Digital Dash.

Digital dash project.
I am eliminating the Paktraker because it has never really worked properly. It never read the Amp draw correctly. So I ordered 2 panel meters for the dash. I have made a 9v. power supply and a voltage divider using these guides. 9 volt power supply and the voltage divider.

I got the dash out with no problem. Used my handy dandy Dremil tool to chop the dash and then started mounting the panel meters and power supply. Then there was a problem ... the top panel meter was reading gibberish ... So i connected up my leads to the bottom one and it read correctly ... Either it is faulty or I damaged it playing with it the other day ... I will order anther and hope it gets here before long. This bottom picture is the top gauge on the fritz and the bottom hooked up to a 9v battery.

It's been a cold winter.

Back into the EV driving season ... hopefully It will become 70 soon and just stay there. I have been starting on some projects. Mainly I have been buying stuff for projects. I want to build Zener diode Battery regulators. Right now I have no pack balancing so I want to make a set and then as a Help to the community I want to monitor the improvements. I am also making a 10 led Battery bar graphs for each battery. My Paktraker has crashed and I am not interested in replacing it.

COLD hard facts!

So needless to say it is getting cold here in Ohio. How cold? 24 the other night when I drove home. I have a difficult situation for a EV. First of all I need 32 miles a day to get from home to work and back. That is more than some cars will go. Then I work 2nd shift so my trip home is in the dark. Sometimes with wipers on and it is always colder. I built the most efficient car I could find so that I would have extra left over. So when it got cold I could use heater and lights. Well after coming home the other day and feeling the voltage sag I decided to research it a bit more into the Effects of cold. I called my crown distributer and he looked up the data sheet for me. The data sheet said @80deg F they are 100%... @32deg F they are 80% rated capacity... and at 0deg F they are 30 % rated capacity. These numbers are way bigger than I ever thought they would be. So the options are....
1) Call it a 3 season car and deal with it.
2) heat and insulate the battery pack.
Well I did not design my battery pack very well for insulation. I have individual battery off buy themselves. So I think It is gonna have to be a fair weather EV.
I hope someone reads ths and understands how cold effects a lead acid battery. These were things that I never found before I built my car. I guess I was also fooled buy the fact I have seen frezer trucks in the forklift buisiness. I asked the Battery guy how they work and they Raise the acid level on the batteries. Making them Cold storage only.

Just the Cold Hard Facts :(

Larry

Still at it !

I was scared at first. It got cold and the performance of my car went down hill. No way cold affects this that much.. I was thinking what a horrible mistake making this car. It was barley making the 35 mile a day trip now and I was too scared to run the heater. Then It warmed up and... I was still having problems... Then I stated testing everything and checking things out. There it was. Bad cell In one of the batteries. Must of happened on the first 32 degree night. Well now, one off colored battery latter and I am back in business. I guess In my original purchase of batteries the factory had ran out of red tops... So they put my batteries in black cases until they got the shipments in. well now if I get one replaced I get the red top batteries :)
I decided that the stink in the garage over time would rust my car and tools if I didn't do something about it. So I got a bathroom exhaust fan that moves 50 CFM of air. I decided to blow it out the soffet on the usually down wind side of my garage. I will find out tomorrow if It does good. I also got a 12 houre timer that I still need to wire in so I can just turn the dial and walk out and It will shut itself off.

WOW ..All I can say is WOW

I finished the bottom of my car today and took it for a ride. WOW ... 40 amps to do 55 mph. Previously this was 55-60 amps. So then I got home and called my friend adam for some dinner. Afterwords we jumped on the freeway and jumped up to 65. 70 amps for what was 125 amps previously. I had no clue that aerodynamics were that hard on a EV. Here is a little video of 55 mph. Yes I have tested this going multiple directions on multiple roads.

It's been a Month now.

Gas free for a month! It has been nice not to shell out huge amounts for gas. But as soon as I stop buying the price goes down ... Just my luck. Oh well. I have started to cover the bottom of the car for weather proofing and for aerodynamics. I also closed off the front intake. this is my little prototype for now and a better one latter. before and after paint so you can tell. Then on the bottom of the car I just got 1/3 done today ... I will work more on it this weekend I hope.

About Electrical

I really haven't mentioned some of the specifics of my conversion. Caution this is for my 85 fiero GT. No guarantee that your car is the same. These are some of the things that I had to do with trial and error because I could not find them on the net.
First of all. When removing the engine go to the interior first. remove the center console where your elbow would rest. under here is the ECU that controls most things. Unplug all the connectors from it. Remove it from the car because It wont be needed. all the wires that came out of it should go through the firewall on the drivers side. Take the plastic grommet thing at the firewall and remove it from the firewall and press it into the engine compartment. 45% of the wires are gone now. On the passenger side of the car there is a mini junction next to the battery. Take the bolt out of it and remove the harness going to the engine. That is the other 45 % of wires. The other 10% are up to you... but most of the engine harness is disconnected and it should be easy to remove the engine. I did it the hard way and actually disconnected everything. This took forever.
With this harness removed the only thing that will suffer on your EV conversion is the speedometer and the Tach. I haven't devised a Tach yet so I hope someone gives me there insight on it. But the speedometer is easy. For some reason the ground to the speedometer went through the ECU. Use your wiring diagram to find it and go to frame. Then the 2 wires for the sending unit also were in the harness you removed. I ran these from the gauge to the sending unit. There was a purple wire on both ends of mine so I kept it constant but the other wire changed colors.
Helpful hint with the Speedometer is this. When you go to on or ACC the speedometer should go to Zero. If this does not happen it doesn't have power or it is broken. Any guidance on hooking up the Stock Tach would be great.