166: Saturday 23rd October 2010
It has happened again, but this time I can detect the symptoms. The throttle pot is starting to go again, so I have limited my car use over the weekend as I have some new pots on order. 10k 1W wire wound linear pot x 2 should hopefully do the job and I have a spare in case they are not quite up to the job. There are higher wattage types also, but I believe the ones I have fitted now cannot tolerate being outdoors and being a carbon track type, it would not behave well with moisture. The wire wound type is sealed and much more tolerant of moisture. Hopefully this will be something I can put to bed for some time. The new pots should arrive Monday and will probably take about an hour to fit.
165: Sunday 17th October 2010
Today I was dropping off a friend of my daughter, then I lost control of the throttle. I was getting no drive until I nailed the throttle pedal, then I got full throttle. It was like having a throttle switch with full on and full off as the only states. I put him in 3rd gear to smooth the drive out a bit and got home. I checked the throttle using the tester function on the controller with the gearbox in neutral and I could see no change until about 80% when the motor fired up. So the throttle potentiometer was playing up. This a heavy duty sealed type potentiometer, so there was nothing I could do but change it. I had some 10k pots in my electronics spares, but the shaft was 4mm compared to 8mm of the original, so I used some brass tubing to increase the shaft size. I fitted the lever back and put it all on the car, then I had the controller learn the new throttle pot extremes. When I tried it again, control was back to normal so I had nice control across the range of the pedal. Thankfully this happened in the early afternoon, so I had a good amount of time to solve the problem. So it all seems o.k. now and I have a bag full of these potentiometers in my garage in case it goes again. I think this was my first breakdown where something has actually gone wrong and needed repair other than just charging up. I am not counting my original batteries as they were second hand to start with and only a temporary solution. When they did give in, it was nothing less than expected and planned for.
164: Saturday 16th October 2010
I knew it was a mistake to say that Sparky was behaving himself. The Probatron was all charged ready for its first trip to football training. We set out with 18 miles done, arrived at the normal time at football training with 125v still reading on the tester, all was well. 2 hours later we set off to come home and once we were on the main road it seemed to be constantly uphill all the way home. I was watching the battery voltage going down and down until when we was about 6 miles from home the controller started cutting out. I limped it into a lay by and just let the voltage build up again. when we were back at 120v I set off again, but I knew it wouldn't last long. We got within 2 miles of home and it was cutting out again. I knew we had a hill to go up, so we stopped for another 5 minutes or so to let the voltage recover again, and we managed to limp home. After about 4 hours of charging a quick local trip out and all was back to normal. It is clear now that the Probatron cannot maintain a long period of higher current. I could probably try again using up to 3rd gear only so as to keep the current lower and drive at a slower speed, say 50 mph. I also believe that having my daughter and my wife probably added over 100kg of weight and this affected the range. So for now I shall set a 30 mile limit for our journeys when we are all in the car as we got to 31 miles when it cut out first time today. I just hope this hasn't affected the life of the batteries too much. I can't believe my test runs gave me 40 miles with maybe a couple more to spare. However this was done in several shorter journeys. I learnt something today. It is good to know the Probatron is back to normal just for a charge though.
163: Friday 15th October 2010
Nothing much happening with the Probatron recently. It has been behaving itself.
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There has been, and will continue to be an accelerated amount of news surrounding the introduction of the various large brand offerings of electric cars.
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The Chevy Volt has taken a beating in the press for keeping some of the details about the drive system quiet while they get their patents sorted out. Nissan are soaking up all the press they can get for their battery only electric vehicle the Leaf. Mitsubishi with the iMiev battery car, Peugeot's ion (iMiev with different calibrations and paint job), the Renault Fluence and the relationship with Better Place for battery swapping stations etc.
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I am confident we will start seeing lots of pretentious adverts on TV soon, if they haven't already started. I have seen some on-line. My wife loves the Nissan Leaf polar bear advert, but was only interested in how cuddly the bear was, no interest in the car at all.
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There has been much talk about how China wants to control the technology that is allowed to be sold there.
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As you may know I work for Ford, and initially they had others build retro-fit prototypes in the form of Smiths for the Transit Connect and Magna for the Ford Focus and then taken them on to develop it further in the Ford factories. The Transit connect now being kitted out by Azure Dynamics and the Focus still by Magna. Fairly well proven systems in both cases and Ford are not making so much noise about the electrification as some of the other brands and in my opinion appear to be offering the customer electric options if they want them rather than thrusting a position or standpoint on the public. There has been some publicity, but not too much boasting.
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Then to continue my rant, there is all the hoo-har about charging points. I know that in the U.K. I could plug in just about anywhere there is a 240v 3 pin plug. It seems that every utility company has a fancy looking post with a socket on it that costs thousands of $s or £s. It cost me less than £20 to set up a 240v 16A socket alongside my garage door. I find it frustrating that the authorities can't just find a local electrician to put in 10 ordinary electric points that are suitable for car charging in every large car park and pay the car wash guy to paint them spaces green with some floor paint and write "Electric Car Parking" alongside all for about £2000. That would be about 2 days work for me on my own and would make me fairly well-off if I could get a couple of gigs each week. Apart from everything else it could all be done in just a few months and cost just a few millions for the whole country. It seems that we are seeing this sort of money being spent just on consultations with not a damn thing being installed anywhere. Then when some fancy posts do appear one or two at-a-time in some obscure places and then cost 10s of thousands of pounds or dollars.
