Almost legal

I talked my wife into giving me a lift to the DMV this morning to register the Miata. You are supposed to register the car right after you buy it, but since it wasn't going anywhere, I didn't think it was a problem. The DMV doesn't see it that way and hit me with about $36 in fines.
Oh well.
They didn't have any problem with it being electric. The woman working the desk said she just needed to enter the letter 'E' someplace to indicate it was electric. I have to schedule an inspection to get the requirement for smog (emissions) checks waved. I think they want to poke around to be sure I'm not hiding a gas engine somewhere under the batteries ; )

They gave me a temporary permit that's good until January 31 - which explains the big number '1' in the pink sticker on the windshield.

Wiring, wiring and some charging questions...

I started out today by returning the crimper and vacuum tester, then a quick trip to Lowes for some electrical parts for adding a 220 outlet. I was originally thinking of going with a 30 amp 110 outlet for the Zivan, but the distributor recommended 220vac for the input saying it would make the Optimas last longer.
When you can choose both the outlet and the inlet (the part on the car) you have a ton of options. I decided to go with the L6-20 because it's locking (no cables falling out by mistake) it's reasonably priced and I could get a pre-made 15' cord for $25. BTW, there is a proposed standard inlet/cable combo that I did consider - but it's way expensive. I figure if it does become a standard, I'll make a cable up.
Putting it all together was straight forward. Plugged the car in, and the Zivan beeped a couple times, it's fans spun up and charging commenced. A few of the BEQ1s had their yellow LEDs lit, which made sense because the pack shouldn't need much of a charge. Then after a bit one lit it's red over temp LED. This BEQ was hot and the manual says to shut the charger down when this happens. I did a little trouble shooting and determined that this battery was the replacement for the one I toasted. It shows 13.3 volts where the rest of the pack is showing 11.9 to 12.4 volts.
So, until I figure out a remedy, there will be no charging.

Next I cleaned up the under hood wiring. I put in a split loom over the wiring to make my wiring look more stock. A word of advice - put the loom in first, then run the wires. Do not put the wires in then try to squeeze the loom over them - like I did. It was a long frustrating experience, but I finally got it in place and it looks good.

I had a little more time, so I relocated the horn. The old location would hit the nose rack, so I drilled a hole inside of the bumper in the gap between the sides of the nose rack. Fits real nice and the stock wiring even reaches.

The charger

The big job on Sunday was getting the Zivan installed. As you might recall, I made a mockup of the charger out of a cardboard box and found that it fit nicely over the nose rack. Cabling-wise, this was a lot better than installing it in the trunk (as I was planning to do with the Manzanita Micro charger) because the most positive and most negative ends of the battery string are right there.
To get it installed I needed to:
1. design, bend and weld the mounting bracket
2. paint said bracket
3. wire the output cables to the battery pack
4. crimp the cables to the supplied Anderson connector.
5. wire the 220 vac cable from the charger port to the charger input.

I started by laying some old floor mats over the batteries in the nose rack. I was then able to remove the bracket I made for the high voltage component box without worrying about shorts.

The bracket design was a bit tricky. The passenger side was the easy part, I just needed to make another straight bracket like I made for the high voltage box bracket, just bent in the opposite direction. But the other end, (where you see in the picture the the red and black cables plug in) was trickier. I could have run a straight piece of steel under the charger mounts, but it would have had to bolt to the airbag sensor, and I didn't want to mess with it. So, I used a bolt hole near the center of the cross brace (to the passenger side of the airbag sensor) and ran the steel at a 45 degree angle to the box bracket. This took care of one of the charger mounts (and stiffened up the box bracket too). The other charger mount was close to where the bracket attached to the middle bolt on the nose rack. I decided to weld a tab there to hold the mount. So designing it wasn't so bad, and neither was the welding, drilling or grinding. The painting went pretty smoothly too, though it was a bit windy in the back yard...

