EV Trans Am

Today:

• All regulators installed and checked for voltage at jumpers
• Throttle potbox installed, connected to pedal by existing cable
• Control board reinstalled
• Low voltage components tested at key on (power steering motor, blower fan, vacuum pump)
• High voltage wiring complete to circuit breaker and contactors
• Broke stud on negative contactor (whoops)
• Installed PFC-30 charger
• Made 220V to 110V adapter
• Tested charger, all batteries show 13.2V at 10 amp draw
• Tested regulators – seemed ok, but the yellow leds didn’t act as I expected.  Reviewing the manual to see what’s going on.

Tomorrow we hope to do a test run!  Need to wire the negative contactor, circuit breaker, and low voltage wiring to the controller.

So a few days ago I thought I was going to take a break from working and let things settle down after the whirlwind of making battery racks and mounting so many things.  The good news is I ended up not making it that long.  After a frustrating day on the computer at work (new software that doesn’t work and has to be used) I left early and decided to work a little on the car.  That was a Thursday and things clicked off pretty well.

So roll forward to last Saturday and I woke up early and went out to wash the gas-car.  I found that there were little specks all over it making it feel kind of gritty.  I hadn’t washed it in a few weeks so I attributed it to road grime but after closer inspection I found out it was metal dust from all the cutting and grinding on the Trans Am.  So learn a lesson from me and move your good cars further away while working on the ev convert.  Most of it came off with a clay bar but I’ll need to go over it another time or two to get the stubborn bits.  I needed my energy that day to get some car stuff done…

So last Saturday and some evenings this week I finished a bunch of small tasks and actually got a little ahead of myself on some things.  A list:

• Completed high voltage wiring.  I have not connected all the batteries because I don’t want 156 volts humming around while I’m still doing the low voltage, but everything is ready to bolt in.
• Completed and mounted the main control board.  High voltage wiring is complete and installed from fuse to contactor to shunt to controller and from the controller to the motor.
• Installed the DC/DC controller and wired it in
• Completed wiring for the motor blower
• Completed wiring for the power steering motor
• Made wires and a terminal block that will be electrically live with key on and tied all my relays into that.

So I said I got ahead of myself.  Today I removed the main control board after scrapping my hand up one too many times.  I thought I could install the battery regulators just reaching under it but it was a pain.  While I have it out I completed the 6 guage wire wires that will connect the charger to the most positive battery up front and most negative in the back.  I bought two lengths, 10-ft of black and 5-ft of white.  Thinking that I had wire to spare I cut off about 1.5-ft of the white to use to tie the DC-DC converter to the negative battery post.  That left me with about 2″ to spare when I ran the wires from the front to the back.  I had to reroute the long wire from one side of the car to the other because it was too short, but ultimately it worked out.  I have another tip to add to my collection for future convertors: While it is a good idea to do a test run of your wiring to make sure it is long enough, you shouldn’t get over zealous and actually attach the wire to the car, especially if you haven’t crimped the lugs on because you don’t know how long the wire needs to be.  I was able to remove only one clip and make my crimp on the side of the car, but it was close.

I also tested my pot box and it seems pretty linear.  I hope the fire didn’t damage it.  Oh, you didn’t know about the fire?  Well I’ll tell you.  I was going off memory and for some reason I thought you had to connect a battery to the pot box so the resistance could be measured.  I did that and connected the multi-meter to the wires that will connect to the Raptor.  Raptor is cooled to say than controller.  As soon as I moved the throttle lever, the battery dumped who knows how many amps into the too small wires that probably shouldn’t have been connected that was anyhow.  So the wires puffed and were on fire.   I blew it out and figured out that a resistor works whether there is a load going through it or not.  So I undid all the connections except for the multi-meters leads and it still shows me 0-5k ohms resistance, pretty linear but a little jumping.  It could have been my unsteady left hand holding the assembly and my unsteady right hand  moving the lever, so we’ll see how it goes once it it mounted to something solid.

I made a couple more HV cables Friday night.  The bolts on the circuit breaker and shunt are bigger than the holes in the lugs.  I’d already run the cable to length for the CB so I drilled out the 5/16 hole to 3/8.  It took the tinning off the lug but it will be covered with heatshrink and the hole won’t actually be in contact with the washers so no worries.

I’m a little confused about the motor wiring.  The diagram from NetGain says it doesn’t matter which line from the controller goes where.  It seams that if a reversing contactor can be used to change the direction of the motor by switching wires (I’m not 100% on how reversing contactors work though) then the motor would spin the wrong way if wired wrong.

The other complicating point is that the preferred wiring configuration doesn’t match the wiring given in the bench test.  Given that the bench test worked how we wanted I’m wondering why we can’t wire it that way.

Also, the A1 to S1 connection on the WarP 11 is so close that two lugs won’t even fit between.  I either need a copper bar to drill out or make a long enough cable that can bend 180 degrees and not interfere with the A2 or S2 connections.

