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Old 11-17-2010, 12:44 PM   #16 (permalink)
bennelson
EV test pilot
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Oconomowoc, WI, USA
Posts: 4,435

Electric Cycle - '81 Kawasaki KZ440
90 day: 334.6 mpg (US)

S10 - '95 Chevy S10
90 day: 30.48 mpg (US)

Electro-Metro - '96 Ben Nelson's "Electro-Metro"
90 day: 129.81 mpg (US)

The Wife's Car - Plug-in Prius - '04 Toyota Prius
90 day: 78.16 mpg (US)
Thanks: 17
Thanked 663 Times in 388 Posts
Welcome to the 72V Electric Geo Metro Club!

AN XFI converted to electric MAY be unique. Generally, XFIs have been really sought-after for their gasoline engines. Heck, maybe the engine blew on that car, and that's what lead to the conversion? Who knows.

Anywhoo.. As MetroMPG was saying, what you really need to do is load test the batteries by driving the car.

For a while, I had 6 Harbor Freight multimeters, each one hooked up to a different battery.
Charge each battery with a 12V battery charger. Then, go for a ride of some sort of medium range, or circle around your block a bunch of times - that way you don't have too far to walk or limp home!

Drive for a while and see if one particular battery starts dropping in voltage faster than the others. It will be REALLY noticeable at higher amps. So, drive around for a bit until you notice the voltage of one of the batteries dropping faster than the others - then, ACCELERATE HARD, this will put a much greater load on the batteries, you will see the voltage on that battery plummet.

Replace that battery.

Now don't go around doing weird things like that to your batteries all the time, but it does seem like a practical way to test for a bad battery.

The tough part is being able to drive while watching 6 multimeters. That's the beauty of an LED "Bar Graph" meter. It's really easy to read and compare the relative voltages of one battery to another.

Here's a battery monitor that I am using now that a friend built.


PS: Your Metro looks great!
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