where the pointy bits are by the ends of the wheel arches. I shall need to repair these before they go on, so I need a small fibre glass kit to rebuild these corners. The damage is only a few millimetres, but I cannot overlook it as it would notice for sure. The kit itself in general is good quality and has a good finish to it. I am very pleased with the quality of the parts. It was a shame it had some slight damage.
225: Wednesday 25th January 2012
I went and got new wheels at lunch time today. They are 18 inch diameter x 8 inch width with 225x40x18 tyres. They are from a VW Scirocco, but I got them with Ford badges in the centres. The photos don't do it justice.
224: Sunday 22nd January 2012
Tuesday my new sunroof panel arrived. Saturday I set about changing it over. Firstly I had to remove the old panel and take the rubber strip off the edge. In the photo below you can see the amount of rust on the underneath and this had bubbled through on the outside, right across the back edge. To remove the sunroof I had to open the sunroof a few inches, pull the trim front edge downwards to release it from the clips, then fully open the roof and put a long thin bar or piece of wood between the trim and the roof panel to release the other clips around the sides and back edge. There are seven clips all together. Take the trim away by sliding forward and out of the top of the sunroof opening, then shut the roof, undo the four nuts and the roof panel is free.
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In the pictures below I have drawn a green circle to highlight the position of the hole for the trim clips. These needed to be drilled, very carefully. I used a 3mm drill to drill a pilot hole in the centre of each position for the clip holes. Fortunately these were very easy to find as they had been taped over when the fibreglass mould was made and the circle was clear to see. I found the centre of each mark and drilled through very carefully. The fibreglass is very thin and a drill goes through very easily. The risk is going right through and out the other side leaving a hole in the roof. That would be tragic.
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In the next photo the hole has been drilled very carefully again with an 8mm drill. I measured this at 7.6mm on the original roof panel, but 8mm was the nearest I could get. Once again there was a high risk of going right through.
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In the next photo you can see the clips fitted.
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Finally, the roof panel is lower into position and bolted down. In this photo it is sitting high as I did not realise the four nuts that were on the panel when it was deliver needed to be removed. I had to go for a drive and the increase in wind noise was incredible. This was exaggerated because electric drive is so quiet and you can hear every noise. When I got back I took the nuts off and refitted the roof panel and then it was sitting up a touch on 2 corners that were diagonally opposite. I took off the rubber shims from the sliding bracket and tried again. It was still a little bit proud of the main roof on the same 2 corners. I shaved the brackets with a grinder as they were aluminium and this brought each them down a couple of millimetres. It is still very slightly proud, but it looks right now. I took it for a drive and there was a bit of wind noise, but this was due to 2 factors; I had not fitted the inside trim and it was a very windy day. I fitted the inside trim back on and went for another drive and it was back to normal, except I had a rust free roof.
I also cleaned all the rust from around the sunroof opening and cleaned all the sliding mechanism. I got everything working perfectly so the roof opens freely now just like new. Idecided to wait a little longer to order some wheels asI have another couple of options am exploring now. I hope to get the body kit on Wednesday, so hopefully I can get this fitted next weekend.
223: Sunday 15th January 2012
Yesterday I fitted an earth wire from the bolt on the back of my radio linked to a screw on the body under the centre console. The problem was that sometimes the earth through the connector was not so good and I would get a horrible whine from the electric power steering pump. All o.k. now. still waiting for body kit and sunroof. Been holding back on the wheels until paint done, but prices will go up soon, so will order now. I have decided to go for the original red with gold metal flake and heavy lacquer, on the body kit this should look cool. I have emailed the two companies to get my parts moving. Now I'm off to order my wheels.... :o)
222: Thursday 5th January 2012
I had an email back from the people I have ordered my glass fibre sunroof from and they said that the guy who makes them was on vacation for 2 weeks over Christmas, so I should get this soon. I have now ordered a body kit and tomorrow I am getting some new wheels. The photo below (free advertising) shows the body kit in silver, but I am having mine painted bright metallic red with a gold flip. The batteries are holding up well and easily doing my journey to work now. I shall try and do another couple of test runs at the weekend now the batteries are "cycled up". I contacted the battery salvage yard to let them know I had 8 batteries to swap when they have some more come in. I still have 5 spares and 2 more that I know are low capacity, but do work and 2 more that may be recoverable slightly. Hopefully he will get some more soon and we can come to an arrangement for swapping them over for some fresher ones. 
