Bad SLI battery

Well, on my way to work Wednesday morning the check engine light came on solid. This is the Zilla’s way of telling me that something is amiss. The can continued to drive with full power and the Zilla wasn’t overheating (according to the gauge) so I continued my drive. Once in the parking garage I plugged in my laptop and looked at the error codes. I was surprised to see a whole bunch of 'em:

1224 - SLI battery too low and caused shutdown of controller
1221 - Major Overspeed Either Motor Beyond redline by X
1223 - SLI battery below warning threshold
1124 - Main Contactor Stuck On

2 of these, the overspeed and contactor stuck on are pretty serious, but the motor wasn’t over-reved, and the contactor was not stuck on…

By the way, SLI stands for Starter, Lights, Ignition since that's the role the battery plays in a gas car. In an EV, it's more of a buffer to keep the 12v system running during heavy loads.

I cleared the errors and thought I’d take a look at it again on the way home.

After work I drive the car out of the garage without the check engine light lit. On my way home the light came on steady again. It was raining so I was using my wipers and headlights, so then I started to think the real error was low SLI battery voltage and this low voltage was causing the Zilla problems in its logic which made it think the motor was over revving or the contactor was stuck.

A few blocks from my house it did stall, but I was able to get it running again and brought her home.

I tested the voltage on the SLI battery – 12.4v, not too good. I got out my 12v charger and charged it up.

The next day I drove it to work when the check engine light came on again. Once in the garage I checked the error codes and this time it was just 1223 - SLI battery below warning threshold. I left work a little earlier to avoid using the headlights, and it wasn’t raining, so the trip home was, other than the check engine light staying lit, uneventful.

Back at the house the SLI battery again showed 12.4v. I put it on the charger for a couple of hours, but when I removed the charger the voltage started to drop. In an hour it was back at 12.4v - must be a bad battery.

I checked on line and the nearest auto parts store, Kragen, doesn’t carry them. I tried Sears, and they don’t carry them either. I was thinking I was going to have to order one on line and pay a hefty shipping fee, when I found that Auto Zone did carry them and the one 20 minutes away had one in stock!

Saturday I pulled the old battery, picked up the new one and gave them the old one in return. Connected it up and thought I was all set…

Monday on the way home the light comes on again! Same error, 1223. I put the new battery on the charger and checked under the hood to see if my Iota was disconnected. It was wired fine, but I did find one of its fuses blown. Not sure when this would have happened (maybe when installing the new battery?), but this must be why the new battery died on me. Just the same, the old battery was bad because it wouldn't hold a charge.

So, moral of the story?
- Low SLI battery will make your Zilla think strange thoughts
- Check your fuses!

Lithium in the future?

Since the car is a part while the engineering drawings are being made, I've been researching lithium batteries. I got a message lately reminding me that the price has come down quite a bit since I first wrote my FAQ on Lithium batteries too.

It does seem that Thunder Sky may be on their way to fixing their quality issues and the price is coming down. I found a couple of retailers (Elite Power for example) that offer 52 60 amp cells (equivalent to the 13 Optimas in my car) for $6240. Not bad.

The charger Elite Power offers is a HUGE thing, but I believe my Zivan can be reprogrammed for lithium. I haven't seen a good BMS system for sale though. Elite Power has a system designed to work with that big charger and Hot Juice Electric is dropping production of their BEQ boxes so that they can focus on bringing a controller to market. I'll keep looking.

Meanwhile, I'm having the kit racks tweaked a bit so that the 52 lithium cells can be installed without modification.

#2 is out, service disconnect is in

I was not looking forward to pulling out the number two battery. It has been not holding a charge and keeping the pack from getting fully charged, so it's got to go.

I had to remove the Zivan (you can see it upside down in the upper left of the pic.), a bunch of high voltage cables, the high voltage box and it's wiring and the bracket that hold all this in place.

Once all of that was out of the way, the battery was pretty easy to pull out and set aside.


