I wanted to get a test drive out to my work this weekend. I'm pretty sure I can make it there and back if it was flat all the way, but I have a couple of hills along the way...
Thursday and Friday i charged the pack. The two batteries that came back from the shop were fully charged, so I couldn't run the Zivan on the pack. I charged all the batteries individually until on Friday they were all in the 12.90v range. Then I ran the Zivan which quickly went into pulse charging mode, as it should.
After about an hour 11 of the BEQ1s were blinking - indicating those batteries had "filled up" and battery #12 started squealing, so I cut the power.
Sunday afternoon I checked the pack voltage and it was above 95% SOC.
I weighed my options and figured it was time for a drive.
The main objective is to get as far as I can, so I was trying to stay off the accelerator - not an easy task for me. At any rate, with one eye on the Ammeter and the other on the road, I was off.
The SOC meter isn't much help while you are pulling current. It dives down as the voltage sags and creeps up at the stop signs and while you coast down hills. Twice I pulled over to let the meter return to a stable reading. I got to within a couple of blocks from work and the SOC meter was showing 50% - meaning I had 75% left on the pack.
(BTW - my SOC meter reads the top 50% of charge, so when it reads 80% I actually have 90% and so on. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's actually kind of annoying. It's like setting your clock 5 minutes ahead - you find yourself constantly doing the math to convert to the actual SOC. Next time I'll just use a standard Voltmeter...)
So with 50% of my usable charge left, I turned back home. I arrived back in my garage with an indicated 20% SOC charge (you do the math).
When I put it on the Zivan, two batteries hit 14.7v in a little over an hour, while the rest are in the mid 13's. So I decided to abort the charge again.
I got a question into the BEQ1 vendor and the Zivan distributor to ask what I'm doing wrong.
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