DC\DC converter and vacuum pump

Back to work.

I hated to remove some of the batteries to do the Iota wiring and install the vacuum pump, but they were in the way. I switched off the breaker and carefully removed the 3 cables that connected to the passenger side batteries on the top rack and put the covers on the posts.
One bad habit I've gotten out of is laying tools on the car. I recommend using your pockets or a tool belt or just dropping them on the floor near by. Even if you lay a wrench on a rubber fender covers (mine ironically says Isky Cams on it), it can still find it's way into your battery pack. Same applies for the extra nuts and bolts in your hand as you tighten a nut.

I bought some one red and one black 60"4 gauge wire at a Kragen for $7.99 each. It already has lugs crimped to it and the 60" should cover my needs for the Iota and the Zivan. Most people use 6 gauge, I think, but 4 is 2 better, right? and they didn't have 6 at the Kragen.
I bolted a red cable to the big positive lead that had gone to the starter and bolted the black negative cable to the chassis as a ground. Too easy. I cut the AC cord and crimped on a lug for the most positive lead on the battery pack and extended the negative lead ('cause it was 4 inches too short) and crimped a lug on it and connected it to the switched side of the contactor.
Problem is, I can't test it until I reinstall the two batteries I pulled, so I'll need to wait until the vacuum pump is working.

The Vacuum pump bolted up to my bracket nicely and I wired it up to the vacuum switch (which turns the pump on when the vacuum is low) and hooked the hose up to a T fitting to connect the pump, switch and the brake booster. When I turn the key on the pump runs (yay!) and then turns on and off repeatedly (ugh). Must be a vacuum leak. I checked and retightened the fittings, but there was no change. I added a check valve(left over from another car project) in line after the switch which helped a little but not much. Back to Kragen for some new vacuum lines and the problem persists.
Hmmm.
Later I checked my add-on check valve by blowing and sucking on it (the things you have to do!) and it leaked. If that doesn't fix it then it may be the switch.
I'll deal with this later...

Its alive!

Today is our annual block party and my latest deadline for getting the car running. Previous dates were Mid-June, July 4th, the August SFEVA club meeting, Labor Day and now the block party. As the dates were slipping, so were the requirements. I no longer planned to get the car “done,” just running. All I want to do is get it running, that’s all – no charger, no gauges, no DC/DC converter - just running.

I spent an hour or so this morning getting the top rack back into the car and re-assembling the brackets and the Zilla and cables. I needed to make sure all the cables are tight and aligned, so this took some time. I also did some more shrink tubing on the cable ends, even though the lugs are hidden in the box.

Later, I snuck out of the block party to do the battery cabling. I was a little concerned about this after my meltdown, so I put on rubber gloves, safety glasses and tightened up one cable at a time being careful that neither end was touching anything other than the battery post where it belonged. I taped up my ½ inch open end wrench so that only the open end section was exposed to insulate it in case I dropped it. I had the circuit breaker switched off and triple checked the Zilla and contactor wiring to make sure there were no shorts in the cabling. This was nerve racking work, but I got through all three racks without incident. After a sigh of relief I sat behind the wheel and turned the key. I don’t have the instruments installed, so all I could do was listen to the contactor close to indicate the car was working. I gave it a little juice and it moved! The Zilla hisses a little at low speed so that was a good indication that it was working.

Since we had the street blocked off for the party I decided to take it out for a spin. My wife captured it on video which I’ll edit down and post on the site later – maybe YouTube too. I can’t tell you what a relief it was to have the car running, but it did not want to go back up the hill. It would nudge a long then stop then nudge a long again. I got it back to my driveway and after answering questions and getting congratulated I got out my laptop to see what the Hairball thinks is wrong. It gave me an error code saying that the SLI battery was too low and the hairball was shutting down. Figures. SLI stands for Starter, Lights, Ignition – this is the battery that came with the car to start the gas engine. It had been sitting a year and, of course, I never thought to charge it.

At least it’s an easy fix.

Paint and a few wires

Today primered and painted the top rack in my backyard. We are dog sitting for some neighbors this weekend. Hope I don’t have dog hair on my rack.

While the paint is drying between coats, I ran some wires from the hairball out to the box where the contactor sits. I need a pair of wires to turn on the contactor (actually only need one hot and a ground) and a pair on the power terminals of the contactor so the Zilla knows that it’s on. I will also need a pair of wires for the Zivan to tell the Zilla that the car is charging. This is intended to stop you from driving away with the car still plugged into the wall. I’ll hook this up later. I used a 4 pair network cable and crimped some ends on it. I’m not sure what gauge wire is needed for the Hairball (there is nothing in the manual, and I didn’t want to bother Otmar with more questions right now). I believe the wire is fine, and if not, I can double the leads up, or run something else, not a big deal.

More Hairball wiring

I've got some of the wires figured out for the hairball, but the one that's stumping me is the starter wire. I traced it out in the wiring diagram, and sure I have the right wire, but, with the key on it gives me 12 volts and when you turn the key to start, it drops to zero. It's backwards. I tried tracing it back from the clutch switch (the interlock that makes you step on the clutch to start the motor) to the relay under the hood, to the fuse block, to the wire, and they all are backwards. Very strange. Maybe it has to do with the ECU being removed?

Anyway, today I decided to stop messin' around and went to the key switch, where the voltmeter showed that the wiring worked as expected - zero volts until the starter switch was activated, and then it hit 12 volts. I used a tap to connect a new wire right of the switch and down to the Hairball. In the picture you'lll see a bright red wire going to a yellow tap. Why didn't I think of that before?