Once the battery was out I started on my next project - installing the service disconnect. The idea is be able to disconnect the battery pack from the driver seat to make it easy to service the car or in case of an accident. Some people call these "emergency disconnect" switches, but I like the "service disconnect" name - why not put a positive spin on it?

There are three ways to do this
1. run high voltage wires under the dash to a breaker or switch.
2. put a low voltage switch on the dash to open a contactor
3. install a mechanical cable that activates a breaker under the hood.

Though I had originally planned on using option 1 and placing the breaker under the dash, I realized the high voltage cables really don't belong under there. I went with the 3rd option as it was the simplest, least expensive and safest (compared to #1).

I bought a choke cable at Kragen for around $5. I mounted the "pull" side on the tunnel near the bottom of the dash. This position provided the most room for my big feet...

I needed to mount the cable below the breaker. I ended up bolting an angle iron to one of the top rack's mounts. The cable itself was looped through a hole in the breaker's lever. The cable then looped together where a cable clamp to hold it in place.

It works good. It doesn't take much of a pull to pop the breaker, and just a little push to reconnect the pack. The breaker is spring loaded and does most of the work.

The Battery Story

I realized that the battery problems I've been having may not make a lot of sense unless you know the full story - so I thought I'd give you all a recap and some lessons learned so that you may avoid learning them like me.

I had 13 Optima D34M Blue tops delivered before I was ready for them to be installed. This wasn't a bad thing, in itself...
You are supposed to test the motor when it's first installed to confirm that the flywheel, clutch and the motor all all in working order. I put the car in neutral and since the batteries were there, I jumpered one of them to the motor leads. It worked fine, but I put a drain on one of the batteries and now they were no longer balanced.

Lesson #1 - use your starting battery for this test - not one of your pack batteries.

Next was a little mishap I had wiring up the batteries. The details are in a post called "the meltdown", but the end result was 5 batteries were shorted out with one of them taking the brunt of the damage. One was replaced (it was the original #4) but the others are still in the pack and now out of balance with the rest of the pack.

Lesson #2 - don't be a numskull and short out your pack - or, more correctly, don't leave loose ends of cables on your batteries. Each cable should have both ends connected before you move on to the next. Don't leave one end unterminated while you go onto the next cable.

With the pack out of balance, I began to charge each battery individually. This is the way to do it, but you should use an automatic battery charger with an AGM setting. I used a manual charger, and though it worked most of the time just fine... well you get the picture.

Lesson #3 - invest in an automatic battery charger with an AGM setting for individual charging.


I have heard people say that Optima doesn't have the best quality control and that one should expect a battery or two to fail in a pack, and I can say the 2 that have been troublesome so far (#5 and #2) were not overcharged by the manual charger. But, if I had not put the pack so far out of balance I don't believe I would still be dealing with battery issues today.
And that, I think, that is the big lesson.

Sunday driver

Friday and Saturday I charged batteries - in between running errands and watching kids. But the pack is charged - though #2 is still acting a little flaky. I noticed that the pack looses voltage over time and am starting to suspect the Zivan may be putting a slight load on it. I've been leaving it unplugged from the pack to test my theory.

So around 2:00 Today the pack was fairly charged. My SOC gauge showed 95% which is closer to 98% in the real world, so I'm off. First thing I noticed in that the vacuum pump isn't working, but no matter, I'll just stand on the brakes like we used to do in the old days. I still have the tach set to display amps, and what a difference that makes in your driving style - you can't help but accelerate slowly and coast into intersections. They need to put something like it on gas cars - like an MPG gauge. Didn't make any friends with the other drivers, though. I took a mile and a half loop and came back to the garage to check things out. #2 is at 12.35v where the rest of the pack is in the high 12.4 to 12.5. I plugged the Zivan in and gave it some juice, but #2 came up to 15.6v pretty fast - the rest of the pack was in the 14v range when I had to abort the charge to save #2 from being overcharged.

I'm thinking #2 needs to go.

I let her rest for a bit then took her out for another drive. This was about a 3 mile loop (the trip odometer isn't working - gotta add that to my list). I took some streets with bike lanes and it sure confused the cyclists having a silent car running with them. I came back home with about a 70% SOC - not too bad. #2 was the lowest about a tenth of a volt below the rest of the pack, and again I had to abort the charge when #2 reached 15.6v.

