Civic Electric Car Conversion

Finally, Free Time is Coming

2011-12-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

I've been extremely busy with school and work that I haven't done a whole lot on my EV. I've been doing a few miles here and there to keep my pack charged and cycled through, and I've been slowly prepping the new Civic for conversion next year.

However, while playing with my stinky battery I decided to check up on the warranty and contact my dealer. To my surprise they agreed to replace it! I got the new one this morning and this weekend I will be cleaning up my batter pack, checking the water levels and voltages, then installing this new one once I get its voltage to the same as the others. The I can slowly start driving the EV again and get some miles under it, and possibly get it commuting once again. I have 7K miles on the pack and if all the other batteries are still fine ( they seem all fine, just that one dropped out after 10 to 11 miles) I should get another 3K out of them.

I'll post some pictures of the new Civic donor and what I've done to it when I get some time. I am also going to try an experiment this winter, I got a heated seat cover. I've done some research and other EV'ers said that a seat warmer worked much better to keep the driver/passengers warm than a heating system. We'll I guess I'll find out in a few weeks.

Still Here

2011-10-05T20:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a while, but I am still here. Now for some updates:

My battery pack seems to be giving up the ghost, one battery appears to be failing and I am going to try to bring it back to health in the coming weeks.

I do have a new Civic donor! I picked up a 2001 Honda Civic EX at the end of August and I am getting it ready for a conversion. I'll start a new post on that when the time comes along with pictures.

Right now I am not driving my EV because of my battery issues. I am going to try to revive the low one, but I do plan on doing the new conversion this fall or this winter and getting a new battery pack anyways. Update with pictures are on their way, I just need to find the time to post them!

Blown DC/DC

2011-08-14T11:47:00.001-07:00

I finally got home from 5 weeks in India and I have discovered my Curtis DC/DC is blown. I have no idea what did it, could have been a nasty lightning storm we had or something else. Point is that I am dead in the water until I get it replaced.

I am searching for the best price on the Zivan DC/DC converters which are 70-160 volts, perfect for when I upgrade to the new Civic later on.

August Update

2011-08-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a while but I have still been driving the EV. I did have to install new brake lines a few weeks ago. They rusted out due to age and I decided to fix them while I search for a new Civic donor.

My Civic is getting old and tired, its 15 years old and body rot is getting to it. I am on the look out for a newer 2001-2005 Civic EX Coupe and I want to up my voltage to at least 120 volts. I am having some problems with my 12 volt system, I think it's either the 12 volt battery needs replacing or the DC/DC isn't working right.

April Update

2011-04-29T10:57:00.001-07:00

I have been busy, but I have added a few things to my EV. I know have a quiet vacuum pump from Audi which provides up to 28" Hg of vacuum and my brakes work a lot better now. I got the pump off eBay for a lot less than the noisy Thomas Pump I had been using.

I have been working on two rather stubborn batteries. I haven't been driving the EV as much as I should, and two batteries are performing a lot worse than they should be. I believe they are become stratified, so I am working on those batteries. I am breaking in the pack again slowly and charging the lower batteries with a power supply. I also am giving the entire pack a day or two on a float setting to get the acid moving around again.

I am thinking about upgrading my EV to 120 or 144 volts and a new chassis this summer, with lithium batteries possible. I am going through my budget and options now, but if I can't get these two stubborn batteries back up I am thinking about replacing them or doing the upgrade. This weekend is really nice, so I plan on working a lot on my EV in between getting ready for the end of the semester.

Trekking On

2011-01-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

My heat has been installed for some time and it functions! It does defrost the EV, but really doesn't do much more than that. My voltage just isn't high enough at 96 volts to heat the EV up, but I get by. I have to drive the EV everyday just to keep the batteries nice and toasty around 80F, but I go places each day and it isn't a problem.

Over the past 8 months of EV driving I have made quite a few notes for my next build. I have noticed that past 50% DoD the performance is just awful on lead acid batteries. My automatic transmission is a real power hog. I estimate that I get 10% less power and range than a Civic using a manual transmission and in the cold upwards of 25% less power and range just due to the automatic transmission. My batteries stay nice and toasty in their boxes, but the transmission fluid gets real thick in the freezing weather. My 96 volt systems works fine for most things on my commute, but I really need at least 120 volts to keep up with traffic on the last hill home and to run the heater to do more than just defrost the windshield. But overall I am very happy with my EV, and in the next week or so I will be going to get is inspected for the year.

Now I am planning to do another EV, this time a Generation 7 Civic (2001-2005 model years). I am going to reuse almost all my parts, but this time go for a manual transmission and a 156 to 160 volt system using lithium batteries. I am looking for a 60 mile back road range and about 40 miles highway, and I am hoping to start doing research into charging stations. I am hoping to build this EV in the next year or so when I get the funds, and after my lead acid pack dies out in my Civic now. I am expecting at least another 6,000 miles out of it so I have plenty of time to plan this EV. I do own a 2004 Honda Civic VP coupe that I find extremely comfortable and peppy, and my new EV will be designed to maintain the same pep, but I want to try and get a Civic EX coupe for my next EV.

Winter is Here!

2010-12-23T09:28:00.000-08:00

I have now well over 5,000 miles on my EV and winter has arrived! My heater is installed, but I am waiting for an overflow tank before I can use the heat full time. Right now the pressure builds up and shuts down the pump because it's a closed system, but once my overflow tank arrives it will be an open system and I can run it continuously. It's about 900 watts of heat but once it gets going it does a nice job of keeping the interior warm and the windshield clean.

I have gone about 7 months without buying any gas, and I am going to spend part of this break testing the winter worthiness of my EV. I just watered the batteries last weekend, about 1/2 a gallon for the whole pack, so I don't use much water which is good. This pack now has 4,000 miles and seems to get stronger all the time. I am hoping for at least 10,000 miles from this pack, hopefully more. I have figured my break even point is about 6,000 miles due to the benefits of driving an EV, so I'm pretty happy.

Winter's Coming

2010-11-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

I have over 4,000 miles on the EV, and now winter is coming. While the batteries are insulated, I still don't have heat in my EV yet. These past few weeks have been quite chilly, even some frost. While preheating the EV works to clear the ice, it doesn't last too long on keeping me warm.

Today was a day off from classes, so after my homework I worked on my heater. I originally had this overkill setup with all sorts of electronics, but I decided today it was unnecessary. I now just need to pick up two automotive relays and some anti-freeze and I can install this sucker on Saturday!

If all goes well, tomorrow I will pickup the last parts of the heater, get it all wired and lugged up, then Saturday I plug it into the EV and I should have an all season EV!

Harvest Energy Fair

2010-10-17T09:18:00.001-07:00

Yesterday there was a Harvest Energy Fair at the high school, so my dad and I decided to check it out. I also decided to bring my EV to show off and check out the advertised Plug In Hybrid.

There were a local company who sells Electric Bikes there with three bikes that people could test ride. My dad took one for a spin and loved it.
There was also a Tesla Roadster! The owner just received it this past Tuesday and got word of this little event and had to show it off.
In this picture you can see my Civic EV, the 2010 Tesla Roadster and the 2012 Toyota Prius Plug In Hybrid. The new Prius has a slightly larger hatch and a 13 mile EV range, the Tesla has a 250 miles range and my Civic has a 32 mile range. My Civic and the Tesla were definitely big hits, you have the home made commuter EV and then the sports car. And yes, not only did I sit in the Tesla, I got a ride! It has some serious zip, I know what I have to modify my Civic into next!

Still Going

2010-10-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

Well, my EV is still going! I had to buy new tires a few weeks ago, I got a flat on my way home and it was not repairable. I got Goodyear WeatherHandler Fuel Max LRR tires from Sears, and they have really good grip on the wet roads.

Last weekend I removed my batteries, cleaned out the trunk and checked water levels. Everything was great, and this weekend I am insulating the battery pack. It's been cold at night, 35F, and the batteries aren't too happy. Today I purchased two 2x8 sheets of 2" foam insulation and tomorrow I will rig up my new insulation box. This box will be twice as thick as my last box, and it will be easier to keep sealed.

I am also hoping to test my water heater this weekend. It's getting pretty cold out, but preheating the EV with the ceramic heater has worked fine the past week.

Power Windows

2010-09-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

Since my driver's window stop working, I decided to go all in and see what the damage was. Ever since I owned the car the drivers windows was the only one that would work from the control panel on the door, the passenger windows only worked on the individual doors.

It didn't take me long to rip off the fender, side trim and finally peel back the insulation and inspect the 25 pin connector. Four wires were completely cut off and another 8 had severe cuts in them.

After inspecting the connector, I called up Honda looking for a replacement and they wanted $500 for a whole new cable! After an hour of trying to remove the pins on the broken connector I said forget this, went down to Radio Shack and pick up 25 bullet connections. After that, I spent over 3 hours cutting cables, stripping wiring, crimping, soldering and testing.

Now all my windows work from the main control panel! It has been my largest pain, which is now cured!

I have also had significant progress on my heater setup, which I will post about once I get some more time to case it up.

3K EV Miles!

2010-09-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I cleared the 3,000 EV mile mark! (1600 miles on this pack) It's been great driving gas free, but recently I have found a few annoyances that need to be worked on.

First, I still don't have my heater installed. The mornings have been getting colder (41F this morning) so it's time I got around to install it. Preheating the EV with the ceramic heater does work great, though. But my biggest pain has been the wire harness on the door. It's 14 years old and since I got the car I haven't been able to control any passenger windows from it, but this week it decided to stop doing the drivers window too. Not cool. So this weekend I am going to take off my fender and replace the wire harness. Well, more like repair it. It has been driving me crazy not being able to open my window for some fresh air, or to open the parking gate.

If repairing this harness does indeed fix all my window issues, I will then look into replacing my dead door lock. After I get heat installed, of course.

Proof of Concept

2010-07-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

I have completed over 6 weeks of EV driving and loving it. I have officially started my EV Proof of Concept period with this setup, and the summer testing has been great so far. I have noticed some problems, not EV related, but problems with my Civic itself, such as problematic locks and windows, but nothing that impacts the EV fun at the moment.

Now this EV was originally designed to be my entry in the EV world, as my Proof of Concept and here are my requirements for my 1 year full test:

-8,000+ miles on a single lead acid pack

-All year capable

- Maintain 40-45 MPH

-20+ miles of range reliably

-Limited to no down time

-Fun to drive

The only thing I have left to do is install my heater for the fall/winter weather. I already have 1,000 miles on this battery pack and once I get around to installing my heater I should meet all my other requirements.

I should also mention that I have indeed noticed the extra money staying in my bank account, and I do like my parking space at school/work so it has definitely been worth it. So far my EV has been a great commuter and the real test will be how it lasts the coming school year.

5 Weeks!

2010-07-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

I have done 5 full weeks of commuting in my EV! By the end of this week I will have put 1,000 miles on this battery pack and so far I have not gone past 50% DoD so I should get a good life from this pack. Oh, and I have purchased a drop of gas in two months!

I have also received a small DC/DC converter for my AMP gauge that I will install tomorrow for this weeks drive. I will then be away on various trips for a few weeks but I want to get my EV setup so others in the house can drive it.

I have one more week of work before I start my vacations, then I will be off for the summer. I actually have quite a lot happening but I do want to have my heater setup installed but the end of August and maybe even the power steering/AC hooked up.

