Thursday, January 28, 2016

Stuffing is the hardest part

After rebuilding the Grumman battery tray rollers with technical help from the capable countermen at Motion Industries, we discovered that though the tray could hold 14 batteries with a few rows set on end, two of those rows would just barely interfere with a floor beam, and the cabling gets difficult any time you set batteries on end.  Also, the manufacturer may allow it, but they're never quite as comfortable with any installation where the batteries don't sit on their base as designed.
That and other factors is pushing us towards a simpler pack layout with ten in the main tray, and ten in the forward body cavities.  Those two parallel strings at 120V nominal will still provide over 30 kWh of capacity, yet be a very safe voltage for student mechanics to work with.

BUT, when adult entertainment is desired, a simple switch could unite the two strings in a series circuit of 240V for higher performance.

Also in the interest of speed and simplicity, I'm leaning towards getting the van rolling with a single 10-battery pack to start off with, and then add more once the bugs are worked out of EVerything else.  placing batteries is tough work, especially when safety is job one!

The charging inlet has been changed from a jury-rigged industrial plug that was placing 12 VDC on two pins and 144 VDC on the other two, all in close-proximity exposed blades, to the modern J1772 standard.  The original inlet mounting plate was reused, so of course a billet aluminum inlet from Modular EV Power was used to match!



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