Tuesday 30 August 2016






















 After putting glue on the walls and the rails on the bottom I put thin rubber on them to insulate the batteries from the steel and to add some small amount of  thermal insulation.

Once I got all of the batteries in I had to make sure that they were set up from the big battery box to the small and then I had to think about the wiring and when I was happy I put the rods in to clamp the them in place after that to put on the connectors.


Tuesday 23 August 2016

once the battery box's were in in needed to sort out the box for the relay's and fuse's,
I have put it on the left of the ute for no other reason than weight the main pack of batteries is slightly right and with me on the same side I decided to put it left to even things up,
after that was made I got it sand blasted

 and painted with the lid on it looks good

 in the bottom there is heater relays,charge relays,the silver box is the dc to dc converter with the small fuse holder ,the shunt to work the meter and the main relays that turn on with the ignition

and on the right side a small plug for the battery charger to connect with a micro switch to keep the ute from starting while plugged in

Friday 19 August 2016





















 78 batteries in the left box with the last 22 in the other and the pump to lift the deck in between them


 On the left is both the original bateries with the new ones being charged to 3.6 volts each

and I know its not 3.4 volts that I said in my last post but the originals where 3.5 so I thought that 3.6 would be ok and all i needed to do is turn on the heater(bottom left image) to use up the 20 extra volts (100 x 3.6 =360 -20=340) speaking of witch the heater is 3000 watts at 230volts but I can't waste energy stepping down the battery voltage so the heater does not burn out so I put them in series so they now become less than 3000 watts at 460 volts once I got them running the meter showed that they where about 2000 watts thats enough to warm the cab but not to much if it gets to cold it will take the chill off the air but around here we only get to -4c not like in the usa of -30c
 

Thursday 18 August 2016

once the deck was off I set about making a bolt on frame to put all the batteries etc in(mind you it took a while to make sure they all fitted safely )

and because I was putting the batteries under the deck I may as well make it a tip deck





I fitted rib's to the bottom of the battery box for allowing air flow and if needed the addition of warm air later on,

as you can see I have only fitted 3 sides the lithium batteries need to be under compression while in use so one side will float a little to allow compression 
december 2015


after 10,000 km and 2 years I started to strip the old battery box down and take the deck off to make a new battery box for plan "B" to go to riverton and back(90km) on one charge, I had thought long and hard about if I should go higher than 155 volts and as I was wanting more pickup and less power loss from battery sag ( which happens when you can not get the amps to the motor fast enough) so I maxed the voltage and I will let the controller step it down to the motor so now I'm at 340 v (100 batteries at 3.4v each ,I could have gone less batteries and gone 3.8v per cell but as I have learned the 170 volts I had soon dropped to 155 volts just getting out of the drive and since I was at the maximum volts of the controller at 340 volts I needed to keep it up there)