123: Wednesday 17th February 2010

Today was quite productive as I sorted out how to get our 3 cars all insured so I can keep my run-around for a while longer. I shall have insurance on the Probatron starting 1st March. That's longer than I want to wait, but not too long. They didn't ask for an Engineers report either, but I shall get one when I have it tested as it could save me having inspection for the change in tax class. My friend came round and we went for another test drive. This time I had 10 good batteries and they were all fully charged. Unfortunately he couldn't stay long, so we had a little drive round the streets and clocked up 5 miles. Wasn't brave enough to hit the main road this time. It had good power delivery the whole time so the fresh batteries have cured the problem for the moment, but still no real idea about the range I will get. When we pulled up on the drive the battery discharge indicator was still showing full. After I keyed off and on again the display was showing 4 out of 5 lights. I need to look at the book for the discharge indicator and work out what the different lamps mean in terms of % depth of discharge. I don't want to take it down below 20% as this will start to damage the batteries. I have started to design a battery monitor display and I hope to make this for up to 12 batteries with a bar graph for each battery. That way I can get an instant idea if one battery is lower than the others and potentially resolve an equalization problem before it gets out of hand. I hope to make plans for this and if anybody is interested I could sell them one. Anyway, one thing at-a-time. Other future projects include converting the rev counter to read instantaneous Amps and convert the fuel gauge to show how much charge is left. I have the discharge indicator but this is just a crude 5 LED lights.