Two Weeks

2010-06-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

I have been commuting for two weeks so far! I have had no real problems, I did have to adjust some controller settings but it has been very reliable and fun to drive! Today I watered the batteries for the first time and only a few cells needed water. I don't think they all came completely topped off at the factory but better safe than sorry. I have only three batteries left to water, I couldn't get to them this afternoon because I didn't have a proper wrench.

The only real things I need to do it get the heater finished and installed, and get a DC/DC converter for my Current meter.

Oh, and I am nearing my 2,000 miles EV mark! 1,913 gas free miles!

Commuting

2010-06-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have finally started commuting in my EV! 16.7 miles each way with a full charge in between and the EV is working great! I have a few little things left, like replace one of the controller cooling fans and get an isolated DC/DC converter for my AMP gauge.

I have done two days of commuting so far and haven't run into any problems. I usually take it easy, but sometimes I have been pounding the full acceleration to keep the gas guzzling, late-for-work people from trying to run me down at lights.

Oh, and I also like my parking space.

Front Suspension

2010-05-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

I have finished installing the new struts and springs today. I didn't get any pictures, but they were easier to install than the rear. However, it was over 90F today and humid but I still worked on the EV!

Tomorrow my Zilla should be back and I can try out full power with this new pack. I have to clean up my EV and wash off a weeks worth's of pollen just to see out the windows. I have installed the vacuum switch and I am going to install a few more straps on the batteries. I plan on doing all this tomorrow morning before the mail arrives, usually around 1:00 PM, hopefully with my Z1K-LV all ready to go. It should take 5 minutes to install the Zilla as it's four mounting bolts then four power cables.

I also found out today that all the student parking lots will be closed down this summer, but I can still get to my EV parking spot! I have to test my range this week, try and get up to at least 17-18 miles before I go to work next week.

ZIlla Update

2010-05-18T09:08:00.001-07:00

I sent my Zilla 1K-LV back to Cafe Electric this morning to get the firmware updated. I was experiencing a problem where my controller would shutdown when it hit 95% or higher duty cycle. I had a temporary fix where I set the MAX motor voltage to 84 volts which stopped the shutdown, but I lost a lot of power and top speed, and forget about hill climbing. When I drive around time I see no real difference in performance, mainly because I poke around while I break in my pack.

Now that my EV is basically ready for full time use, I decided to send my controller back while I finish installing my front suspension system and clean up a few things. I should have my Zilla back next week then I can start longer trips. I had planned to take my EV out this weekend to my cousin's house but decided to wait until I get the new firmware so I can easily traverse the highway and hills.

Loading Up the Mileage

2010-05-13T18:22:00.000-07:00

I have been slowly adding up the mileage on my EV over the past few weeks, but not as much as I would have liked. End of semester work and finals have consumed most of my time, but every so often I have gone out for a few mile run. The furthest I have gone out was 12.1 miles and I had plenty of power left.

I have started to use my battery heaters again, but I have no insulation on them. I learned that I need about 150 miles and the batteries to be above 75F for the best performance, based on my previous pack. I have about 80 miles on my pack now, so I have a ways to go before I challenge any large hills that need high AMPs. I also want to add a few more battery tie downs just to be safe.

I also want to drive my EV over to my cousin's house this weekend, assuming I have enough time to fully charge and I add at least another 20 miles in the next few days.

EV Tank

2010-05-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

I have a total of 32 miles on the new pack so far, with my last trip being a 12.1 mile run. I am going to do as many trips as possible to pile on the cycles this week, with hopes of commuting next week.

I will say my EV drives like a tank! It must weight about 3,000 lbs, and feels crazy sturdy. I still need to replace my front suspension and had hopes to do it tomorrow but it's going to rain like crazy. Oh well.

I have also found out why I can zapped while my EV is charging! My isolated volt meter for my shunt is actually not so isolated! I will purchase a small isolated DC/DC for the meter and in the mean time I will use a 9 volt battery.

I have also noticed these batteries are way more efficient than my MAXX29 and charging times have decreased greatly. I will start to hook my laptop up again and start taking data on more runs and compare to my other batteries.

Batteries are In!

2010-05-02T11:26:00.001-07:00

I spent all weekend bolting down the rack, making new cables and installing the battery pack. The first picture is of my home made cable crimp. Basically, it is a scrap price of aluminum from my adapter plates that I drilled/cut out to form the appropriate shape for crimping. I place in the cable and lug on the crimp and proceed to smash it with a hammer until satisfied. It makes a strong crimp with the top getting flattened by the hammer and the bottom/sides getting indented to make a good crimp, which I then finish it off with electrical tape.

The actual battery installation wasn't bad. The batteries are 63 lbs, but not a problem to place into the trunk. I strapped the suckers down using four carrier straps from the old pack, and I have four left over so I am going to get creative on where I should use them. The longest part was by far the wiring. I spent about two hours planning out the best wiring pattern, then I went to it and spent another 30 minutes setting up the PakTrakr.

The first thing most people would do would to go out and drive the EV. But you can't! The batteries do not come fully charged, and they spent about 3 hours charging the afternoon before I went on my first test tun. 1 mile loop, keeping the current under 75 AMPs and then return home to check the connections and recharge. I also needed to play with my brake vacuum, it was harder to stop with the extra weight.

This week I will be breaking in my batteries, and testing the range out as a go. I have been reading through EV America's docs, and they have a great section on battery care and use, so I will follow those with this pack.

8VGC XC

2010-04-29T14:03:00.001-07:00

Today I removed the MAXX29 battery pack and the racks for them. The batteries are still in good shape so they were not used as core charge but kept for other use, or I might fine other EV'ers interested in a beginner's pack for cheap change.

My batteries arrived this afternoon!

I didn't really expect my batteries until Friday so I took my time today removing my old batteries and racks. Then I did some homework and got a call that said my batteries were on the way! I still have to secure the new rack to the EV and build new cables. Now that I have the batteries I was able to make the measurements and I will start to cut cables and crimp new connections once I gather my tools to do so.

I am extremely motivated right now and have high hopes of having a test drive by Saturday, maybe even tomorrow afternoon if I get a good start on the cables tonight.

Getting Ready for US Batteries

2010-04-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

Today I realized two things: My cables I have need a lot of work to clean up the ends, and that the new US 8VGC XC don't have the SAE posts, but just threaded posts. This means I need to change the ends of my battery lugs, so I ordered up 3/8" lugs and I will check my spare cables to see if I have enough.

I would need at least 12 hours to clean up my current cables, so it might be better to just get new cables and start fresh. I do have a lot of spare cable so I will see how much I have left over. I also have a handful of cables with bad clamps that I will have no problem cutting up and replacing the ends with new lugs. Just more things to do.

Slight Change of Plans

2010-04-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I found out that my order from Sam's Club didn't go through, and they didn't even have a record of it so I was going down their today to order when I got one more quote. This is the second quote for US 8VGC XC and it was excellent!

The price is more than the EGC8, but they have a much higher reserve capacity rating and the cost per estimated mile of range is the same. And I get them delivered to my door in a week or two. I am waiting for the final price sheet that I should get tonight and figure out the payments. I really hope to order them this week so I can possibly get them next week.

Ticking Clock

2010-04-15T14:46:00.000-07:00

Today was actually pretty productive for being a day devoted mainly to studying. Last night I received my battery rack all nicely welded much faster than I had expected. I didn't think I would see it for a week, let a lone just a day after it was given to the welder.

Today I got some paint and primer and went to work on the rack. One coat every hour, takes about 5 minutes to apply so not much time at all. I also called up Sam's Club to order 12 of the EGC8 batteries. Walmart/Sam's Club have recently changed over from Exide batteries to Johnson Controls and golfing season hasn't started around here yet so the batteries were not in stock. However, the rep said it shouldn't be a problem to get a fresh pallet of them soon and they have my info so I should get a call when the fresh pallet arrives.

I hope they arrive soon because my clock is ticking, but while I wait I have a box of cables that need cleaning and sanding since they have 10 years worth of corrosion on them.

Battery Rack 2.0

2010-04-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

I finally had time this weekend to actually do something on my EV instead of just driving it. I finalized my battery rack design yesterday and this morning I took my EV out to ACE and picked up the metal and got to work cutting it up. I have it all laid out and my dad will hopefully get a friend to weld it this week. Once I have the rack fully welded I will have to paint it to prevent rusting and then install it.

Greener Pastures

2010-03-31T07:16:00.000-07:00

It has rained almost non-stop this week, taking away any real chance I have had to work or even drive the EV. I did take the time to think through my battery upgrade and contact the local Sam's Club for some specs. I need to physically inspect the batteries to be sure, but the specs they gave me matched the US 8VGC to the letter, which is my current battery of choice. I have the price of the pack and next I have to check prices on the material for the new battery rack and to find a way to weld it.

I am giving myself until the end of April to get the new batteries and rack built. I am first going to visit Sam's Club, check out the batteries and get measurements. Then I will have my rack built before I even purchase the batteries.

Until then I will continue driving the EV around town and continue enjoying driving gas free.

The Culprit?

2010-03-25T13:42:00.001-07:00

After swapping the PakTrakr remotes and finding similar readings as I was getting earlier, I decided to do some random thinking. I went for a 9 mile run, and found that battery 2 was again getting lower under load, compared to the other batteries, so I went home to charge up. After 3 hours, I went to browse the PakTrakr screen and found decent charging voltages, but my remote said the batteries were at 104F! The remote was sitting on the cable that goes from battery 1 to 2 and it was hot, even after 3 hours of charging and not high amp cruising.

Stunned, I took out the DMM and found that the cable in question had 0.9 mV flowing through it at 2 AMPs charging current, while all the other cables were at 0.1mV! It had 9x the resistance!

I have replaced the cable with another (I've got a stash of spares) and hooked up the charging and it was a nice 0.1mV like the rest. This could be the reason why my PakTrakr has found battery 1 and 2 lower than others because part of the signals use that cable, and that cable has a lot of resistance when it gets hot.

Never Ending Thinking

2010-03-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't driven my EV in the past few days because I have been booked solid with school projects. This evening I finished up a few of them, then did my usual EV web surfing of forums, blogs and such. I was reading another EV'ers blog and they mentioned having to replace their PakTrakr remote because it was giving errors, false failures and wrong voltages.

I have been under the impression that two of my batteries are bad, or lower than the others according to my PakTrakr. I have actually never measured the batteries with a volt meter, but decided to and found they were all equal according to my digital volt meter, but not according to my PakTrakr. So my idea is that I am going to swap my two remotes with each other and do a test drive for 12-13 miles and see if I get the same low battery warning I was getting before, or see if I get the warnings on other batteries.

It's 9:30 at night and I would run out right now and switch the remotes, but it's pouring rain. So I have a plan for tomorrow to look forward too.

More Range!

2010-03-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

I spent most of this week driving my EV, messing with batteries and figure out what I need to do. I have decided I need larger capacity batteries. My current batteries do very well until I reach 50% capacity, then they drop and sag a lot, so I usually stop driving at that point, or about 12.5 miles. My Zilla makes it very easy to pull massive amounts of AMPs for accelerating, and my commute has changed a little, so I really need more range, more like 25-30 miles for a lot of more things I have been doing recently, like visiting relatives and not having the time to fully charge, etc. Also, half the roads I took to school used to be 25 MPH due to construction, but are now 45 MPH, and maintaining that takes a toll on my range, but the Zilla happily gives the power while my current batteries cry.

