Door Liners ready for fabric

I finished punching out the holes in the door liners and we laid one of the front and one of the rear door liners out to see how we would cover them. The rag stealer was nosing around.

Here is one without the black silhouette in the way.

The orginal liners were covered in red vinyl with vulcanizing in several strips under the armrest area.

We decided to do two or three strips of silver starting where the vulcanizing starts at the bottom but not going quite to the armrest (the two smaller holes through the vulcanized area). When we laid fabric on the liner it was apparent that, even though the fabric has a foam backing, that the backing was not thick enough - it felt cheap. I'll buy some 3mm foam backing to go behind the fabric.

At some point in the past two weeks I made the decision to use the constant current balancers on all the battery packs in the car, not just the ones that showed errors on the drive - I just didn't mention it here. I have been moving the balancer chargers from pack to pack as each pack got to 59 VDC (3.69 x 16). Every pack has taken more than two days to reach internal cell balance - thats about 9AH (for a 20AH cell pair). The packs were certainly not correctly charged. The last two battery packs are on the 180mA constant current balancer chargers now - nearly there!

New Door Liners

While I waited for the last 3 battery packs to balance I busied myself making the door liners. The old masonite door liners on the Vogue were water damaged (why do people insist on removing the plastic sheets between the door liners and the door panels and not putting them back), so it is necessay to make new ones.
This one is typical of the old door liners.

I have elected to use 3 ply as it is reasonably light and better when it comes to water damage (I'll be using plastic sheet under it as well).
First I acertained that the door liners on left and right sides of the car were mirror images of one another. Then I choose the best one, stripped off the vinyl and traced it onto my 3 ply - including the holes for handles, window winders, armrests and mounting clips. Then I firmly applied masking tape over the lines where I was going to use my old trusty jigsaw.

Once cut, removing the masking tape shows hardly any splintering.

I am lucky enough to have inherited (really) some hole punches. The door clips and armrests use a 1/2" hole. The only problem I had was on one panel near the corner it split the whole corner out. Some woodglue fixed that.

I had to bash out over 100 holes.
I now have four stamped 3 ply panels. Next comes a test fit (just to be sure the armrest, winder and door opener holes are correct) then the fabric covering.

Pack #9 Update (balancing the battery packs)

There's those who say that you can't tell a LiFePO4 cell's  State Of Charge (SOC) from the cell voltage.
They're right!

In my previous post I mentioned that cells around 3.3V appeared to only be about 2 to 4AH shy of fully charged.
Well in Pack #9, we have so far put 11AH into a cell that initially measured at 3.28V and it's only just up to 3.5V - so it's nearly charged. The critical voltage at 20 degrees C for reasonably new LiFePO4 Headway cells seems to be between 3.2 and 3.4 V.

I had ideas of logging pack voltage and current and coming up with a SOC indicator that didn't have to measure AH in and out of the pack. The idea was to compensate the pack voltage with the current being drawn from it and assume a particular SOC from the compensated voltage. I think it may be harder than that!


William is at home today and I'm at work, so I am getting cell voltage and current updates from him.

Battery Pack Balancing Update

The pack balancing is going well, albeit slowly. I have two 180mA current source chargers running all the time balancing the cells in packs that didn't show alerts during the drive. I move them to the next pack when the pack under charge gets to 59 VDC (3.69 * 16). As well as that, I am pulling each of the 5 alerting packs (minus one that was too difficult to remove and responded to 3.5 days of 180mA charging) out of the car, lifting the lid, and charging the low cells with an Individual Cell Charger (ICC).

The ICC is a small PC power supply that has an adjustable 5V, 5A output. It doesn't adjust all the way down to 3.7V so I have two 3A diodes in series and have it set to 5.2VDC. The diodes drop 1.6V at 3A and 1.5V at 180mA so it's reasonably safe to leave unattended. When I pull a pack from the car, I start by measuring all cell pairs then use the ICC on the low cells. I generally find that there are about 12 cell pairs over 3.6V and 4 at 3.3 to 3.4. The 3.3V seem to need about 4 AH put into them. Cells that have been 3.2V have needed up to 17AH. Considering the cell pairs are 20AH, that's pretty discharged.

So far all but one of the packs (the one that had a cell that took 17AH) I have pulled out have had the 180mA treatment before I decided to remove them, but pack #9 which get removed from the car tonight has only had the post-drive charge to 58.4V, (the 3A charger cut back after only an hour) so it will be interesting to see the SOC of the cells.
I only have one of the alerting packs left to pull out of the car, pack #9.

Battery Balancing and Steering column cowl

It's been a bit of a slow week with one battery pack opened up for individual cell balancing and others with a 0.01 C controversial balancing charge.
Pack opened for examination and individual cell charging.

