PakTrakr interesting situation

The PakTrakr main display is telling that the pack won't charge more than 78% in this cold weather - but - when I look at the data on the SD Card from the Woodward large Pak Trakr Display with Data Logging, - I see the front remote data says that part of the pack is at 100%, and the rear remote says that part of the pack is at 100%, and - the individual battery chargers are saying each battery is charged to 100% and is stable at about 13.2 Volts, all leaves me wondering what happened?

Current Cold weather, wet & snowy weather, and work schedules make checking it all out a bit more difficult, and other issues of late to deal with have left little time or energy to dig into it!

Likely - my last thought of simply - take the car for a drive, keep the batteries out of the danger zine, and come back and put them right away on the charger is made more difficult due to the Rehab center customer stream that usually is in the way for me to plug in, except for Friday Afternoon and Saturday Afternoon. However - for some reason - this past Friday - there was a late night stream of clients to the center!

If the actual power consumption of my battery pack was measured from the beginning with the Data logging PakTrakr Display - I would have a tally of how many Watt hours I had taken from it - but the pack was driven for wome time with just the analog Voltmeter and Ammeter, so no real way to know! (And those trips where I drained the batteries and limpled along - both in warmer weather the first time, and in cold weather the second time, likely took a lot of life out of the set!)

In any case - we are seeing more and more places supplying and promoting LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) cells and packs for cars and eBikes too! Just looked today for a few minutes at San Diego Electric Bike. they have some good information there, and there was some other good stuff I will report on shortly!

Repositioned the Woodward Display for Better Viewing

Well, After Driving the Car since last September with the Woodward Enhanced PakTrakr Display mounted on a new test Cluster location, and noting that it was low and hard to see the information at the bottom of the display - Total Pack Volts - I had been thinking for some time to reposition it up higher for better and easier viewing.

Well Finally - 8 months later - I get the idea, the method, and the bug to get it done! So - now here it is - I simply removed and rotated the two pieces of aluminum angle - which moved the display up about an inch, giving better viewing and clears the steering wheel line of sight better! Also, I inserted a small piece of foam, to bring the display away from the plywood a bit to clear the cable from the voltmeter.

You can see from the comparison pictures - that the displays top edge is now even with the Analog Voltmeter and Ammeter, instead of below them, as it was before. This Side view also shows the SD Card used to log data with .csv or comma delimited format, which I simply open with Excel, and then select the columns of data that I wat, or re-arange them in my own preference for better viewing.

Also - the part that bugged me about making the repositioning, as the data cable coming out, and the thickness of the voltmeter, being thicker than the space from the cable to the back of the Woodward case. So I tested three different materials to prop the case out a bit so the cable would clear. I finally settled on some simple 1/8" thick yellow craft foam, and two Velcro connector squares to set the depth offset so the cable would clear the face of the voltmeter without binding, and yet still have enough grip in the two small 1"x 1" aluminum angles to hold the display.

So - Now - the drive is more comfortable, in that I am not haveing to repeatedly strain or lean forward to see over the steering wheel so as to see the digital valu of the pack voltage on the display, and it is generally more comforatable because it is in a nice Horizontal line of sight with the other two guages!

First 2 BattEQ's Wired up!

Today - I got the first two Battery Eqaualizers wired up to the Batteries! The Long Leads on the Front BattEQ were first connected using Crimp-Type Butt connectors and then covered with Heat Shrink tubing to make the reach from the Firewall mounted BattEQ location to the batteries.


After that - the 5/16" Ring Terminals were crimped and sealed with Heat shrink Tubing, colored the same as the lead wires, whenever possible, and finally - the Ring Terminals were secured to the relevant batteries.

Now to watch and see when and if (or how well) they perform - by watching the results on the Woodward Enhanced PakTrakr Display - and - to log the events with the SD Data Logging option!