More batteries and some progress on the car

Well I just got back in town and realized I am way past due for a blog update.  I was out this past week for a seminar on energy storage at Ohio State University for work that was presented by EWI.  While I wasn't working on the car during the week (my excuse for lack of progress), I got to hear a lot about lithium based batteries and electric vehicles (among many other things).  Ohio State/EWI has a very impressive program with some interesting results on battery life testing/modeling, methods for building packs, as well as talking to the staff about thir ECOcar and the very impressive buckeye bullet (current EV land speed record holder), and finally a presentation from Ford on there take on the EV market.

Before I left I did make some progress on the car but most of it was centered on cell testing.  I have actually put together a testing procedure/lessons learned that I hope to release this weekend.  But as of this post I have just over 200 cells tested.  I think I should be done testing early next week!

I did complete the mounting for the Soliton1, the vacuum pump for the brakes, and the throttle is just about done.

The mount for the controller was made from some scrap steel using a torch and a hammer.

I think in a previous life I was a blacksmith.  :)

For the throttle I ordered the evnetics one which was backordered and just came in.  Like the controller it is a really nice piece of CNC work.  The TPS is a automotive one and the even included a weatherpack connector with a pigtail ready to wire.  Now that evnetics is making the throttles I wonder if their next controller can/will have a built in the throttle?  This would reduce a lot of the faults/noise that people get when wiring it up themselves and are not careful enough.  Anyway for my installation, I enlarged the outer hole just a little bit and cut two notches so I could slip the stock Mazda cable in.  Anyone familiar with bikes will recognize this method for connecting brake cables.

 I am going to mount it to my strut brace/controller mount.  Why have one part only do 2 things when it can do 3?  :)

I have been also been spending time reviewing wiring diagrams.  My plan right now is to utilize the stock wiring from the motor to pull of the few pins I need for the EV components.  I found the wiring diagram online which made this pretty easy.  

www.madracki.com/miata/wiring.html

When testing I did notice that I am getting 2-3VDC with the key off.  This probably explains why the previous owner kept having the battery die on him.  I also found it interesting that the back of the cluster wa labeled at the connectors which made wiring easier.

The adapter was a little delayed from Rebirth because they couldn't get the dowel pins from Mazda in time.  So they jut made some for me.  Unfortunately it arrived while I was in Ohio so It has been sitting in the box waiting for me to return.  When I got home I unboxed it and what a nice piece of engineering and CNC manufacturing. 

It's almost a shame it's going to be hardly seen. 

I did run into one problem when I tried to bolt on the flywheel.  The hub is course threaded and the miata crankbolts are fine thread.  I am not sure if there was supposed to a set of hardware included as I didn't get bolts for the motor interface either (I did get the key and the other parts that I ordered) Or was the hub supposed to be tapped for fine thread.  I emailed Steve at rebirth and i'll see what he says but I will be making a trip to ACE to see what hardware I can find there.