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.

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This photo has a nasty reflection of the flash. The display is much sharper than the photos are showing.

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This photo is out of focus, but it shows more of how the brightness looks in reality.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Very carefully with a very sharp knife I cut round the hardboard to make the new fascia panel for the display to sit behind.

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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.

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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.

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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!).