----
I read regularly about people arguing that coal fired power stations producing CO2 when generating electric that would be used to charge cars. No matter who does the calculating, this still pollutes less than the millions of petrol cars on the road, but the figures now show that truly electric cars are not completely clean. I watched a program on TV that had the American government in for about 1.5 trillion dollars worth of coal fired power stations before 2050 with a life expectancy of about 50 years, but using sequestration to clean the emissions into porous rock beds. I am not totally convinced that this egg basket is the right place to put all your solutions either. So another idea to come out was closed nuclear power stations where the waste is re-used over and over. Wind power and solar power don't have enough coverage for the outlay to provide for all.
----
For all the things that are starting now, the next 5 years are going to be really interesting. I would be surprised if there was another war somehow related to the introduction of electric cars and at least one major environmental disaster. I am sure that in 2015 we will still be trying to understand what is the winning solution set, whether this is right or wrong, and by 2020 we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.
----
I will be really interested to get some comments going on these subjects since I have only got my amp gauge and matrix display to build now for the Probatron. Plus adding Lambo door hinges and a blingy paint job.
----
There has been, and will continue to be an accelerated amount of news surrounding the introduction of the various large brand offerings of electric cars.
----
The Chevy Volt has taken a beating in the press for keeping some of the details about the drive system quiet while they get their patents sorted out. Nissan are soaking up all the press they can get for their battery only electric vehicle the Leaf. Mitsubishi with the iMiev battery car, Peugeot's ion (iMiev with different calibrations and paint job), the Renault Fluence and the relationship with Better Place for battery swapping stations etc.
----
I am confident we will start seeing lots of pretentious adverts on TV soon, if they haven't already started. I have seen some on-line. My wife loves the Nissan Leaf polar bear advert, but was only interested in how cuddly the bear was, no interest in the car at all.
----
There has been much talk about how China wants to control the technology that is allowed to be sold there.
----
As you may know I work for Ford, and initially they had others build retro-fit prototypes in the form of Smiths for the Transit Connect and Magna for the Ford Focus and then taken them on to develop it further in the Ford factories. The Transit connect now being kitted out by Azure Dynamics and the Focus still by Magna. Fairly well proven systems in both cases and Ford are not making so much noise about the electrification as some of the other brands and in my opinion appear to be offering the customer electric options if they want them rather than thrusting a position or standpoint on the public. There has been some publicity, but not too much boasting.
----
Then to continue my rant, there is all the hoo-har about charging points. I know that in the U.K. I could plug in just about anywhere there is a 240v 3 pin plug. It seems that every utility company has a fancy looking post with a socket on it that costs thousands of $s or £s. It cost me less than £20 to set up a 240v 16A socket alongside my garage door. I find it frustrating that the authorities can't just find a local electrician to put in 10 ordinary electric points that are suitable for car charging in every large car park and pay the car wash guy to paint them spaces green with some floor paint and write "Electric Car Parking" alongside all for about £2000. That would be about 2 days work for me on my own and would make me fairly well-off if I could get a couple of gigs each week. Apart from everything else it could all be done in just a few months and cost just a few millions for the whole country. It seems that we are seeing this sort of money being spent just on consultations with not a damn thing being installed anywhere. Then when some fancy posts do appear one or two at-a-time in some obscure places and then cost 10s of thousands of pounds or dollars.
----
I read regularly about people arguing that coal fired power stations producing CO2 when generating electric that would be used to charge cars. No matter who does the calculating, this still pollutes less than the millions of petrol cars on the road, but the figures now show that truly electric cars are not completely clean. I watched a program on TV that had the American government in for about 1.5 trillion dollars worth of coal fired power stations before 2050 with a life expectancy of about 50 years, but using sequestration to clean the emissions into porous rock beds. I am not totally convinced that this egg basket is the right place to put all your solutions either. So another idea to come out was closed nuclear power stations where the waste is re-used over and over. Wind power and solar power don't have enough coverage for the outlay to provide for all.
----
For all the things that are starting now, the next 5 years are going to be really interesting. I would be surprised if there was another war somehow related to the introduction of electric cars and at least one major environmental disaster. I am sure that in 2015 we will still be trying to understand what is the winning solution set, whether this is right or wrong, and by 2020 we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.
----
I will be really interested to get some comments going on these subjects since I have only got my amp gauge and matrix display to build now for the Probatron. Plus adding Lambo door hinges and a blingy paint job.