221: Sunday 1st January 2012
Happy new year! The people that were supposed to be fitting the new windscreen didn't come. They were expected by 4pm, so I called them at that time and the call centre guy had no information, so he said he needed to make some calls and call me back. 15 minutes later he called back and the guy who was supposed to fit my screen had gone home sick, but before he went he phoned his Manager who neglected to tell the call centre. Since they schedule the work they could not know it was not getting done. I told them I did not want to pay anything for the next appointment, so they noted that. The new appointment was for 27th December and they came (a little late), and I got the charge for windscreen excess of £60 reduced to £45, so that was not bad for a new screen. They brought the correct trim for a Ford Probe, but it was very difficult to fit and kept popping off. The fitter told me it was a bad design and asked if I wanted them to try a universal trim. They did and the finish is better than the original. Also the edge of the universal trim is easier to lift when the paint person wants to mask the windscreen, cool. Still waiting for the sunroof panel to come so I can fit it and get the car into paint. Today I fitted Aeroquip one piece wiper blades. They look neater and wipe a whole load better. Friday I borrowed my friends volt drop tester. This applies a 275A load for 12v. I tested the batteries I had on the garage floor. The two remaining red ones I had were reading very low, but all the yellow ones were showing a good charge, and this is after standing for several weeks. Today I swapped the 2 batteries that were lower than the others for 2 of the yellow ones and then went for a drive. Directly my range went from around 9 miles to 11.2 miles. I gave it a full charge and ran it again for 13.6 miles. This gives me confidence for my work commute as this was 7 miles each way, but my passenger has moved and that adds another 2 miles each way. I shall charge up at work, so 13.6 miles is easily more than I need to complete the trip. This will save me over £120 per month in petrol using my Fiat Punto. Also I shall have enough range to take my daughter to football training and loads of other little trips. 1st of January and I am back up and fully running, great start to 2012.
220: Tuesday 20th December 2011
I have had a couple of charges now and the distance was up to 8 miles while using the screen heater. This is still not much and I still want to swap 2 batteries as the rest are still showing a good charge when the 2 are flat. I spoke to the paint guy and he can work with the windscreen in and mask round it, so there is no need to have the windscreen out and back in again at different times. I am having the screen changed today for a new one and this takes care of the crack too. I am still awaiting my sunroof panel then I can fit it and hand it over to be painted all over, cool.
219: Sunday 18th December 2011
Fitted 120v charger back on today. Worked fine, first charge, 80% indicator came on almost straight away. I ran a tester across each battery and found my 2 suspect batteries at 16v and the others at around 14v. About 3 hours later the charger had finished and I got 4 miles and it was flat again. Ran a tester again and found 12.5v on most, but 10.15 and 11.2v on the 2 suspect batteries. Charged again for about 3 hours and got 7 miles after running the screen heater to clear the frost off the screen, so that is better. I am hoping that I can get the batteries to cycle up and take more charge over the next few charges. I want to get the battery monitoring system up and running very soon now, so I can see exactly what is happening while I am driving. I have handed this over to my friend now who is using it as a case study for developing several modular systems. My system shall include a display board, a dual CAN board and 2 CAN 10 way measuring ports. This all connects together with serial links over CAN and a USB connection for programming. Looking forward to this now.
218: Tuesday 14th December 2011
I have had a few attempts at getting Sparkie going again, but failed because although the batteries were showing over 12v, when they were put on the car and loaded, the voltage fell dramatically. I found 1 battery at 7v and another at 5v. I swapped them for 2 others and they responded badly too. I was suspicious of the position of the batteries, but this was not a problem. I swapped them for another 2 and they were o.k., but all the batteries were semi-flat. My suspicions about the charger were correct. I set it back to running at 120v and it was continually resetting. It was out of warranty so I had to bite the bullet and send it back for repair. I paid the £141 bill yesterday and it is on it's way back to me now. I spoke to the guy who did the repair and it was one of the fans that had faulted and was pulling the logic board supply down when it powered up and this was causing the reset. It has been fixed and cleaned and is coming back in the next few days. Hopefully I can get my batteries charged up and go for a run soon to see what range I can get. I am going to borrow a 12v drop tester from a friend to find the best 10 batteries and put them all on the car. At least I should be able to charge up again soon. I have ordered a glass fibre sun roof panel as mine is rusty. Otherwise there is one little rust spot on the back of the lift gate, the rest of the car is fine and just needs taking back and repainting.
