3 year aniversary

This post marks the end of my 3rd year driving electric.  4344 miles this year for a total of 13644 miles.  I estimate I have about 227 cycles on my battery with no issues.

new charger

Two weeks from my 3 year anniversary I decided to upgrade my charger.  For all this time I've been using the old heavy transformer rig from step 31.  It worked well enough but was very loud.  The 50' of romex wire I put in series with the output to drop a little voltage (to avoid melting plugs) heated the garage and required a box fan on it to prevent it from getting so hot it outgassed.  It was also a little awkward to plug in, requiring 4 or 5 connections to be made.  For the past year or longer these connections lived under the hood and looked like 2 extension cords.  The romex wire was introduced in the circuit after the plug on the side of the car melted. 

The new charger lives in the corner of the trunk and only requires an AC voltage connection, either 120VAC or 220VAC.  

From top to bottom is the rear battery, the motor controller, the DC/DC converter, and finally the new charger.  There are relays tucked around that are controlled by the BMS to turn the charger off at a set high voltage and to turn the motor controller off at a set low voltage.  The red/green/yellow dot is a status indicator.

BMS trouble

I've been getting communication faults with my Elithion BMS.  The BMS plays several roles.  It is responsible for turning off the charger to avoid over-charge, disconnecting the load to avoid over-discharge, as well as doing the same to avoid any over-temperature conditions.  The faults originate in one or more of the cell monitoring boards attached to each cell.  By observing their blinking pattern I believe at least 2 are faulty, both of them are nearest the opening of the hood which makes me wonder if the elements are too much for the PCB.  In the front all that protects them is conformal coating and the hood.  

old car "stuff"

Brake booster went out.  No power brakes and drawing excessive vacuum.  Ordered an aftermarket replacement and learned that car is a 2002tii and that the tii requires a differently sized booster (to make-way for some fuel injection parts) - the tii means that it was originally fuel injected.  It was carbureted long before I got it.  So to avoid redoing brake lines the correct booster had to be found.  This turned out to be a hard-to-find part.  

A shop in town send mine to Dallas to get it rebuilt.  A week later I received it back with news that it couldn't be rebuilt.  Finally a shop in California rebuilt it for a reasonable fee.  The car was out of service for about a month.  

2 year aniversary

This post marks the end of my 2nd year driving all electric.  I have driven 4700 miles this year, for a total of 9300 miles without any electrical trouble.  I have been dealing with worn out old car issues not reported here, an upper strut mount, a mirror that just fell out, a steering arm, the flex disc, and now shifter mounts.  I estimate I've saved $1000 total in fuel costs.

Note to self:  odometer was 32741 miles starting

repair ac again

Step 37:  Repair ac.  It is getting hot this summer so I had a local shop repair my air conditioning and it is now blowing cold.  Windows up!

loss-of-commute incident

A wire fell off my charger last night and my car failed to charge.  First loss-of-commute incident in 650 days.  L

Otherwise I would post about how reliable it has been.  I have a clock that captures how long my car has been charged and in the early days I would check it every morning but that habit went away when I realized it never gave me trouble.  I haven't had to work on the car outside of what's on this blog.  My AC still needs to be fixed and I plan to do that soon.