Otmar at the Maker Faire

The Maker Faire is always a good time but while checking in I spotted a double VW Westfalia - two campers welded together to make one long bus.

I only heard of one of these creations and it belonged to Otmar - creator of the Zilla controller. Finding it had Oregon plates and a Biodiesel sticker confirmed my suspicion. 

No sign of him on Saturday, but on Sunday, my dad flagged me down to talk with a guy wearing a goofy purple hat - it was Otmar. He asked how I liked my Zilla (which I love) and we talked for 15 or 20 minutes about the state of the conversion market and the different projects he's working on. I asked him to sign my Zilla 

And I got a picture with him. It was an ethereal experience, which my smudged camera lens can attest to.

 

Blame the potholes

Before you read the following post, you should know that I drive this car daily.
It may seem that this blog recently is nothing more than a list of  problems, but when the car works (which it does 99.9% of the time) there is nothing of any interest to post - "disconnected charge cable, backed out of garage, drove to work, drive home from work, connect charger cable..."

Yesterday I had a little trouble getting to work. Along the way my controller appeared to shut down - the Charge light went out and the Check Engine light went on plus, I had no power. I coasted to a stop and restarted the car. Everything worked fine. I took the streets to work in case it decided to fail on me again and once I parked at work, I hooked up my laptop to my Zilla to read the error codes. There were 3 of them - the 12v supply was too low, the contactor opened unexpectedly, the motor RPM was too high. Sounded pretty serious, but I remembered a similar set of errors when my 12v SLI battery failed and I had left the door ajar one night, leaving the interior lights lit for 14 hours... I decided the SLI battery was to blame and after work, took the streets home without incident. Once back home, I hooked up my 12v charger to my SLI battery. It showed it was at 100% - but I ran it through a charging cycle anyway.

Next day, I drive to work without incident. Ont the way home, however, it stalled, First on the freeway (i was able to coast down the next exit where I was able to restart it), then at a left turn (sorry to the people behind me) then at a traffic light (more sorries to those behind me).

I figured it must be a loose 12v wire. Saturday I popped the hood and poked around for a loose wire. Everything looked fine...until I noticed the ground connection under the relay box was loose. I tightened it up and took her for a test drive - all good. A simple fix to what sounded like a serious problem.

The potholes must have rattled it loose.

Shock Absorbing Stud Mounts

I have a bunch of speed bumps in the parking garage at work. Even though I try to ease over them, sometimes I hit them pretty hard. I started wondering what this was doing to my electronics - like my Zivan charger and Zilla controller. . .
I ordered some rubber mounts for my vacuum pump and thought I'd order 8 of them to use on my Zivan and Zilla. They are a little tricky to install - the rubber tries to twist rather as you tighten the nuts. If you put pressure on them, the rubber compresses and won't twist allowing the nuts to tighten up nicely.

Now both my Zivan and Zilla have a little give and I won't be worried about hitting those speed bumps a bit to hard.

The Zilla is back!

After what seems like forever, the Zilla controller will be back in production.
http://www.cafeelectricpress.com/blog/?cat=2

Happy day!

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...

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.

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.

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.

No more Zillas?

Big news today - Otmar is calling it quits. He evidently is having health problems related to running his business and looking to sell out.
Zillas are generally regarded as the best DC EV Controllers available. I would hope that someone reputable will take it over and keep these outstanding products on the market.

Read all about it on the Cafe Electric Blog:
http://www.cafeelectricpress.com/blog/?p=45

Keeping busy

My family was out of town tonight. Do you think I read a book, or watched some of the Olympics?
Nah, I worked on the car...
First I mounted the potbox - this is the electronic throttle that tells the controller how much juice to give the motor. I mounted it on the firewall behind the windshield washer reservoir. I thought about a number of ways to connect the accelerator cable to the lever and ended up using an electrical lug crimped to the cable. I then wrapped the extra cable around the mounting screw and attached it to the lug with a mini cable strap - this gives me a little reassurance that if the crimp comes loose that the cable loop will keep it working. Furthermore, since I didn't remove the end cap from the cable, if the crimp comes loose AND the mini strap breaks, the end cap won't get pulled through the lug, keeping the potbox working, though not as well.
Redundancy is good - double redundancy is even more gooder.
Sorry - I took the picture before I did the double redundancy stuff.

Next I drilled out the temperature sending unit so that it would fit under one of the Zilla's water fittings. The sending unit comes with a 1/4 lug, but I needed it to be 3/8". A little drilling, a little filing a and a little Dremeling and voila.

Lastly, I flipped the cover over on the Zilla so that the graphic was right side up. I know, but it was bothering me.

That's enough for one night.

brackets and mounts

Saturday I got to do a little bending and welding to finish off the mounts for the Iota and the Zilla, plus I got the battery straps mounted on the motor/cowl rack.
I wanted to attach the Zilla using a separate bracket so that other brackets could be used if another controllers was called for. The braket mounts to the rack, one of the rack brackets and a miata hole near the shock tower. I used flat head machine screws to that the bolt heads wouldn't interfere with the Zilla.
The Iota was originally going to mount with a bracket, but after some experimenting I found it could fit against the passenger side of the rack really nice. I welded up 4 tabs for it on the rack and drilled them out for flat head machine bolts so that the bold heads won't gouge the batteries.
Lookin' good.

Zilla is here!

Got an email from EV Source that my Zilla shipped on Wednesday and received it on Friday. My records show I ordered it on January 13th which means that Otmar and crew beat the 4 month lead time commit by 10 days. Not too shabby.

Now I wish I was ready to install it, but got a few things to do first...