217:Thursday 1st December 2011
Saturday I stuck my electric badge on the reflector between the rear lights This won't need to be moved when it goes for a paint job, cool. 
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Monday I rang the battery recyclers and they told me that the batteries could be delivered Thursday (today), and I should check to confirm that is still o.k. on Wednesday. So Wednesday came, delivery confirmed and 7:30 Thursday they arrived. I did a quick check with a volt meter and the lowest was 12.07v, the rest were all over 12.5 volts. Thankfully I now finally have a good set of batteries. These should keep me going for ages now so I can save up for LiFePO4 200Ah batteries. Hopefully they may drop in price too or somebody come along with an extraordinary deal. Lots of things can happen, but at least now I can get my car back on the road again. Coming home from work and go figure, it was raining! I had an easy night, watched some TV and took my daughter to football training. I have a day off tomorrow, so maybe in the afternoon I can get the batteries hooked up. I have a full set of the red ones on the car. They are the same spec as the yellow, and I have them loaded in the car already. I need to move the rear batteries into the rack as they are just loose in the trunk at the moment and the front are in position, but need to be connected and fixed down. I need to modify the charger back to working with 10 batteries then I should be set. The red batteries match the car almost perfectly.....
Monday I rang the battery recyclers and they told me that the batteries could be delivered Thursday (today), and I should check to confirm that is still o.k. on Wednesday. So Wednesday came, delivery confirmed and 7:30 Thursday they arrived. I did a quick check with a volt meter and the lowest was 12.07v, the rest were all over 12.5 volts. Thankfully I now finally have a good set of batteries. These should keep me going for ages now so I can save up for LiFePO4 200Ah batteries. Hopefully they may drop in price too or somebody come along with an extraordinary deal. Lots of things can happen, but at least now I can get my car back on the road again. Coming home from work and go figure, it was raining! I had an easy night, watched some TV and took my daughter to football training. I have a day off tomorrow, so maybe in the afternoon I can get the batteries hooked up. I have a full set of the red ones on the car. They are the same spec as the yellow, and I have them loaded in the car already. I need to move the rear batteries into the rack as they are just loose in the trunk at the moment and the front are in position, but need to be connected and fixed down. I need to modify the charger back to working with 10 batteries then I should be set. The red batteries match the car almost perfectly.....
216: Friday 25th November 2011
Several things to report from the last couple of weeks; I have now secured a swap deal with the battery recyclers for 23 lead acid batteries just like the ones I have already. This is especially good as they will swap directly and no modifications required except to put my charger back to work with 10 batteries again. I have been assured that these ones have been tested using a load and they are all holding 12v. The previous set were discharged down to zero volts and I had to recover them. I have some funding that I could have used to get Lithium batteries, but I could only get 100Ah. Now although this would give me more range than I have had so far, it would not be my goal. Since I now have a stock of 13 spare batteries coming as well as the 10 on the car, I can keep sparkie going for a long time with a limited range. I am hoping for about 20 miles or more this time. This takes care of most of my journeys. For me to say my car is in a finished state with respect to batteries, I would need to get 200Ah Lithium, that should give me a range of around 100 miles and for that I need to save some more money. It will come in time and sparkie will be complete. I have also got my wife to agree to let me get her another Jeep Cherokee and convert it to electric. We had one and she loved it, but it was just too expensive to run at 13 miles per gallon on a good day. The objective for me is to buy and convert for under £1000. I have some batteries I can use now and the car could take the weight of 20 batteries when I get some Lithium for sparkie. I am looking at the revolt 1000A controller and a salvaged motor from a Fork Lift truck. I am not sure about the charger yet. I believe the revolt will set me back about £500 and this is less than half what I paid for my Zapi controller and meters out more current too. I like the idea of open source code for the controller, so I can tie in a battery monitoring and display system. I also got my "electric" badges that I ordered from cloud electric in USA via Tim, cheers Tim! See photo below. I got 2 because I thought I would damage one removing it before I sent it off for a paint job, however I have decided to stick it on the plastic reflector between the rear lights, so it can just stay on. So I shall have a spare if anybody is interested for a modest price. I am supposed to be getting some made up by rapid prototyping at work in the original Ford Probe writing style, but I have not heard anything yet. Tomorrow I shall unload all the batteries to the front of the garage so they are ready for collection and I have space to receive the next lot. On Monday I shall call the recyclers to arrange the drop off and swap back and hopefully by next weekend I shall be up and running again. 
