Monday 27 April 2009

A long trip to Homebush and back.


On Sunday I attended an event at Energy Australia

The trip there was  31.8km and the economy was 226Wh/km. 
The recharge time was 4 hours. (I have never had a chance to 'watch' the chargers before.)

The return trip was 39.4km (Thanks to Kearon getting lost and me making the mistake of following him) I averaged 210Wh/km. 

The extra kms were on flat ground around Olympic park. This really shows how much hills kill the batteries. I usually get abut 250Wh/km around the hilly area where I live.

My Hilux



Mark's Lotus 7 replica


Kearon's Capri

Peter's Combo

Nathan's Hyundai Excel



Electric Vehicle conversion in one week

By our AEVA 'cousins' in South Australia

Happy Birthday Sam. (Samuel Morse)

My other hobby is Amateur Radio






Saturday 25 April 2009

Findchips.com

FindChips.com aims to perform the fastest, most complete distributor search available today on the internet. After you enter a part number (or substring), FindChips.com will simultaneously query over 20 distributors, and return the responses to you in real time, in the order completed.

Electronics Engineering video blog

By the guy that brought us the home made programmable uWatch

Thursday 23 April 2009

For anyone using twitter, this add-in rocks

This is for Firefox. It make twitter a whole lot easier to manage from the browser!




How Detroit's Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill


Joseph B. White
Senior Editor, The Wall Street Journal

How Detroit's Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill

249kWh/km

I traveled 33.3km last night and averaged 249kWh/km. This is based on voltage measurement. This means to 80% discharge I can travel 38.5km.

c

"As for c, that is the speed of light in vacuum, and if you ask why c, the answer is that it is the initial letter of celeritas, the Latin word meaning speed." 
Isaac Asimov in "C for Celeritas (1959)"

Friday 17 April 2009

More accurate Dyno Figures

After watching the video below I noticed the power and torque were much higher. This was before the tech changed some setting on the Dyno.
I extracted a plot from the shot of the TV screen and came up with the following.

We can see that the Road torque max is 5000N which equates to a shaft torque of 315 Nm.
I think the drive is cutting back torque after the peak at 20km/hr. The nominal peak at 28km/hr is a shaft torque of 283Nm.

As for RPM, The 28km/hr equates to 1178 RPM on the motor shaft.

The big dip is still evident, a little slower at about 52km/hr.


Sunday 12 April 2009

Scatter plot of RPM vs. Torque, Power



(Power is 10x.) The above data was captured from the Danfoss VFD.
This would indicate that the Dyno run yesterday did not reach peak power / torque.50km/hr = 2100 RPM. The motor torque from the dyno plot at 50km/hr would be 2100*.323/5.125=132Nm. This (very roughly) corresponds to the scatter plot at that RPM.
The dyno plot can be for all intents ignored unfortunately. I will go and see them and see if they can do plots at multiple single speeds.



2 of my favorite things - Tesla Coils and Doctor Who!

Tesla Coils and Doctor Who! I saw these guys minus the conductior at the Maker Faire in Austin, TX last October. The performing coils have to be seen and heard to be beleived!



Saturday 11 April 2009

Dyno run - Curves

I took the Electro-Lux to a local Dyno Day today at Envy Imports. The revheds enjoyed seeing something different. I think I get the record for the lowest power and first ever EV on the Dyno.

My diff ratio is 5.125:1 and my wheel radius is about .323m.



***The dyno plot can be for all intents ignored unfortunately (see later post). I will go and see them and see if they can do plots at multiple single speeds.


Friday 3 April 2009

400km so far and no major troubles.

Today the speedo rolled over 400 electric kilometers.

There have been no significant problems, just some minor niggles.

I am confident that as long as the batteries live up to expectation I will get many 1000's of EV kilometers.

Minor changes include:
  • Replacing one battery due to a loose terminal.
  • Replacing 2 x Zener balance circuits due to mismatch.
  • Adding a series resistor to the 7 solenoids because they were getting too hot.
  • Adding an electric fan to the motor to cool it down after long up hill stretches.

Selling my hilux engine and power steering.

I am finally cleaning up the car port (Yes car port, I did the hilux conversion in a carport, I dont have a shed).

The old 22R engine and and power steering are listed on eBay http://shop.ebay.com.au/merchant/a4x4kiwi



Hacked road sign

I have been sorting out some old photos and videos from my camera. This is an old video from December 2007.

POLICE NOW TARGET'G
SIGN HACKERS
i R WIN
YOU HAVE BEEN
1337 H4X0R3D (elite hacksawed/hacked)