277: Thursday 26th February 2015

Today I received new batteries. 38 x CALB 180Ah giving a 21.6kWh pack. I have ordered a JLD 404 to monitor the amp hours in and out and I need to send my charger back to have a new microprocessor put in so I can select Lithium. The microprocessor I have at the moment only has charging curves for Lead Acid batteries. I also need to make new racking, lots to do now.

276: Saturday 7th February 2015

It's been nearly 3 months since my last post and since then I have found a couple of new sources for recycled batteries and I now have a set of 10 lead acid batteries that I like and 9 spares, so I should be o.k. for a while. I was chatting on Facebook in the Ford Probe group and Danny ze dog showed me some front lights he had made. I was most impressed with the actual LED strips and he pointed me to the place I can get them. The strips are 2 colours in one strip (white and orange) so ideal for the side light units on the probe. I also was approached by a man called Duncan who lives near me in a pub car park as I pulled in. He was fascinated with my car as he has 6 Ford Probes himself. His wife has a pink one! Apparently my car is a legend in Ford Probe Clubs and forums.
The picture above shows the white element and below shows the orange. If you connect both then the orange takes priority and the white comes back on after about half of a second from when the orange goes off. That works well for the indicators and side lights. These strips are bright enough that I don't need the main lights to drive around lit streets. What I have on the Probatron right now was the previous attempt where I glued 63 white LEDs along the top and 63 orange LEDs along the bottom. 3 white LEDs have stopped working on one side and it looks like the car has a tooth missing. The white had a slight violet tinge to it and was nowhere near as bright as these strips even though they were ultra bright LED types. I got new lenses from Duncan and the new strips from Ali-express (china). The strips are actually nearly twice as long, but I cut them to fit. You get 2 strips in the order too, one for each side so that is just what I needed.