Battery Self Discharge Monitoring

For the last couple weeks, I have had the car charged, and then parked it, monitoring the battery voltages by logging the current voltages after charging, (and making a note in my notebook log, as well as using the SD Card Data Logging function of the enhanced display), and then checking it and logging a few minutes every few days.

Today I moved the car back to the building for a while, to nake a parking spot avaialble while I was working on my aerocap project on the Dodge Dakota Pickup. The pack was showing 100% before moving, and dropped to 95% from the move, so it shows there is some power loss to self distribution over the last couple weeks, because the move was only about 50 feet.

Now that might just be the effect of Battery Number 2, which goes dead first on a driving run, or the cold weather, or both, or the actuall battery state of health. As of yet, State of Health (SOH) is something I don't have and hard monitoring on, just inference from the total or part pack State of Charge (SOC), and individual Battery Voltages at rest or under load, in comparison to the others.

Heater Contactor Relay - Step 1

Today I finally got back to the electricfly's heater relay mounting setup! I cleaned up the bump in the bottom of the box so that the Contator Relay could be mounted, and drilled in 4 holes for power wires. Have to drill in 2 more for the contactor solenoid power wires to operate the pull down / power on to heating element functions.


Also took a moment to see the fit of the box + contactor in it's intended postion, in the right front corner inside the fender, beside the custom charger, and as a support for the PakTrakr front remote.

Still not Started Wiring Heater in!

Been busy with my Dodge Aerocap project, and have been logging data on my batteries and doing other things - so - have not got back to the heater wiring install part of that project.

Between either being tired from work, or having crappy weather to work in, or working on the aerocap - I have not got back to it, but hope to get something done on it by the end of the weekend coming!

Battery #2 must be really sick, today - on the way home from the bank and shopping - the Woodward Display showed battery #2 dipped down below 9 Volts, then a feww seconds later - it went down to about 4.5 Volts!! (Pretty Sad for a 12V Battery) So - when I got home - I put the pack on the chargers right away, even though most of the pack was at 12.6 - 12.8 or 12.9 Volts in one case.

A Few Days back - I did get one of the new Equalizers installed - to switch the one I had in the rear, attached to the hold-down for Battery Number 6, and instead - put the Equalizer on the rear 4 battery hold down on the left side, so as to be able to shorten the wires, and still reach all the last 4 batteries. (Hoping this will improve it's efficency some!)

Still have not installed the third and (as planned) final BattEQ Equalizer, to cover the split btween battery #4 - #5. It has pre-run wires from the back to the front - so as to be able to pick up Battery #3 in the front, and then to Battery #4, #5, & #6 in the rear of the pack, with short wires. I plan to mount it also on the main rear battery hold-down bar, with a polycarbonate plastic plate, the same as the current rear-mounted BattEQ.