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.....