I have also been experimenting with finishes for the steering wheel centre and steering cowl. I tried a leather dye but it would not soak in, then vinyl paint which peeled off in a very strange way. I have fallen back to prime and paint.
Primed.

 The top of the cowl.

More Video of Second Drive

Another short video. This is where we stopped at lights to turn right, then upon moving away, the battery alert started.

Balancing my Battery Packs

I posted some thoughts on the AEVA forum so I could get some feedback from like-minded souls about my battery pack issues. It may be of interest to some who read this blog so here is the link. It's about the eighth post on the page.
http://forums.aeva.asn.au/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=2707

Some notes on the Second drive

The drive on Sunday showed up some minor problems.

1. There was a "thump" from the driveline when I eased up on the accelerator too fast - even as very slow speeds. This was easy to avoid but it's a bug nevertheless.
2. Regen braking didn't work at all. Pretty clever for me to muck up something that is hard to prevent.
3. We only travelled about 5km before I got a battery low alert. Upon returning home, 5 out of the 12 packs were showing a low voltage event (blue LED off).

1.
The thump happens when the accelerator transitions through the point where I am requesting full speed (variable torque), to the point where I am requesting zero speed - at about 10% pedal depression.
I left a 100mS ramp up/ramp down in the speed section of the controller, thinking it did not effect torque control - but it may.
If that doesn't help, the easy fix is to implement a ramp function on the Analog input (a function block in the controller), and limit the ramp down speed to that which doesn't cause the thump - but I'd rather identify and take the correct action. I'll put it up on axle stands and have a fiddle.

2.
Weird. I will connect the laptop and monitor the internal controller signals and trace through while on the axle stands. This is pretty easy to do as the Lenze software lets you tap into any analog or digital code of function block output and display as a dial or digtal readout or both. Up to 8 at once.

3.
Seven packs were at 52.5V and 5 (with LEDs off) were below 51 V. After a full charge, I pulled the lowest voltage one (as measured after the fault event) from the car and have so far put 12AH into one of the 20AH cell pairs. There were 4 cells pairs under 3.25V - the rest were 3.6V or higher - keep in mind this pack just got fully charged!
They are obviously way out of balance. To use an Americanism - "my bad". I thought since all chargers had cut out and all packs were at 58V they were balanced - not at all! The remaining 11 packs are on charge for the 4 days it will take for 180mA to charge all cells. It took me a whole night just to charge one cell pair in one pack so that's not reasonable to do for the 5 packs. I will change the the pack I have out to the same "trickle" or CV charge and monitor it closely to ensure I'm kind of OK. I don't like doing this but it's untenable to pull every pack.

Second Drive (first major drive)

On Sunday afternoon I was finally ready for Laurel and I to get in the Vogue and see how it went at more than 16 km/h (first drive). There is a lot to tell here, but I'll start with two of the uncut videos.

Then out the driveway.

We ended up with seven videos so I'll have to do some editing soon to put them together.

Tailshaft (driveshaft) Instal

About the last thing to be done before the second test drive on Sunday was to instal the tailshaft. I messed around with the front M10 bolts for at least an hour, taking them out, putting them in, without success. I finally came to realise that, while they fitted the Uni yolk and turned OK, when they were started in the coupler thread, they would not go in - the peaks on the bolt heads did not clear the Uni yolk protusions.
I ended up using two M8 bolts to hold it in until I got some machine screws (Bunnings only had course thread).
During this process I had to come up with something the right height to hold the other end of the tailshaft roughly in position.

This did nicely -(product placement alert).

Yes, we drove on Sunday - more to come...

Bonnet Latch Fitted

The bonnet now has the main latch and release fitted. Up until now I have only had the secondary or safety latch which has been making it easier to open and close the bonnet. If I'm planning on going faster then 16km/h (see first drive) I'll need it closed properly. I reconditioned it over a year ago. All went well - it was quite easy to align the pin with the latch
I have updated the to-do list post again.  Refresh your browser (Windows F5) if you have already visted that post.

 The release and spring have been added to actual latch side.

Internal Front Door Handles Installed

We can now get out of the car.
The list a couple of posts ago has been updated.
Refresh your browser (Windows F5) if you have already visted that post.

Rear View Mirror Mount Failed

Mounting the rear view mirror is back on the list.
I carefully scraped off the excess silicone last night and secured the mirror to the plastic mounting tab.
Then I squared myself up in the driver's seat and reached up and adjusted the mirror - and it came off in my hand. The silicone stuck to the glass just fine - but not to the plastic mount. It took a while to scrape the silicone off the windscreen - it was stuck very well! There was NO silicone stuck to the plastic mount. Keep in mind that the little tube of silicone (vinegar smelling type) came with the mounting kit.

I have read a fair bit (web) on these failures recently so my three choices are:

1. Rough up the back of the plastic mounting tab with sandpaper and try the silicone again (I have enough left to try once more).
2. Use the metal mounting tab that came with the mirror although I'm concerned that the silicone is the corrosive type.
3. Go and get another adhesive product for mounting mirrors.

