Commissioning Woes

Well the Engine Bay wiring was pretty much completed by Monday at about 4PM. Everyone stood back at a safe distance and we turned the key to 'Start' - nothing happened. A quick think and I realised that the Charger inhibit wire to the boot (so the car will not go if the charger is connected) was not connected to anything. I clipped it to vehicle ground and turning the key to 'Start' resulted in a satisfying clunk as all the contactors closed. The 12 V battery now read 13.7 volts - good.

The completed engine bay.

Now the problems.
The controller has 4 digital outputs and 6 digital inputs. I need 4 of each. One digital output is used as a 24 VDC source for the 24 V logic on the digital inputs to the controller. This output appears to be 'fried'. No matter what I do it stays at 0 V. It turns out that digital input 4 is the culprit. For some reason it draws enourmous amounts of current and destroyed the output I was using for 24 Volts. I had assumed (when you assume you make an Ass out of U and Me) that the outputs would be current limited - not so - they just blow up. Anyway, I stopped using that particular input and swapped to another output for 24V and got a bit closer to everything working.

Once the above was sorted out we broke for dinner and afterwards I downloaded the prepared configuration into the controller. This is the first time I have run the controller in Torque mode and - IT WORKED!

Next problem - it would not make the motor go in reverse. I left that until I had time to think about it and review the configuration.

One final issue is that when I selected forward or reverse, both of which enable the motor outputs of the controller, I get a warning from the low 3 battery pack opto bus - the packs UNDER the controller tray. (Couldn't it have been any of the other seven battery packs?) Crawling under the car showed the the indicator light for pack #10 (the rearmost of the three packs under the trays), was going out when the alert sounded. Strangely, measuring the voltage of the pack when the problem happened showed 52.7 VDC - the same as the rest of the packs.
So 2 hours later with pack #10 removed for examination, I took this picture.

Pack #10 is now on my bench inside with the lid off. According to my modification notes (when I modified the packs), pack #10 was the only one that had clear signs of a short when it was being made. A flat washer had a quarter blown off and there was black residue on the top of the cell it was attached to (no, I didn't do it).

Now where do I get a 5 Ohm, 200 Watt resistor to use as a test load? Counting portable electric heaters now - each one is good for about 2 Amps at 50 Volts...