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.

Charger quandry

I was about to order the Manzanita Micro PFC-20 I planned to use when I found out some bad news. First, the price has gone up around $300, second, there is now an 8 week wait for delivery and lastly, it appears you can't get the battery regulators that are made to work with it.
The battery regulators are needed for the AGM batteries I'm using to keep them from being damaged from overcharging since they can't "off-gas" like old school flooded cells.

I spent some time researching the battery regulator options and found PowerCheq and BEQ1.

The PowerCheqs sight says they may not work with long battery strings. I contacted Ryan at EVSource who sells them to see if they would work with my 13 bat string. Ryan replied that he didn't recommend them, and haven't got a reply when I asked for the reasons why.

BEQ1s looked good and were designed to work with the Optima D34M batteries I'm using, plus they are $20 less than the PowerCheqs. I contacted the manufacturer of the BEQ1s to see if they would work with the PFC-20 and the answer was no - they only work with the Zivan NG3. I had looked at the Zivan, but they are not dual voltage like the PFC-20, so I would need two chargers - one for 220 at home and another for 110 opportunity charging while on the road.
The Zivan is smaller and cheaper than the PFC-20, so it's worth looking into, and maybe I can come up with a cheap way to handle 110 charging...


I checked around and found a step up transformer that says it can step up a 15 amp 110 circuit to 220, but doesn't give an amp rating for the 220, but it's less than $100. I sent the Zivan folks a message to see if they thought this idea would work. Their reply was to say the NG3 charger needed more amps than the charger would offer and that they would get back to me with a proposed solution.

Maybe I need to get a cheap Rusco for the 110 charging and mount the Zivan in the garage?

So, I guess I'll wait to find out what the folks at Zivan come up with...

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