#2 is in the most in accessible place in the pack - in the front of the nose rack on the driver side. I'll need to pull out the Zivan, all the high voltage cables to the box, pull the gauge, contactor and relay connections remove the high voltage box and bracket, then pull out #1 so that I can get to #2! It's gonna take me a full day just to get her out.

New #5

Today the replacement for the bad battery, #5 arrived. It was delivered to my door, no charge. Can't complain about that. I've been charging the rest of the pack up so that I can do some road testing with a good pack. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be on the road with 100% SOC.

Running out of things to do...

That sounds good doesn't it?
Today I went through my "Todo" list I made over the break...

#1 - Bleed clutch. I bled the clutch once before, but it still wasn't working. This isn't that bad in an EV, since there isn't much shifting involved, but I will definitely need a clutch to get my 0-60 time. I have a self bleeder kit (a plastic bag and a hose) so, once I took battery #6 out and cold see the clutch cylinder, it took maybe 10 minutes.

#2 - fix leaky (heater) hose. I'm using the heater core as a radiator/reservoir for the Zilla. Only problem is, I didn't plan for this and bent up the metal end when I pulled the engine. I spent 15 minutes making the leaky one rounder so that the hose clamp would seal.

#3 - Pull 12v lead to temp gauge. Before the break I troubleshooted the temperature gauge and found out my 12v supply wasn't working. I pulled a new wire from the fuse box to the instrument panel and wired it up.

#4 - Fix Tach. The tach hasn't worked and I've been suspicious of the sending unit. It is a magnet thing that looks like a plastic cup that is supposed to fit on the nose of the motor. Mine didn't exactly fit, so i added some washers to the mount so that it would. It's buried under Zivan, so fixing it is going to be tough... First thing they teach you in mechanic school (I'm told) is to start with the easy stuff, and work up to the hard. The easy thing is to see if some knucklehead mis-wired it at the hairball. Yup. White and Red were reversed. To test it out, I'll need to put the batteries back in and cable them up. Easier said then done, but they're in and I left the handle on #5 so I can easily pull her out later. I turned the key on, step on the throttle and the tach needle starts to wobble up the gauge - nice!

#5 Fix ammeter. Like the Tach, the ammeter has never worked, but I was on a roll. I started by setting my meter to millivolts and connecting it to the shunt (this is hidden in the high voltage box). I'm not sure what it's supposed to read, but the shunt is rated at 50 mv, so I'm guessing it should show 0-50 mv on the meter. I put the meter where I could see it from the driver seat and gave her some juice. The meter showed 7, 11, then 17 mv, which was enough for me. I then did the same test on the wires at the instrument panel with the same result. Hmmmm. Maybe the ammeter is bad? I decided there were 3 possibilities

1. Wrong shunt. But they only come in 24, 50 and 100 mv, so I would think the gauge would still read something, even if the shunt was the wrong value...
2. One or both Leads fell off the ammeter, I pulled out the panel and removed the ammeter - all were connected and even did a continuity test on the leads to double check my crimping was good.
   
3. Defective gauge. I read the instructions from Westach, but there were no trouble shooting tips other than reversing the polarity if the needle goes the wrong way, but my needle never moves. I'll email them to see if there is another test...

The Zilla has a setting to display amps on the Tach. Later, when I had the gauges back in I tried it out. Works pretty good. The Zilla manual says tach shows the amps x 10.

#6 Fix light in temperature gauge. The light stopped working in the temp gauge, and since I has the panel out I removed it and found the light had slipped half way out of the gauge. That was easy. While I was at it, this gauge never fit in right, so I spent some time adjusting the mounting clamp so that it didn't hit anything in the panel. Fits nice now - no squeezing and cussing needed...

Now I was seriously running out of things to do while the batteries charge...
I decided to fix the driver side courtesy light. Some adjustments and contact cleaner and she works!
This is getting bad...