Im using a CIPA 31000 8 inch mirror and the Pilot MI-005 mounting kit.
BTW - The silicone oozed out the sides of the mount - none of it went up those square holes in the mount which are obviously designed to "key" the glue.

Rear View Mirror and Current To-Do List

I stuck the fitting for the rear view mirror on the windsceen last night. I'm hoping Laurel won't make me take it off and do it again because I was a fraction too sparing with the silicone and it missed a tiny bit at the bottom of the fitting. That will teach me to ignore youtube advice that says to be sparing. It won't matter to the mirror staying on, but if you look closely from the outside you can see it.

This list waxes and wanes but this is the to-do list as it stands during August (I'm updating this list as each item gets done - press F5 with Windows to refresh your browser).
The priority column has an asterrisk for things I need to do to be able to do the next test drive - the 60-80kmh runs. From this point on they are all pretty trivial but the project plan shows one resource (me) and the tasks are all in series. (Lenze is the motor controller.)

Dashboard, Glovebox and Front Seats In!

On Saturday I figured out the wiring for the dash, added a new 4 way connector for the Forward/Reverse wires and installed the dashboard.

Of course, like everything with the Vogue, it wasn't that simple. First I had to mount the two side trims that hide the dashpad vinyl edge at the sides. The left hand side didn't fit so it took about half an hour of fiddling to come up with a reasonable comprimise. Then another half an hour to locate the fasteners that hold the dash in and I was ready.

Other than the fact that the Vogue wiring loom appears to have shrunk (why, why are looms always just too short?), it went in fairly easily. The glovebox door was next - about a two hour job but finally - it opens and shuts and matches the dash mounts pretty well. I may attack the bottom of the dashpad with a heat gun to see if I can stop the glovebox door scraping on it when it is opened - later.

Sorry about the poor quality of photos - I took them this morning with no electricity in the garage due to some switchboard work we are having done.

On Sunday I fired up the dashboard for the first time and was met with the first problem. When I turned the ignition on, but not started yet, the dash powered up OK but the peizo warning buzzer under the dash started to sound - quietly. The piezo is supposed to sound under two conditions. A warning from the controller - usually that a battery pack is under or over voltage - and a warning that you are trying to start the car while Forward or Reverse is selected. It took me a while to cotton on the the fact that the ignition switch was "leaky". It obviously has some resistance between Ignition contact and the Start contact - just enough to be a problem for my relatively high impedance circuit (peizo sounds with 10K in series from 12VDC).
A dashboard bulb to ground fixed it and so did a 1 watt 270 Ohm resistor - now added. This isn't the orginal Vogue ignition switch - the one that the key falls out of. This is one I had "under the house" and that I thought I'd cleaned out pretty well - obviously not. There is no current drawn (less than 70uA) from the 12V battery when the ignition is off so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll come back to it later anyway - next time I'll really flush it out and do some measurements while at it.

Sunday afternoon I finished off some minor trim hiccups that arose when installing the dash and installed the two front seats. We finished off the leather cover on the steering wheel and dropped that on to get it out of the house (the steering wheel, not the car) - it's not secured yet. Then I installed the washer/wiper switch and encountered my next Lucas electrical problem - no high speed wipers. My backup switch had no low speed either. These ones are totally sealed - I tried drilling though the side so I could flush it out but I didn't make it through the bakelite. I'll try to find a new one - with an electric switch for the pump instead of a manual pump. For now, single speed wipers are fine

Another view of the dash, seats and carpet.

  I

There was a plan to drive the car Sunday afternoon but with everything taking longer than expected I didn't install the indicator arm, rear view mirror, driveshaft, or put the final configuration in the controller so it wasn't going to happen. Just as well because it rained from about 2PM onwards and I don't want water on it just yet. (I have to seal the windscreen corners before it gets wet or dirty).

Dashboard Mounts

Try as I might I could not figure out which way the 'L' brackets at the bottom of the dashboard went on. I certainly did not take enough pictures when dis-assembling the dash. Fortunately I have a complete, albeit rather sad but intact, spare under the house. So I crawled under the house last night (at 8 degrees C) and took this picture. Other than that, the only work on the car last night was to glue the vinyl bottom into the glovebox and secure the clips that will hold it in place. Oh - I also soldered a bullet connector to a wire so I can intercept the reversing lights wire before installing the glovebox.
I had a bit of homework to do so nothing more on the car last night.

The spare dash with mounting brackets circled. Note the spare diff/axle casing and diff underneath. I wondered where those aluminium stabilisers (spelt wrong on sticker) got to...

We were discussing a few nights back how, if we ever moved house, I couldn't survive on a concrete block - no under the house storage.