215: Saturday 12th November 2011
Yesterday I set about changing the output voltages for the Zivan charger. I wanted to try to operate on 8 batteries instead of 10. Since I melted that last battery I have tried to find some batteries good enough to use as dummies just to get a charge into the car. I had been charging with ten and running the drive on 9 batteries. I have a reasonable set of 8 batteries and this is enough to drive my car (just). In the photo below you can see 2 of the screws that need to be removed to take the case off the charger.
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The next photo shows the other 2 screws at the other end, then the case comes off, but you do have to prize the mains cable out of the case as the rubber grommet sits in a slot that goes round a corner on the case. I have circled the screws in green. When removing the case take care not to knock the indicator LED and the selector switch for the different charge curves. The selector switch has a screwdriver adapter pushed on it and it pops off quite easily. If you disturb the LED then it may not line up with the window in the case when you put the case back.
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I connected the charger to the mains and measured the output at the small Anderson connector and found that it starts at 143.8v for a few seconds then changes to 136.5v as the indicator goes from red to yellow to green flashing. As I have 10 batteries that makes 14.38 volts and 13.65 volts per battery on average. If I multiply these by 8 then I know what the new voltages should be. I calculated them as 115.04 volts initially, then settling to 109.2 volts when the indicator is green flashing. The photo below shows the logic board sticking out of the main board. I have outlined it in green. There is a voltage and current adjustment multi-turn potentiometer on this board. Take extreme care not to touch the heat sinks as some of them will hold a high voltage and give you a shock.
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In absolutely tiny writing on the board you can just make out the letters "I" and "v" beside the two potentiometers. The right hand one in the photo was adjusted, but the voltage would not go low enough.
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On the main board by the Anderson connector is a resistor labelled "R20". I soldered the equivalent of 2Mohms resistor across this resistor. I turned the power off first! When I powered up and allowed it to settle, the voltage was too low, so using the voltage adjustment pot again I wound it up to exactly 109.2 volts. When I cycled the power off and on again the initial voltage was 115.1 and then it settled to 109.2 volts. This was exactly what I wanted, so after breakfast today I fitted it back on the car. In the photo below I have put a plastic clamp between the crocodile clips on my tester just to stop them touching together.
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In this photo you can see the tester showing the final voltage after I had completed the adjustments. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, the charger was then stuck in a reset cycle as it was still seeing a high resistance load from the batteries, so it was continuously starting and resetting. I shall try rotating some batteries round again to see if I can get it to charge properly. I had this problem before I started and since I spoke to the supplier on the phone they confirmed it is caused by a high resistance in the battery pack.
The next photo shows the other 2 screws at the other end, then the case comes off, but you do have to prize the mains cable out of the case as the rubber grommet sits in a slot that goes round a corner on the case. I have circled the screws in green. When removing the case take care not to knock the indicator LED and the selector switch for the different charge curves. The selector switch has a screwdriver adapter pushed on it and it pops off quite easily. If you disturb the LED then it may not line up with the window in the case when you put the case back.