#7 Fix remote charge indicator. As you might remember, I put a charge indicator in the charge port (where the gas used to go) so you could easily monitor your charge without popping the hood. I had to extend the cable to get it to reach and it does light, but I noticed the LED blinked red when it should be blinking yellow... maybe a short? I'm hoping it's not the splice I did, if it is, then I got to pull the wiring out of the conduit under the car to fix it.
Starting with the easy stuff, I pull out the LED from the housing to check my soldering job. Well, the wires got all twisted up in the housing and shorted out. A little electrical tape should do the trick... I'm still charging the batteries individually, so I can't test it out yet, but I'm going to call it fixed just the same.

Back to the batteries...
I had charged up all the batteries up front before using the motor to test the ammeter and the tach. When I checked them with the meter, they were down around 12.6 where they had been above 12.8. One, #2, was at 12.45! That's a pretty substantial drop for not even driving the car.
I check the trunk rack and they were all around 12.8. Is it my bad #5 battery dragging down the batteries in the front racks? Or do I have more bad batteries? I have been suspicious of #2, maybe she's gone bad too? If I had the money, I would replace the whole lot of 'em.
We'll see what happens after #5 is replaced.

Bad Boy

I've been suspecting that my #5 battery was bad for a while. This was the replacement battery for the one that was damaged in "the meltdown". I was suspicious because it charges up really fast and discharges just as fast. And when using the Zivan, it would pull down more voltage than the others, even though its indicated State of Charge was the same. On the way back from the SFEVA meeting it was hot and had dropped to 10.96v - way below what it should have been. It had also blown the fuse on the BEQ1.
I messaged Ken at Hot Juice Electric (the maker of the BEQ1 equalizers I'm using) to confirm my suspicion of the defective battery. He agreed is was bad and I called the battery dealer. I got someone on the phone who quickly told me to bring it in. After describing the symptoms he agreed that they would do a swap. The details will have to wait for after I return from Xmas holiday, but I have high hopes that replacing this bad boy will fix my charging problems...

EV Miata at the SFEVA meeting

Today is the day.
I have had a string of target dates for getting the car done, but today is the day I promised to take it down to the SF Electric Vehicle Association meeting. The batteries aren't terribly balanced, but good enough for, say 98% state of charge (SOC). I made some progress on the gauges, but still no ammeter, tach or temperature gauge. I was going to hook up the Zilla's cooling system too, but that was not to be.

So, mostly charged and with just a speedo and SOC gauge, I was off.
As this was the first drive farther than around the block, I took my time and stuck to the streets. It wasn't too far, less than 5 miles I figured, so it should make it there and back easy - and it mostly did.

The SOC gauge drooped precariously each time I stepped on the juice (AKA the accelerator). Without the ammeter it was hard to drive it carefully, but I gave it my best. At about 4 blocks away the "Check Engine" light came on. The Zilla uses this to tell you that something is wrong, but I couldn't tell if the controller was overheating, the battery voltage was too low or something else was happening. I pulled over and checked the temperature of the controller using a manual temperature sensor - I stuck my hand on it - and it was just warm. The SOC gauge was showing 50% -which, because it only show the "usable" 50% of the pack, indicated the pack was at 75% SOC - not bad. The wiring under the hood looked fine and nothing smelled hot, so off I went. I found Luscious Garage (great place), where the meeting is held each week and pulled in to the drive. Dale, the president, and a few of the club members were out front around a RAV4 EV. After chatting a bit I broke out my palm to read the Zilla error code - d'oh, the SLI battery was low again! This is the same error that caused the car to limp up the street in the "It's Alive" video... Maybe I need to replace that battery...

Anyway, I got to talk a little about the project in the meeting and got to show my handy work off to some people who "got it" - very nice.

One of the long time members let me know that it takes about 3 cycles to get your pack "broken in." Good info.

After the meeting was over, I borrowed a Luscious charger to juice up my SLI battery. In hooking it up I found the negative clamp had worked it's way loose. So maybe the battery was still good? Maybe. At any rate, the Zilla error was soon cleared.

