I recently purchased some LG Chem LGX cell modules 10s3P configuration to upgrade my battery pack.

I should reduce the weight in my car by about 250lbs! These batteries will have less voltage sag and the modules are 220Ah so my range should increase.  I'm not sure how much more efficient my car will be with a >10% reduction in weight or how much the performance will improve.

Stay tuned

2022

 I have not posted in years.  I've put in 92,000 miles on the 914 with the same set of batteries (38 Voltronics 200Ah cells).  But sadly, it mostly sits in the garage these days.  It's still a great car but I mostly drive my Model 3 Tesla now.

WOW! (04/26/2014)

Time flies.  I haven't posted for quite some time as there hasn't been much to say.  I'm still driving my wonderful 914EV.  I commute to work most days with it.  I now have over 33,300 trouble free EV miles driven.  It's been almost 4 years now and the car still puts a hugh smile on my face whenever I drive it.

After 33,300+ miles, my batteries have lost approximately 7% capacity.  In the beginning after a bottom balance, I was getting 194Ah out of my slightly undercharged pack.  Last month 03/01/2014,  after my bottom balancing, I only got 180Ah.  14/194=.072  I went 120 miles on this trip.

At this rate I should reach my goal of getting 100,000 miles out of my pack.  Stay tuned.

Last year I purchased a Rav4EV 2012 model new from Toyota.  This is a California zero emission compliance car from Toyota and they don't promote it.  2014 will be the last year they produce it.  It is the result of a collaboration between Tesla motors and Toyota.  It's a great car for rainy days and trips to the beach and to Haul my Bike to go Bike riding.  I have a tow bar on the back so I can attach a bike rack.  This car has the 40Kwh pack from Tesla and will go 140 miles if I drive it conservatively.  If not, it goes zero to 60 in 7 seconds.  This car does great burnouts.  Not bad for a soccer mom looking car.  Now if only I could get the wife to drive it.  My daughter loves it though.

Water cooling the controller

After 2 years and 22 thousand miles, I finally decided to add a chill plate to my controller and use water cooling.  This makes the controller run much cooler. :-)  I had been using a large heat sink with a fan to cool the controller but there were times when the controller got up to 70C.   I used a small radiator with fan used on computers to cool the controller and it works great.  You don't need an automotive grade radiator to water cool your controller.  We'll see how things work out in the summer months.

REFUEL 2012 @ Laguna Seca Mazda Raceway

Laguna Seca Mazda Raceway REFUEL 2012 (July 1, 2012)
This year Electric car conversions were a small portion of the Electric cars at Laguna Seca.
Production cars dominated the Track with 5 Tesla Model S cars, several Tesla Roadsters, several Coda cars, Nissan Leafs, and BMW ActiveE cars. They also had electric motor cycles Production and conversion or prototypes.  This year they allowed GoCart conversions as well.

According to this I came in first in my class although I thought there were conversions faster than me.  I believe they had mechanical problems before the time trials.

I almost didn't go this year as I had to work on Saturday the day before.  But at the last minute,  I decided to go for it.  So I towed my car to work and left straight from work to make the 8 hour trip.
Last year they had plenty of room for cars.  This year it was a bit over crowded.  Unfortunately I had E-Mailed the Refuel guys telling them to cancel my registration and then changed it back to yes I was going to go.  Also requested them to call me if there was going to be a problem but I guess they were a little too busy getting the event off the ground and so they missed my message.  As a result, I was not able to drive in the practice runs but did get to participate in the time trials.
It was great fun to drive on this race track again.  Next time I hope to have wide tires and a chance to practice.

Here's a shot of Steven's car.  He's from Washington and when he gets the lead out of his car he will be really fast!!

Here's one of the 5 Tesla S models that were at REFUEL 2012.  These cars did exceptionally well.  The 5 Model S cars came in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th. (a Roadster came in 5th).

140 miles on a charge!

Wow.  It's been nearly a year since my last post.  My car has been running relatively trouble free so not much to say.  I have purchased a new Elcon 4000 charger that pushes 31amps @ 220v AC.  I like it much better than my old Elcon3000 charger as it has two fans and does not get hot at all.  It barely gets warm.  If you have the room for this, it is a much better choice.  With my old Elcon3000 I was always nervous about closing my fiberglass trunk lid over the charger as it got very hot.  Now no worries

I also made a J1772 adapter for my car (which I never use). 
Here's a shot of my trunk with its new add ons.           

140 MILES ON A CHARGE!

I had to run a few errands on Saturday and I noticed I was running very efficiently at about 1.3 Ah/mile. So... I decided to do a long distance maximum range test.

