Sunday, February 22, 2009

Progress Report

I hit the 1,000 mile mark today. I have been driving the EV for a little over a month now and so far I'm mostly happy. The only real issue I've had is that one of the batteries is failing already. I suspect it was bad all along but I did not know it. As soon as I put the car in service I was having occasional charging failures where the charge timed out before completing it's cycle. After I installed the PakTrakr I found which battery was causing the trouble. When fully charged it looked okay as far as voltage but it very quickly lost power during use. I could see that during acceleration it was typically 2 volts or more below all of the others. I have taken it out and sent it back to the supplier for evaluation and/or replacement. In the mean time I took a chance and bought a similar battery at Sam's, for about half the price, and installed it. It did not have the L terminals so I had to get a little creative but it works. I have noticed that the voltage sag is not as great under load so I think this might improve the range a little. Time will tell.

Today I made a modification to the regenerative breaking switch to allow me to either have it on when slowing down, as the original kit does, or to have it on when the brakes are applied. I will evaluate this and see if I like it.

The compressor for the air conditioning has been ordered and I am expecting it in about a month. I ordered a Masterflux compressor that runs off of the pack voltage. When that comes in and gets installed I'll post the results.

I drove the car to this month's meeting of the Houston Electric Vehicle Association meeting and it was well received. I was very surprised by the intense interest some members showed in it and I was also surprised that a couple of others were contemplating the same conversion. That would be great.

I'll continue testing and post anything new as it happens.

1 comment:

onei57 said...

I wish I'd have seen your blog before. I was in Houston last week and we could have compaired stories. I've been driving mine for 2 years now.