What I did this week was do research of the 8 Volt Golf Cart batteries, from US Battery, Trojan, Exide, etc to see what options are out there. I am now looking at Sam's Club and Costco as they sell these batteries for excellent prices. I have also asked fellow EV'ers who use these batteries, and they consistently get 25-35 miles per charge from the 8VGC batteries. They are usually 170 Ah, a huge step up from my current 125 AH, and they do not suffer from lots of sag past 50% mark like most 12v batteries do. I have designed a new battery rack on paper, and I will check out material pricing this week on it, and also get battery prices from the local Sam's Club and Costco.

Now this means I have to make new battery racks for the 8VGC, but that will happen after I confirm the size and that I have the money for the pack and the tray. For now, my EV is great for all the around town activities, and it may get a little better with more cycles on the pack, but my normal driving activities require more range, and at higher speeds than I am used to driving.

Warm Weather Fun

2010-03-07T14:43:00.001-08:00

I have collected so much data and done so more research on my batteries that I could write a paper. Wait, I am....

It was over 65F today and I couldn't resist driving my EV, so this morning I hooked up my laptop and drove 12.9 miles and didn't get a single low battery warning! I have also found that the extension cable I use to charge can't handle anymore than 10 AMPs continuously, so the end that plugs into my EV kinda burned out. I usually charge at 12.5 AMPs when I am at home and the connections end has been warm and slowly cooking itself. I have been using a 50 ft 12/3 cable that has a rating of 15 AMPs, but clearly it can't handle it, so I got my Dad's heavy duty 10/3 50 ft cable and it stay cold giving out 12.5 AMPs!

Here is my EV with the huge cord plugged in. It barely fits into the socket on the EV, but does a nice job. However, I still needed to replace my bad cable, so I hopped into my EV this afternoon and drove down to the hardware store and got it exchanged. I usually refrain from going any where in my ICE because it cost me gas money, but with my EV fully functioning I didn't think twice. My only concern was what music to listen too. :)

I now have two power cables, the big yellow one that sits at home and my smaller red one that now lives in the EV. This actually works well for me because now I don't have to fish out the cable from the basement every time I want to drive the EV somewhere and charge it.

Zoom Zoom

2010-03-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

I have fixed my issue with my batteries heaters, I just replaced the +5v regulator with one that works from -40C to 90C. My batteries now maintain a solid 76F, and they only cycle on for 30 minutes every 4-5 hours at night, and don't turn on at all during the sunny days.

My Zilla has sprung an unexpected problem, though. If I am cruising, then decide to go full throttle (100% duty cycle) the Zilla get's a fault and shuts down. Apparently this is a problem that was found recently with low voltage EVs and the Zilla, and there is a fix that I should be getting in the coming week or so. For now, all I have to do it set my Motor Voltage less than my Battery Voltage and it's all good because the controller will never hit 100% duty cycle that way. And during my drive today it worked great, and I suffered no performance decrease at all.

I have been slowly working my batteries into existence. I have been using test routes, ranging from 4.0 miles and increasing that and now I go for 12 miles at a time. I have found that two batteries are much lower than the others under load, but I have been working on them. What is happening is two batteries would get to the point when they would go under 10 volts under heavy load, at the 3.8 mile mark. Then I did some battery charging, equalizing and magic and they didn't complain until 8.8 miles, then 10 miles, now 12.2 miles. I believe they need to be broken in slowly, so I have been adjusting my driving to help out. Each drive gets better and better, and I am guessing that I should have my full range in a week or so of these break in drives.

According to EV America, letting the flooded batteries rest for a weekend affects their performance, and if they rest for a week you have to break them in again slowly.

Battery Pad Results

2010-02-21T17:50:00.000-08:00

Results: AMAZING!

After installing the pads I left them on all night, and the next morning the pack was at 76F and the drive was GREAT! I had a massive EV grin mixed with an EVil EV laugh as I zipped up the largest hill in my commute.

I did find something interesting this morning. I left my heater plugged in last night, and it got the pack up to 76F in 20 minutes (it was already 63F) and then shutoff for about 4 hours before it got cold enough to reactive. The problem was it didn't turn back on! The voltage regulator I used wasn't the one designed for cold temps, it has a range of 0c-75C, where I need the one that goes from -30C to 125C. I did find a few in my electronic component stash that I will install tomorrow.

Heater Pad Installation

2010-02-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

Today I spent the afternoon installing the Farnam Battery Heating Pads I purchased from KTA-EV. What took the longest was lugging the batteries out from the basement out to the EV, then hoisting them into the EV.

This is my temperature control circuit for the heater pads. This is essentially a massive on/off switch that uses a temperature sensor set to a value that trips when it is reached, then it shuts off the AC power to the heaters. I have it set to 75F and it will reactivate at 71F. I have also a fuse, master on/off switch for the AC and a solid state relay that does the heavy work.

And here are the pads themselves, installed in the trunk. They are 35 watts each, and I have one under each battery.

I did a test yesterday with the whole setup in the basement, and it got the pads up to 75F from 50F in about 3 hours. During this test I used a thermal probe between the battery and pad, now in the EV I am using the thermal sensor from my PakTrakr, which lays on top of battery 1. After I finished reinstalling everything, I turned on the battery warmers for 3.5 hours and the Paktrakr sensor recorded 58F from 49F. I insulated my batteries so there is little space for the heat from the pads to rise, except through the batteries themselves.

I have to neaten up the electrical cord for the pads, so I shut them off for the night, but tomorrow I will sort that out and take the EV out for another drive, then apply the pads. Right now it is 35F out and 58F in my batteries, so I am curious to see how my new insulation packing will work out and check out the temps in the morning.

Winter Proofing

2010-02-17T17:04:00.000-08:00

When I ordered my battery heating pads I also ordered this:

And official "ELECTRIC" sign! My last sign was a computer printout half laminated with scotch tape that one of my dad's coworkers put on. It was one since August and finally fell off last week after removing snow from the car.

This past weekend I removed all my batteries to clean out the trunk and install my battery heating pads. What really happened was that I removed all my batteries, then spent the next two days equalizing my batteries, checking voltages and playing with a hydrometer. Then I finally got around to finishing the circuit that controls the temperature and spent the next few days dealing with snow.

Anyways, today I tested the heaters and circuit this afternoon in the basement with my batteries on it, and it did really well! After an hour it got the batteries up to 62F from 50F, and while that sounds low, it was also heating a concrete floor at the time.

Tomorrow I have a half day and the weather looks good, so I should be able to get the pads and batteries back into the EV after I finish vacuuming out the trunk. My next post will contain all the pictures and information on my battery heaters and what I did, etc.

I still haven't finished the cabin heater circuit, mainly because if I don't get heated batteries, I wouldn't have enough usable capacity to even run the heater.

Also, nearly every day this past semester the EV professor keeps asking when my EV in coming back, and I am hoping it will make it's 16.8 miles return next week, assuming I get the cabin heat completed and I so some range tests to make sure I can hit the 16.8 miles with heated batteries.

Heaters

2010-01-27T15:41:00.000-08:00

I have been working on building an electric water heater for the EV. I have been using a KATs 1500 watt block heater and a Jabsco RV water pump, and so far the bench testing has been great. I have more work to do, like build a DC thermal switch that I can adjust the temperature, and possibly some sort of relief valve system. I don't need much heat, but from my tests for far this should give heat just as well as it did with the ICE.

I have also been investigating ways to warm my batteries. Right now I have about 12 miles of range, and I need to jump that back up to 20 miles so it can be an all year EV. My batteries are usually around 50-55F on a good winter day with insulation alone, and they need to be over 80F for proper battery performance. I am going to try an electric blanket, because they are inexpensive and have temperature control built in. I only really need it in the mornings after charging has completed before I go for a drive. The insulation on the batteries can keep them warm/hot but they need something else to get them up to temperature.

Tomorrow I am going to check out some local stores to see what they have for electric blankets, and if I do fine some I will try them out this weekend. I have to redo my insulation anyways, so it should be simple to wrap a blanket around the batteries before I tape up the insulation.

Efficiency Testing

2010-01-17T11:16:00.000-08:00

I have been running a particular test route for breaking in my batteries and testing out my EV. It's about 3.3 miles long and includes everything I usually see during my commute. It also happens to be a little more aggressive than my standard commute because there is a fair amount of stop and go. I have been collecting lots of data over the past five or so months and this is what I have found:

Kelly Controller -> 333 WH/Mi

Zilla Z1K-LV -> 312 WH/Mi

Zilla w/Skunk2 -> 270 WH/Mi

What these numbers mean it how much power it takes to go 1 mile of driving. Less power required = more range. I also did not baby it during any of these tests as the roads were quite populated with travelers.

My new suspension has done A LOT for efficiency, more than I had expected. My rear wheels were bent in quite a bit due to the weight and stock struts.

I did the route a few times just to make sure, but it seems my EV has dropped it's WH/Mi requirement a good chunk from last time I drove it to school back in October. It's looking like a 19% improvement in efficiency, which is amazing. And for comparison, it was around 55F back in October to this past weeks high of 42 F when I drove it.

I am going to have to collect a lot more data this week just to verify, but these past few runs have been great. Not to mention the suspension itself feels a lot better, although stiffer.

Suspension Installation

2010-01-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Today was really nice out, around 50F so I installed the rear suspension. Here is the Old and Busted:

And here is the new Hotness:

What I first had to do was the obvious, jack up the car and remove the wheel. Then I had to use another jack to compress the strut so I could install the spring compressor I rented from AutoZone. That part was tricky because the compressor could barely fit, but I did eventually get the struts and springs off. I then had to disassemble the old struts to get the Dust Cover and the top part of the strut assembly.

Using the spring compressor wasn't as scary as I originally thought. In the above picture it actually did get a little scary on the second strut when it came to decompress the springs. One of the compressors started to slip, but it caught itself.

The lower control arms on Civics have a nasty habit of freezing and busting the lower bolts. So I did not undo this bolt like the Civic Service Manual says too, but instead undid the upper bolt on the control arm and used the spring compressor and lots and shoving to get it out. It was about an hour to remove each strut, 10 minutes to build the new struts and springs and another 10 to install them. Now I have only done the rear suspension, I will do the front later on after I get my inspection this week.

Equalization

2010-01-12T17:25:00.000-08:00

Today I removed my battery balancers because they were interfering with cold weather charging, and I want to rebuild their programs from scratch. I have also started to Equalize/Desulfate my batteries using my trusted Home Depot 12 volt 10 AMP automatic charger. I have found that at least 2 batteries needed to equalize, and I will be equalizing all of them just to be sure.

I have researching the proper way to break in and care for my batteries, and according to EV of America, batteries should be equalized every 5-10 cycles and a slow break in for 30-50 cycles. They recommend driving 10-20% of my estimated range, and then adding 10-20% more every two cycles, and I should be able to reach the designed range.

I have a whole bunch of EV things to do, but I also got a modified version of the ZillaConfig that keeps track of Ah usage and KWh usage. I will do my standard 3.8 mile run and see how much power it really uses, then try it again after a full charge from the first run.

Suspension Round Two

2010-01-11T14:42:00.000-08:00

I called around today and drove around town and found a solution to my suspension problem. We could not removed a few bolts, so I went out to see how could I get the suspension installed. After some hunting, I found that the local Goodyear was more than willing to loosen my stuck bolts. They would have even installed the new suspension, but I didn't have it fully assembled because I need parts from my old suspension to do it. So now all my stuck bolts were professionally loosened up and I can attack the coils again.

I am going to rent a spring compressor from AutoZone this week and give it a whirl. I don't need it to assemble the struts, but to disassemble the old ones.

