[danh818]

Batteries have arrived this morning. All 31 boxes made it through US Customs just fine. I'll be spending most of the day clearing room for them and setting up a test bench for inspection and capacity testing.

[danh818]

Advan Carbon hood and header panel arrived today. We did not have a chance to bolt it up and do a true test fit, but we did hold up the header panel to get and idea of how it will look. More pictures on the blog at http://infa944.blogspot.com

[rwaudio]

Originally Posted by danh818

Advan Carbon hood and header panel arrived today. We did not have a chance to bolt it up and do a true test fit, but we did hold up the header panel to get and idea of how it will look. More pictures on the blog at http://infa944.blogspot.com

That's a beautiful piece, what's the weight difference?

[danh818]

I'm actually not sure. We gave Advan the original parts to make molds from since they have never done anything carbon for the 944 before. I should have weighed them before sending off the originals. I will find a way to weight the new carbon parts, but I'm not sure if we are actually going to get the originals back. Although it's my car one of my good friends had a contact at Advan and worked out the deal. The parts were given to us gratis as they are prototypes and in return we agreed to do some promotional photo shoots when this car is finished.


RWaudio, what are the specs of your traction pack for the drive with your wife? Amp draw?

Now that I have had a chance to physically get my hands on the A123's I'm fairly impressed with the robustness of the tabs. I'll be spending the weekend thinking and tinkering intently on my cell connection and packaging method.

[rwaudio]

Originally Posted by danh818

I'm actually not sure. We gave Advan the original parts to make molds from since they have never done anything carbon for the 944 before. I should have weighed them before sending off the originals. I will find a way to weight the new carbon parts, but I'm not sure if we are actually going to get the originals back. Although it's my car one of my good friends had a contact at Advan and worked out the deal. The parts were given to us gratis as they are prototypes and in return we agreed to do some promotional photo shoots when this car is finished.


RWaudio, what are the specs of your traction pack for the drive with your wife? Amp draw?

Now that I have had a chance to physically get my hands on the A123's I'm fairly impressed with the robustness of the tabs. I'll be spending the weekend thinking and tinkering intently on my cell connection and packaging method.

I'm using a 44S3P pack right now which is a bit low on voltage for the 11HV.
Battery and Motor amps set at 1000, clamp on meter on different runs showed 949 motor amps and 809 battery amps. I did notice from the log that I wasn't getting full throttle so I'll have to recalibrate that.

Torque is dropping off by 2500rpm but that seems normal since I'm running 1/2 the rated motor voltage.

[danh818]

Thank you for sharing your specs RW. This is promising news for both of us, and anyone else using an 11HV I think that in the end we will both have plenty of power at our disposal.

I have ordered some toggle clamps and nylon thumb screws from http://mcmastercarr.com to build out a cell testing board. I've also ordered another two PL6's, so I will now have four total. This should speed up capacity testing considerably. I should have the 'board' setup in a couple days.

I have now firmly decided that I will only be charging my cells to 3.6v so I will be doing a 4p98s design. I like what Kerry Mann has done with his battery design, and will be doing something very similar, but for me there is a bit too much exposed conductive material. I'm fortunate to have a laser cutter at work and we do a lot of work with Acetal POM sheet. I'm looking into using POM or a smiler engineering plastic as an external insulator for my battery groups. I am also thinking about potting the the connections to help reduce flex. While doing research last night I stumbled upon http://www.bricolagefaidate.com/english/magicjoint.php
Looks promising and warrants more research. Interestingly this product is "re-enterable" so it can be torn apart pretty easily and a particular cell could be accessed with relative ease. Seems as thought some other products from this company may be applicable to EV'ers as well, such as their self regulating heating cables.

[danh818]

Finished the first of two cell testing stations today.
Tomorrow I will finish assembly on the second test board and pull together some lead acid batteries so that I can use regenerative charging for a 2C charge/discharge.

[rwaudio]

Originally Posted by danh818

Finished the first of two cell testing stations today.
Tomorrow I will finish assembly on the second test board and pull together some lead acid batteries so that I can use regenerative charging for a 2C charge/discharge.

Make sure you check the temperature in the clamping area to make sure you have enough clamping force to make a good connection.

[danh818]

Not quite as much progress today as I had hoped for, but if its worth doing, its worth doing right. No cell testing today, but I did grab some 1/0 stranded cable and nip four, 6 volt batteries from our Sports Rider golf cart. By the end of the day I had the lead acids wired up in a 2p2s configuration to feed my four PowerLab6 chargers, but alas, I needed a 12v load to draw them down as there were already topped off. My go to guy David reminded me that we could use the Transwarp 11HV and kill two birds with one stone, breaking in the motor and using it to draw down the golf cart batteries. Cell testing to commence tomorrow morning.

[danh818]

Thanks RW, I have the clamps set very tight, and the discoloration of the copper is due to me using an acetylene torch to solder the terminals on. I used a scotchbrite pad to scour the clamping surface.