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I have a speaking engagement at a private school on Thursday.
A Teacher there is involved in sustainability issues, and knows me from a county group.
I have been invited to show photos of my car and talk about how I did it, and how "doing Eco-things" can create new jobs in the future.
That speaking engagement reminds me that there is an electric car dealership which has offered me a 72V battery charger. It was a return from a customer, meaning there's SOMETHING wrong with it. I am hoping it's something simple. That way, I can just fix it and use it.
There charger has a couple of adjustable charging settings to it, so I think I can use it with the gel cells just fine. It also has a 12V output, so if nothing else, I should be able to use it as a DC/DC converter.
I am planning on picking it up Thursday, after speaking at the school. It's not close by, but at least the school and the battery charger are at least the same direction away from home...
If I can get this 72V charger working right, I may be able to have a 144V system and charge it with TWO 72V chargers. It would be real easy to use a contactor to split the full battery pack in half right down the middle to make two 72V packs for charging.
Also, I think I'm murdering my battery pack. I have had really short ranges lately, and voltage drops under load so fast. I think I need to test all the batteries individually, and load test them all again.
I do have a few spares of these batteries, so I can pull out a "bad" one if it seems far below average from the rest.
I also took the car through the carwash today. And yes, I even got the feared (to EVers) "Underbody Blast"!
My car still ran fine afterwards.
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