Getting close, counting down by weeks.

Made 26 wires today, about 5″ long to run from the battery terminals to the battery regulators.  Regulators are from Manzanita Micro, Mk2d analogs.  They’ll monitor the batteries and tell the PFC-30 when to throttle back so all the batteries take an equal charge without blowing anybody up.

Lots of cutting, crimping, soldering and heat shrinking (with only 1 visit to ACE for more wire and heat shrink), but it took less time than I though.

Also canoed this morning on the Wekiva.  That was fun.

The rear racks are in.  All 13 batteries can be stowed.  I’ll clean up the metal and paint the rear racks then load them up for cable measuring.

Yay!

As my wife says it takes almost as long to post happenings here as it does to do happenings.

13 hours in this week doing battery racks. I know because I got a timecard from Fabricator Mike. I got another couple in this weekend touching up some stuff.

• Removed, painted and reinstalled battery racks (they are bolted to mounts that are welded to the frame)
• Installed the forced air cooling on the motor, excluding wiring
• Found out the zolox speed sensor and kit do NOT work on a WarP 11.  Hopefully some modification (more than expected, I knew it wasn’t a perfect fit) will make it work.
• Layout of the rear battery pack and removal of rear carpet and plastics.

Yesterday and tonight we finished up the remaining front battery rack. Finding mounting points was difficult because the A/C compressor and lines were in the way. Even with 2 bars supporting the tray, the batteries have a slight amount of give to them. They won’t be going anywhere though unless I pop a wheelie and slam back down. Then maybe.

With that done I can complete my front layout, probably work on that this weekend. Tomorrow we begin to hack out the back for the 8 battery rack. Fabricator Mike has been looking forward to that.

Mike the Fabricator (are you keeping track?) came by today and worked up the first of three battery racks.  It turned out pretty well.  It took several hours and it was hot today.  Florida is even in a heat advisory.  Fortunately wife went out to Publix and came back with a case of water and 2 – 64 oz of Gatorade.  We about finished them off and ran the fridge out of ice, donchaknow.  (We just watched “New in Town” where someone from Florida went to Minnesota during the winter.  It was entertaining, and Harry Connick Jr. sure looked good with that beard.

So it was hot but we got a good amount done.  I also cut and crimped 8 battery cables.  That makes all of the side-by-side battery cables complete.  I want to wait until we have the racks in so I can get a more accurate length for the long runs.  Here are a couple of pictures from today.

First I used my clamping table to force the handles of the cutter to close. 2/0 cable is pretty tough, so I got Louie the Cat to help.

That was pretty difficult so I tried a hammer on the garage floor.

This picture shows the difference in ends from slowly cutting with the clamp and fast with the hammer. The hammer cut is on the left, slow clamping on the right. I liked the hammer better because it looks more symmetrical and left the tiny wires more at the same length. It was also easier and faster. Slowly cutting seemed to crush the wires into the middle.

This is a trick I learned. Once you remove the outer sheath of the wire it wants to spread apart. You have to get all the tiny wires into the terminal so I realized that this smaller the length of exposed cable, the easier it would be to slip it into the lug.

Here are a couple that show the battery rack being assembled.

The rack is really two parts. First there are 4 lower arms that are welded to the frame for good. Then there is the actual box that is bolted to the 4 lower arms. This way the rack can be removed by yanking those 4 bolts if I ever need to pull the motor.

Neighbor Mike has a big Ford Expedition so we expeditioned ourselves to our local Sears Auto Center and picked up 13 Diehard Platinum P1s last Saturday. They are equivalent to the Oddysey PC1500 I was eyeing up, but about $50 less each so I’ll give them a go. The best part was customers weren’t allowed in the work area unless they had eye protection. Neighbor Mike jumped right in and helped loading, but in doing so took the only extra pair of safetly glasses they had. So I scoped out the vending machines while they loaded 650 lbs of batteries.

I did help unload and then moved them into the garage on a pallet though. I’d never heard it before but people are saying that leaving a battery on concrete will drain it. One idea I thought made sense is that the concrete remains cooler than the ambient air so the electrolyte separates at the bottom. The slight differential created eddy currents which drain the battery. I remember hearing about those at UF, but I don’t know what they are. I do know they aren’t used to build roads and were not on the PE exam.

Today a package from Grainger arrived with my 5/16 – 18 lefthanded tap arrived.  That matches the threads on the motor that will drive the accessories.  Next time I need something from Grainger I think I will order it through NAPA and pay the 30% markup.  They charged me $13 to ship a 3 or 4 oz piece via USPS.

Regardless, I got the part and I think it worked out well.  I’ll have to power up the motor to find out for sure, and will try that out later.  Through the captions below I’ll describe the process to get from where I was to where I am.