I also found that one of my batteries was not happy during my 5 mile round trip. I have had the EV in and out of full service since October, so the batteries aren't in the best shape. I have put my trusted Home Depot charger on it, then I will charge each other battery individually also. This charger has been wonderful, and it has removed just about all the sulfation from other batteries, so it should do a nice job. I also made the mistake of not doing any break in drives since last week, and that means I need to start all over again. Ooops.

Suspension Suspense

2010-01-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we attempted to install the new suspension system, with the help of my neighbor, his garage and sweet tools. We had the wheels off and most of the strut tower bolts, then we got stuck. One flange bolt would not come loose, but we could see if wanting to give with a bolt breaker. My dad and I decided that instead of breaking the bolt, and then getting screwed with busted bolts and a car with just 3 wheels, I would reassemble it and drive it down to the local Honda mechanic and see if he can install the suspension system. I also have not been able to find the bolts that would need replacement at any local auto parts stores, so I would have to go to the mechanic anyways.

Tomorrow I am going down to see what he can do. I have all the parts, and yesterday the car was just about in pieces in 10 minutes, so it is not a huge job. It has come to a point where if I did it, I would cause more damage than good.

I do have most, if not all of my components for my water heater. I am going to measure out the hoses and mock it up and try a test with the pump using a bucket of water.

Winter Wonderland

2010-01-03T17:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't made my test heater setup yet, but I did play with my new digital camera. Tomorrow my Skunk2 suspension should be arriving so I decided to get a before picture. You can see how low the rear is compared to the front. Once the new setup is in, I want stock ride height. I also need to bring the EV in for inspection this month, and I would like to do that after the new suspension is installed.

And my control tray setup with the Zilla 1K-LV. I drove around today and realized I still have a small vacuum leak that needs to be clamped off.

And here is my interior setup. I have the Paktrakr and Current meter on the top, and on the side I have my Cruise Control that activates the current meter and my Idle control. It works great and I activate it when the transmission computer finishes booting and the D4 light shuts off. And below I have my 5K potentiometer that allows me to change my shift points.

The holiday mayhem of family visiting, cleaning, etc is over and now the relaxing part starts. I have collected most of the parts to make my heater and they are all set on my workbench, I just need to assemble it.

Holiday Season

2009-12-26T14:23:00.000-08:00

I have been busy enjoying the holidays, so I have done much EV related. I did order up a new suspension system, a Skunk2 Race package off eBay that should be arriving January 4th. In the mean time, I have been designing my heater setup and here is the start of it:

Basically I have gutted the AC heater core and have is waiting for a new casing, designed to sit a top the dash. I have it mostly designed, I am just searching to the parts to build it. I received some great Christmas presents such as a Radio Shack gift card for parts and a new Canon PowerShot SD780 IS that can take HD video, so sometime this week I will get getting some EV video in HD!

Just Chillin

2009-12-21T16:52:00.000-08:00

Now that finals are over, I can get back to EVing!

Today I finally fixed my Shift Adjuster. I installed it backwards when I put the Zilla in, so when I went to use it the transmission thought I was flooring it and would drop into 1st for acceleration.

Now my heater is going to be interesting. I can't build it into the dash until Spring because it's so darn cold out and I don't have a garage. I was going to get one of those 12 volt heater/defrosters, but apparently those do absolutely nothing for heat. So I am working on creating a 96 volt edition of one of the Windshield defrosters and only use half off the heating element, so ~750 watts to save on batteries. I will have a switch so it can go between 750 watts and 1500 watts just in case, and all the proper fuses and wiring. I am working on my design tonight and hope to do something with it tomorrow.

Another thing that has been eating at me, besides the heater, has been my suspension system. The rear rides so low that I can hear the shocks bottom out when I got over bumps, and I am estimating that they will fail in the next 2-300 miles. The stock rear suspension wasn't designed to take 520+lbs in the trunk, let alone have it permanent. And if I ever update to a different lead acid pack, it will weigh even more.

I currently have my eyes set on a Skunk2 Sports suspension system on eBay and I may scoop it up if the price it right.

Little Kinks

2009-12-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

Today I reassembled the splash guard for the motor and drove around some more. I have a problem with my Shifting Adjustment potentiometer, either a wire is loose or the pot is defective. I was driving today and had my shift adjustment to its usually spot and then after 15 MPH the transmission would jump between 1st and 2nd and it did that until I turned off my adjustment pot. I will check the connections tomorrow as it's raining like crazy now, and I will check the resistance, etc. I was having a "WTF" moment when crusing and all of a sudden it would drop a gear, then a few seconds later it would jump back up. Ugh.

I also buttoned up my batteries nicely and found something interesting. While my batteries are charging, the AMP gauge back light powers up! I found it interesting, and I first thought I had a problem with my 12 volt system, but further investigation shows it was just the construction of the meter and current going through the shunt can activate the backlight.

Heating Things Up

2009-12-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

So after doing a few more Zilla runs, including the worst hill in my commute and ripping up it like nobody's business, I decided to take a good look at my heating.

So these past few days I have used my AC ceramic heater and tested out the capability of them.

It was 27F outside and with the Heater set to MAX, the car was fully defrosted in 8 minutes and 42F, in 15 minutes it was 50F and after 20 minutes it was a nice 58F inside!

I have decided to do the heating right and get the AC drained so I can install my ceramic heater core into the old heater core socket. I still have an AC heater for preheating/defrosting, but I full 1500 watt heater in the EV would be a wise thing. It will use about 15 AMPs, which isn't really that bad. I just need to find a shop to drain my AC so I can work on the installation.

I have also decided that I want to get Lithium batteries for my next set, so I have already started to save up. I am looking at 30 cell of TS-LFP100 from Thundersky, and it should give me 35 miles of range. It looks like that will cost about $3,300 which does sound like a lot, but when I looked at a higher quality/power lead acid pack, I found it would cost about $2500 for that kind of range and twice the weight with 1/10 the cycle life. I have lots of saving and research ahead of me to do.

Zilla Performance

2009-12-10T10:20:00.000-08:00

I was able to drive the EV again today, and log the drive with the DAQ feature of the Zilla.

In this graph there is motor amps all over the place because here are a number of inclines, starts and stops and small amount of constant cruising during the run. I am estimating a top speed of about 55MPH with the new setup, which is pretty good. I need to fix my shift point adjustment, but the EV was pretty nice to drive. I just need to break in the batteries mode, and deal with the heater issues.

The Zilla

2009-12-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

I got the EV running! After I adjusted the Torque Converter I reinstalled the control tray with the Kelly and took it for a few mile joy ride. The new transmission has a very smooth shift to it and my batteries are going to need to be broken in. They have only 3 miles on them and I want at least 50 miles before I try driving back to school with the EV.

Now for the awesome greenness:

On Saturday I took the EV for a few little runs around the block, then removed the control tray and called it a day. We had to decorate for Christmas, get the tree, setup the lights, all before the snow storm coming that afternoon. Then last night I removed the Kelly and started to install the Zilla 1K-LV. Ok, here are the specs of the Zilla 1K-LV compared to the Kelly

Zilla 1K-LV Kelly KDH09401

Peak AMPs: 1,000 400

Cont. AMPs 350 160

Voltage 72-156 24-96

The Zilla also weights 15 lbs compared to the Kelly 6 lbs. The picture is of the Zilla fully wired up, but not installed in the EV yet. The snow got in my way, but tomorrow I plan on installing the tray and programming the Zilla up. I am going to be started relatively low for my settings, using only 450 motor AMPs and 180 battery AMPs to get started. 450 motor AMPs gives me 95 ft-lbs of torque, just about on par with the original ICE motor. Too much more and I risk destroying the automatic transmission. Besides, I don't need high torque as much as continuously available torque.

I don't have a water cooling kit for the Zilla yet, but I have installed the Zilla on my large finned heatsink and it should suffice for now. I just can't wait to see how the EV drives with this sucker!

Lots of Frustration

2009-12-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

I have been holding off posting because I have been frustrated with the transmission. Last week I finished assembling everything Thanksgiving morning, and then on Friday I went to test drive and nothing happened. The motor spun up, but nothing engaged into any gear.

Since then I have spent every bit of free time checking the transmission electronics, sensors, etc and make a conclusion that the transmission was defective and went to remove it today. I was just about to remove it, when I had one last burst of idea about the Torque Converter. I had my old transmission sitting behind me and I decided to measure the distance from the TC to the hole where the starter used to be. It turns out the TC was too far out of the transmission, buy 5/8 of an inch! It turns out that is also the same distance as the teeth on the TC that connects to the ATF pump gears! So all my frustration for the past week has been caused by me not installing the coupling properly!

This afternoon I reinstalled the motor, this time with the TC properly set (I hope) and did a spin up and I could now hear fluid flowing through the transmission. Tomorrow I will reinstall my control systems and give it a drive around. I still haven't spent any time with the Zilla, but if tomorrow goes alright, I can start on the Zilla this weekend.

Thanksgiving Puzzle

2009-11-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

It was really foggy and damp this morning, but I managed to get the control tray installed and spin up the motor. So far so good, but I didn't have time to actually drive the EV because there was turkey that needing eating.

What I did was install everything, check the connections and then tested the IDLE control and do some revving in Park. Something I did find interesting was that is took less AMPs to idle the motor, 10 AMPs down from 15 AMPs. I think that is indicating that I had a lot of transmission drag and my performance and range may possibly increase. Tomorrow I plan on removing the tarp setup and taking the EV around the block as it's all ready to go.

Minor Differences

2009-11-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

There seem to be some minor differences between the original A4RA transmission and newer B4RA replacement. My coupling was pushing the Torque Converter too far forward, causing it to jam against the transmission bell housing. After removing and reinstalling the motor 6 times, I think I finally figured it out. I spent a good 45 minutes analyzing all my photos I took, then I went out to my coupling and did more measurements. The A4RA transmission allowed the TC to be pressed more into the transmission without much complaining, where the B4RA just doesn't budge without anything but perfection. The motor is now back together and bolted into the EV. I checked it with a 12 volt spin up and it seems fine, with a little coupling bolts needing tightening which I did.

Tomorrow I am going to reinstall the control tray and see what happens. Hopefully it will be driving again, a few times around the block will tell me.

Then I will get to my Zilla! I really haven't looked at it yet, mainly cause I don't want to get distracted from actually fixing the current problems. I am hoping to do some test runs before we leave for Thanksgiving dinner, then I can drag along my Zilla manual and figure out how I am going to install it.

Stubborn Transmission

2009-11-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

Replacement this transmission is a pain. Saturday morning was spent refilling the ATF, then finding out the torque converter popped out a little so I had to disassemble the entire setup to adjust it. Then I put it all back together and found out it was then too far in and wouldn't spin, then it wouldn't line up, etc, etc, etc. So between Saturday and Sunday I had removed and reinstalled the motor 4 times! Then we got a scraping sound and called it a weekend, until today. I have been loaded with school work until today.

The weather has not be nice, rain and cold so I setup a blue tarp around my EV and working space. I took everything apart again and went on an investigation. I took pictures off everything, like 100 photos and then went about analyzing them. I found Aluminum shavings on the bottom of the transmission bell housing and found the culprit. The teeth on the torque converter is hitting the top left and top of the transmission! Something is not getting aligned properly! So now that's the current mission.

And on another note:
My Zilla 1K-LV was waiting for me at home last night! It's a beast compared to the Kelly, 20 lbs vs 6 lbs. I was getting really frustrated with my EV until this package came in. Now I just need to get this transmission working with my Kelly, then I will install the Zilla. I have no idea when that will be because nothing has been going to plan.