A little grinding

I took a couple hours today to clean up the top rack with a grinder to get it ready for paint. There are a lot of odd angles and brackets on this one, so it took longer than I expected.

More words about welding and cables

Got a few things done today. I welded on the bracket for the circuit breaker to the front right side of the top rack. I was going to put it with the lever facing up to make it easy to trip when working on the car, but the instructions (and later the tech support people) said that for proper operation it needs to be mounted up right. It's not in the easiest place to reach, but my plan is to connect a cable to it so that it can be tripped from the driver seat.
Next I welded on two brackets on the lower left side of the rack for the vacuum pump. This produces the vacuum needed for the power brakes to work. It will mount under the rack in the space to the left of the motor.

After the welding was done I finished up the cables - added the shrink wrap to the ends, the proper colored insulating boots and tightened them down nice and snug.







I made the replacement cables up (to make up for the ones I melted) and added the two l o n g ones that connect to the rear rack. One goes from the circuit breaker to the positive terminal in the rear and the other comes from the last negative terminal up to the contactor. I was worried I would run out of cable, but I have a good 12 feet left of the fifty feet I bought.
Running these cables was a little tricky. I decided to tie wrap the cables to the exhaust hangers, which worked out well. I used some foam rubber pipe insulation to soften the connections where the cable was tied to the rear suspension and the front subframe.

Zivan charger is in

After a lot of research and a few phone calls, I changed my original plans to use a Manzanita Micro PFC-20 charger and ordered a Zivan NG3. In the picture you see the NG3 beside the cardboard mock up that my daughter and I made. The Zivan is smaller, lighter and cheaper, but only works on one voltage – in my case 220VAC is what Zivan recommended. I still want to have 110vac charging available for “opportunity charging” (in a parking garage or friend’s house) and am told another small charger that is compatible with the Zivan is on the horizon.

The reason I didn’t go with the PFC-20 had nothing to do with the charger itself, but with the battery regulators. Manzanita Micro use to make something called Rudman Regulators they insured that the battery charges were in balance across the pack. Batteries each are a little different chemically and when charged in a string they can be undercharged or overcharged, reducing performance and their life span. A regulator will sit on top of each battery and make sure it doesn’t get overcharged and by doing this, insures other batteries don’t get undercharged. I’m a believer in battery regulation but the Rudman Regulators are no longer available. I tried to find something else, like PowerCheq, but they won’t work with 13 battery strings or with racks that a separated by more than a few feet. I did find a company in Austin making a nice regulator called a BEQ1, but it is designed to work with the Zivan. So there I am.

I’ll be building a bracket to place the Zivan above the nose rack in the near future.

Web site up(dates)

Well, the site is back up and I decided it needed a little updating.
I added some info about a bea-utiful Miata re-body kit from Simpson Design and added some graphics.
I said a little updating, right?

Also, unrelated to the web site, I order a Zivan NG3 charger and a set of BEQ1 battery equalizers. And Monday I was able to do some programming of the Zilla's Hairball.
More on this later...

It's getting close.

Web site down

I downloaded Chrome - the new Google browser - because I wanted to see what the web site looked like. I got an error 403 message when I hit the site. Hmmmm.

Of course my first thought was that Chrome was to blame, but when I tried it on Firefox and IE6 and got the same result, I realized it was my hosting service.

I sent them an email and they quickly replied:

Our system administrators are currently carrying out a server maintenance on the machine where your account is hosted on.
They will have it upgraded to a more reliable system that will hopefully cause less trouble.
The upgrade should be over after 12-15 hours.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

"more reliable system that will hopefully cause less trouble."
Hmmm.

Hairball wiring

I had an hour of quiet after work and decided to start on wiring up the hairball. The hairball is the device where the low voltage wiring connects to the Zilla. I think it's also the brains to the Zilla, the controller of the controller so to speak. Anyway, with the help of my wiring diagram and a little sleuthing, I was able to locate the starter wire, a wire that the key controlled in the "on" position, the alternator light on the dash, and the Tach (I think - need to check on that one). Most were long enough to reach to the hairball, but a few needed a little extension. I also connected the Pot Box (the throttle control) to the hairball.
That's as far as I got.
More on this later.

Stuff in the mail...

Got my terminals delivered this morning. These are the replacements I ordered for the ones that got toasted. I also forgot to mention that the replacement Optima was delivered Friday AM. They took the damaged one back for recycling.

The box

Over the three day weekend I was able to get a little work done on the car. I decided it was easier to put the high voltage components into a box rather than try to find a place to mount them each and then try to insulate all the connectors. I bought a 6"x6"x4" plastic junction box at Lowes which was big enough for the main contactor (the relay that acts as the main power switch) and the shunt for the ammeter. The only other component that is high voltage is the Zilla, but I'll deal with insulating it later. Next, I needed to mount the box. I planned on keeping it as close to the Zilla as possible so that the wire runs were short. I built a mount out of 1" flat steel that connected to 2 of the nose rack mounting bolts and to one of the radiator mounts on the car. After the mount was done, I figured out where the cables were going to run into the box and drilled some holes. Next, I cut and crimped the cables. I was hoping for nice straight runs, but shirt cables, you don't get much flex for pretty "S" bends and the like. Still looks good.

I have 4 cables left - one to the circuit breaker (that I plan to mount on the upper rack near the Zilla), one to the rear pack from the breaker, one back from the rear pack to the contactor and lastly, a replacement for one I fried.

I should get a box this week with the needed terminals.