EV work sidetracked by Home Renovations

I'm back driving the Vogue daily (since Monday) after my slight scare with the battery pack (which is working fine now).
I'm trying to track down another BMS for the battery packs as I do not have a spare. If a BMS dies for some reason it will put me off the road. The problem is that the BMS in my packs (WL086-05) is not available any more. The closest thing to them is a 16 cell BMS from EV-Power at 120mm x 90mm and I only have about 110mm x 90mm room in the pack.
At least I know where to get one now and there is a chance I can slice 10mm off it in the power FET area. I hope I never have to find out but it's best to plan.

Anyway - house renovations.
In the last few weeks I have demolished a built-in wardrobe pair in our main bedroom. By built-in I mean it. It was part of the original house framing even to the point where two of the ceiling bearers didn't make it to a load supporting wall instead being secured to the wardrobe framing (I extended them). The reason for it's removal was that in a house with 2.7M ceilings, the wardrobe was only 2M high. The remaining 700mm above the pair of wardrobes (on a 4M wide wall) was roof space. There were two wardrobes, each 1.5M wide with a dressing table that we didn't use in the middle. Add to that - they were only 450mm deep - most are at least 550mm deep. A real waste of space.

I also had to patch the floor. Fortunately the tongue and groove boards that formed a shelf in the wardrobe were actually floorboards (the white ones in the picture).

So I removed the whole lot and re-plasterboarded the area.

Since taking this picture I have done the first "mud" and tape coat.

The new wardrobe get installed in early October and they will trim the cornice and skirting boards to the correct dimensions to butt against it.

So I have two more coats of "mud" then we have to get the area painted.
Plus other stuff...


Demolition in progress - a tad blurry - sorry.

Pack #5 Fixed and ready for Car.

I temporarily plugged the relevant parts of the BMS into the pack last night and charged it while the pack was still open and I could measure the cell voltages.
The cells were so perfectly balanced that the charger current died off at 59VDC with around 3.68V across each cell pair - so no balancing required.
I did  a quick test of the BMS monitoring (my opto-coupler mods) and it checked out.
The BMS is fine - no damage.
After now leaving the pack open for 24 hours or more to thoroughly dry out, I re-assembled the pack last night but it was too wet and rainy to bother putting it back in the car.

I'll put it back in tonight or tomorrow morning.

Astute readers my notice that this pack is identified as Pack #10. That's because, way back when I had problems with controller switching coupling from the motor leads into pack #10 in the engine bay, I swapped packs #5 and #10 - just in case.
It remains an annoying facit of always having to note which pack #5 or #10 I am dealing with in my pack notes.


If I ever have to pull the faraday cage off Pack #5 (engine bay - see), I'll shield Pack #10 (the one shown above) more elegantly and swap the packs back to their rightful positions.

Pack problem caused by Water

As soon as I got home from work last night I yanked Pack #5 from the boot (trunk), took it inside and pulled it apart. There was a little bit of water on it and a few drops on the tray but I kind of ignored them until I got the pack apart - a little water dribbled out but I still wasn't sure that it didn't get on the pack when I was removing it (boot lid was very wet). I checked all cells and all measured 3.27V per cell - no variation. So the cells were OK. I proceeded to remove the bottom of the pack enclosure - now it was obvious.

Most of the bottom cover was covered in a thin film of water with a patch about the size of a matchbox (50mm x 40mm) that had green tinged foam/slime around it - that's where the BMS's daughter board was sitting in the pool of water!
BMS daugher board circled in red. (Daughter board appears to be so they can use the same BMS for 12 or 16 cells systems. They add four more cell handlers on the little board.)

Unfortunately my sense of WRONGness was so great I instantly wiped it all up - then remembered that I should have taken a picture - oh well.

I removed the BMS board and cleaned it with genclean (PCB cleaning stuff) then resoldered any suspect looking pins (a couple of Molex pins looked like they had corroded slightly), then gave the board a coat of clear laquer.


OK - so where did the water come from.
Some while back I crowed about how the Vogue was fine charging in the rain because the charger inlet (located IMMEDIATELY above this water soaked pack) had a "moat" that went to a drain hose. Well the 48 year old drain hose had cracked even more than when I re-installed it and was leaking every time I charged in the rain. Also, any water that got under the unsealed cover while driving went down the drain hole/hose.

The charger inlet, "moat" and drain hole in question.

I cut the bad end off the hose and ran the hose in a straighter line (no fuel tank to go around).
View inside the boot.

This old picture shows where Pack #5 is mounted with respect to the charger inlet. It's the one sitting alone on the left under the contactor/fuse box.

I haven't tested the BMS board yet to see if it still works - fingers crossed.
I'll try to get the pack back together tonight - it's still in the state of the first picture in this post.

When I re-install the pack (assuming the BMS is OK) I will put a temporary cover over the pack and check it regularly for a while.
I am still amazed that the water had got into the pack enclosure so easily. The three packs under the front of the car (engine bay) have been sealed with waterproof gaffa tape but now I wonder about them as well. At least their orientation would not have the BMS board at the bottom of the pack like this one.

...and yes, I am very embarrassed.

Battery Pack Problem

I didn't drive the Vogue today. When I started it the battery monitoring system instantly sounded an alarm. A quick check showed Pack #5 in the boot (trunk) had it's indicator light off. I re-connected the charging lead but it's internal BMS switched off the charger path straight away. I took my daughter's car to work.
I'll check it out when I get home.
I have a sneaky suspicioun that I just had my first cell failure in active use (later edit - wrong - they are fine). Unfortunately my packs will tend to kill two cells at a time due the the two-parallel nature of the system.
At may be that my 65km on Friday night has pushed some week cells into failure (nope - see next post). I did have two cells fail while in storage - a couple of years ago now (and to date they are the ONLY two).
I'll post the results...

Longish trip and Wombats

Last Saturday I had to drive 27km down to Chelsea and back and it was interesting. I got to my destination with 54km remaining range which was fine (total 81km). On the way home the total reduced to around 77km. Each time I stopped from 70km/h I gained around 1.5km then when I accelerated back up to 70km/h I lost around 2km.

The interesting bit was when someone in front of me had a brain freeze and caused me to do a faster stop than I would have liked - so I had to use mechanical brakes. I lost just under 2km range when I took off again having not got it back from regen first. So from that point on the trip plus remaining range at at 75km.
All this is measured to 80% DOD on a 12kW/h pack. The more you start/stop - the more regen. is important. I can't imagine it being anywhere near as much fun driving an EV with no regenerative braking - I rely on it.

On other matters. We had four Wombats visit work today. One of our engineers and his wife look after wildlife and they currently have a plethora of Wombats.

Jacob had a hold of a naughty Wombat.

When Wei tried to have a hold he just wanted to get away. A VERY naughty Wombat.

Suddently the sun broke through.....

Even Gaia likes EVs.
This was the view as I left work and walked up to the eVogue on Friday late-afternoon.