Coming Darkness

2009-11-20T14:19:00.000-08:00

The Darkness comes earlier each day, making it harder to do EV work.

The EV is back together, minus 3 quarts of ATF. I spent all of yesterday getting the motor installed, the mounts back together and all the wiring of the control tray. The most difficult parts were the coupling and then the rear motor mount. I have a few bolts that just didn't want to go in, and after about an hour they finally set themselves.

Today I was finishing up the IDLE control wiring, then it got dark and I couldn't properly see the ATF levels, so I called it a day. I had to use the IDLE to get the ATF flowing because it registered FULL after only 3 quarts, and that sucker can take over 6 quarts to be filled up during an "overhaul". After a few seconds of idling, the ATF registered low, so tomorrow I can refill it up again. Then I can drive it FINALLY!

I plan on taking pictures and video with the idling, and want to try out the Pocke Dyno iPod Touch app to what the performance is like with the Kelly, then compare it to the Zilla when that comes int.

Transmission Removal Day 5

2009-11-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

The weather this weekend was awful. Lots of rain and wind I no garage or shelter to work under. So yesterday I took in my control tray and worked on it a bit. I properly installed my IDLE control circuit and neatened up the loose cables.

Today the weather lighten up this afternoon and my dad and I almost finished the transmission swap! Well, the old one is out and the new one is in, but I still need to put the wheel back together and tighten up a few bolts before I get to reinstalling the motor and refilling the transmission ATF. I am going to spend this week reassembling the EV slowly so I don't miss anything. I am guessing about 2 hours to reinstall the transmission sensor cables, ATF cooling lines and get the motor back in.

I didn't take any pictures though. When ever I thought about it, I was covered in grease and in the middle of suspending a transmission. The actual removal went pretty easy once we figured out the ball joints. Usually you have to take both front wheels off, but we couldn't because the car became too unstable, so we just removed the left wheel and moved the transmission instead of moving the right drive shaft. It's wasn't by the book, but it worked anyways.

The EV is SOO CLOSE to being operational again! EV Components has says that my Zilla should be ready for shipment this week, so with any luck my Thanksgiving weekend will be installing the Zilla.

Transmission Removal Day 3 and 4

2009-11-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

Days 3 and 4 were very uneventful. I was hoping to have a full day yesterday, but that was interrupted with last minute projects and a possible summer 2010 adventure.

I was having problems removing the ball joints from the lower control arms, so I had to go out and get sockets for an Impact Drill. After getting the sockets my dad still couldn't get the bolt off the damper fork on the right tire setup, so we moved on to the other side and that came off much easier. Then it turns out we didn't have to remove the fork, we actually needed it to help separate the ball joint from the lower control arm.

Those were also a problem. Last night we were stumped, so we went down to Autozone to get a Ball Joint Press used to remove/install the joints. Turns out it doesn't fit a Civic! Not even close. So I went down to the local Honda mechanic that does our ICE Honda's and his advice was quite interesting. Instead of using a removing tool, you use a jack to push up the rotors, remove the lower control arm Castle bolt (easy part) and then use a sledge hammer and beat the control arm until it pops out. It work great!

Now I have one axle removed, that shifter cable removed and all the bolts loosened. If the weather holds out I hope to finish the swap tomorrow. I am guessing 15 minutes or less to remove the transmission then maybe an hour to get the new one installed.

Transmission Removal Day 2

2009-11-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

Today was really a bust on what I wanted to do. All I got done was drain the transmission fluid, remove the ATF cooler and unplug the transmission from the wire harness.

I got hung up with removing the suspension system from the front wheels. I need to remove the lower control arm from the hub/axle setup but I couldn't get the bolts off. I need to get some impact sockets to I can use the impact drill to get off the stubborn bolts.

Tomorrow I will be doing some tool and socket shopping and hopefully finish the transmission replacement.

Transmission Removal Day 1

2009-11-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

I have started to replace my transmission. On Saturday I removed all my electronics and my motor and here is the current transmission still in the EV.

And this is my new transmission. The original transmission was a Honda A4RA and this is a newer B4RA, from a 1998 Honda Civic LX and has 104,000 miles on it and it comes with a 3 month warranty so I have to get EVing!I haven't actually removed the transmission yet. Today was spent picking up the new transmission and cleaning it up. I also restocked my transmission fluid and made a list of how I am going to proceed. The weather looks good so I am hoping to get the transmission swapped out tomorrow and driving by Thursday afternoon. I plan on dealing with the transmission tomorrow and hopefully get the AC/PS bracket built but I will only do that if I have time.

Lots of Thinking

2009-11-08T15:03:00.000-08:00

I didn't get my new transmission this weekend. Apparently something happened and the transmission casing got cracked or damaged so it had to go out for repair and *should* be done Monday. Just great.....

Anyways, I removed the motor and have everything ready to replacing the transmission yesterday in the hopes that I would have the transmission all set to go. So today I decided to tackle my heating problem and found it's more of a problem than I had hoped. I was all set to go at it and remove the dash to get to the old heater core and remove it and replace it with the Ceramic element. After reading the service manual I found that I have to drain the AC and remove part of it, and I do not have the means to do that at this time.

I now have to figure out something else. I am thinking on building the Ceramic heater into a compact DC setup that will sit in front of the windshield and the only real purpose will be to defrost the windshield while driving. I will purchase another Ceramic heater to use to preheat the EV in the mornings.

I have also decided to get a start on making the mount that holds the AC and PS compressors. They have been held by rope for over a year now and I think it's time to do something about that. I have a basic idea that I will be fine tuning and hopefully built this week. I actually have most of this week off due to holidays and classes that have already ended, so plenty of EV working time!

Replacement Transmission

2009-11-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

I have finally found a replacement transmission. I decided to stick with an Automatic and ordered it up today. I was looking at a manual, but when I showed up to the salvage yard the prices for the transmission, shifter, linkages, etc were just too much at this point. It's fall now and the good working days are numbered and I know I can replace the Automatic transmission in 6 or so hours, so that's the way I went.

The transmission is from a 1998 Civic and has 104,000 miles on it. It was still in the donor car so I couldn't bring it home today, but it's supposed to be out and ready for me tomorrow. I will be doing all the proper transmission care, checking all the sensors and draining all the ATF and replacing it with all the new ATF I bought, but only used a small amount of it.

Oh My...

2009-11-02T15:38:00.000-08:00

I finally got my idle control functioning and decided to give the transmission a drive. 1/4 from home it dies again, this time for good. It turns out that the TC wasn't the problem, but something with the ATF pump and possibly the clutches. I had to push the EV home, but at least it was down hill. I spent most of Halloween Day testing out the Idle and it was working fine, but after I went for a drive it gave out again.

Now I am looking for replacement transmissions before my Zilla arrives, and I am keeping an eye out for Automatic or Manual transmissions.

I have located a few places that have transmissions, and tomorrow I plan on visiting one or two of them to check them out. I want to have my replacement in my hands by this weekend because I want this EV going !!!! AAHHHH!!!!!!!!

Back in Business

2009-10-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

The EV is running again!

I took everything apart and decided to replace the only thing that I had a spare part of: the Torque Converter. I figured that the only things I had to loose was 8 hours and $25 of new ATF. The old TC was toast! I guess after 244,130 miles it make sense, so the new TC I put one was the one I got with my sacrificial transmission for constructing my plates last year. It has about 97,000 miles on it so it should be good for quite a while. I have been meaning to get rid of the old engine and transmission for some time now, and I am glad I didn't!

I have also decided to idle the electric motor. I am designing the circuit tonight and tomorrow I will be purchasing the parts to build it. The idle will make it easier for others in the family to drive, and I will be using the old Cruise Control switch to turn the idle On/Off so I can save power while at a long stop light. Though, it only takes about 18 AMPs to properly idle the transmission in Park, and most likely slightly less in gear. Also, having the idle will allow me to use the A/C when the car is parked, when I ever get around to actually building the A/C compressor mount.

Karma

2009-10-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

This morning I exercised my vocabulary of 4 letter worlds. My transmission DIED on me a mile from my house. I had just replaced my last battery and took the EV out for a break in run, Not a break Down run!!!

I was driving down the street and went to stop to make a turn, and I heard a very interesting whirring sound as the car slowed down. Stumped, I went to make the turn, heard the whir again, the car lurched forward and then that was it. I glided into the next parking lot and the transmission would not engage anymore.

So now I am ripping EVERYTHING out of the engine compartment and going to take a look at the damage. I am hoping it's just the Torque Converter as I do have a much newer spare. The transmission has 244,130 miles on it and I guess that was it. If replacing the TC doesn't fix my problem, I will be going to the local salvage yard and claiming a new transmission.

I am so mad/sad/disappointed right now it's stupid. I guess by the end of this conversion, I will have rebuilt every aspect of the car that it will be just like new. But for crying out loud, WHY NOW!?!?!?!?! The Zilla is due soon, I just replaced my pack and cleaned everything up.

Obviously Oblivious

2009-10-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have been having problems with my new brakes, specifically a VERY squishy pedal. I have bled the brakes twice, checked the fluid, readjusted the pades and shoes and still nothing seemed to help. The weather hasn't really been cooperating, so I decided I was going to bring it down to the local Goodyear dealer this morning and let them have at it.

A couple hours later I get a call saying that everything was mechanically sound, it just needed more vacuum!!! I never even thought about the vacuum!!! So I went to pick it up and just cranked up the vacuum and drove it home. Man, what a difference. I just finished cranking the vacuum high enough to provide the extra stopping oomph, but also shut off once it reaches max Hg.

Next on my to do list is replace the last "old" battery in my pack. It passes all the tests Walmart does on it, so I can't replace it under warranty, but I am fine with that because I wanted a good battery to test my BMS modules revisions on, and for camping power. I even have an old car battery to use for core, so I should be all set. I am also still looking out for a new suspension system, the last major piece besides the Zilla. I have found one I like, I just need to see if I have the funds for it.

My Zilla will hopefully arrive the first week of November, according to EV Components. I have been waiting forever for a nice controller, so another two weeks isn't too bad.

How I Used an Automatic Transmission in an EV

2009-10-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

I have been lots of questions on how exactly I used the automatic transmission in my EV. So this insanely long post is a summary of how I did the whole transmission setup.

The first thing I did was design a motor coupling and plates that mimicked the old ICE. I kept the torque converter and flywheel setup, and since it mimics the original engine, the adapter plates and motor coupling can be used with the automatic or a manual transmission. I used the transmission's Flex Plate to design the motor coupler, which is a taper locking coupling. The aluminum plates were created using a second transmission I bought off Craiglist because at the time the car was still driving and I wanted to have as little down time as possible, so I bought the second transmission (which was skipping gears) as a EV sacrifice so I could use it as a template for the coupling and for the bolt hole pattern on the plates.Next, I left the Automatic transmission installed with the existing radiator/transmission cooler. I also left the PCM and ECU installed as they are needed to operate the transmission and the dash board. I also used the old engine mount to hold up the rear side of the 9" ADC FB1-4001A series wound motor. The motor has a rear shaft that will connect to the Power Steering pump and A/C compressor.
After all the mechanical is done, comes "fooling" the PCM. I Do not idle the motor at all. It does take about 6 seconds to build up pressure for the clutches to operate, but that only happens when the EV is first started before a trip. During driving the pressure stays up while at stop lights and such, and getting going again is no slower than with using a manual with a clutch.

