Ben Nelson's Electro-Metro Build thread

[bennelson]

Actually, a friend stopped over last night, who drives an older style Metro with the open headlights.

He cut up clear plastic soda bottles to make headlight covers. They looked really nice!

As for the other mods, I do like the way Darin's BlackFly looks. Oooh! And some cheap-o full-moon caps would be great too!

As long as I can keep it all cheap!

[Hondo]

Hey Ben, is your controller stilll in "weinie" mode or have you put a new chip in yet? Mine is still in slow mode until Paul gets the upgade sent to me.

[bennelson]

It's still in weinie mode.

[MPaulHolmes]

You Guys! Quit picking on me! hahahaha. I programmed the chips last night. I was going to have the stuff mailed out Saturday, but life got in the way.

It also took longer to build the stupid rs-232 cables than I expected. I HATE soldering the wires to the serial plugs! If a serial plug was a human, I'd punch it right in the head!

[MPaulHolmes]

The software is right in the middle of dramatic improvement. There was also a bug with the temperature cutback. Sorry for the delays. S:^)

[bennelson]

Last Sunday, I cut a chunk of pink foam insulation to fit a section of pipe-anti-freeze heat tape. The heat tape has a built-in thermostat. However, I found that it is a poor temperature match for EV batteries.

So, last night, I hacked open the built-in thermostat on the heat tape, and spliced the wires to make it "always on". I would then control the heater with an external timer or thermostat.



I used some of the "spare" batteries I had to conduct a test. I set 4 batteries directly on top of the foam with the heat tape carved into it. Spaced over from those just a tad, I set another battery on a scrap chunk of the same thickness of foam, WITHOUT any heat tape running through it. I then put a packing blanket over the top of all those batteries in such a way that they were all covered, but the non-heated battery was also separated from the heated ones.

I plugged in the heater and let it run over night. This morning I checked all the batteries, with the hand test. I put my hands on the sides of a non-heated, non-covered battery. It was pretty cold.

Next, I pulled back the packing blanket on the covered, but non-heated battery, and checked that. It felt the same as the first battery.

Then, I pulled back the blanket on the heated batteries, and slid one over a bit to feel it. It was WARM. Pretty warm near the bottom, and only ever so slightly warm near the top! This was a significant difference in temperature between the heated and non-heated batteries. How far the heat went into the center of the batteries, I can't say.

Even more interesting, was the fact that the heat tape ACTUALLY MELTED ITS WAY FURTHER DOWN INTO THE FOAM!
Not sure what to do about that! Maybe the next version of this needs some aluminum foil on the bottom or some sort of heat spreader!?!?
I'm sure having a thermostat on it would have helped as well, but I wouldn't have gotten as much total energy out either, if it was turning on and off all night!

Any thoughts?


Back view, showing where the heater melted THROUGH the foam.


In this view, you can see how the heat tape melted down below the routered-in path.

[bennelson]

Yesterday, I pulled the Cougar controller out of the Electro-Metro, and took it with to the Milwaukee Electric Car Club meeting.

Recently, Paul mailed me a new chip (with updated software) and a connector and serial port.

The guys and I yanked the cover off the controller and examined it. Overall, everyone who looked at the controller was pretty impressed with the construction. It's very beefy, and has plenty of Mosfets and Capacitors in there.

The new chip was easy to deal with - just a matter of pulling the old one out and sticking the new one in.

The serial port was a little more work.
A small, three-pinned connector has to get soldered to the J2 point on the logic board. I pulled off the plastic nuts on the mounting spacers, so that the logic board could be gently flipped up, to get soldered from behind. I have poor soldering experience, and it has tiny connections, so I made Tom do it. All those years of building robots really show up as soldering experience!

Next, I drilled and Dremeled a hole in the end plexiglass to accept the Serial port. It's not too pretty. I still plan to eventually replace the end cover with something a little nice some day. I did put the serial port away from the bus bars to make it easier to access.

I am still working with Adam to get the Cougar control software up and running on my pc. It appears that I am missing some bit of software that I need to update. Once I get that, I should be able to do some bench work with the controller. That should be fun!

-Ben

[MPaulHolmes]

Awesome Ben!!!! ya! Go Ben Go! Then it will be super easy to update the software. IN fact, there have been 2 updates since I sent it to you. haha.

[bennelson]

GRRRRRR!

I must be the biggest-stupid head ever!

I just spent two hours updating Windows so that I could run the Open Source Controller interface.

Only AFTER doing this, did I realize that I did NOT have a SERIAL port on that computer!!!!! I had an old-school printer parallel port, but NOT a serial COM port!

Doh!

Now I am working on another computer to try to get the right software updates and get the controller rolling!

EDIT:
Gal dern it!
Trying to load the Microsoft Net Framework has now made Internet Explorer lock up any time I try to open it! Without Internet Explorer, I can't even go to the web and download Firefox!
I can't load the software at all! On to another computer! (Number four, counting using Tom's computer yesterday...)

[adamj12b]

O man Ben, What kind of antique do you have there? lol

I hope this one works out for you.

-Adam