In between squirting on the coats of primer and paint, I made the output cables up. I had bought two 60" battery cables from Kragen to use on the DC/DC converter and the charger. For the charger, the red lead went to the terminal of the most positive battery - which is just to the driver side of the charger. Black lead goes to most negative - which is the input to the contactor (you don't want the switched side of the contactor or you will only be able to charge the car with the key switched on). The contactor is in the box mounted also to the driver side of the charger, so I could have got away with about a foot of cable, but I had plenty, and thought it would be better to have enough cable to unplug it easily and put it aside. You can see in the picture there is at least 2 feet of cable there.

I was concerned about the Anderson connector. These are special 2 conductor connectors designed for high voltage. I thought my wire might be too thick for the connector at 4 gauge instead of the usual 6 gauge. Comes out it fit right in and crimped solidly with my hand crimper (not the big one I borrowed).

Once the paint was dry, I removed the mats over the batteries and carefully put the brackets in place. the holes lined up fairly well, and it even looks pretty good.

Next was wiring up the input cable to the 220 volt line. The cable from the charger port was a little shorter than I liked - it only made it to the back of the Zilla. It would have been nicer if it had been a foot longer, but it was long enough to strip back the 3 wires. Being that it's a standard US cable, the wire code was black, white, green - green being ground and the black and white connecting to hot leads (actually, each are 110 vac, just 180 degrees out of phase to make 220vac). Anyway, the Zivan, being Italian, did not have the same color code. This was a little disconcerting. But after thinking about it, I realized that only the ground mattered, the other two leads just need to be connected to 110 vac each, it doesn't matter which one. I had considered using a connector so that I could easily disconnect the charger from input power, but I couldn't think of when I would need to disconnect it. So I hard wired it with some crimp on butt connectors. A little tape and it was good to go.

Only wish I had the 220vac outlet installed in my garage so I could plug it in.
That will have to wait for next weekend.

Vaccum pump resolved

I was having trouble connecting up the vacuum pump for the power brakes.
Actually, it worked fine - it was just working too often - constantly cycling on and off, which indicates that there is a vacuum leak somewhere. The pump is mounted under the passenger side of the top rack beside the motor, so I have to pull out a couple batteries out of the rack to get to it. Most people connect the pump to a vacuum reservoir (essentially a tin can with a check valve and a hose fitting) which stores a little more vacuum than the booster alone. I've used one of these on a gas car a while back and am skeptical that they make any real difference, so decided to skip this piece and connect the pump to the vacuum switch and to the booster. I had a T fitting to hook this up and, it looked good, but, as I mentioned, didn't work real good.

One great help when dealing with this is having the right tools. I don't. But AutoZone does. They are a car parts retailer in the US and they have a great tool loaner program. Last week I drove to one of their stores and, after leaving a deposit, walked off with a hand held vacuum pump complete with a gauge.

I quickly found out the pump leaks! When it shut off the vacuum drops to zero. I got a check valve from Kragen (sorry AutoZone, but Kragen is in walking distance...) and after plumbing it in, it made no difference. After a few checks it was clear that the check valve didn't stop the leak. A little more testing and it was clear that the check valve was defective.


Later, while working on wiring up the charger, I had an epiphany. I didn't need another check valve, I just needed to move the stock one to the other side of the vacuum switch. The stock check valve is inside the hose that comes off the booster. So I pulled it off and replaced it with a regular hose. The check valve hose got moved to between the T fitting and the pump and voila. Works fine.

BEQ1s

I got a good 8 hours to work on the car today. I'm in the home stretch now, and anxious to get it.
I got three major things done, so, three blog entries...

First was the BEQ1s.
As you might recall, the BEQ1s are battery equalizers which help keep the batteries from over and under charging which makes the pack last longer. I couldn't get equalizers for the Manzanita Micro charger I planned to buy, so I went with a Zivan that worked with the BEQ1s.

The BEQ1s are compact little black boxes (literally) that are easy to install - they just bolt to the posts of batteries. They have LEDs on them that light to show they are working or that there is an error. I ordered a couple of long terminals because two of the one for the front rack could be covered by the charger making it hard to see the little LEDs. HotJuice Electric (the maker of BEQ1s) was more than happy to help me out.