The SOC gauge was now showing 30% (65%) and I was off.
The SOC gauge which had earlier been bouncing about was now spending most of it's time staying around zero. Not good. The car ran well, though, no rattles or other strange noises, just the whine of the motor. Why do people want to play amplified gas car nosies in an EV?

I drove by a motorcycle club with a guy hanging our front. I think he was drinking out of a paper bag, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I pulled up the red light and stopped. Absolute silence.
He shouted "Why is your car making that whine?"
Me: "eh, it's electric."
Him: "Did you do that yourself?"
Me: Expecting now to be told I was a fool to spend a year and $13,ooo with gas prices now under $2, I simply answered, "Yup." and prayed the light would change.
Him: "Very cool."
Ah, this is nice. Even bad-boy bikers drinking out of a bag on the street corner appreciate an electric car conversion. Maybe things are changing...

Not too much longer down the road the "check engine" light makes a return appearance - and this time it's blinking. I recognize this as the Zilla trying to tell me my pack voltage is dangerously low. I pull off onto a side street and let the car sit while I try to act normal.
After what seems like 30 minutes, but was probably less than 10, the SOC is showing 10% and I'm off again. Slow-ly. I'm now less than 5 blocks from home and decide to go for it.

Once I get home I pop the hood and start reading voltages off the batteries: 12.06, 12.07, 12.11... About 40% SOC, not good.
One battery, #5, was showing 10.96 volts. That's not just dead, that's off the chart dead.
I gave it a little charge at 6 amps to bring it up into the 12 volt range and turned on the Zivan. Everything seemed fine, but, after about an hour, #5 was showing 15.5 volts, (15.6 is the limit) where the rest were all around 13+ volts. I turn off the Zivan and head upstairs.
That's enough for one day...

Owe you all an update...

I realize it's been a while since I have updated the blog. Over the last couple of weekends I got the batteries almost balanced, I reworked the instrument cluster, got the hood reinstalled and a bunch of minor little things.

Balancing the batteries has been a huge pain. I did get to learn a lot of things NOT to do.

1. Don't expect that two batteries with similar idle voltage readings have the same state of charge. (I lost a good two weeks learning this one).
2. Don't expect a standard battery charger to hold up to charging 13 batteries multiple times over 3 weeks.
3. Don't expect your timer to not fail when you aren't watching

1. I thought that if I got all the batteries to within a tenth of a volt that they would all be relatively the same state of charge and I could then use the Zivan to charge them up to 100%.
Wrong.
Some were always getting over charged while others got undercharged - the Equalizers would start blinking and batteries would begin to hiss.
The right way to do this is to bring them all up to 100% first. And measure the voltage THE NEXT DAY - not in an hour or even two hours after charging. I have a couple of batteries that will slowly drop over night back to where they started. Multiple long charges was the only way to get them up to capacity and stay there.

2. I have a good charger for my ICE car. It has a 6 amp and 2 amp setting with an ammeter on the front. After using it constantly, though, I noticed some batteries weren't charging. Comes out the crimp connection on the positive clamp had worked it's way loose. I would connect it up to the battery, read the voltage, plug in the charger and see the voltage rise, but when I returned the voltage was back where I started. At first I thought the battery was being difficult... Then I found the wiring problem.

3. My charger doesn't shut off by itself. To avoid overcharging, I used an appliance timer set to an hour and a half. This was working pretty well until I got too confident and didn't check on it. Naturally, by the time I did check on it, the timer was stuck (it's little motor was overheating) and my battery was overcharged and hissing. The lesson here is to use a timer, but always check - don't assume.

In the end, I got them all above 12.84 volts (100% SOC) and ran the Zivan for a half hour or so. The Zivan did it's pulse charging thing, and everybody appears to have survived.

While all this battery baby-sitting was going on, I did disassemble the instrument cluster to fix the lamp problem and some of the wiring. I was trying to pull 12v and GND from the back of the cluster for the temperature gauge, but it still doesn't work right. My new plan is to grab GND from the dash and 12v from the alternator light (the Zilla uses this as a contactor closed indication, so it's on when ever the car is operational). That should do it. I'll check the ammeter and tach after this.