I connected the charger to the mains and measured the output at the small Anderson connector and found that it starts at 143.8v for a few seconds then changes to 136.5v as the indicator goes from red to yellow to green flashing. As I have 10 batteries that makes 14.38 volts and 13.65 volts per battery on average. If I multiply these by 8 then I know what the new voltages should be. I calculated them as 115.04 volts initially, then settling to 109.2 volts when the indicator is green flashing. The photo below shows the logic board sticking out of the main board. I have outlined it in green. There is a voltage and current adjustment multi-turn potentiometer on this board. Take extreme care not to touch the heat sinks as some of them will hold a high voltage and give you a shock.
In absolutely tiny writing on the board you can just make out the letters "I" and "v" beside the two potentiometers. The right hand one in the photo was adjusted, but the voltage would not go low enough.
On the main board by the Anderson connector is a resistor labelled "R20". I soldered the equivalent of 2Mohms resistor across this resistor. I turned the power off first! When I powered up and allowed it to settle, the voltage was too low, so using the voltage adjustment pot again I wound it up to exactly 109.2 volts. When I cycled the power off and on again the initial voltage was 115.1 and then it settled to 109.2 volts. This was exactly what I wanted, so after breakfast today I fitted it back on the car. In the photo below I have put a plastic clamp between the crocodile clips on my tester just to stop them touching together.
In this photo you can see the tester showing the final voltage after I had completed the adjustments. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, the charger was then stuck in a reset cycle as it was still seeing a high resistance load from the batteries, so it was continuously starting and resetting. I shall try rotating some batteries round again to see if I can get it to charge properly. I had this problem before I started and since I spoke to the supplier on the phone they confirmed it is caused by a high resistance in the battery pack.
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The next problem is that the new lower voltages mean that the contactors are not in the correct voltage range as they are meant to be 120v, but now operating at 96v. I was getting a problem with the reverse contactor not releasing some times. I am concerned now that this will be too much of a stretch to try and run like this. I desperately need some more batteries. I shall persevere and see how it goes.
214: Saturday 29th October 2011
My daughter had asked me to drop her off at a party and I had been running on 10 batteries all day doing just short journeys. As the weather has been mild this week and I had put the package tray back in the rear, the batteries were running nice and warm. I had a few hills to hit on this short journey and my 10th battery (the suspect one) sang out a little whine and then a hiss. We carried on wondering where the noise had come from when there was a huge his and a big cloud formed in the back of the car. We pulled over and opened all the windows quickly, then opened the trunk to find a melted 10th battery. Fortunately I had been running on 9 batteries for several weeks and had terminals with easy access set up and a wing nut to secure the connection. So I went through the process, to the front of the car and unplugged the Anderson connector, disconnected the 10th battery and moved the terminal onto the 9th battery, to the front and reconnected the Anderson connector. We shut everything and got back in the car ready to carry on the journey on 9 batteries, but I had no power. Then I realised I had hit the emergency stop button, so I released it and keyed on and away we went again. That was that drama over with. See the photos below, this is a proper melted battery. 
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the next photo shows the vent cover has popped off and melted. There was water under the cover from the steam that was ejected.
the next photo shows the vent cover has popped off and melted. There was water under the cover from the steam that was ejected.
213: Sunday 16th October 2011 part 2
I have been getting upset with looking at the big hole where I had my plate for the switches and seeing my old switch panel that fitted in the pod in the centre console with a big empty space around it. All the wires were showing and it had a completely unfinished look about it. I took the plate away to get it blinged up and I am still working on the graphic display for the battery monitoring. This will be mounted on the plate along with the switches. I had the piece that I cut off the boot carpet and that had black felt and hardboard. I cut a section off, peeled the felt off and cut the hardboard to the template that I made some time ago for the previous plate. I drilled the holes and mounted the hardboard in the console then tried it in the car. It all fitted. I then spray contact adhesive on the board and stuck the felt on. Carefully with scissors I cut round the edge and then with a craft knife I cut out the holes. I then took a graphic that I had made on paper and sprayed the back with glue and stuck it on the felt. I mounted the plate in the console then went to the car, fitted the switches and then fitted the console in place. This is only a temporary solution, but it looks 100 times better than the hole I had before where the gear lever was. See photo below.