This was mostly Freeway driving @ 65mph driving like a granny not 75-80 like I usually drive. At the end of the test, I was driving around my neighborhood with a volt meter attached to my windshield wiper connected to my cell #25. This is my lowest capacity cell from prior tests. I also wanted to see how the voltage sagged on that cell when I was accelerating. Cell #25 sagged to 2.25v under 50amp load at the end of my trip. As soon as I pulled into my garage, I checked cell voltages and #25 was up to 2.41v. This was a little further than I had intended to go but I was so close to my house. :-) 

Cell voltages ranged from 2.71v to 2.41v with an average of 2.62v.

I got exactly 140 miles using 194.2 Ah (Actually it is more like 137 miles as my tachometer is off a little with my smaller diameter Bridgestone Ecopia tires.)

That's 1.387 Ah/mile and 168.4 Wh/mile with a 2,300lb car.

What's really great is in 100 miles I will have 18,000 miles on my battery pack and I still have almost full capacity!

I wanted to see if I could compete in the ENDURO run being planned for EVCCON 2012. However, as it turns out, I will be hiking in the Grand Canyon with my wife in September. The hiking group we belong to has planned a big trip in September and since my kids are both off to college I am trying to find things that my wife and I can do together that we both enjoy.  (The empty nest has its challenges)

So... next year for sure.

Here's proof of my drive (or stupidity)

I have almost 18,000 miles on the car.  I average 1.82Ah/mile = 221 Wh/mile

Highest 2.29Ah/mile = 278Wh/mile

Lowest 1.13Ah/mile = 137.2 Wh/mile

The 914 is a fairly aerodynamic car so I can do a little better than the "Rule of thumb" of

1 Wh/mile for every 100lbs of car but it depends on how I drive.

So as of June 20th, 2012:

Using 38 200Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate Voltronics batteries from Flux Power.
Nominal Pack Voltage of 121.6
Top speed 107mph
Max miles on a charge 140 (137 )
EV miles traveled 18,000 (almost)

Gross weight 2308
Charge time after my 45 mile commute is about 3 hrs. @ 31.1amps


 

Here's a rear shot of my license plate frame and bumper sticker.  The license number is a forgery. Ha Ha!

Brian Galleger of Andromeda continues to work on his Display I have the first version in my car.  His new display will have more features including touch screen an Ah counter and better graphics. 

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!

San Diego Auto Show

6 cars from the San Diego Electric Vehicle Association were in the show.
Mine was one of them. I never planned on driving this car in the rain however I had to drive the car on Wednesday Dec. 29th, 2010 to get the car in the show and it was pouring rain. I had to take the car home on Sunday Jan. 2nd, 2011 again in the rain. My hand crank windshield wipers worked OK but I may rethink the whole idea and add some pounds for normal wipers on the car. It doesn't rain much in San Diego except for this year. It's been one of the most rainy winters we have had in years.

I am hearing a little too much road and engine/transmission noise. So I decided to install some sound insulation. I have a support beam on my battery box system that is bolted to the engine motor support bracket and also bolted to the frame. The bracket is supported with rubber mounts to dampen vibration. However I may be transfering noise and vibrations from the motor to my bracket to the frame.

(Added 01/03/2011) Turns out this was the case. I modified the battery mount support bar so it did not rest on the motor bracket and that helped. I also put the firewall pad and insulation back in the car. Makes it look more like a car and less like a go-cart.

The car is running great. My commute to work is 22.5 miles and 22.5 back.

I used 40.8Ah to get there averaging 1.81 Ah/mile (freeway speeds 60-70 mph). I used 61Ah to get home including a 4.1 mile lunchtime trip to staples for supplies. This works out to be an average of 2.25 Ah/mile. This is interesting. My trip home was in the dark so I needed the headlights. Also my headlights are pop up creating more drag? Not sure why the increased Ah difference. Possible elevation changes (ie downhill to work uphill home).

11/13/2010

Drove down to Grangetto's Farm and Garden Supply store today in Escondido.

They have a truck scale. My car weighs 2225 lbs.

The scale reads 2200lbs but the car is missing its 25lb charger right now as it was sent back to Elcon for reprogramming. There lies another story.

Weight distribution is 1120 in the front and 1080 +25 in the rear.

This is close to the 50/50 weight distribution I was shooting for.

Front Shot

Here's a shot of the front of the car showing fiberglass front bumper, fiberglass front trunk lid and some batteries







Here's the car with the top on sitting in my driveway. If you look really close, you can see the dent I still have on the left sail panel. :-(

Butt Shots

Here's some rear shots showing a raised 3rd brake light, the back-up lights working and the fiberglass rear bumper and fiber glass rear trunk lid with the Elcon 3000 charger in the rear trunk.