Now comes the big question: How did I change the shift points on the transmission? Did I reprogram the PCM? Modify the transmission soleniods? I did nothing of the sort! The key to using to changing the shift points: replace the TPS with a 5 k potentiometer!

In and ICE he TPS tells the transmission when to shift, depending on how hard the pedal is pressed, when accelerating or cruising or coasting. By replacing the TPS with a 5K potentiometer I now can manually tell the PCM when to shift. The higher I set it, the longer it stays in each gear. After 1,000 miles of driving like this, I have had no problems and I have found a few settings that work well depending on which terrain I drive on. Higher RPMS mean better efficiency while lower RPMS allow for better acceleration.

I usually leave it at about 1/4 turn, however it needs to be set to 0 every time I start up the EV because if the TPS (5k pot) is higher than 0, the transmission thinks you are stepping on the gas and will lock the Shifter into place so you cant move it from Park. Annoying, but effective safety measure. And I will not be bypassing that protocol, but if I do the transmission can easily be shifted into Neutral with the EV off, and that is a safety issue that is checked during the yearly Inspection.

Battery Mangement System 0.1b

2009-10-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I have updates anything. I finished my brakes, but I did the bleeding all wrong because I have NO stopping power. I can jammed the brakes to the firewall and the EV will stop, but barely. So I either did the bleeding wrong (which I think I did, pressed the pedal too far) or I killed my Master Cylinder/Brake Booster.

I also have replaced most of my pack under warranty because they were not working right. I have one left to replace, which I plan to do soon. They needed equalizing, but I didn't know until after I replaced most of them. I am going to replace the last one just so it's new like the others.

Anyways, I have really good results with my BMS. Here are pics of a few modules, and then installed in the EV.

I installed these and took them on their maiden drive to school (with funky brakes, but that's another thing) and found bugs in the software. I have a visual error reporting function that is supposed to activate for about 5 minutes, while disable the module, then go back to normal. They would not get to normal, so I sat in the parking lot rewriting the code at 8:30 AM and then updated all the modules.

They have been working really well. During the charging phase, the voltages are pretty much every where because of the batteries each being slightly different in age. (Well, one's about a year older than others.) But once the charger gets to the end, the balancers help spread the final voltages pretty evenly. I was having some problems where some batteries were charging at 15.2 volts and other at 14.0 volts. Now they all charge around 14.6-14.9 volts.

Brake Install

2009-09-28T17:33:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures from the new brakes installation. The top picture is comparing the old rotor on the left to the new one on the right. The Second picture is the old rotor and pads, which look awful. And the last picture is the final result with the new rotor installed and new pads. The entire EV got this treament, but the rear had drums so those got replace along with the shoes. It took about 4 hours to do the whole process, including bleeding the brakes, which was not too bad.

September Update

2009-09-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

I have been EV less for over a week now and I am still working on the brakes. I have installed all the new rotors, pads, drums and shoes, but I had to fix the front left caliper as it was sticking badly. It had shave 1/8 of an inch off the rotor due to it being all gummed up and not releasing. Next I have to get more brake fluid and bleed the lines and I should be all set in that area.

I have also sold my old K99-4007 to another EV'er this past weekend, so I have recollected a good chunk of the money I spent on this conversion. I am making a spreadsheet of all my costs, but at the moment the total money spent on the EV, including money reclaimed by selling parts, is about $3,100. Pretty darn good, but that doesn't include the $2,000 Zilla 1K-LV I just ordered up.

Brake Time

2009-09-18T19:19:00.000-07:00

I was driving home on Tuesday and half way home I smelled something odd, but wrote it off thinking it was the construction truck that pulled in front of me. Then about 2 minutes later I was cruising at 35 MPH @ 80 AMP draw and all of a sudden my speed plummeted to 25 MPH. My brakes were dragging quite badly that I ended up using all my battery getting home and I really could glide.

The brakes have never been decent since I started the EV. I attributed it to rust from sitting for the 4 months of conversion, but yesterday I finally had time to take a look at them. The rotors are warped, pads are rusted, drums shot and all the pads are scraping. Today I bought a new entire set of rotors, brake pads, drums and shoes and tomorrow I will install them.

I have no idea how old these brakes were to begin with, but there has always been a ratting sound that supposedly means warped rotors, but I never did anything about it because I thought new brakes would cost loads of money. I was wrong, these new sets of brakes all came to under $150 in parts.

I may see an serious improvement in performance and range with a new set of brakes that don't drag. I guess I will find out this weekend once I get the new set installed.

Out of Reach

2009-09-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

I have waiting for my Synkro for while now, so I decided to contact EV Components to see what was going on. It turns out that getting the Synkro is getting pretty hard and production seems to be behind for the moment, so arrival was up in the air.

So I went with another option: Order a Zilla 1K-LV. More powerful than a Synkro and will be shipping within a month or so, and it's under complete control of the folks at EV Components. For the past year EV controllers have been hard to get a hold of, and the Zilla was basically untouchable because it had been out of production since 2008. I have always wanted a Zilla, but it does cost quite a bit, more than I have ever planned, but in the end it wasn't much more than a Synkro.

I should be able to zip around with a Zilla, seeing as they are the most popular for drag racing, a small commuting car so have nice zip with a power house under the hood.

I have also been driving the EV better, figuring out when I should glide, accelerate or pull over when the hills get too bad for the controller and I start to hold up traffic. I am hoping for a 2-3 mile increase in range with the Zilla because it won't be wasting AMPs going up hills, and I should be able to stick in 2nd for longer for way more efficiency.

Temperature Effects

2009-09-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

Last winter I attempted to insulate my batteries, but didn't finish because I wasn't seeing a noticeable difference when driving less than 10 miles doing my around town driving.

Now I am starting to see the difference between 58F, 63F, 74F, 81F, etc in my morning drives. The past few days it has been about 48-60F outside and my batteries has been about 58-63 depending on the day. So last night my dad an I quickly whipped up a temporary insulated box for the batteries. It is made from 1" foam board that has been cut out and duck taped together, just to see if it works before really trying to make it nice.

Well it WORKED. Last night it was 78F on both temp sensors when we installed it, then I plugged the car into the charger and after 30 minutes the trunk was down to 72F but the batteries were at 92F! This morning, after the batteries had been charged for a few hours and just floating, the box was 81F while the trunk was 63F. The drive to school was much improved from the previous drives and I even had power left when I parked vs yesterday's limping onto campus into my spot.

This website has good basic info on deep cycle batteries, including a section on Temperature Effect: http://www.windsun.com/Batteries/Battery_FAQ.htm

EV Update

2009-09-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

I have a few EV-related updates:

First Paul and Sabrina's Open Source EV Controller is now available as a kit for purchase. Here is the Wiki: http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/ReVolt

And here is the main purchasing website: http://www.paulandsabrinasevstuff.com/store/index.html

I am considering making this controller this winter if the funds allow it. It has the potential to be a great contender to the EV world, not to mention having a spare controller around.

I have also been working on my BMS system slowly. I have been changing up the design a bit and adding a few features. I am going to make up a design and have prototype boards made by PCB Express. $51 + $9.85 shipping for 3 professionally made boards is a decent deal.

I think this design has the potential to be a sell able product and I am also going to design a charger system and LCD status screen also. Possibly create a charger/bms kit with a few interesting twists, like real battery/cell management and a computer programmable system.

Can You Pick Out The EV?

2009-09-01T11:09:00.001-07:00

Can you pick out the EV? Wait- they're all EVs! Well, after about 5 months of trying to get a spot, there I am smack in the middle charging away. Today was the last bit of rearranging needed to squeeze me in, but now that's over, just in time for the semester to start tomorrow.

The school year started today for the public schools, which is good for me. All my high speeds hills that I have left to contend with are now 20 MPH school zone, which means good EV driving for me. The arrival of my new Synkromotive controller is still up in the air, but I really hope its soon. When I do get it, I am going to start off with the motor AMPs @ 500 and the battery AMPs @ 200 to save on battery power. According to the calculator I should need anymore than 175 battery AMPs to climb these hills, and anything higher is just wasted AMPs.

I also decided to do the math savings. It costs $2.86 a day to drive my ICE to school and back, which ends up being $57.37 a month at current gas prices of $2.70 a gallon. Now my EV takes 6.5 hours to charge, and at the 7.5 cents/KWh that is $0.49 a charge up, or $9.80 a month in electricity. The $0.075 is the cost of electricity at night, when I charge my EV. So it's basically a 6x savings in costs!

Now the trick is figuring out how long I can drive it before weather become a range limiting factor. BTW, it was 48 F when I left this morning and now its 86F where my EV is parked. This New England weather is just screwed up.

Little Tricks

2009-09-01T07:11:00.000-07:00

Today was the first, real, Official full time EV use to work and back. I was welcomed on this September first with 48 F weather! It was in the 90s last week, and all of a sudden it was cold and brisk. On the way in, I did notice the cold had an effect on the batteries, and I messed with the charger yesterday didn't help.

First, the charger. I was reading that I should set the float on my charger to 14.4 volts, so I did. Well, some batteries didn't get fully charged because of that, so it went right back to 14.8 volts this morning when I got it.

Now the temp. According to this: http://www.windsun.com/Batteries/Battery_FAQ.htm#Temperature%20Effects%20on%20Batteries the batteries were down to about 87% capacity due to the weather, and that was dead on. I usually have 40-50% left, but I was closer to 25% left and did my best to slow down. I did a few trial last winter and found that betteries were much warmer when left charging over night and range was quite decent compared to cold batteries, so tomorrow I will get to see if it still true since I will have the EV charger most of the night.

It's time to start thinking about installing the ceramic heater and get down to insulating the batteries, for real this time. I am looking into sheet metal or some type of cheap plastic to house the foam insulation.

The Adventure: Home

2009-08-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

My EV was basically fully charged when I left for home yesterday. The trip was pretty uneventful, but I ended up missing on of my planned short cuts, so I had to drive through some 45 MPH streets with mild hills, into the center of town, adding another 2 miles to my 16.5 mile commute. The EV did well, until the last hill home. I dropped to 25 MPH going up the hill and I had to pull over cause some guy was riding my tailgate. It was a 30 MPH hill, so I there was really not a big deal... Oh well.

I definitely need the new Synkromotive controller and to not miss out on my shortcuts. I probably would not have had much trouble with that final hill if I had an extra 10 Ah of juice in my pack to contend with. Actually, I am going to look it up to see if it was my batteries getting sort of low, of the controller not giving the juice to go up.

EDIT: It must be both the controller not giving the juice properly since the calculator shows That 230 motors AMPs are needed and only 165 battery AMPs to climb the hill, and an extra 10 Ah of power would be nice since climbing that hill at 30 MPH will use 3.75 Ah of pack.

The Adventure

2009-08-25T06:49:00.001-07:00

The Adventure actually began yesterday when I decided to take a test run of the route I picked out for my EV ride to school. So with MapQuest in my hand, I take my ICE and try out the route. I get a whopping 2.6 miles when my drivers rear tire blows. I pull into the nearby school parking lot like 100 feet away and find a HUGE tear in the tire, like someone took a sawzall too it! I tried to remove it but the sucker was rusted on so a call to AAA was in order and they came and used a sledge hammer to get it off. Put on the Donut and went home. I felt like I was towing 3000LBs with that donut!

Anyways, I needed new tires and today I find out I also need new brakes and I had a stuck caliber (which I thought needed replacement a few months ago). So with my ICE in the shop, I had to try out my route with my EV, pretty much going blind.

