It's important to keep the police entertained

I finally got to meet Bob Wilson, who was just up at HybridFest presenting the interesting work he's been doing with injecting water into bad traction batteries, injecting sense into bad silent-hybrid legislation, and so on. It's probably a good thing he hasn't been injecting anything else, or this meeting could have turned out differently.

I had talked about buying some traction battery hardware from him (note, NOT because my battery is acting up in any way - knock on wood at 129k - but so I might have a future way to assemble a replacement without needing the current one out). His route to HybridFest and back on the interstate goes right past my town, so he suggested meeting at a Shell station near an exit. I don't usually fill up out there, but I found a Shell at one of the exits according to Google Maps, and we agreed to meet there on his way home.

His call came a couple hours later than I'd expected (you never know about getting through Chicagoland), so I drove out to the Shell station at about midnight. I drove past it twice before spotting it, because what neither one of us knew was that this Shell station closes before midnight, and the nice big bright yellow sign was in a very efficient, energy-conserving mode otherwise known as 'off'. And the station is tucked well away from the road off a service drive. I pulled in and parked with my lights facing out and the hazard flashers on, wondering whether Bob had any chance of spotting the station or me.

I was a few minutes into the local AM jazz program when the first squad car pulled up.

The officer was very polite, and of course why shouldn't he be when I had such a perfectly reasonable story? I was there waiting in a closed-down filling station to conduct a quick commercial transaction with an out-of-state gentleman who would be swinging by momentarily off the interstate.

So by the time Bob arrived, we had two squad cars on hand to watch the deal go down.

Bob arrives and we lift a battery carcass out of his back seat, after shuffling around a bunch of HybridFest material, and set it down on a mat behind his Pri in the spotlights from the squad cars. It still needed some disassembly to separate the parts he wanted from the ones I did. A cordless driver would have been faster but wasn't in his car, so I rummaged in my trunk and came up with my two ratcheting screwdrivers. My two black-handled, pistol-grip ratcheting screwdrivers, which I held high in the air by their, ah, muzzles, while walking rather slowly back to Bob's car.

So after a few more minutes we get everything apart, sort the parts into our respective trunks, and the cash changes hands. Bob gets back on the road to Alabama (without, as far as I saw, any further interviews with the officials) and I'm safely back home and trying to stop laughing.

-Chap

 

Not half bad for dead reckoning from mid-Wisconsin with a lot of unknowns in between. Full credit, however, requires the frequency or call letters of the AM station.

We're not the size of Indy, but in the past few years the police here have been dealing with an unfortunate uptick in some kinds of commercial activity that involve quick transactions along I-65, Chicago/Gary to Indy and points south, so little wonder our meet-up was an Interesting Event....

-Chap

 

The first responding officer did ask me what kind of mileage I'd been seeing, and took a look at my MFD, which was showing a paltry 46.2 at the time (owing to a lot of recent < 10 minute trips). I should have suggested that he take a look at Bob's when he showed up.

It seems he did the Hybridfest solo this year, so he left the RV home and actually drove the Pri. (What a concept!)

Does the car even like to be towed in READY? With the go pedal completely released, wouldn't it be trying to do slight regen the whole time and making you do more work? Or does it give up completely on regen once it hits high SOC, as long as it's not in B?

They did not, and it didn't occur to me. I did think later that while the officers and I waited for Bob to arrive, I could have flipped to the battery diagram in the shop manual to show them what they could expect to see us doing ... but I didn't think of it at the time.

Ah, but we didn't exchange any battery modules at all; those stayed with Bob for his reconditioning R&D. I was after the case/hardware. If I ever do have trouble with my current battery, I'm tempted by the idea of building a replacement using NHW20 modules. But I would still need an NHW11 case to mount them in, and I didn't want to buy a whole battery with modules just to get the case. So, they'd only be able to get us on a low-volume trade in steel stampings. On the property of a closed filling station. With no doughnuts.

-Chap