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)

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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.

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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.

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Here is a closer photo of the tubes connecting the charging vents.

202: Friday 5th August 2011

Did nothing today apart from watching movies. I am glad because it was raining and really humid. Yesterday I finished mounting the batteries in the trunk. In the photo below you can see the left side hold down bracket. Notice how there is a "dog-leg" going off the side panel where there was a fixing to hold a cargo net, that was a handy fixing point. These were also fixed to the floor of the trunk.

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In this photo you can better see the hold down bracket across the top. This has a bend in it so that it applies pressure to all the batteries across the width. After the previous battery slide I was making sure these were very secure.

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After having done a couple of drives in sport mode (the full 800A max) all the 12v systems started failing at around 7 miles. This was due to a failure of the main 12v battery (normal car battery). With a garage full of deep cycle batteries, it seemed like a crime to go and buy a new ordinary car battery that is not really designed for this kind of usage, so I set about figuring out how to mount another battery in the front and it just about fits. My first attempt would not allow me to shut the hood, but with some adjustments of heights and angles I was able to mount this battery firmly and make a hold down bracket too. As space was limited, I had to weld this bracket together as I could not have nuts and bolts sticking up in the air. It does make a neater job too, but you also need to get it right first time or it is a real pain re-doing. The connections were made using some cables I had laying around. I shall revisit this some time soon. After my first drive, the 12v system was low, but had not been charged after I had installed it. The second drive, after a charge saw my 12v system at a much healthier level and in both cases I did not lose any functionality, so that is another upgrade done. This cost me an extra half day that I hadn't planned for. I still need to get the front up in the air to refit the wheel arch liners and some clips on the front bumper. In the photo below, the space behind the left head lamp is where the old battery was, and the battery on its end is the new one.

201: Tuesday 2nd August 2011

Yesterday I got the batteries clamped down and connected in the front of the car.

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I then added the crash impact assembly to the front.

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In this photo you can see the copper strips that I used to make the connections.

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Using cooper bar makes the connections neater and there is very little that can go wrong with these connections.

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Today started with the bumper fitted on the top fixings only. In the photo below you can make out the side lights and indicators, but the photo does not do it justice.

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In this photo just the side lights are on and the LEDs are a bit clearer.

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Up close and personal, you start to get an idea of what the sidelights look like for real. I tried to take some shots at night, but the contrast was too much and the photos were either a glare or just the lights and license plate on a black background when no flash was used.

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Last job of today was to mount the batteries in the rear. I still need to add some fixings to the front bumper, but I need some axle stands to jack the car up so I can get to all the fixings underneath. I borrowed these from my brother, but by the time I got round to his house I had to go back have dinner and go badminton. I did not want to start on this late, so it is a job for tomorrow. Also I have started making the hold down brackets for the rear batteries. I went for a little test drive and all the batteries slid to one side with a thud. That was a little worrying. Because I have mounted these batteries on their ends (you can do that with AGMs), I have created an enormous boot space. The rear suspension looks much more healthy now it has less weight than the previous batteries.