Burnin the candle!

The early morning’s and late nights are starting  to take their toll now, Wednesday night I loaded the two complete rear batt boxes and wired up the Soliton Jr to the IGN 12V feed and wired the Contactor (big HV relay) with the batteries not connected I turned the Ignition key to hear the gorgeous sound of the HV contactor “click” the HV relay shortly followed by the whir of the Soliton Jr fans.

ITS ALIVE (Well almost)

1st Low voltage live test complete, hurrah!

Boyed by that success and due to the failing light now summer is nearing its end I went inside to fire up the charger for it’s 1st Low voltage 12V test and ½ second in LCD came on as expected began boot up “Snap", "Crackle" – I did not wait for the POP!

Fried a 2n2222 transistor, must be a short will investigate tonight ,still looked promising there for a split second.

(Update:- checked this last night and spotted my schoolboy error, I had inadvertently reverse orientated the LM211P IC that feeds the S3 2n2222, DUMMY!)

Ho Hum, I am guessing it has fried the LM211P although it appears that the 2n2222 S3 has taken the brunt of the damage, luckily I have these in stock so I have fired of a post to the diyelectriccar forum’s 10KW charger thread to see if Valery can suggest the symptoms of a fugged LM 211P, this is so that if I replace the definitely fried 2n2222 (S3) and orientate the LM211P correctly I am hoping that I may not have fried the LM211P and it may well be still useable.

If Valery suggests the symptoms of a dead LM211P I should be able to test it and identify if I have killed it or not.

Last night (Thursday 5th) I wired the motor for series field mode clockwise orientation (not sure if it needs clockwise or anticlockwise to give forward motion through the transverse gearbox but I am taking a wild guess at clockwise due to the layout and logical look of how it is laid out. If it is wrong it’s very simple to change.

Also wired in a temporary throttle cable by twisting 2 pairs in an old shielded DIN cable I had laying around (this is definitely not good enough for actual use but I have already ordered an appropriate cable just waiting for it to arrive) basically using 2 cores twisted together to cover the potential 1A current draw (although it will likely be much less as it is only a 5V hall effect sensor probably draws micro/milli amps)

(Update:- The cable I bought turned up and is thinner than I thought So my temporary bodge is probably better than this anyway! Will check with Steve as to what is actually required for Safety’s sake)

Also the new 12V cables arrived 5 meters of each, black and red, silicone insulated, ran these through the car from front to back (in the case of the red +ve) and a short link for the –ve to chassis.
Threaded the red alongside the HV cables, both the HV cables and the 12V +ve are currently just zip fastened to the brake fluid lines in the tunnel that runs under the center down the whole length of the car, this is definitely not safe and once the car is running it will be going back to Brent for him to safely secure all the wiring looms in place properly.