213: Sunday 16th October 2011 part 2

I have been getting upset with looking at the big hole where I had my plate for the switches and seeing my old switch panel that fitted in the pod in the centre console with a big empty space around it. All the wires were showing and it had a completely unfinished look about it. I took the plate away to get it blinged up and I am still working on the graphic display for the battery monitoring. This will be mounted on the plate along with the switches. I had the piece that I cut off the boot carpet and that had black felt and hardboard. I cut a section off, peeled the felt off and cut the hardboard to the template that I made some time ago for the previous plate. I drilled the holes and mounted the hardboard in the console then tried it in the car. It all fitted. I then spray contact adhesive on the board and stuck the felt on. Carefully with scissors I cut round the edge and then with a craft knife I cut out the holes. I then took a graphic that I had made on paper and sprayed the back with glue and stuck it on the felt. I mounted the plate in the console then went to the car, fitted the switches and then fitted the console in place. This is only a temporary solution, but it looks 100 times better than the hole I had before where the gear lever was. See photo below.

212: Sunday 16th October 2011

Bright on a Sunday morning, had a nice poached egg on toast with some bacon on the side, cup of tea, watched a bit of 'children of Dune', then turned sparkie round in front of the garage. I checked the 12v system and it was measuring 11.22 volts after being on charge all night. I unbolted the securing bracket and removed the deep cycle battery that was powering my 12v system (just about). Re-routed the cables for the 12v charger and mounted this with cable ties and a hold down bracket to stop it from jumping around. I refitted the original battery tray, added the battery that I got from my friend yesterday and fitted it with a clamping bracket at the bottom. I checked the battery yesterday with a drop tester and is was showing 'good', today I put my volt meter on it and it showed 12.60 volts, cool. In the car the gauge shows out of the empty zone on the battery alone and when the key is on and the DC-DC converter active it registered half way up and that is great as in use there it needs extra boost. With the charger connected (see photo) and the key off, then the voltage was measured at 13.78 volts. This is a moderate charge. After about 10 minutes it dropped down to 13.26 volts. This is a trickle charge. I disconnected the charger and the battery was reading 13.19 volts, so the quick boost had charged it up some, but I suspect this was just a surface voltage. At least the charger is working correctly with this battery. A positive experience (pardon the pun).

211: Saturday 15th October 2011

I went to my friends workshop and helped him building his street racer today, and in return I got a carpet for my trunk and a normal car 12v battery for my 12v system. With the plywood floor that I made yesterday, I cut the carpet to the same shape and fitted it in the trunk. As you can see in the photo it looks quite finished now. The carpet came from a Ford Mondeo that was a write-off, so it was not a perfect fit, but near enough. I only made one cut across and in it went. I shall probably fit the 12v battery tomorrow as I need to put the battery tray back and it would be much easier as it was dark now. I also sent back the 20A charger I had bought so I am reverting back to a simple car battery with a household type charger. That worked for the first 2 years and I still haven't had to buy a battery. I enjoy working on my friends car too and it is a bonus when you can get some bits in return to help my car along.

210: Friday 14th October 2011

I was having a tidy in the garage and I had the old board that went on top of my old Lucas batteries still. I wanted to cover the spare wheel, so I took the battens off the back of the plywood and cut it to fit over the spare wheel space. Next job is locate some carpet for the trunk. I had the original carpet and cut it to fit the first set of batteries I had, it would have been too small for this size trunk space. I think a decent house carpet off cut should suffice (grey or black would do).

209: Tuesday 4th October 2011

For the last few days now I have been running on 9 batteries instead of 10 and getting a better range. I am still waiting for the battery recyclers to get some more deep cycle batteries so I can go and select some and swap with the dead ones I have now. I kept swapping the 1 dead battery, and the last one was promising, but it was charging much slower than the rest, so it was dropping down and down every time I discharged. I put this on the end of the pack and arranged a copper bar extension from the terminals of the last 2 batteries, so I can move the connection from 9 to 10 batteries easily. The motor controller seems to be ok with changing some settings and fooling it to believe it is a 96v system. The power is slightly less, but the range is more than double what I was getting before and the 9 batteries are all discharging evenly. I have to connect up for 10 batteries before charging as the charge is 120v only and I don't want to change this at the moment. The process is as follows; for example when I get to work, open the hood and pull the main battery pack connector go to the trunk and move the minus terminal cable from the 9th battery to the 10th and bolt it on. re-connect under the hood and then plug in the mains cable for charging. However yesterday I forgot to put the connector back on under the hood, so the charger was connected to nothing. Shock, horror, what was I to do? Fortunately I had done some tests the night before and I knew my range was 18 miles in ideal conditions, so 7.5 miles each way should be possible, and it was. That was really lucky though. The worst case was that I would have put it on charge and sat in work for couple of hours to boost it up. I learnt from that mistake and it won't happen like that again. Meanwhile work is still progressing on the battery monitor and the centre console plate, but I have nothing to show right now.

208: Tuesday 20th September 2011

I have had a suspect battery on charge for 3 days now to get it up to the same level as the rest of the batteries on the car and after work I came home and put it on the car, then put the car on charge, so they can all charge up together. I am hoping this will get me some use for the coming week. My friend is progressing with the board layouts for the battery monitor display and then we shall be working through the sensing circuits and communications boards. My other friend is progressing with the fascia plate to mount this and the other switches on. It will either be chrome letters or a polished brass plate engraved and painted in with red. This will be on a shiny black background. This will be like putting the icing on the cake (for the interior). Meanwhile I keep phoning the battery salvage yard in the hope they will have some more bats I can do swaps with and squeezing the last few Ah of capacity out of the ones I have now. Hopefully I can win the lottery this week and get it kitted out with Lithium batteries. If I won the lottery I think I would get another Probe and convert it with a no compromise approach. The I would have a good looking hot car that could do 300 miles between charges. Dream on..... 87)

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.