EV Trans Am

Made 26 wires today, about 5″ long to run from the battery terminals to the battery regulators.  Regulators are from Manzanita Micro, Mk2d analogs.  They’ll monitor the batteries and tell the PFC-30 when to throttle back so all the batteries take an equal charge without blowing anybody up.

Lots of cutting, crimping, soldering and heat shrinking (with only 1 visit to ACE for more wire and heat shrink), but it took less time than I though.

Also canoed this morning on the Wekiva.  That was fun.

Lots.  Battery racks are complete, HV cables are 80% complete, accessories are mounted, including the motor to run them.

Ran out of lugs for wiring all the fuses and contactors, more will arrive next Wednesday.

Battery Charger and Regulators are delivered, need to buy some phone cords and make jumper wires to connect the regs to the batteries.  Also mentally working on mounting methods for regs – they will be directly on top of the batteries.

The rear racks are in.  All 13 batteries can be stowed.  I’ll clean up the metal and paint the rear racks then load them up for cable measuring.

Yay!

A little more progress fitting the rear battery rack last night. We may be able to finish up tomorrow with the tray and then will need to make a cover that will open to access (and show off) the batteries.

With the front complete I can do all the wiring and find out if I’m missing anything. I think I’ll add another contactor so there is one on both the positive and negative leads of the battery pack. That provides redundancy in turning on and shutting down the power to the controller.

I also need to add a manual disconnect, preferably a circuit breaker that can be activated easily from the driver’s seat in the event of an overload from the batteries or runaway motor or any other expensive misfortune. I’ve only seen one that is commonly used and I’m not sure if it provides enough protection to not nuisance trip. We’ll, I’ve seen others but they cost a whole lot more. Right now I’m leaning towards using it anyway and replacing it with a beefier unit if it comes to that.

Remaining items:

• Where is my charger and battery regulators?  I ordered them a little over a month ago.
• Manual disconnect, second contactor, ammeter shunt and wiring layout
• Complete battery cables
• Complete low voltage wiring (PS motor, brake vacuum, which also needs to connect to the A/C vent, master on switch for HV system, etc.)

Is moving within a month under E-power reasonable?  As luck would have it work is going to be very busy so hopefully I’ll keep making progress.  Pictures are overdue, next week maybe.