212: Sunday 16th October 2011
Bright on a Sunday morning, had a nice poached egg on toast with some bacon on the side, cup of tea, watched a bit of 'children of Dune', then turned sparkie round in front of the garage. I checked the 12v system and it was measuring 11.22 volts after being on charge all night. I unbolted the securing bracket and removed the deep cycle battery that was powering my 12v system (just about). Re-routed the cables for the 12v charger and mounted this with cable ties and a hold down bracket to stop it from jumping around. I refitted the original battery tray, added the battery that I got from my friend yesterday and fitted it with a clamping bracket at the bottom. I checked the battery yesterday with a drop tester and is was showing 'good', today I put my volt meter on it and it showed 12.60 volts, cool. In the car the gauge shows out of the empty zone on the battery alone and when the key is on and the DC-DC converter active it registered half way up and that is great as in use there it needs extra boost. With the charger connected (see photo) and the key off, then the voltage was measured at 13.78 volts. This is a moderate charge. After about 10 minutes it dropped down to 13.26 volts. This is a trickle charge. I disconnected the charger and the battery was reading 13.19 volts, so the quick boost had charged it up some, but I suspect this was just a surface voltage. At least the charger is working correctly with this battery. A positive experience (pardon the pun). 
211: Saturday 15th October 2011
I went to my friends workshop and helped him building his street racer today, and in return I got a carpet for my trunk and a normal car 12v battery for my 12v system. With the plywood floor that I made yesterday, I cut the carpet to the same shape and fitted it in the trunk. As you can see in the photo it looks quite finished now. The carpet came from a Ford Mondeo that was a write-off, so it was not a perfect fit, but near enough. I only made one cut across and in it went. I shall probably fit the 12v battery tomorrow as I need to put the battery tray back and it would be much easier as it was dark now. I also sent back the 20A charger I had bought so I am reverting back to a simple car battery with a household type charger. That worked for the first 2 years and I still haven't had to buy a battery. I enjoy working on my friends car too and it is a bonus when you can get some bits in return to help my car along.
210: Friday 14th October 2011
I was having a tidy in the garage and I had the old board that went on top of my old Lucas batteries still. I wanted to cover the spare wheel, so I took the battens off the back of the plywood and cut it to fit over the spare wheel space. Next job is locate some carpet for the trunk. I had the original carpet and cut it to fit the first set of batteries I had, it would have been too small for this size trunk space. I think a decent house carpet off cut should suffice (grey or black would do).
209: Tuesday 4th October 2011
For the last few days now I have been running on 9 batteries instead of 10 and getting a better range. I am still waiting for the battery recyclers to get some more deep cycle batteries so I can go and select some and swap with the dead ones I have now. I kept swapping the 1 dead battery, and the last one was promising, but it was charging much slower than the rest, so it was dropping down and down every time I discharged. I put this on the end of the pack and arranged a copper bar extension from the terminals of the last 2 batteries, so I can move the connection from 9 to 10 batteries easily. The motor controller seems to be ok with changing some settings and fooling it to believe it is a 96v system. The power is slightly less, but the range is more than double what I was getting before and the 9 batteries are all discharging evenly. I have to connect up for 10 batteries before charging as the charge is 120v only and I don't want to change this at the moment. The process is as follows; for example when I get to work, open the hood and pull the main battery pack connector go to the trunk and move the minus terminal cable from the 9th battery to the 10th and bolt it on. re-connect under the hood and then plug in the mains cable for charging. However yesterday I forgot to put the connector back on under the hood, so the charger was connected to nothing. Shock, horror, what was I to do? Fortunately I had done some tests the night before and I knew my range was 18 miles in ideal conditions, so 7.5 miles each way should be possible, and it was. That was really lucky though. The worst case was that I would have put it on charge and sat in work for couple of hours to boost it up. I learnt from that mistake and it won't happen like that again. Meanwhile work is still progressing on the battery monitor and the centre console plate, but I have nothing to show right now.
