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?  

Promoting EV awareness 04-17-2011

This Sunday there was an Earth day Fair at Balboa Park.  The Kick Gas Club got some coverage and I was on the news.  Also had an article on my car in the Union Tribune.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/on-air/as-seen-on/Electric_Start_to_Green_Week_San_Diego-120041864.html

CostCo gas line

EV Grin...  I was parked in the CostCo parking lot today.  I took this shot of the car when I noticed what was in the background.  People waiting in line to pay 4.00/gallon for gas.

I am still working on my ceramic heater (Almost done).

A few days ago I took the car out on the freeway and got it up to 102 MPH (not a super smart thing to do with tires inflated to 42PSI.)  A week ago I drove the car 82 miles and used only 160.4 amphours on my 200 Ah batteries.  I now have over 4,100 electric miles on the car and I am very happy with what this car will do.  My typical commute to work is 45 miles round trip.  No range anxiety here.

Bring on the HEAT!

San Diego does not get very cold but I have had a day or two when I had to defog the windshield. So...

I am installing a ceramic heater with defrost vents and an interior vent.

The heater box is homemade using aluminum sheet metal, a 12V fan and the original plastic housing for the ceramic element from my $25 space heater.  I purchased a defroster kit from Mill Supply for my defroster vents and heater tubing and flanges.

Dash light

The Link pro meter by Xantrax does not light up at night unless you manually press on the meter. You can program it to have the light on all the time but this would be on 24/7. I added a blue LED strip to light up the instrument panel so I can see the Link Pro Meter at night. I like the look but may need to tone it down a bit as it's a little bright. I need to paint my dash panel flat black to reduce reflections. It is also a source of glare when the sun is reflecting off of it.

Dynamometer Results

I was lucky to get the opportunity to have my car tested on a Dynamometer this week. I felt a little embarassed as my car has a whimpy 50 HP motor and this place had mostly muscle cars and sports cars with 10 times my horse power. However, it was great to verify the HPEV motor results. My results were very much the same as what they have posted. My peak HP was 51.5 HP with max torque of 90ft lbs. 3480RPM is about the peak of the power curve for my results. HPEV results peak power was around 3200-3400RPM. Looking at the Porsche 901 transmission data for MPH @ RPM for the different gears the data suggests my best shift speeds are as follows:
------------------------------- Stock 901 transmission gears

1st 18 mph @ 3500 RPM --------- gear ratio is 3.091: 1

2nd 30 mph is @ 3500 RPM ------gear ratio is 1.889: 1

3rd 44 mph is @ 3500 RPM ------gear ratio is 1.261: 1

4th 60 mph is @ 3500 RPM ------gear ratio is 0.926: 1

5th 80 mph is @ 3500 RPM ------gear ratio is: 0.710: 1

My driving experience is 1st 0 -25mph, 2nd 0-35 mph, 3rd 30-55 mph, 4th 55-75, 5th 70-95 4th and 5th vary depending on the terrain (steep hills are tough in 5th) 4th gear does pretty good on the hills on the freeway. I can start in 2nd gear but 1st gives better off the line performance.

Quieting the Beast

I now have 2100 miles on the car. However driving in a 37 year old car has a problem with road noise. Especially when I removed a lot of the insulation to reduce weight. So... I am now adding weight back into the car to Quiet the Beast.

I played around with the regenerative braking today using my programmer. The factory setting for neutral braking is 10% . I had been driving with 12%.

Today I tried 30%, 25%, 20% and 15%. The car drives a lot different with 30%, 25% and 20% neutral braking. 15% felt the most comfortable to me. I could feel the car decelerate when taking my foot off of the accelerator for gear shifting with the higher values. You had to keep pressure on the accelerator at all times to avoid this. There's a little of that at 15% but not much. So I will leave it at 15% neutral braking for now.

I now have over 1000 miles on the car!