Thinking of converting my Volvo

[mechman600]

It turns out that my brother-in-law's dad works at a place that rewinds electric motors. I'm gonna get my brother-in-law to ask him if they have any motors lying around that I could use. If so, having an "in" like that might be just the ticket.

As far as batteries go, I still haven't looked in the battery core shed at work. Here are the batteries we deal in:
http://eng.trpparts.com/files/part-f...atteriesEN.pdf

I can buy them at cost as an employee. I wonder which would work in my potential EV....

[MetroMPG]

If you're working with used batteries, you'll also definitely want some way to measure the capacity of them. You could build some kind of test rig to cycle them and measure their output (at some meaningful load, say 50A minimum, just as a rough starting point).

Something like this, but with a higher amp draw:
Easy Test of Battery Amp-Hours Capacity

I don't know how often your usable cores come available, but it may take you a bit of time to sort through them to evaluate/put together a pack that will be serviceable in a short-range EV.

[mechman600]

I have a carbon pile at work. It can load batteries to about 400A. THAT should be enough!

I'm having second thoughts about these battery cores. I think most of them are cranking batteries. And those are too small and will die a ridiculously quick death.

[DJBecker]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Something like this, but with a higher amp draw:
Easy Test of Battery Amp-Hours Capacity

That's a good, practical approach! A more powerful inverter would be preferable if you are buying a new one, but even a smaller one will provide a useful load with auto-shutdown at low voltage. And an inverter is generally useful item to have have around.

We bought a Harbor Freight carbon pile battery tester and have found it to be a good general testing tool. It's not limited to battery testing, we use it to bench test controller designs and components. It was especially useful to find that we had bought two batches of IR MOSFETs that were dramatically under-spec -- probably Chinese counterfeits.

The down-side of a carbon pile tester is that it's not a stable load, and it accepts much more power for a brief test than it can dissipate over the long term. That makes it pretty much unsuitable for a capacity measurement that the inverter-based solution above excels at.

[mechman600]

In the automotive trades, a battery load test is as follows:

-Load the battery with a carbon pile to exactly half of the battery's cold cranking amp rating for 15 seconds.
-if the battery voltage falls below 9.6V at any point, the battery is toast.

Now we test batteries with a small hand held electronic gizmo. I think battery gnomes go through the wires and do a full inspection of the inside of the battery. Seriously - the machine is pretty cool how it works. It sends pulses through the battery and measures the reaction. At least that's what makes sense to me - it could work a different way. Actually I'm probably wrong. We'll go with the "battery gnome" theory.

I will use both testing methods, most likely. But before all that I have to acquire a motor.

[mechman600]

Now would officially be the time to rename the thread or start a new one entitled:

"The Electric Brick Pre-Build (Parts Collection) Thread"

The collection has officially started. Yesterday I found 4 battery cores sitting on a bench at work. They had been replaced because they were "no good." The first thing I see it corroded terminals. I cleaned them up and charged each battery individually with a fairly dumb charger.

Once charged, I performed the aforementioned load test on each one. Being 700CCA batteries I loaded them with 350 A for 15 seconds. All batteries ended up sagging to 9.5-9.6V. Not bad for "no good" batteries, considering 9.6V is considered "good" in the automotive world.

Here is my charging & testing setup:

This batch is made up of "dual purpose" batteries. A cranking battery made to handle deep cycling as well. Probably akin to a Walmart marine battery.

Today I found three AGMs pulled out of a truck that I was able to revive. I know I know, never mix floodeds and AGMs. But if I charge them individually and monitor each battery's voltage while discharging them, I shouldn't matter, should it? We'll go with that for now!

On Tuesday I'm going to talk to a local forklift company about motors. Wish me luck!

P.S: can somebody direct me to instructions on how to embed photos in my posts? Thanks!

EDIT: Never mind, I obviously figured it out.

[mechman600]

Here's the car in question. My wife is a wedding photographer and reluctantly agreed to do a "photo shoot" with the car. Don't be fooled by the beautiful photos...it really is a beater.






EDIT: I have decided to start a new thread after all. The new thread is more generic, not having to do with a particular vehicle, although it may become vehicle specific once I FINALLY make up my mind, whether the Volvo, a smaller car, or maybe even a motorcycle.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post277355