208: Tuesday 20th September 2011
I have had a suspect battery on charge for 3 days now to get it up to the same level as the rest of the batteries on the car and after work I came home and put it on the car, then put the car on charge, so they can all charge up together. I am hoping this will get me some use for the coming week. My friend is progressing with the board layouts for the battery monitor display and then we shall be working through the sensing circuits and communications boards. My other friend is progressing with the fascia plate to mount this and the other switches on. It will either be chrome letters or a polished brass plate engraved and painted in with red. This will be on a shiny black background. This will be like putting the icing on the cake (for the interior). Meanwhile I keep phoning the battery salvage yard in the hope they will have some more bats I can do swaps with and squeezing the last few Ah of capacity out of the ones I have now. Hopefully I can win the lottery this week and get it kitted out with Lithium batteries. If I won the lottery I think I would get another Probe and convert it with a no compromise approach. The I would have a good looking hot car that could do 300 miles between charges. Dream on..... 87)
207: Tuesday 30th August 2011
Got back to work today after the public holiday and my friend who is working on my display circuit had done some more work on the background template. We discussed some changes and how to complete the background before we move onto the sensing circuits for the batteries. The photo below shows were he got to with the display. It is starting to look good and also resembles the design that I made up some time ago.
206: Monday 29th August 2011
Not much happening at the moment. My 12v charger on the car decided to pop. It is probably because it was charging a much bigger battery since I swapped the normal car battery for a deep cycle one. I got another charger working and I then fitted the new one I bought a few weeks ago on the car, so now it will get a boost to the 12v battery when plugged in. That should take some strain off the DC-DC converter.
205: Sunday 21st August 2011
I had my Friend Mark from facebook come round for the first time on Wednesday and I gave him the tour. He videoed everything and then edited it a bit, so here is a 6 minute 30 vid clip showing round the car and driving etc. My only disappointment is that I did not have the new plate for the controls inside otherwise it is just about done now. I am sure there will be plenty more upgrades to come still. I have the battery monitoring system in development and that will be added once I have the new plate and the display mounted on it. You can watch it better directly on youtube. Enjoy the vid clip......
204: Thursday 11th August 2011
My evening ritual has become the following: come home from work, put a tester on the batteries and measure them. Find the left one in the rear is down to about 6 or 7 volts, change the battery for the latest one I have on charge, put the car on charge. Then I come back some hours later and go for a drive to make sure I can get enough range to get to work the next day. I have a spare car in case it is too low. The picture below shows today's sacrifice. This battery was down to 6v and rather hot when I took it off. Notice the bulge on the side. This actually sticks out about an inch. I have another on now and it is performing a bit better than the last couple. I spoke to my supplier at the recycling yard and he has no batteries in at the moment, but is happy to swap them again for good ones when he gets some in. I reckon I might have 12 to swap by the time he gets them. I am to phone him in the middle of next week to see if he has got any more stock. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get a completely good set of 10 batteries. For now it is doing me for my journey to work and back. Fortunately I can charge up at work otherwise even this short journey would not be possible.
203: Sunday 7th August 2011
Today I checked my email and found that my friend and enterprise colleague in the display venture had actually got my display working on command. Cool, he has put a temporary logo on the display for demonstration purposes. Next step is to rig up the battery monitor circuits so I can then work out how to display the information on this display. First I need to figure out my friends PIC chip coding..... ;o)
Had a bit of a mishap! I have been monitoring the battery voltages and found one to be a bit lower than the others, but then I noticed it had kind of melted a bit. I swapped this one out with another that I have been conditioning. It was showing better voltages, but still went down below 10v when the pack was done. This was due to severe imbalance. I have swapped this with the one running the 12v system as the demands are much lower and it may perk up yet. I did some test runs and the 12v system is holding its own still and the battery is getting conditioned too. I found another of the batteries is also reading quite low. I am hoping to get a set balance nicely soon so I can achieve some respectable mileage. I am getting a fairly reliable 10 miles with the imbalances. I hope to get this up above 15-20 miles soon. If I cannot get this right soon, then I am going to need to bottom balance the batteries and charge them all up together and hopefully this will bring them in line a bit more and also get the maximum charge in them.
While I was doing this work I noticed the batteries hissing while on charge and then I realised I had not put in the tubes for venting the gases when charging. In this photo you can see the network of pipes linked across the top at the front of the batteries.
Here is a closer photo of the tubes connecting the charging vents.
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