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.....
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.....
216: Friday 25th November 2011
Several things to report from the last couple of weeks; I have now secured a swap deal with the battery recyclers for 23 lead acid batteries just like the ones I have already. This is especially good as they will swap directly and no modifications required except to put my charger back to work with 10 batteries again. I have been assured that these ones have been tested using a load and they are all holding 12v. The previous set were discharged down to zero volts and I had to recover them. I have some funding that I could have used to get Lithium batteries, but I could only get 100Ah. Now although this would give me more range than I have had so far, it would not be my goal. Since I now have a stock of 13 spare batteries coming as well as the 10 on the car, I can keep sparkie going for a long time with a limited range. I am hoping for about 20 miles or more this time. This takes care of most of my journeys. For me to say my car is in a finished state with respect to batteries, I would need to get 200Ah Lithium, that should give me a range of around 100 miles and for that I need to save some more money. It will come in time and sparkie will be complete. I have also got my wife to agree to let me get her another Jeep Cherokee and convert it to electric. We had one and she loved it, but it was just too expensive to run at 13 miles per gallon on a good day. The objective for me is to buy and convert for under £1000. I have some batteries I can use now and the car could take the weight of 20 batteries when I get some Lithium for sparkie. I am looking at the revolt 1000A controller and a salvaged motor from a Fork Lift truck. I am not sure about the charger yet. I believe the revolt will set me back about £500 and this is less than half what I paid for my Zapi controller and meters out more current too. I like the idea of open source code for the controller, so I can tie in a battery monitoring and display system. I also got my "electric" badges that I ordered from cloud electric in USA via Tim, cheers Tim! See photo below. I got 2 because I thought I would damage one removing it before I sent it off for a paint job, however I have decided to stick it on the plastic reflector between the rear lights, so it can just stay on. So I shall have a spare if anybody is interested for a modest price. I am supposed to be getting some made up by rapid prototyping at work in the original Ford Probe writing style, but I have not heard anything yet. Tomorrow I shall unload all the batteries to the front of the garage so they are ready for collection and I have space to receive the next lot. On Monday I shall call the recyclers to arrange the drop off and swap back and hopefully by next weekend I shall be up and running again. 
215: Saturday 12th November 2011
Yesterday I set about changing the output voltages for the Zivan charger. I wanted to try to operate on 8 batteries instead of 10. Since I melted that last battery I have tried to find some batteries good enough to use as dummies just to get a charge into the car. I had been charging with ten and running the drive on 9 batteries. I have a reasonable set of 8 batteries and this is enough to drive my car (just). In the photo below you can see 2 of the screws that need to be removed to take the case off the charger.
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The next photo shows the other 2 screws at the other end, then the case comes off, but you do have to prize the mains cable out of the case as the rubber grommet sits in a slot that goes round a corner on the case. I have circled the screws in green. When removing the case take care not to knock the indicator LED and the selector switch for the different charge curves. The selector switch has a screwdriver adapter pushed on it and it pops off quite easily. If you disturb the LED then it may not line up with the window in the case when you put the case back.
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I connected the charger to the mains and measured the output at the small Anderson connector and found that it starts at 143.8v for a few seconds then changes to 136.5v as the indicator goes from red to yellow to green flashing. As I have 10 batteries that makes 14.38 volts and 13.65 volts per battery on average. If I multiply these by 8 then I know what the new voltages should be. I calculated them as 115.04 volts initially, then settling to 109.2 volts when the indicator is green flashing. The photo below shows the logic board sticking out of the main board. I have outlined it in green. There is a voltage and current adjustment multi-turn potentiometer on this board. Take extreme care not to touch the heat sinks as some of them will hold a high voltage and give you a shock.
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In absolutely tiny writing on the board you can just make out the letters "I" and "v" beside the two potentiometers. The right hand one in the photo was adjusted, but the voltage would not go low enough.
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On the main board by the Anderson connector is a resistor labelled "R20". I soldered the equivalent of 2Mohms resistor across this resistor. I turned the power off first! When I powered up and allowed it to settle, the voltage was too low, so using the voltage adjustment pot again I wound it up to exactly 109.2 volts. When I cycled the power off and on again the initial voltage was 115.1 and then it settled to 109.2 volts. This was exactly what I wanted, so after breakfast today I fitted it back on the car. In the photo below I have put a plastic clamp between the crocodile clips on my tester just to stop them touching together.
