Ben's Refurbished Mitsubishi Miev

[dremd]

Yeah, I regretted that word choice once I got a few pages in.

[Cobb]

Id bidded on a flood Leaf. I was out at 500 bucks, but it went well into the thousands.

[rmay635703]

Ben is probably knee deep in a very very time consuming bit of business, probably a 3 month job just to clean batteries. We shall see if he caves to sell or sticks it out. a Honda insight drivetrain with a RWD ev setup would make that unit quite lively and usefull for long ranging it. Hopefully the batteries can be recovered and a charger sourced so he can build his own sleeper or hybrid.

Originally Posted by Cobb

Id bidded on a flood Leaf. I was out at 500 bucks, but it went well into the thousands.

Honestly its too bad (for average joe) that these type of sales go as high as they do, gone are the days of any good deal through these types of sales.

Honestly the buyers who do buy must be totally crazy to pay what they do to get body parts that they will need to sell in under 2 years (likely under one) before the car parts become more common, complete non-sense.

[bennelson]

I dissassembled the blocks of cells from the main battery pack today.

It was finally the first real day of spring. (Snowed last week, will have to mow the lawn next week, sigh....)

I was able to roll the Miev out of the garage and wash it off. First time it's had a bath since SuperStorm Sandy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81mlaR5iu3I

[Cobb]

When the video shows the tray some of the compartments look muddy. Is that mud, salt water, etc?

[bennelson]

Yes, all of the above.

The "ick" in the battery box is a combination of silt from the flood, rust from corrosion on the battery bolts and bus bars, salt from the sea water, and God knows what else.

It's icky.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Yes, all of the above.

The "ick" in the battery box is a combination of silt from the flood, rust from corrosion on the battery bolts and bus bars, salt from the sea water, and God knows what else.

It's icky.

That was Mother Nature showing you what she thinks of electric cars! :P

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by Xist

That was Mother Nature showing you what she thinks of electric cars! :P

Well, 99.9% of all the ones damaged in that storm were gas-powered, so I'm going to take that comment with a grain of salt, er, ok maybe a couple of gallons of salt-water..

Yesterday, I did some work on the car, mostly disassembling the lithium cells from the pack, and giving it a car wash. That of course caused the weather report to be rain for the next ten consecutive days....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81mlaR5iu3I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-pK5lCEmEA

Today, I took one of the 8-packs of cells and "War-Charged" it. I've tried finding some good info on how to bring up the voltage of lithium cells that are completely discharged, and frankly, I haven't found any good techniques that actually work!

I have borrowed fancy lithium charger, but it won't connect and actually charge unless the cell has a certain minimum voltage of about 2 volts or so.

The only thing that really works is jumper cables!

I've rigged up a block of cells (24v-ish) to a pair of 100ah flooded-lead acid batteries (in this case in my electric riding lawn mower...) and let the batteries try to parallel themselves to each other. But with one pack at over 24V and the other at zero, it tries to do it at a fair amp-rate. My Harbor Freight meter only goes to 10 amps, and it was higher than that... I'm guessing about 20 amps or so, which is one-half the C-rate of the cells.

After testing amperage 15 minutes later, it was charging at about 10 amps. And yes, I was using my good thick jumper cables, wearing safety glasses, was outdoors, didn't have small children around, etc. etc. Still, "Kids, don't try this at home."

Once charged and with the cover removed from the pack of cells, about 2/3rds of them measured 2V or higher! I'm excited because it means there's a pretty good shot that a fair number of these cells can be saved!

I'll have to cycle them all through a few times to know for sure, but we'll see.

Out of the first 8 cells I pulled out of the car only ONE of them was good, measuring a capacity of 40ah (50AH faceplate rating) while the other 7 were all completely shot!

[rmay635703]

Honestly I would have charged them slowly with my lightbulb charger but you never know, voltage could have skyrocketed in that case too, not sure if amps or voltage are most dangerous on failed lithium.

(actually looking .1-.3c is in the recovery thread elsewhere)

[bennelson]

I've tried a cell-phone charger, a bench power supply, and a couple other "low-amp" solutions, but none of those worked with these cells.

I also monitored for heat while war-charging, and that wasn't an issue at all.