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.

A few odds and ends

It's a rainy Sunday and while the batteries are being fed, I'm doing a little "debugging."

I noticed that the most negative cable coming from the trunk rack is rubbing just a little on the steering column. So I disconnected and re-routed it.

I spent some time on my experimental passive cooling system for the Zilla. The idea is to reuse the heater core since it is right by the Zilla. First step is to use it as a reservoir and see if that is enough to keep the Zilla happy. Second step, if this fails, is to add a pump to create a little circulation. Either way, I'm going to need the temp gauge to work...

I did some extensive testing on my temperature gauge. It comes out it was the 12v lead going to the gauge that wasn't right - it showed 12v, but only until the key was on... I also found out you can't test the sending unit by heating it up with a soldering gun while it's against a heat sink. The heat sink soaks up all the heat - like I didn't know that... I ended up connecting a 12v jumper to the Iota and removing the sending unit and heating it with a solder gun and got the gauge to work. Instead of fishing for another 12v source on the instrument panel, I think I'll run a new wire, that way I'll know it works.

I also have to hook up the relay for the Iota with a new 12v lead off the key. That will make 4 devices off the key switch - the hairball, the vacuum pump, the temp gauge and the Iota relay. I think it's safe to say I need a fuse box. Found one on eBay that handled 4 fuses, looked good and was under $10!

Probably won't get a chance to install it until after new years...

Gauges again

I have four main things to finish on the car:

1. Get the full charge on the batteries. This first requires that I get them balanced.
2. Install the instruments
3. Fix the clutch (new on the list since yesterday)
   
4. Attach the hood and prop rod (this one should be easy)

While I was charging batteries I set out to tackle the instruments.
Last week I took a template of the plastic piece I needed to cover the original gauges that I was keeping (tach, speedo and idiot lights) the temp, fuel and oil pressure gauges were replaced an ammeter, State of Charge meter and a temperature gauge for the Zilla. And yes, I could have reused the old temperature gauge, but I think it would have looked funny.

At any rate, The plastic cover fit pretty well it just needed a few adjustments with the Dremel. I hooked up light kit and fed the wires through some holes I cut in the sides and crimped on some connectors. The lights had to be connected to the one in the instrument cluster so that the dimmer would work right. I traced out the wires and soldered a pair of flywires to the circuit board for these. These are the two black wires running across the back of the cluster in the picture. So far so good.

I had fed the wires through the firewall and up to the where the cluster goes earlier, Now I just needed to crimp connectors on them. Here's a tip: make the connectors all the same just in case you mess up the wiring. I made all the instrument connectors female and all the wire side male. And, I thought the blue went to the SOC meter, when it went to the Ammeter... Works out nice when you plan to make mistakes. ; )

Once I got them in, the SOC meter started working, but nothing on the ammeter. I tried reversing the polarity but still nothing. The temp gauge didn't move, but the Zilla was still cool to the touch after a couple of drives, so maybe it was okay.
Next I tried the lights and, the temp gauge went up when the lights went on. Hmmmm, must have the ground or the positive leads wrong. When I turned the key on with lights lit, the temp gauge bottoms out like the polarity is wrong.

So, of the 5 gauges...

• The tach doesn't work, but it lights up
• the SOC works, but the light is too close to the face and lights a corner of it up
• the speedo works and lights up fine
  
• the ammeter doesn't work, but lights up
• the temp gauge is mis-wired, but it lights

So, the cluster needs to come out for a little reworking...

I had a nice visit with a fellow Miata converter. He is using an ADC with a Curtis and 15 8 volt batteries. Funny thing is, he lives about a mile from me. What I thought was really interesting is that he took his gas tank out from the top - he cut away the sheet metal with a sawzall and lifted it out. Pretty cool. I'm going to try to go look at his car later.

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.

Installed gauges (Part 1)

Got the gauges into the instrument cluster today. It's not as easy as it looks - took a lot of cutting a little careful grinding to get the new gauges to fit (as the black plastic scraps in the picture attest). The stock gauges were about an inch and three quarters (probably metric, though) and these are two inch, so there the holes needed to be re-sized. I used a Dremel, and would highly recommend using one if you attempt something like this. The new gauges stick out a bit - looks kind of like a Toyota Matrix's instrument panel now. The clear plastic panel that covers the dash no longer fits, though. I'm either going to have to modify it to stick out in the bottom to clear the lower gauges or get a half circle piece from TAP plastics and mount it behind the new gauges. Some chrome trim rings would look good on the new gauges too... I'll have to check if Westberg makes 'em. Speaking of Westberg, still have to send back my State-of-Charge gauge. It's only in the picture for show. I'll post an update with the final version of the dash.

Got the gauges in

State of Charge, Ammeter and Temperature gauge (for the Zilla) all came in. The State of charge was supposed to be 170 volts at 100% and 158 at 0% (this will only show the top 50% of charge, but that's all that's really usable).

The gauge they sent was 158 volt to 178 volt.

It needs to go back : ( Oh well.
Nice looking gauges though and not too deep - ought to fit in the stock instrument cluster without too much work.