Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Test Drive...Or Not

On Sunday I had everything ready to go for a test drive. That morning I had adjusted my current limit to a lower value for safety reasons, installed all the cabling, wired up the starting ciruit, contactors and put the rear battery pack in. Then went off to visit grandparents and came back that night for the test run.

So there I am, camera rolling, everything connected. I start up the car, contactors close, cooling fan comes on, put it into reverse and hit the pedal. NOTHING HAPPENS.

After 5 minutes of taking measurements, it hits me. I modified the current limiting wrong, so it forced on, prevent the car from moving. (Well at least that worked!)

It gets better. So I go to remove the controller, shut everything off, flick the breaker and proceed to remove the controller. In an act of complete stupidity, I drop the wrench across the B- and M- terminals, and it sparks blowing the logic board away. The capacitors were still charged, and found their way to there desitnation by toasting the controller.

I had breakers and fuses for every other part of the system except dropping a fraking wrench across the terminals. Now I have to repair it, which should be as simple as replacing the three chips and some bench testing. I also am almost done laying out the microprocessor controller and hope to have that is some sort of a testing phase in the next week or so. I just have to order a hall effect current sensor and plan on having it completed before it gets cold out. (It's water cooled, and that will provide my heat for the cabin.)

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