The hood ended up being trickier than I thought it would be. First, the box I put the high voltage components in was a little too tall. It fit under the hood with the top off, so I only needed to take less than a 1/4 inch off of it. I had plenty of room, so I went for 1/2 inch just to make sure there were nothing banging when I hit a bump.
I cut the top edge of the front down with my Dremel. The plastic cut easily, but was so hit it would melt back together after the blade passed by. I only broke three blades dealing with this. I decided to cut the sides at an angle so that the back side of the box was not cut - mainly this was to save me time, but it also looked better angled - it looks more like it was designed to go under the hood.
I hadn't thought about the hood prop rod. The stock mount was below the top of the high voltage box, and if I just bent the rod to go over the box, it would hit part of the headlight bracket and never reach the hood. I ended up mounting it to the back of the headlight bracket and after straightening it out, putting a bend in it to lie over the top of the high voltage box when down. Of course, this made the clip that the for end of the rod too low. I ended up using an unused wiring mount to mold down the end of the rod.
The hood went back in place pretty easily - it's aluminum, so you don't need to get a neighbor to help. The only thing that didn't align properly were the headlight covers. Comes out the back side of the covers doesn't have any support, so every time you lean on them, they drop a bit. I carefully finessed these back up into position and it looks like stock.

Now the only way you know it's electric is from the lack of a exhaust pipe and the buzz it makes as it drives by...

Little this, little that...

Didn't have much time to work in the car this weekend, but I did sneak off to the garage a few times. The constant battery charging was the major activity this time. The pack is out of balance and I find myself charging each battery with a 6 amp 12 volt charger that needs constant monitoring. I'm trying to get them all within a tenth of a volt so that the Zivan and BEQ1s can do their job, but so far this has proven - what's the word - elusive.
At the moment, I have two in the 12.6 range five in the 12.7 range, 4 in the 12.8 range and one lone cowboy hanging in around 12.92. My plan is to bring the 12.6s into the 12.7 or 12.8 range and hopefully, that 12.92 will drop into the 12.8 range on it's own. If not, I may jumper it to the SLI battery and do the headlight trick again...
I'm a little concerned that one of the 12.6s doesn't seem to hold a charge well, but won't worry about it too much right now.
Both the hissing batteries seem to charge up and hold a charge well enough, so we may be okay there.
I did take a trip to a plastic store to have the cover for the gauges made. I made a template out of construction paper. It should be ready on Tuesday.
I also got some 9' of wire for the ammeter and SOC gauges. The wire that comes with the gauges is 16 gauge stranded, and I let the guy at the hardware store talk me into 18 gauge solid. His argument was that it was to short a run for a resistance to be built up. Maybe so, but getting the solid wire into the wiring loom was a major hassle. Next time I'll order 16 gauge stranded on the 'net.
I've been noticing the Zilla hairball is showing an error and hooked up my laptop to see what it was. It's error 1131 - Shorted/Loaded Controller during precharge. There's no info in the manual, or on line on how to troubleshoot this, but I have faith that Otmar will help me out.

Out of balance (still)

My new Fluke came in the mail yesterday. Now I can see what's really going on with my batteries and it aint pretty.
Last time I ran the charger I noticed two batteries where hissing. This is bad news for AGM batteries as it means the valve is open and they are off gassing. Since they are sealed, there is no way to refill them. I did some checking on line and some people seem to think that it doesn't necessarily mean the battery is bad.
We'll have to see.
Here is the last set of reading I did:
#1 12.38
#2 12.59
#3 12.36
#4 12.41
#5 13.13 (hissing)
#6 12.63
#7 12.50 (hissing)
#8 12.67
#9 12.60
#10 12.45
#11 12.66
#12 12.44
#13 12.45

I've been emailing Ken at HotJuiceElectric (the makers of the BEQ1) who has been real helpful.
He's telling me the BEQ1s won't balance the pack, but keep it balanced. His suggestion is to charge them all up one at a time until they show 13.2 volts each. I was hoping to avoid this since it may take me DAYS to get them to this point, but it looks like I won't have much choice in the matter.
Ugh.

