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