Quote:
Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes
Luke's controller blew up! Fortunately he is OK. It sounded like Ben's and Joe's situation. At least one mosfet was failed shorted, and when the contactor closed, the car tires spun out and lurched forward.
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Sorry to hear about the failure.
So far mine is working fine after a week and 400 miles. For precharging I have mounted a 240v 50w light bulb (I am running a 48 cell Lifepo4 pack) under the dash. I can see the glow while precharging, if it doesn't go out then I have an indication of a problem and hopefully remember not to close the controller contactor. Easy and cheap way to precharge.
A couple of questions, I set pc-time to 70 but the wire from the controller to close the contactor doesn't seem to energize when I checked it using a 12 volt test light. How is this supposed to work? The config command shows it being set and the controller won't work until after 7 seconds. I seem to recall there being an issue with precharge circuit on the early controllers, I built mine from Paul's kit in Jan 2010.
Another thing I noticed is the controller gets warm. up to 60-70 Celcius. I just have the supplied steel base plate and was hoping I could get away with that in Scotland.
But ebay to the rescue and have just got a nice aluminium heatsink the right size to replace it, so I will do the spacer mods on the bolts at the same time so I don't have the same problem that Ben and Joe had.
I will get some pictures and videos up soon of the car, but got to have a ride in a Tesla today around Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh.
Man that thing is quick!
In return I have promised him a ride in mine.
Seems like a fair trade.
Greg