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In this photo you can see the tester showing the final voltage after I had completed the adjustments. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, the charger was then stuck in a reset cycle as it was still seeing a high resistance load from the batteries, so it was continuously starting and resetting. I shall try rotating some batteries round again to see if I can get it to charge properly. I had this problem before I started and since I spoke to the supplier on the phone they confirmed it is caused by a high resistance in the battery pack.
The next photo shows the other 2 screws at the other end, then the case comes off, but you do have to prize the mains cable out of the case as the rubber grommet sits in a slot that goes round a corner on the case. I have circled the screws in green. When removing the case take care not to knock the indicator LED and the selector switch for the different charge curves. The selector switch has a screwdriver adapter pushed on it and it pops off quite easily. If you disturb the LED then it may not line up with the window in the case when you put the case back.
I connected the charger to the mains and measured the output at the small Anderson connector and found that it starts at 143.8v for a few seconds then changes to 136.5v as the indicator goes from red to yellow to green flashing. As I have 10 batteries that makes 14.38 volts and 13.65 volts per battery on average. If I multiply these by 8 then I know what the new voltages should be. I calculated them as 115.04 volts initially, then settling to 109.2 volts when the indicator is green flashing. The photo below shows the logic board sticking out of the main board. I have outlined it in green. There is a voltage and current adjustment multi-turn potentiometer on this board. Take extreme care not to touch the heat sinks as some of them will hold a high voltage and give you a shock.
In absolutely tiny writing on the board you can just make out the letters "I" and "v" beside the two potentiometers. The right hand one in the photo was adjusted, but the voltage would not go low enough.
On the main board by the Anderson connector is a resistor labelled "R20". I soldered the equivalent of 2Mohms resistor across this resistor. I turned the power off first! When I powered up and allowed it to settle, the voltage was too low, so using the voltage adjustment pot again I wound it up to exactly 109.2 volts. When I cycled the power off and on again the initial voltage was 115.1 and then it settled to 109.2 volts. This was exactly what I wanted, so after breakfast today I fitted it back on the car. In the photo below I have put a plastic clamp between the crocodile clips on my tester just to stop them touching together.
In this photo you can see the tester showing the final voltage after I had completed the adjustments. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, the charger was then stuck in a reset cycle as it was still seeing a high resistance load from the batteries, so it was continuously starting and resetting. I shall try rotating some batteries round again to see if I can get it to charge properly. I had this problem before I started and since I spoke to the supplier on the phone they confirmed it is caused by a high resistance in the battery pack.
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The next problem is that the new lower voltages mean that the contactors are not in the correct voltage range as they are meant to be 120v, but now operating at 96v. I was getting a problem with the reverse contactor not releasing some times. I am concerned now that this will be too much of a stretch to try and run like this. I desperately need some more batteries. I shall persevere and see how it goes.
214: Saturday 29th October 2011
My daughter had asked me to drop her off at a party and I had been running on 10 batteries all day doing just short journeys. As the weather has been mild this week and I had put the package tray back in the rear, the batteries were running nice and warm. I had a few hills to hit on this short journey and my 10th battery (the suspect one) sang out a little whine and then a hiss. We carried on wondering where the noise had come from when there was a huge his and a big cloud formed in the back of the car. We pulled over and opened all the windows quickly, then opened the trunk to find a melted 10th battery. Fortunately I had been running on 9 batteries for several weeks and had terminals with easy access set up and a wing nut to secure the connection. So I went through the process, to the front of the car and unplugged the Anderson connector, disconnected the 10th battery and moved the terminal onto the 9th battery, to the front and reconnected the Anderson connector. We shut everything and got back in the car ready to carry on the journey on 9 batteries, but I had no power. Then I realised I had hit the emergency stop button, so I released it and keyed on and away we went again. That was that drama over with. See the photos below, this is a proper melted battery. 
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the next photo shows the vent cover has popped off and melted. There was water under the cover from the steam that was ejected.
the next photo shows the vent cover has popped off and melted. There was water under the cover from the steam that was ejected.
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.
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