Out of balance

I'm having trouble getting the batteries in balance so that they can be charged.
When I fire up the charger, I get some BEQ1s lighting up yellow and in 90 seconds one goes red indicating overheating.
Some batteries are around 13 volts and some are just under 12. They should be 13.2 volts when fully charged, and they are shipped charged. I blame this on my shorting out of the nose rack that melted one of the batteries. I think that drained the other 3 in the pack and the replacement battery has a higher charge.
My plan is to charge the low ones one at a time with a 12 volt charger and drain the high one a bit by connecting it to the SLI battery and turn on the headlights.
My cheap meter isn't exact enough for me to tell what's really going on, so I ordered a Fluke on eBay.
More on this later...

While I was charging and draining the batteries I did some more wiring.
I traced out the wire to the Tach and hooked it up to the Zilla's Hairball and ran a new wire from the dash down to the hairball for the Check Engine light. The stock wiring for Check Engine goes to the ECU, which was located under the front floor board on the passenger side. Doesn't do me any good there, so a new wire was in order.

I did a little more dressing of the wires after that.

With these last two wires hooked up I could finally chop out the rest of the wiring harness. This actually was kinda fun. After chopping, I wrapped up the ends with tape so that they won't short anything out. It looks a lot cleaner and there won't be anything to rattle around when I hit a bump.

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 meltdown

Is it better to be smart or careful?
In my case, I was neither, or maybe I'm guilty of thinking I was smart, and careful.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I do know that I had my cables laid out on the batteries on the nose rack. I had made the cable from most positive (the + terminal at the beginning of the string) to the the Zilla B+ terminal and the cable that connects the nose rack to the motor rack. I was measuring the cable that interconnected two terminals of the motor when it happened.

There was a loud snap.
Sparks flew.
Smoke filled the air.
And the smell of something burning.

I quickly pulled a sparking cable off the battery rack it was touching, and it stopped.
After the smoke cleared the cursing began.

Evidently, the Zilla cable that was just set in place slid off the terminal and touched the rack. A 5/8" open end wrench qas touching the rack and a cable. Enough of the cables made contact to complete a dead short across the batteries frying one of them. The terminal was melted away, as was a piece of two cable clamps and my 5/8" wrench. There was what appeared to be gray paint splattered around, but it wasn't paint, it was the lead post that vaporized.

I would like you all to think I'm brilliant and don't make mistakes, but in reality, neither is true. I make mistakes just like everyone else. So the message for this post is: don't be smart or careful, be safe. Don't think it won't happen to you or that you can just be careful - avoid the situation entirely by not taking chances - be safe.

Batteries are here

I had the batteries delivered today. A guy drove up in a truck similar to one of those used to deliver water, pulled out a hand truck and wheeled them into my garage.
They all have a serial number to confirm they were made in the same batch, which he assured me they were.
Each are shrink wrapped and come with a plastic handle which makes them a little tight in the nose rack, but okay in the trunk and upper rack. The trunk rack's supports underneath don't line up with the batteries very well - looks like I was off about 5/8" when I laid it out, so I'll need to do a little cutting and welding on it. I also made the upper rack (formerly known as the cowl rack) a little too wide - about 3/8". I thought about cutting it down, but I think I'll just stick a piece of wood trim in as a spacer.

Turning Blue

Well, the battery reseller redeemed themselves today.
I've been busy with work and family stuff lately and haven't had a chance to call to follow up. I gave them a call this morning and not only did they remember who I was and what I wanted, but they explained that they had written down my number wrong and had been trying different combinations of the number to reach me. They hooked me up with the sales rep right away who knocked off the delivery charge. Nice start.
We started talking about terminals - posts and studs - he explained that the blue top marine batteries are the same chemistry, same price but with both posts AND studs.
Hmmm.
While he was checking the inventory I checked the Optima web site, just to confirm, and the specs are identical. Okay, then he explained he had 13 from the same batch in stock and he could have them delivered today. (!)
I got a family trip this weekend and having these babies sitting in the garage would be too much of a temptation. So I arranged to have them delivered next week instead.