So I did take my EV, and I got lost. When I finally made it to school I had driven 18.4 miles, 2 miles farther than I needed too. I had power left, and the pack voltage never got below 84.4 volts under heavy acceleration and at rest was over 96 volts when I finally parked in.

That was only part of the Adventure. Yesterday I got my access to the lot with the school's EVs, the access pass and sticker. So when I arrived today at 8:15 there was NO PLACE TO PARK! I had a backup plug in another lot so I am currently charging there. But I really need a spot in the EV lot, so some EV rearranging is needed, and since they are all small Geo Metros, it shouldnt be too hard to get a setup that works for everyone.

Now I am prepping for the third part of this Adventure: going home. The Civic is on the charger and hopefully will be done when I am ready to leave. I cranked up the charging current a bit just to hasten it.

Replacements

2009-08-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Walmart and exchanged the two bad batteries. It took longer than I thought, mainly because the price of the MAXX29 have increase $10 each since last year, so it took the Customer Service rep a bit to figure out what to do.

Anyways, the new batteries are fresh off the pallet with an August 09 date. I put them into the battery trays, but I haven't strapped them down or wire them up yet, that will be tomorrow's job.

Before I do that, I am going to charge the two new batteries with the smart charger, then hooked them into the pack and give it a few minutes with the K&W. Then comes breaking them in with a couple runs doing 25-30 MPH around the block should do it. There is only about 25 cycles on the pack, and it's OK to add/change single batteries as long of they are less than 50 cycles difference between them, so I should be fine.

I am still working out the finer details about getting my plug at school, but I am hoping to get things finalized very soon before all my saved money gets spent on gas again. It's costs me $3.00 a day to commute in my ICE, and only $0.60 for the EV, so it's quite a savings!

Under Load

2009-08-20T09:47:00.000-07:00

I MapQuested a trip around town, using 35-50MPH roads with hills and drive 16.5 miles just to make sure I could make the trip to school. I found out that I have two really bad batteries. After 15 miles of driving, the PakTrakr starting to flip out saying that A1 nd B1 needed charging.

So I set the PakTrakr to monitor the batteries in question and found that under load, A1 was sagging to 10.4 volts and B1 was at 7.5 volts! The other batteries were only sagging to 11.2-11.1 volts while driving at 35 MPH. I made it home, but dropped the speed down to 25 MPH to keep the A1 and B1 batteries above 10.5 volts.

I am pulling A1 and B1 today and getting them replaced at Walmart. 18 month free replacement is going to be real useful right now. I kept all my reciepts just for this purpose.

At least I know I can make it the 16.3 miles, and most of the batteries were at 50% when I stopped. And the route I plan to take to school is limited to about 35 MPH and probably less hilly.

Too Many Variables

2009-08-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

I decided to try another setting in the Kelly controller, one that would use less battery AMPs, and hence less acceleration. There must be hundreds of different combination's one can do with this thing, and they really don't come with any explanation on what they do.

I went over the mountainous journey, and instead of looking of power required to hold speed, I looked at the battery power needed to climb the mountain. It was quite frightening! I was pulling 250 AMPs for 3 minutes going up, and with some simple math the power it took from the battery pack was: 250 AMPs per Hour/3600 seconds per hour*180 seconds driving time*2 for Puekerts Effect = 25 Ah from the batteries! Thats 1/5 of my battery pack, and that was done three times after 12 miles of driving! No wonder I literrally crawled home! I used up at least half my pack driving 3 miles of mountainous hills, more than I expected. Now I know, avoid that part of town.

I have a few new routes I found using MapQuest that I want to try because they are basically flat, and will get me to where I want to go, hopefully with lots of power left.

The Real Deal

2009-08-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I decided to take the EV out and try out the new cooling and program settings. The acceleration was GREAT and the controller stayed pretty cool. It was supposed to me a 12 mile round trip, but 4 miles in I can to a dirt road (under construction) and bottomed out the EV, cursed and went on. Then after reaching my destination I followed my dad home, asking to skip the dirt road. Well, he did avoid the dirt road and instead took the scenic routes to the mountains of our town! I ended up using almost ALL the battery power going up the hills, and came to a point where the controller went into low voltage shutdown and I was creeping along at less than 1 MPH.

I found that this what was my dad was referring too when the hills slowed him down. I did a battery check, and one was 50% and the rest were between 8% and 40% left! WAY out of balance!

I have used the single smart charger to bring up the lower batteries, and next I am going to set my K&W to do an equalizing charge on all the batteries. If this doesn't work, I am going to replace the entire pack with a new one, all under warranty. I also did try out the prototype BMS and it worked great after some minor software changes. Hopefully I will get a picture soon.

Cooling Off

2009-08-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

I decided to do some more controller playing today. I added two CPU fans to the heat sink of the controller, and changed the controller program settings to Torque. Now it should give all the power it can, and with the extra fan cooling it seems to be doing a little better. I won't really know until my Dad takes it out again and reports back on those hills. My 7.7 mile trial run with the improved setup yielded great results and the controller heat sink was considerably cooler. And it was 85 F with high humidity out today, quite nasty for working on the EV, but I did it anyways.

This Friday is the meeting about getting plugs at school and I also hope to drive it 17 miles and see how it does. I might mapquest a route to go back and forth and see what happens.

Heating Up

2009-08-06T07:12:00.000-07:00

I have not done much with the EV since I was away on vacation, but I do have a few things going on.

First, I started my Battery Management System. I have one prototype made up and will be trying it out soon. It's a Shunt type regulator with a programmable PIC processor and I have it setup for a 12 volt flooded lead acid battery. It also has a basic State of Charge meter, 0%, 25%, 50% 75% and 100%.

I also have a meeting next Friday about getting my plug for my electric car at school. I have been trying to get a plug for about 8 months now. This time instead of asking for a plug and getting clueless responses, I went out and found a spot on campus that would be great for electric vehicle charging, gave a picture to the right people and get a meeting two weeks later!

Now the controller. I am on the waiting list for the next batch of Synkromotive Controllers, and it might take more than 4 weeks! I have been going over more data from my EV driving, trying to get the most out of the Kelly, and I think if I add some more high powered fans to the bottom heatsink, it might make the hills better. There are these two hills in my Dad's route that the car really slows down, and they also happen to be at the end of his commute. The other day when he came home I decided to check the controller's temp, and the top casing was fine where I put the CPU fan on, but the massive heatsink was HOT! I have no forced air cooling over it, so that is my next job. I have a whole ton of high power CPU fans, so I will try those out. I am also going to take some TEMP readings today when I take the EV out and try some massive hills.

Going Over the Data

2009-07-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

I have been pouring over all the data I have collected, such as range estimations, AMP draw at different speeds, top speed and all these hills. I them made a conclusion and took it to the electric vehicle teacher and he agreed: my controller is way underpowered.

Actually, I learned that my K99-4007 was actually quite fine for the Civic with the blower cooler and proper gear selection. It was my controller limiting the acceleration and AMP draw to the motor. Which makes sense because my controller couldn't provide the continuous power required to maintain hills, and I only need to higher AMPS for a few seconds.

So now I know it's the controller, it's on the top of my EV list of things to buy. I am still working on getting a plug at school, but I really need the upgrade controller before driving it there. I hope to have the new controller by the end of August, before the semester starts up again.

More Tweaking

2009-07-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

This week was spent gathering more EV driving data by my dad. I adjusted the vacuum switch on the brake pump because the pump would not turn off. A quick adjust of the setting screw and it now stays off for a lot less of time, but still works just fine.

I also took another crack at figuring out the whole hill thing. I temporarily hooked up my current meter and took some AMP testings and then went off to the hill with the worst grade (5.6 %) and did a few runs, with momentum and one starting from a stop, after getting the controller warm.

I found that it would draw 200+ amps, then drop down to 182 AMPs and wouldn't go any higher, even if I floored it. This means that the controller is limiting the current due to heat.

So I found the most powerful CPU fan I could find and planted it on the Kelly controller. Man, what a difference! I have a heatsink for the bottom of the controller, but the top also needed some cooling. After a 5 mile run the controller was practically cold and usually it's quite warm. And it's 85 degrees F out today, and humid and it's probably closer to 120F under the hood and the controller will start to slow down at 125 F. The CPU fan was designed to cool Quad Core Xeon processors, so cooling the Kelly isn't too far out of it's design specs. And I can always add another one.

Now it has to go through some real testing but my dad driving it to work again and see if it's any better. The motor needs to see 215+ AMPs to hold the hills at 30 MPH, which means it needs to pull 215 from the batteries, which hopefully it can do now for longer than a few seconds. 20-30 seconds would be nice just to clear the hills.

Dilemma

2009-07-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

After a few days of daily driving, we have decided that we need to upgrade the controller. The Kelly just won't make some of the hills, dipping down to 5 MPH because the continuous power of the controller is 160 AMPs and I need more like 250 AMPs.

I thought it would have been fine because the other controller that was recommended to me was a Curtis 1221c, which is similar to my Kelly with 400 AMPs peak, but instead only 150 AMPs continuous.

I was going to build the Open Source EV Controller, but I planned on taking my time slowly building it over a period of a few months to iron out any kinks and give it a thorough testing. So now I have to research production controllers and I am currently looking at either the Curtis 1231C, Logisystems and the new Synkromotive controller. Right now my eyes are set on the Synkromotive controller since it has the highest continuous current of 400 AMPs and a peak of 650, so it would be a HUGE performance increase.

I also have put up my spare parts for sale on Craigslist and DIY Electric Car Classifieds to fund this controller upgrade:

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/ev-parts-lot-sale-33926.html

I am hoping anyone out there will pick up these parts since it's a great deal, and a great way to get started on an EV project.

Here are the links to the Open Source EV Controller:
http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/ReVolt
And this is the Forum Post on Ecomodder, a good read and a must read for anyone wanting to learn about this controller: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/paul-sabrinas-cheap-144v-motor-controller-6404.html

Battery Watering

2009-07-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I checked the water level off all my batteries after getting the suggestion from my PakTrakr to "Check Water in Battery B1". I found that most of the batteries needed little to no water, which is excellent. Nothing was dangerously low , which is quite good after 230 miles of EV driving. I have read that watering is needed every 200 or so miles and it only takes about 15 minutes to check the levels and add new water if needed, so it might become a Friday night thing to do since the EV will be doing close to 200 miles a week, hopefully starting tomorrow.

Also, after my video run I checked my cables to see how they were and I noticed that one was quite warm so I removed it and found that is had high resistance. So I removed all the cables and gave them a good corrosion sanding. The resistance went from 0.4 ohms to 0.0 ohms after some instense cleaning, about 15 minutes per connection and I have 16 connections.... do the math... I watche Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and I still wasn't done with the cables....

I haven't driven the EV since that, but I should expect cooler cables and possible an increase of power. Since that resistance was limiting me to 240 battery AMPs (V=IR) now I should be able to pull more, but I really don't want to in order to preserve battery life.

EV Driving Video

2009-07-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is, the first driving video! Proof that one can make an EV with an automatic transmission.

There is no commentary by me because I was sort of tired and I did another whole commentary but the the camera fell over at the first corner and I didn't realize until partway through so I scrapped it.

Anyways, it's a 1.1 mile run around my neighborhood doing 25 MPH speeds. You can clearly hear the 12 volt Thomas brake pump and when that is off, the hum of the electric motor. I am going to get another video one of these days with a bit of 45 MPH highway, but that will have to wait until I can get a passenger to hold the camera for me.