Undercar cabling - take 2

Got a little time tonight to clean up something that has been bothering me. Back when I was planning this project I intended to use a PVC pipe to run the wiring from the front battery racks to the rear. After seeing a few cars not using any conduit, I changed my mind and decided just to tie wrap up the cables to the former exhaust pipe mounts. As you might recall this didn't work so well - the cables sagged enough that they could catch road debris and they weren't protected from said debris that might, over time, damage the cable insulation.
I got a comment pointing this out on the blog and an email from a Spec Miata racer explaining the damage to his exhaust system that he has personally seen. Plus he pointed out that in rare cases one of the axles could break free from the differential which could potentially wallop the cables into a heap of sparks.

So, back to plan A.
First I got a short length of 1.25" diameter PVC pipe just to protect the cables around the axle. It was hard to get the cable ends through the pipe and it didn't do anything for the sagging (naturally).
I returned this pipe and got a 10' long 2" diameter conduit - which was of course too big to make it under the axle with any ground clearance.
I returned this pipe and got a 5' long 1.5" diameter pipe - which was about 2.5' too short...
I returned this pipe to Judy (we are on a first name basis now) and got a 10' long 1.5" diameter pipe. It was long enough, it was wide enough it was small enough, it was just right...
The cables went into it real nice and I added a couple of 45s at the end to bring it right into the battery rack. This also let it sit down a little lower than if it was a straight pipe.
After I got the cables in it, I pushed through the cable for the 220vac line from the charging port to the charger.
Looks pretty clean, and definitely a lot safer.

No con-duit

Another difficult day was in store for me this morning. I made an early trip to buy a short length of black PVC pipe to protect the cables near the axles and a proper hose fitting for the vacuum pump.

I'll spare you the details and just say, the fitting didn't fit, the pump still runs, but I still think the fitting is the culprit here.

I got a 16" section of 1.5" PVC pipe to use as a conduit below the axle. It was pretty difficult getting the terminal (clamp) ends of the cables through the pipe while lying on my back and reaching over my head. Eventually I got it. I shoved in the 220 VAC cable from the charger port too, then I tie wrapped it up and reconnected the terminals to the batteries.

I spent some time looking at it from under the car and it just looks sloppy. These battery cables are pretty heavy, so even though they are tie wrapped nice and tight, they sag. You can see in the picture a loop of orange hanging down toward the front of the car. Ugh.
So, after much gnashing of teeth, I decided that I'll be using a conduit for the whole run. I'll need to pull out the cables from the front (where they are terminated on lugs) and pull them through.

That will be next week.

Not the way to do it.

I got back from a business trip late Friday night and though a little jet lagged, went to work on the car late Saturday morning. While I was out two boxes arrived - one with the charger port and wire and the other with 13 BEQ1s.
I decided to work on the charger port. I went with twist lock cables rated at 20 amps at 220 volts. the charger port is called an 'inlet" - like an outlet, but with the male connector inset. The connector won't be live, so having the connectors exposed is not a problem. I also mounted a remote indicator for the Zivan charger beside the charger port. This way you'll know how the charger is doing without having to snoop around under the hood.
Looks good don't it?
Well, it wasn't easy. My recommendation is to mount the indicator at least a 1/4 inch farther away from the latch release (that black button thing you see to the right of the port). I didn't think the whole thing through (I blame the jet lag) and mounted the indicator too close to the latch. I had to stick a washer behind the latch release mechanism so that it didn't protrude so far, then cut off the latch on the door assembly, since it hit the side of the indicator and wouldn't close, then had to rig up the bump stops with rubber cap extensions so that the door would pop open when released.
Could have been an easy job if I had thought it through. Took me a couple hours to get the door to work. Needless to say, the wiring didn't get done.

It's Alive video on YouTube

Finally got the video of the first drive edited and uploaded to YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q22T8DrB7yE

I'll let you in on a little secret... (the first scene is backwards). It looks like I'm driving the car out of the garage, but actually, I was backing it in. You can see how I'm looking over my shoulder as I drive. The other odd thing is how the car won't make it back up the hill. The Zilla was resetting because the 12 volt battery I was running it off of (I didn't have the DC/DC converter in yet) was too low.

And, before you ask, those wheels came with the car when I bought it.