Now I got to order some cable...

Can I please buy some batteries?

I have been trying to get a quote on 13 Optima D34 Yellow tops from the local wholesaler. Of course I'm usually doing this after hours, so my first choice for contacting them is e-mail.
After 2 messages and no answer, I resort to the phone.
So I sneak out of work to call them and no one bothers to pick up the phone.
This is starting to remind me of my friend with the flywheel...

Just for the heck of it I called them Tuesday AM on my way into work and - surprise - a woman answered.
As soon as I told her what I wanted she asked if it was for a Sparrow. That's pretty cool, at least they knew it was for an EV. I told her what it was and she gave me the EAA discount which made them $159 each with a $5 (each) delivery charge. Not bad. I was estimating $160.
Then she asked me what kind of terminals I wanted... "You mean I get to choose?!" I'd rather have a stud over a clamp any day... So this was good news.

But when I asked about getting them from the same batch, things went a little sideways. (You want to get your batteries out of a single batch because the chemistry can be different in each batch. Having the same chemistry gives them a better chance of charging and discharging evenly.) But she said getting them from a single batch will require a special order and will take 3 weeks to deliver to their shop before being shipped to my address - so closer to 4 weeks .
I wasn't expecting that long of a delay. Then she said that a "sales associate" would need to call to get the details.
Uh oh.

I hope they call soon.

Of Chargers and Batteries...

Saw that Cafe Electric, maker of the zilla controller, is offering Soneil chargers. These are small chargers that are usually used for a bike or scooter. The idea is have to use one per battery so no equalization is needed. Comes out to be less to get 13 of these than one PFC-20. Hmmmm.

So, I sent of a message to find out more and got some incredibly infomative resposes from Otmar himself.
===================
>>I have some questions on the Soneil chargers. I was planning on using
>>Manazanita Micro's PFC-20, but this option looks interesting. My conversion
>>will be 156 volt - 13 Optimas
>>- What amp rating will be needed for the 240 VAC input to power 13 Soneils?
>>- What would be the expected charge time at 50% DOD?
>>
>>Thanks.
>>=Pat

Hello Pat,I don't recommend using the Soneil as your only charge source since I've been told that AGMs need regular high current charges to maintain capacity. I'm sure there are many opinions on the matter. I suggest them for equalization and occasional backup charging.Charge rate depends on your capacity, which depends on your rate. But if you get 34 Amp hours out of an Optima at a 1 hour rate (with quality problems that they now have, I think that would be lucky) then 17 Amp hours is 50%, and the 3 Amp charge rate would take 5 hours to bulk charge plus equalization time. Equalization time depends much on battery age but should be less than 1 hour.For power draw we'll have to calculate from the output since there is no input specification on the data sheet.Start with a maximum of 14.7 Volts output at 3 Amps. That's 44 Watts.Assume worst case of 75% efficiency and we have a input of 58.8 Watts.At 120 Volts input that is 0.49 Amps and at 240 Volt it's 0.245 Amps per charger.For thirteen of them you end up at 6.37 Amps at 120 Volts input and 3.185 Amps at 240 Volts.
I hope this helps,--
-OtmarA message from SupportMailto:Support@CafeElectric.com

>Thanks for the quick and detailed response.
>So I guess you would recommend Orbitals over Yellow Tops?
>I was thinking Yellow Tops would provided better range, but maybe
>that isn't an accurate assumption.
>Thanks again for your help.
>= Pat

Hi Pat,These days I have more faith in Hawkers, or whatever they are called today. If they would fit in my racks I would switch to them.Optimas have more lead so may go farther, and yet have reliability problems, but so do Orbitals sometimes. It's not a easy choice. Hawkers cost more, but I've only seen good service from them. Plus you can get them in a 60 lb size and get some decent range out of that. 13 Optimas need to be in a pretty efficient car to go anywhere much.
-Otmar