My Breaker Broke :-(

My Airpax breaker, the main breaker switch, now has a busted switch-arm (I’ll save you the painful images). Just a few test throws under tension, the supposedly strong Bakelite switch arm shattered. The Airpax breaker is expensive, and we’ll have to see if it’s still under warranty as I paid for this some time ago. Considering the breaker is there for safety, it’s a pretty serious failure.

I suspect the cable linked to it and the pivot bend may not have been aligned on quite the same axis and hence some side-ways pulling met with plastic stress thus causing the break. Anyway, another delay. One would assume that such a switch should be strong enough to handle a quick throw.

BMS LEDs Now A’flashin’

When I first received the BMS modules, I noticed that Ross Blade hadn’t included charge status LEDs. I bought a bunch and soldered some on but my error at the time was to solder them on the wrong way around, i.e. instead of shutting off when the battery reached peak-defined charge, they stayed on while discharging. The polarity on the modules was not indicated; I had guessed the correct positive end, though Nathan was convinced otherwise at the time (men are always right, right?) so I soldered them the other way.

Fine? Well no, but in a sense, yes…

Since the LEDs have an incredibly low draw and the battery shelf discharge is excellent, i.e., they could sit around for weeks with little self-discharge, we decided to keep the LEDs in that polarity – and Nathan got me some flashing ones instead. Cool. It means they’ll keep blinking till the cows come home and from a quick inspection power-down point of view I can see all the batteries working and get suspicious should one not have its BMS LED flashing. And it looks neat too; it’s certainly a serendipitous approach to revised usability point-of-view. I guess for a couple of months or so of idle time, the current draw would make about half an hour difference if that.

Other Stuff

While the Echo got my BMS controller (the one I paid an awful lot of money to Ross for a few home store components), we’ve decided to build a better one for my car using a similar circuit consisting of a charge shunt relay, smaller comms relay, a reset button etc, but with better quality components; a decent PCB, not a cheap phenolic type and CAD the circuit up the way we want it.

As for the rest of the car, Nathan will get that hole cut out for me to put the charger in the pillar section while I take care of other stuff (like a darn guard that needs a dent knocked out of it, to replace the rusted one – matching the paint will be a b*tch as it’s not the original Mitsu paint code).

We’re pretty close now, apart from the small stuff that seems to always take longer, (rust stuff, new tires ‘n wheels and other compliant stuff – ewww).

Someone told me recently, “Well now that the Mitsubishi MiEV is coming out, don’t you feel like a bit of a ‘dipschtick?’ Frankly, no. Besides there being no dipstick (ho-ho) – the Starion will be one of the fastest cars in the country (apart from the Tesla) and for a home job, that ain’t bad. It could well out-do the Tesla if I had a decent controller or the time and money to design a new one.

As I said in a previous post, I wonder how they (Mitsubishi) will deal with the fast charging option given that they are using lithium cobalts. I suspect a 2009 delivery may become a late 2010 – we’ll see. Either way, all this stuff is good for the EV market – even the new startups, provided the cowboy startup business-heads and entrepreneurs with uneducated heads-up-their @#%$ ideals embedded in their ambition for green dollars (no names mentioned here) don’t wreck it for all of us.

Tagged as: Batteries, battery, Carmel Duryea Morris, charger, Echo, ev, ICE, lithium, MiEV, Mitsubishi, Starion, video, Zilla