Mr Fusion

I've started buying the safety equipment needed to deal with a 300 Volt battery pack with something like 15 kilowatthours of energy (roughly enough to run our house for three days.) In addition to some fancy insulated screw drivers to keep from shorting things out while I'm working, I bought this monster fuse. It will go between the battery pack and everything else. Lens cap for scale.

British racing green

Well, I've finally fallen into the biggest trap for people who have electric car websites-- I've been working on my website instead of my car. At least reading my journal (I'm allergic to the word "blog") won't make your eyes hurt so much anymore. Plus, it's now authentic British racing green.

BMS, round two

I received and assembled the first three samples of the BMS boards. Everything looks good. I did some thermal tests, and each unit should be able to bypass one amp with a heatsink installed on the main transistor, and about twice that with a fan in addition. If I use the BMS to cut back on charging current when any cell goes over voltage, the bypass current should only be a few tenths of an amp, and I'll be able to dispense with the heatsink. That would be nice, as the heatsinks are a fair amount of work to install. Here's the top of the board, with heat sink installed:And here's the back. The cool thing about making your own layout is that you can write whatever you want on the board:


Only 93 to go...

Ol' sparky

I have finished figuring out where the batteries will sit. The spare tire well is almost perfectly sized for the pack. I will probably relocate the spare underneath the car in place of the gas tank.

While I was looking things over, I learned why British cars are infamous for their dodgy wiring.

Nothing like unsupported wires rubbing against the gas spout... and is that a twisted-together "connector"? I hope that was an aftermarket accessory. The factory connectors look pretty smashing as well:


I'm hoping these practices won't rub off on me when it's time to do the high-voltage wiring