Recent stats

Here's some of my recent statistics.  On July 10th,  I ended up needing to drive the car a bit farther than usual.  SO I decided to do a bottom balance as recommended by Jack Rickard.   SO I drove the car and checked my cells and drove and checked and drove and checked.  I used up 194 amp hrs on my 200Ah batteries.  At this point I had gone 117.4 miles!  I decided to use my ceramic heater to drain the pack further as that only draws about 13amps.  I got all the cells to balance at 2.96 V each.  This was a big pain in the butt but I did it.

  Now the theory is... if I ever drive the car down to its limits (which I do not plan on doing), all cells will be even and dropping over the discharge curve cliff at the same time and they all will be too weak to push any cell into cell reversal.  The car will just stop.  Not that I would ever want to test this. :-)

Laguna Seca Raceway

On june 26th, 2011 I went out to an event called Refuel at Laguna Seca.  It was an all electric car event.  I came in second in my class of converted cars.  The Tesla cars were wicked fast.  I remembered tailing and passing a blue Nissan Leaf in the event and thinking wow I am faster than a Nissan Leaf!  My garage build car is better than a production car.  However there is a U-Tube video of the tan Leaf in this picture being behind me for about 2 minutes and then passing me.  Hmmm....  

Not sure what happened here.  Possibly a case of thermal cut back?  My controller starts to reduce power when it hits 85C.  Time for liquid cooling and a fan.  Currently I am just using a large heatsink with vertically mounted fins.  Although on the freeway even going 90 it has never been a problem.  But on a race track I was pushing the 550amp controller to it's limits.  It was loads of fun though.  Even if I got my ass kicked by a boxy economy car.  :-)  Speaking of getting my a#* kicked, Here's a shot taken from a Tesla Video camera.  I bet the guy was thinking...Who's the guy in the slow blue car?  

Speaking of getting my a#* kicked, Here's a shot taken from a Tesla Video camera.  I bet the guy was thinking...Who's the guy in the slow blue car?