More words about welding and cables

Got a few things done today. I welded on the bracket for the circuit breaker to the front right side of the top rack. I was going to put it with the lever facing up to make it easy to trip when working on the car, but the instructions (and later the tech support people) said that for proper operation it needs to be mounted up right. It's not in the easiest place to reach, but my plan is to connect a cable to it so that it can be tripped from the driver seat.
Next I welded on two brackets on the lower left side of the rack for the vacuum pump. This produces the vacuum needed for the power brakes to work. It will mount under the rack in the space to the left of the motor.

After the welding was done I finished up the cables - added the shrink wrap to the ends, the proper colored insulating boots and tightened them down nice and snug.







I made the replacement cables up (to make up for the ones I melted) and added the two l o n g ones that connect to the rear rack. One goes from the circuit breaker to the positive terminal in the rear and the other comes from the last negative terminal up to the contactor. I was worried I would run out of cable, but I have a good 12 feet left of the fifty feet I bought.
Running these cables was a little tricky. I decided to tie wrap the cables to the exhaust hangers, which worked out well. I used some foam rubber pipe insulation to soften the connections where the cable was tied to the rear suspension and the front subframe.

Zivan charger is in

After a lot of research and a few phone calls, I changed my original plans to use a Manzanita Micro PFC-20 charger and ordered a Zivan NG3. In the picture you see the NG3 beside the cardboard mock up that my daughter and I made. The Zivan is smaller, lighter and cheaper, but only works on one voltage – in my case 220VAC is what Zivan recommended. I still want to have 110vac charging available for “opportunity charging” (in a parking garage or friend’s house) and am told another small charger that is compatible with the Zivan is on the horizon.

The reason I didn’t go with the PFC-20 had nothing to do with the charger itself, but with the battery regulators. Manzanita Micro use to make something called Rudman Regulators they insured that the battery charges were in balance across the pack. Batteries each are a little different chemically and when charged in a string they can be undercharged or overcharged, reducing performance and their life span. A regulator will sit on top of each battery and make sure it doesn’t get overcharged and by doing this, insures other batteries don’t get undercharged. I’m a believer in battery regulation but the Rudman Regulators are no longer available. I tried to find something else, like PowerCheq, but they won’t work with 13 battery strings or with racks that a separated by more than a few feet. I did find a company in Austin making a nice regulator called a BEQ1, but it is designed to work with the Zivan. So there I am.

I’ll be building a bracket to place the Zivan above the nose rack in the near future.

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.

Web site down

I downloaded Chrome - the new Google browser - because I wanted to see what the web site looked like. I got an error 403 message when I hit the site. Hmmmm.

Of course my first thought was that Chrome was to blame, but when I tried it on Firefox and IE6 and got the same result, I realized it was my hosting service.

I sent them an email and they quickly replied:

Our system administrators are currently carrying out a server maintenance on the machine where your account is hosted on.
They will have it upgraded to a more reliable system that will hopefully cause less trouble.
The upgrade should be over after 12-15 hours.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

"more reliable system that will hopefully cause less trouble."
Hmmm.

Hairball wiring

I had an hour of quiet after work and decided to start on wiring up the hairball. The hairball is the device where the low voltage wiring connects to the Zilla. I think it's also the brains to the Zilla, the controller of the controller so to speak. Anyway, with the help of my wiring diagram and a little sleuthing, I was able to locate the starter wire, a wire that the key controlled in the "on" position, the alternator light on the dash, and the Tach (I think - need to check on that one). Most were long enough to reach to the hairball, but a few needed a little extension. I also connected the Pot Box (the throttle control) to the hairball.
That's as far as I got.
More on this later.

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 box

Over the three day weekend I was able to get a little work done on the car. I decided it was easier to put the high voltage components into a box rather than try to find a place to mount them each and then try to insulate all the connectors. I bought a 6"x6"x4" plastic junction box at Lowes which was big enough for the main contactor (the relay that acts as the main power switch) and the shunt for the ammeter. The only other component that is high voltage is the Zilla, but I'll deal with insulating it later. Next, I needed to mount the box. I planned on keeping it as close to the Zilla as possible so that the wire runs were short. I built a mount out of 1" flat steel that connected to 2 of the nose rack mounting bolts and to one of the radiator mounts on the car. After the mount was done, I figured out where the cables were going to run into the box and drilled some holes. Next, I cut and crimped the cables. I was hoping for nice straight runs, but shirt cables, you don't get much flex for pretty "S" bends and the like. Still looks good.

I have 4 cables left - one to the circuit breaker (that I plan to mount on the upper rack near the Zilla), one to the rear pack from the breaker, one back from the rear pack to the contactor and lastly, a replacement for one I fried.

I should get a box this week with the needed terminals.