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.