[MalcolmB]

Congratulations!

It's hard to tell, but from your photos it looks as if the crimps on the contactor terminals are a little loose. Could the heat be coming from there?

[mora]

Oh yes, smooth throttle input. Mine is very spiky at the point I've used most. Bad resistive pot. PWM will stay up as controller is willing to see some "real" current and tries to make current flow. It is completely fine. Paul can confirm this.

[Ace_bridger]

Thanks Mora, good news.

Your throttle issues will be a thing of the past once I send you the HE sensor!!

Originally Posted by mora

Oh yes, smooth throttle input. Mine is very spiky at the point I've used most. Bad resistive pot. PWM will stay up as controller is willing to see some "real" current and tries to make current flow. It is completely fine. Paul can confirm this.

[Ace_bridger]

Thanks Malc,

They are nice and tight, it's just the insulation pulling back from where it's bent...I think.

I'm going with the low voltage high current theory and will monitor once I get some decent voltage on there.

No it's time to remove everything and put it back in permanently (hopefully).

Originally Posted by MalcolmB

Congratulations!

It's hard to tell, but from your photos it looks as if the crimps on the contactor terminals are a little loose. Could the heat be coming from there?

[mora]

Did you run contactor at 24V? I mean coil voltage. You could disconnect high voltage wires from it and just close it (using 12V) and monitor its temperature. And measure on-resistance while you are at it. Even at 24V your amps should be well within contactor ratings. Mine doesn't ever get even warm to touch.

[Ace_bridger]

I was running it at 12V off one of the spare Trojans. The same one also gave the controller 12V supply.

That's a very good idea to just try it on 12V with no pack attached. I'll do that and monitor it. It doesn't have an economiser but I assume that the economiser just pulses the contactor to hold it in reducing power used. I shouldn't think this would affect the workings of the contactor itself?

The annoying thing is that I have another EV200 kicking around but I can't find it!! Ggrrr!!

Originally Posted by mora

Did you run contactor at 24V? I mean coil voltage. You could disconnect high voltage wires from it and just close it (using 12V) and monitor its temperature. And measure on-resistance while you are at it. Even at 24V your amps should be well within contactor ratings. Mine doesn't ever get even warm to touch.

[mora]

Oh, both of mine have economizers. That must be bare coil you are feeding 12V into. I think the coil pulls too much amps without any regulation and gets hot. It might have same results when amps are lower (=economizer).

I had a broken economizer circuit but had hard time to find another one. Eventually I just bought new contactor as they can be found cheap on eBay.

[PStechPaul]

You can make a "poor man's" economizer by using a big capacitor in parallel with a resistor, in series with the coil. The capacitor should be sized such that the RC time constant is about 100mSec, so for a 10 ohm coil you want 10,000 uF. The resistor is usually about 5 times the coil, so a 50 ohm should work. So, without the economizer the 12V coil would have 14.4 watts, but with the economizer the coil would see 2 volts and 0.4 watts, while the 50 ohm resistor would see 100/50=2 watts. YMMV

[Ace_bridger]

My 'other' EV200 has an economiser but where it is is anyone's guess since we moved house!!

Thanks for the suggestions and I might well just buy two new ones and sel this one...the lost one is bound to turn up then!!

[skooler]

Originally Posted by Ace_bridger

My 'other' EV200 has an economiser but where it is is anyone's guess since we moved house!!

Thanks for the suggestions and I might well just buy two new ones and sel this one...the lost one is bound to turn up then!!

got mine from here if that helps

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Kilovac-EV...item43af8d50ee

They arrived quickly and had good customer service etc. If you buy them separately, on different days, they'll be shipped separately and you wont pay import tax

Cheers,

Mike