What's up

It's been a little slow on this blog lately. Which doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Let's start with the converted Xsara. It's 12 V aux battery woes have continued. Also contributing to the issue is your's truly, forgetting the vehicle running and so on. So it seems I killed another lead acid battery. Maybe it's a hint I really should take and just not use them anymore at all anywhere again. To replace it I put in four of the worse 40 Ah SE40AHA lithium cells I had around. Worse because they don't really keep their voltage really well and are at least a little soft shorted inside, but not completely.

With those four cells in the can serving the purpose of aux battery I set off to the local inspection office to have the vehicle checked, as is required every year. This time I had no less than three officers looking under the hood and asking questions about the electric powertrain. The brakes have seen better days, but the car still passed. I should still take them apart and at least try to salvage the discs.

It seems there were no pictures taken of the battery swap or the inspection itself, but there are pictures of something I did a little earlier. The repaired 87.6 volt charger gave up the ghost again and this time I pretty much gave up on it. Again, I suppose, but not willing to pour any more money into it.

So thinking about how to solve the issue again, I decided I'd add some more batteries into the vehicle. It has 60Ah cells, but since I have those abused 40 Ah cells around from the motorcycle, I decided to augment the pack with a couple of them in parallel. Turns out I can just about get away with a string of 27 cells with the AXE 7245 controller in the car. It has a maximum voltage of 90 volts, but it will start if the voltage, as presented by Cycle Analyst, is less than 91 volts. With the 27 LiFePO4 cells in series and fully charged, I end up a little over 91 volts, but if I let the DC/DC converter run for a bit the AXE will relent and start up. This gives me about 400 Wh more to drive around with bringing the pack total a little over 5 kWh.

It's a bit of a mess, but there they are. I was sort of hoping I could use my 102.2 volt charger directly when increasing the cell count, but I had to put into a bit of monitoring in the end. It looks at 20 cells in the middle of the pack and makes sure they stay within 3.5 volts on average and then it tells the 102.2 volt TCCH/ElCon charger to stop charging until the voltage goes back down. Not optimal, again, but it works for now.

On the C-Zero I received a shifter cover panel from Ben Nelson, who has a flooded i-MiEV his parting out now. It took a little bit of fiddling to get it in the car, but I managed to do it and now it really looks the part. Thanks a lot for part, Ben!

Last, and probably least as well, but still quite important is the addition of two new USB charging ports I added to the C-Zero. I can turn them on or off with the switch. They're always connected to the car's aux 12 V battery, so I can provide power to some devices even though th car is not running. Very handy for CaniOn, which I've also configured to turn on when the phone which is permanently in the vehicle gets power, so I can always easily see what's really going on with the battery.

Little progress here and there

There's been a little bit of progress here and there. I've connected the DC/DC converter to the 12 volt system and succesfully too. The little voltmeter that plugs into the cigarette lighter outlet now shows 13.5 volts when I have power on. The converter was drawing about an amp when just charging the auxiliary lead acid battery, but with all lights on the current draw jumped to about 5 A.

I've also mounted the Cycle Analyst display in the dashboard. It's blocking the view to the tachometer and fual gauge, but they're not working anyway. Also it blocks the bright out-of-gas light as well, which was rather intentional. It does not block the speedometer or any other useful signals though.

In addition to the Cycle Analyst you can see a red flip switch in front of the gear stick. It has two positions. Forward or "AJO" activates the main contactor (provided that the car is turned on using the original key) and lights the switch red, albeit dimly. Flip towards the rear of the car or "SEIS", the main contactor deactivates and the car will not move by it's own power. Should be pretty easy to do that even in an emergency. Also you can always switch to neutral by hand, which should be doable even without the clutch.

I was also looking into some heat. I dismantled a 1000 W 230 VAC cabin heater that I got for 9,99€, but unfortunately the PTC heating element inside didn't put out any useful amount of heat at 80 VDC. Also it was quite small and pushing all the air though that small element would have been less than ideal. I did figure out a place to put it in though. There's a pollen filter that's easily accessible that I think I might be able to adapt to hold whatever workable heating element I can get my hands on.

New battery and first charge

New aux battery, 15 V PSU, main shunt and a fuse.

I installed a new auxiliary battery yesterday. It's a 12 V 12 Ah lead acid battery from Biltema, product number 80-268. I'm charging it with an old Toshiba laptop power supply, which puts out a maximum of 5 A at 15 V. It's a little high, but we'll see how this goes. Previously I used old, small UPS batteries, but they probably weren't very good for this purpose and pretty much died. Without the lights on the brick seemed to put out less than an amp, but when I turned on the headlights it ramped up to 5 A. Obviously it's mean for 100-250 VAC, but it seems to run from 80 VDC as well. If the main traction pack falls much below that it will give up, but I suppose that could actually be a good thing. At least it won't drain the pack empty.

That's my fully charged voltage for 25 CALB cells.

I also recharged the traction pack for the first time after the winter. It had been sitting about six months. I had used it to test the TTL200C motor a bit since the last charge and also gave the ME1003 motor in the motorcycle a little spin just before the charge. Only 1.39 Ah went in. So I can pretty safely say the cells haven't discharged by themselves at all. If I hadn't used the pack at all this would equal about 0.5% self discharge per month. Alas I have and no such thing exists. The specs on these cells aren't lying though. 0% is still below 3%. It's really just a number they came up with when they got tired of silly people asking what's the self discharge and they wouldn't believe there is none.

One last shot of the new Cycle Analyst placement from a slightly better angle. Very, very nice.

Spring is coming

It looks like spring is coming. For a nothern motorcyclist the sure signs are increasing amount of dry, ice free asphalt and the accompanying urge to tinker with two wheelers to get them ready for the season. Today I finally did something I had been thinking about since I got the bike inspected last summer. The Cycle Analyst was placed in a less than optimal location below the lock and rather badly in the way, not to mention hard to read while driving. Now it has moved to a better position above the original instrument panel. Looks very good and should be much more user friendly. Good times.

ps. I also lifted the bike on it's center stand, gave the motor a little spin and checked the cells. All came in at 6.56 or 6.57 volts a pair. I'd call that pretty well balanced.

Charger and instrumentation

Today I received my charger and Cycle Analyst instrumentation. EV Assemble came through very nicely. They just had accidently sent me the wrong tracking number. The Cycle Analyst also arrived in an orderly fashion as expected. I now have both connected and working. It is very nice indeed to see the instrumentation in action. Easy charging is always nice as well. I don't really know if it's a problem to use a lithium charger with lead, but as long as the charger doesn't break I don't care. Lithium is the goal in any case. The mount plate for the motor is also being manufactured at Hydroala along with the modifications to the sprocket I was able to purchase at Laakeriteam. Hoping to get everything mounted next week. I also rewired my battery pack for 72 volts and added two additional batteries.