Daox's Enginer PHEV 4kWh install

Well, I threw the car back on the charger this morning. I watched the killawatt for the first few minutes. The wattage the charger was pulling quickly started to drop off after a minute or so. So, the pack was almost fully charged when the alarm went off last time. After it had finished I saw I had only put another .05 kWh in from the wall.

 

That is great news! IMO this should take care of the #1 problem with the kit (if it works well).

 

Well, I've been using the kit here and there and being very careful while charging. Yesterday my wife drove the car alone (we usually carpool) and accidently turned the kit on. I'm sure it was drained all the way down to the cutoff voltage. Its still on the charger tonight as I only found out today that this had happened. I don't think I'll get a full charge in tonight as I am gonna sleep soon and its still not close to being fully charged (under 55V atm).

I'm hoping to get the automatic charging cutoff circuits done this coming week. Shortly after that, I am hoping to get the dc to dc converter cutoff working.

 

I cut the charger off at 55.0V last night. No alarms went off. I will continue charging when I get home tonight. I wanted to see how much power a FULL charge takes so I am not using the kit again today. It has sucked down 3.2 kWh so far.

While not using the kit, I did get some no-kit mpg readings. My morning commute is pretty consistent due to the lack of traffic. This is what I have gotten according to my non-calibrated scangauge. Actual MPG is lower, but this gives me a baseline for comparison.

Wednesday - 20°F - 50.2 mpg
Thursday - 30°F - 52.7 mpg

I'll be using the pack again tomorrow, so hopefully the temps won't change too much.

 

Well, I went to charge up the pack when I got home tonight. I went back a while later to see that virtually no power was put into the pack. I know it wasn't full because when I disconnected it last night the pack was only at 55.0V. I'm not sure why the charger isn't staying on. The other night I only put 3.2 kWh into it.

Another thing to note, Dan2l mentioned that his charger didn't immediately turn off when he plugged it into his pack that was already full. Mine does not do this. I plug it in and it very quickly (1 second max) turns the green light on to show its fully charged.

I guess I'll use it tomorrow and recharge once home again and see what happens.

 

Since the last post, I have only used the kit once. The pack voltage seemed to drop down a fair amount, and I plugged it in when I got home to recharge. The charger's green light immediately went on. So... something isn't right, because I know my pack is not fully charged.

 

Last night I got time to work on the car. It still would not charge, so I turned up the charger's shutoff voltage. Previous to this when it was working, the charger was turning off right around 56.3V. After turning up the shutoff voltage, the charger did start charging The pack voltage stayed around 54.7V for quite some time before finally increasing. I finally disconnected it before retiring for the night. It was then at 55.7V and had pulled ~2.5 kWh. During this time I got no alarms and the batteries stayed pretty well balanced. Unfortunately, I won't be able to use the car today as I am not carpooling with the wife. Tomorrow will be the first day with the pack on in a while.

 

I took a long trip this weekend (400+ miles). At the beginning of the trip, I filled up the tank and turned on the kit. By the time the battery had triggered the red light on the switch panel, I had gone 55 miles and the mileage was at 56 mpg. Most of the traveling was at 60 mph with the cruise control on. I finished out the tank on the way back at 48 mpg with some additional use of the pack. The rest of the 100 miles or so home was done with no pack at all and the tank is currently at 43 mpg. So, it looks like it is providing me with a 20% increase in FE while in use. I'll also note, the 2nd (and only other) time I used the pack on the first tank of the trip I only got about 35 miles out of it before the red light started flashing.

I have identified which buddy cell pair is going high every time I charge, so I think I will disassemble the pack and rearrange the cells into different buddy pairs that are more evenly matched.

 

Does anyone know for sure what the red light by the switch indicates? Mine was blinking on the trip, I assume from reading here it means low pack voltage. However, why wouldn't the darn thing just shut itself off at that point? Does anyone know for sure?

 

That'd be a nice touch, don'tcha think? Nope, no operational instructions, manual, or even notes.