Tweaks

2009-07-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

I have about 75 miles on the EV now and I am getting ready so some tweaks. I am going to adjust the controller settings for a smoother start and I am researching a new suspension system. I am also looking at the pulley system for hooking up the AC and Power Steering, but the new suspension is on the top of my list. I think I have found a system I like

I am also development my own Battery Management System. While wet deep cycle batteries don't require it, I figure it would be a good system to caring for the batteries and making sure they are properly balanced and don't get overcharged. I do have the PakTrakr but it only monitors the batteries, but doesn't actually manage them or balance the batteries.

I still haven't made the EV driving video but I am hoping to do it this weekend if the weather ever lightens up.

Gathering Data

2009-06-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

I have been happily driving my EV as much as possible, and the FB1-4001A is great! I have a total of 38 miles so far on this new setup and itching to put on more.

From the data I have collected, it looks like I have a range of 20.1 miles to 80% DoD, or 25.1 miles to 100% DoD. Now that is pretty decent since those test were with the biggest hills I could find.

Now that the EV is drivable, I have to learn to drive "better", i.e. slow acceleration, steady AMP draw, find the most efficient speeds, etc.

And it's also time to get plugs. My dad was successful and got three plugs from his work. I sent off an e-mail to my college's Access Services over a week ago and didn't hear back. Well, today I called them and they asked if I was the one who sent the e-mail, and I said yes. They said that as of today, they don't have an answer for me. Apparently I am the first person to request a plug, and they are somewhat stumped and trying to figure out what to do. They didn't outright say no, so it sounds like they are trying to figure something out. Now I am itching to hear their response, and I am quite hopeful.

I am also going to try to make a video of the EV in action in the next few weeks. The weather has been quite awful so I have been putting it off for a while. Hopefully when the rain stops I will get the tripod out and setup the camera in the back seat.

I probably should first clean out the EV.....

Balancing Act

2009-06-15T19:03:00.000-07:00

I did two test runs again today, just short 3 miles runs, but my batteries are quite unbalanced. I also fixed the vacuum leak and properly connected the Curtis 1400E DC/DC Converter. The car is now drivable, except for the battery issue.

Right now I am charging each battery with a 10 AMP smart charger, one at a time. I have everything setup under my tarp and I will not drive it until each battery has been fully charged with the smart charger. Then I will take it for a good 6-8 mile drive, and charge it again with the main K&W BC-20.

The batteries became unbalanced due to sitting for 3 months, and having the PakTrakr sucking power from 2 of the 8 batteries more than the others (remotes and display).

Once this Balancing Act is complete, I will start to take new data for range and performance. I did take it up to 40 MPH this morning with no problems, even with the unbalanced pack. I am also working on installing the BC-20 into the trunk of the EV. I haven't spent much time on it yet, but I do have an idea that should be very easy, assuming I can get a marine 110v plug for the gas cap connection.

Assembly Day Two

2009-06-14T19:13:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to torrential rains, which was not on the forecast on Friday. So, after breakfast, I setup my tarp and went to work on installing the control tray. After about 3 hours of bolting, cable installation, checking again and again, it was done!

It wasn't without some little quirks, though. I first tested the control tray and started to smoke up my Precharger Resistor because my DC/DC was connected on the wrong side of it. I just unplugged the DC/DC until I can lengthen the wire for the positive side tomorrow.

After, I fired everything up, got in the EV and went to drive, and the Transmission wouldn't come out of park! It turns out that I had parked it funny, so I had to use the key to override the lock out, rolled down the driveway a few feet, and it was fine.

Then I went for a 1 mile jaunt around the neighborhood, and the EV had much more power now than before, with driving up to 25 MPH. I did feel like it should have had more power, but I decided to skip the step of checking the Kelly Controller settings before my little trip. After I got back, I hooked my laptop and found out that I had the wrong settings on the controller! I changed the settings and tomorrow I will go out to test them.

Now I do have a few things to work on. The vacuum has a leak in it, and my TPS sensor fell out when I installed my control tray, so I will have to reinstall that. I also have to go on a few small trips to break the brushes and batteries in again, so maybe 2 or 3 small trips this week will do that.

Once I get the little quirks out, I will make a video of the EV in action. I need about 30 minutes to fix up the little things, then I should be good for a real joy ride.

My next goal is to install the charger into the trunk. Right now it is an external setup, but I will change that and install the K&W BC-20 into the trunk so I can charge it in any weather. Then I will work on the Power Steering and the Air Conditioning, but that's later on.

Assembly Day One

2009-06-13T18:55:00.001-07:00

Today was a full day of EV work. It took way longer than I hoped to get the motor in. After getting the plates on the motor, and the motor hoisted up and car aligned, I found out that the motor was too big to be dropped down! So I have to remove the plates, and then lower the motor into the bay onto the ground, then add the plates again. Then came the aligning which did take a while, but the real pain was the two little bolts on the coupling. I spent two hours trying to bolt those little suckers, but I finally got them in. The whole setup spins by hand beautifully so I built the motor mount.

I did get what I wanted down today, and the new motor looks really good in the car! Tomorrow I will be installing the control tray and finishing everything up and through the car on the charger. I am guessing I have about 2 hours of work left before it will be drivable, so the morning should be busy.

I also made myself a checklist to be safe. I am glad I did it because I was so close to missing a few on the little things.

Bolt Flex Plate to Torque Converter - Done
Install main line cables - Done
Install motor - Done
Install motor mount - Done
Install Control Tray
Install Precharge Resistor
Test Control Tray w/o main traction power (12v test)
Check Kelly Controller Settings
Hook up Transmission Ground
Hook up TPS sensor - Done

I have half my checklist done, and the other half should be nice and easy once the control tray is installed.

Getting Ready for Assembly

2009-06-12T16:34:00.001-07:00

I just thought I would post this picture of the test setup of the FB1-4001A on the transmission.

Anyways, I spent the past few days getting ready for the motor install on Saturday. I have made and installed the new main line cables, or the Umbilical Cord, as I have been calling it, I built part of the motor mount and I started to collect all my tools to get ready.

Now my only thing I have to think about is whether to drop the motor in from the top, or bring it up from the bottom. I am going to search the EV Album for other Civic's with this size motor and try to find out if they did it from the top or the bottom. The motor is quite massive, and it will be a tight fit!

Metal Puzzle

2009-06-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

I have finished cutting and drilling the plates, and aligning them! It took me longer than I thought because my coupling insert was somewhat defective. All the holes need to be drilled slightly larger, and it took me about an hour of attempting to put the system together to figure that out.

I am still hoping to get it driving this weekend. I need to make the motor mount and crimp some new cables. Of course, now that I am ready to assemble the EV, it decides to rain all week. I will be setting up a tarp so I can work on it, and some parts like the crimping of the cables can be done inside. This is what I the plan is:
- Install FB1-4001A and mounts
- Install new main line cables
- Install Control Tray and test
- Update Kelly KDH09401 program
- Drive!

Adapter Plates, 2.0

2009-06-02T17:43:00.000-07:00

It turns out that the machine shop just doesn't have the time to work on my plates. So today I went down and picked up my FB1-4001A, sacrificial transmission and the new plate stock. I then went off to Home Depot and picked up a new 15" Drill Press, new bits and new DeWalt batteries then spent the day setting up the equipment.

The drill press seemed more complicated than the EV! After setting up, I went straight to work. It goes so much faster now that I have the old plates to use for patterns, and all the right equipment does wonders. I only spent about 30 minutes actually making the plates today, but I will be working on them for the next few nights with the *hope* that I can install it this Saturday. I am also taking my time and making these new plates as professional looking as possible, vs my other "hacked up" plates, which did look pretty bad up close, although they worked perfectly.

Test Fit

2009-05-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

Now that I am completely done with classes, it's EV time!
I did a test fit of the control tray in the EV today, and I have to say I do quite like it. I need another trip to ACE to get some 1/4-20 bolts to mount the controller/heatsink to the mini tray, and I need a longer hose for the vacuum switch. Then I will lock down the vacuum tank and finish up some wiring and test the tray.

I also fiddled with the BC-20 charger today. My batteries needed a freshen up charge, but the charger wouldn't work. I found out that my setting resistor needed to be readjusted to deal with the heat. After 45 minutes of fiddling, I started a top off charge.

Finally, Some Real Progress

2009-05-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

It has been about a month since I have done one tiny thing on the EV. Actually, I haven't really worked on it since winter break. A little bit here, or there, but this past semester has been loaded and most of the things I wanted to do did not happen.

Well, I finally have day to work on the EV. I received my new heatsink and mounted the controller to it.

I have also finished wiring the entire control tray. The only two things left for the tray is to mount the heatsink controller to it's small tray and to add lock washers to the nuts. Then it gets installed and tested. I am also going to make up a clear wiring diagram eventually.

May Update

2009-05-05T17:20:00.000-07:00

I am in my final weeks of the semester so I really haven't been able to do to much on the EV. I am almost done with the new wiring for the control system but it has taken much longer than I hoped because I had to get new relays.

If I play my cards right, I should be able to finish the rest of my semester's work this week and take Friday afternoon off to work on the EV before seeing the new Star Trek movie.

I also have ordered up a proper heatsink for my Kelly KDH09401. I have a 8.5"x12" finned aluminum heatsink coming in soon that will not only look better than the plate I have not, but should also provide even better cooling.

Control Tray Frame

2009-04-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

I have completed the hardware part of the control tray and setup the electronics on it.

From right to left, I have the 12 Volt Thomas Vacuum Pump, Electronic Control Box, Curtis SW200 Contactor and Curtis 1400E 96 Volt DC-DC converter. I need to pick up some more bolts for mounting the components and I haven't wired up anything yet. I am redoing ALL the wiring to neaten it up and reconfigure a few components I now have like the DC/DC.

I am hoping to finish up the electrical parts of the tray this weekend and test it out. Now I don't have my motor yet, but I don't need it to test the low voltage systems. I am estimating an hour or two for the wiring so I am almost there. This weekend is going to have excellent weather so testing it out should be easy.

Some Motivation

2009-04-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

Well this weather has giving me some more motivation to work on the EV! It was about 70F today and I got a lot done on the control tray.

I have one more mount to make for it, then I get down to installing the components. I also am going to to cut out some sheet metal to make a base for the components and for splash protection. This tray isn't complete yet, and it already looks really good. This engine compartment is going to be stuff, but hopefully it will look professional.

It looks like this weekend I will be finishing up this control tray. I will also be redoing the entire electrical setup. I have a new contactor that I want to use to replace the two parallel smaller ones I have. There are a few things in the engine compartment that can be removed and cleaned up a bit, like excess wiring brackets that aren't in use anymore.

Right now my wiring setup is rather difficult to follow and messy. Now that I have a DC/DC things will be changed around a bit.

My motor is still at the shop and will probably be there until mid May. When I do get it back it should be a matter of a day of installing it and making the motor mount.

April Update

2009-04-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

It's been about a month since I last posted, and that's because I have been busy slacking. I haven't gotten a whole lot done, and I am still waiting for the new motor adapter plates. I talked to the machine shop last week, and they haven't started it yet, so it's still a ways off.

I did finally remove the Cruise Control Unit from the engine compartment and readjusted the PakTrakr wiring. I did receive the 96 volt Curtis DC/DC that I traded for and it looks really nice:Between weather, school work and holidays, I really haven't done anything with the EV. I have all the control systems on the work bench, but I haven't purchased the material to building the new control tray system yet. I was going to wait until the motor was in, but at this point I have just going to work on the tray when I get the time just to get something done.