162: Wednesday 29th September 2010
Yesterday I did another range check run. I drove carefully home from work using the gears to try and keep the motor in its most efficient ranges. I got a phone call to pick up my daughter from school, then I dropped her off to her friends later. So I headed for the main road and had clocked 10 miles before I started my run. My objective was to achieve at least 36 miles so I could do the return journey to football training every Saturday and when we have a home match on Sundays. Our Jeep Cherokee is only returning 13mpg round the streets and not much better on a run, so this will save us another £60 per month by my reckoning. Anyway back to the range run, I hit some traffic and that slowed me down, but I managed to keep going at a steady rate and got home with 116v and 40miles on the clock, perfect. I am sure that starting from home and going to football that is a continuous run the whole time is easily possible and I shall do it first time this weekend. Today I was going along the very last stretch of road at work before the car park and I got a real bad squealing from the right rear wheel when braking. It was really loud. I had no choice but to drive home like this as it did not affect the driving. I got the car up on a jack and checked the wheel and found that the anti squeal bracket had somehow got pushed across and was causing the squeal by rubbing on the brake disc. For this to happen, the brake pads would need to have opened wide and then one of them got caught on the edge of the squeal plate to push it across when the brake was applied. I cannot figure out how this happened. I took 2 screwdrivers and manipulated the squeal plate back in position and all is well again. I also fitted some locking wheel nuts that I have had for some time now. I had one rusty plain wheel nut on each wheel as the last lot of locking nuts broke and rusted. So all nice shiny nuts now :-) and 40 miles range.
161: Tuesday 28th September 2010
Last night I went for a run along the main road near where I live to get a better idea of my range with these new batteries. I had already come home from work (7 miles) in sport mode without much regard for economising. I then dropped my daughter off at her friends house and started my run with about 9 miles already done. I completed 34 miles and ran the batteries down to 115.2 volts which is a bit further than I wanted to go. The car was still driving fine when I pulled up at home with hardly any noticeable loss of acceleration or speed. I did the whole distance in sport mode, so on several occasions I would have been drawing 800A. I also completed the whole run in 3rd gear including pulling away and cruising at 55 to 60 MPH. I hope to do another trial tonight from when I leave work with a full charge, I will drive in economy mode and use the gears for pulling away and above 40 mph I shall use 4th and 5th gear in order to maximize regen braking. I still could do with setting my brushes to a neutral position as they are currently set advanced for CCW operation. This is not ideal for regen braking and causes arcing above approximately 3500 rpm. However I can go up to 57 MPH in 4th gear at 3500 rpm, so I should not need to go above 4th to get max regen without arcing. Also 4th gear should be able to take me to 80 MPH at about 5000rpm. In economy mode the current will be limited to 500A, so this should also increase the range a bit.
160: Monday 27th September 2010
I have now completed over 3000 miles of electric driving since 9th March 2010. After fixing the problem of the batteries shifting from side to side I am now getting a banging noise from the bracket when I go over big bumps in the road. I know I don't have much suspension travel with all the batteries in the trunk, but this is not the problem. When I mounted the battery rack I used riv-nuts just to hold the rack in place and to stop movement from side to side and back and forth. The problem is none of these things, but the batteries are trying to jump up when I go over a big bump and I believe this has pulled the riv-nuts out. They will still keep the rack in position, but not for jumping up on bumps. Fortunately the holes for the riv nuts are easily accessible from under the car, so I should be able to re-fix the bracket with bigger bolts and using nuts and big washers underneath. This should hold the bracket down and get rid of the banging noises. I never really had this problem with the old batteries, so I need to spend a bit of time just shoring these up some more. I may find some time this week to work on the instruments some more too.
159: Sunday 19th September 2010
I tightened the nuts on the hold down brackets in the trunk, and checked the connections. All is still well. I am coming up on 3000 electric miles recorded. You may remember that my speedo was broken for a while when there was some plastic fragments jammed in the mile counter, so I have probably already passed this point now, but I have about 100 miles to go before it shows on my clocks. I have been busy rebuilding my kitchen so I have not done much to the Probatron for a while now. I hope to start publishing some more detailed accounts of certain parts of the build. I tend to provide just enough information to make it readable by most people, so if you have a suggestion of a part of my build you want explained in more detail then please leave a comment and we can have some dialogue before I publish a detailed account.
158: Tuesday 7th September 2010
I got an email at work from our director of public affairs stating that there was an article about the Probatron in the 1st September Autocar magazine. It also said that I need to get in quick as the new edition comes out tomorrow. So I rushed down to the shop and sure enough there was an article on page 19. The photo below shows an edited version (I've taken out the stuff that has nothing to do with the Probatron). Another little claim to fame.
157: Monday 6th September 2010
I have been driving around with my new batteries sliding from side to side for over a week now, so I decided to shift them over to one side and pack the brackets out with wood to stop them moving. There is still scope for a couple of millimetres of movement, but this will be much more secure now and the batteries wont move enough to thump or work the terminal connections lose. I checked all the terminals and the one battery that had moved the most had loosened slightly, but not to be a problem. I tightened them all up a nip and now that problem is solved. Now, back to that current gauge......
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