[thingstodo]

Late decision to do first run today - 4:30 pm. I've got about an hour of light left.

Locate the start relay for the car on the electrical diagrams. It is beside the starting battery, beneath the fuse box.

The RUN relay is much more difficult for me to find. The wiring diagrams show an Ig1 relay, on with car in ON position and does not drop when START is energized. It is in JB-07 ... but I can't figure out where JB-07 is.

Use a single pair of wires, that were run from inside the cabin of the car to the engine bay to drive the check engine light, as an interlock. Wire the 12V 'ON' signal through that pair of wires so I can shut off the controller from inside the car.

Drop the car off the ramps and the jacks. It's sitting on the ground for the first time in many weeks.

Power up the controller on the full pack - 384V - like in the last video. All appears to work fine.

Reverse the car (using the reverse gear, of course). The car sounds HORRID! There is a gravelly sound!

The supports for the battery pack (remember the 2 x 4s?) are DRAGGING ON THE GROUND. This is the first time I've had the car off the ramps, so I never knew that the 2 x 4s were too long and had no clearance with the ground below the car!

I crawl partially under the car (it's not up on jacks, so I don't fit under the car) and use a sawzall to remove the excess length of 2 x 4s that were too long (all 8 vertical supports). The cuts are awkward, not straight, and I bent the crap out of my blade ... but they got cut.

And we (Andrew and I) take the first run down the driveway. No video - we were in a hurry since it was getting dark.

First trip down the driveway, battery current limit set to 300A, motor voltage set to 160V and motor current limit set to 300A. These are the settings that I ended up with after the last video. 1st gear felt OK but there was a *LOT* of road noise. Kinda like the supports were still dragging.

I tried a shift to 2nd gear without a clutch ... it took a couple of seconds but it worked ... and we were accelerating again. AGAIN, it sounded like the battery supports were STILL dragging on the ground. The speedometer works .. this was a surprise. I have changed NOTHING.

I was up to 40 kph before I hit the end of my driveway. (My driveway is 550 feet long - about one tenth of a mile). I didn't identify the noise.

Turn around and drive back to the starting point a bit more slowly. There is much less noise?

Second trip down the driveway. Leave the battery current limit at 300A, motor voltage at 160V, but crank up the motor current limit to 1000A! It's insane for the second run, but I want to know if I could pull those kind of amps. The car is put in 3rd gear - that should pull more amps. It still sounds like the battery supports are dragging.

I get to the end of the driveway (Andrew was reading off currents as we went, but I don't remember them). I didn't see the max speed, either.
BUT, we hit overtemp on the controller, near the end of the driveway ... since I DON'T HAVE ANY LIQUID COOLING CONNECTED!!! I thought I would not reach overtemp with the weather at 40F ... but I did. I guess the second run, plus the larger motor current ... well, I guess I was asking for it!

We didn't really know the controller hit overtemp. The car just died. We began coasting and I hit the brakes before we got onto the local gravel road.

I pushed the throttle to turn around and nothing happened. I reset the throttle, checked the controller faults ... so we looked at the interface module display. The controller temp was 54C. I'm not sure how high it got.

After a few seconds, the controller temp dropped to 40C but I think that my throttle was still at some percentage and we experienced a bit of a 'surge'. We were pushed back into our seats briefly (spinning tires). I heard a 'pop' behind me. Sounded like a contactor, but louder. But the contactors are under the hood. Behind me are two isolation switches and 3 fuses, along with the battery pack.

After dragging the car back to the garage, for some tools to do some troubleshooting, I found no high voltage to the controller contactors. Working my way back through the isolation switches and fuses, I found at least ONE 300A fuse had blown. It is there for short-circuit protection. It should not have tripped under 2000A, at all, and I don't think my pack will put out 2000A. I had a sinking feeling ...

Andrew looked at the driveway and figured out that the noise that we heard, that sounded like the supports were still dragging ... was the FRONT TIRES SPINNING ALL THE WAY DOWN THE DRIVEWAY. I had dug grooves in my gravel driveway! You'd think that I'd have noticed the grooves in the driveway when we were driving back to the house, or dragging the car back to house to do troubleshooting.

So I THINK the clutch, old as it is, will hold for enough torque to get me into trouble.

Next time
- figure out if there is a ground fault somewhere
- replace the fuse
- power up the controller and see if anything else is broken