You will find articles organized by categories, along with recent comments, along the right hand column of the website. If you are just getting started with the idea of converting a gas car to electric be sure to check out Your First Electric Car .
Welcome and enjoy!
-Jerry
LED Bargraph battery monitor part 2 · 9 October 08
OK. So You’d like to build a set of those neat little bargraph battery monitors.
Here’s how it’s done ………
Doug's PakTrakr with Zaurus · 4 July 07
Back in May we featured some Electric Vehicle Links to the new PakTrakr and to Doug’s Karmann Ghia conversion site. As coincidence would have it Doug wrote back recently that he’d gone ahead and purchased a PakTrakr for his Ghia EV.
Not only that, but he got out his old Sharp Zaurus, dusted off his programming tools (well, I don’t know if they were really all that dusty, just trying for a poetic effect here), and set to work on making a cool display for all of that lovely PakTrakr data.
Ray's EV Motorcycle Schematic · 19 June 07
Ray passed along a schematic for his EV bike a while back and it has been rotting in my in-box ever since. Sorry about that Ray.
Also mildewing in the in-box is a newer shot of the bike assembly.
LED Bargraph battery monitor - part 1 · 18 May 07
Hello everybody,
About 6 months ago I wrote an article here . The idea was that I would be able to avoid my nemesis, unequalised batteries , and have early warning of bad connections like the one which caused this terminal failure in my car.
Argh!
Charging an Electric Car · 20 April 07
Most of the time when someone considers converting a car to electric the last thing that probably springs to mind is the charger. The car itself garners the most attention since it’s the biggest and most visible aspect of an EV, followed by the motor. Somewhere down the list, after the batteries or controller, the charger choice lies.
Yet, for the health of the batteries, it’s the most important aspect of an electric car.
Battery undervoltage warning circuit · 29 October 06
Hello everybody,
Jerry has asked me to support him on this site by posting articles. This is my first time so please be patient while I get my act together.
There are big wires, big batteries and big currents in an EV. Sometimes things can go wrong and the sooner you know about it, the better.
Last year when I was a green EV-er I just thought it was OK to connect all my cables to the battery terminals without checking them or even cleaning the oxide off the lead. Everything was OK – for a while. then there was a pop and a fizzle on day and one of my terminals had melted and dropped molten lead onto the battery plates below. I was barely able to make it home and had to spend some time patching the hole in the battery and fishing bits of lead out.
I have been thinking ever since about some sort of device which will give me early warning about either weak cells and weak connections, that is, a high resistance link somewhere in my 16 long battery string…..
Parts Placement · 23 May 06
Excuse the somewhat lame attempt at a 3D rendering using a 2D photo editing program. Let’s call it an artist’s rendition. ‘:^)
What I am working on here is a possible approach in laying out the main electronics for Eve. Last week James recommended covering all of the firewall holes with metal plugs and, just like an echo down an empty tunnel, it bounced around my mind for the rest of the evening.
Why not cover all of the firewall?
Monitoring Systems · 29 December 05
Despite increasing complexity, or perhaps because of it, most cars have a limited selection of gauges and status indicators. So called “dummy lights” have replaced meters in all but the performance orientated automobiles. Even the dummy lights are multi-tasking. If the brake light illuminates it could be for a number of reasons: emergency brake on, brake light out, low brake fluid, or maybe loss of assist vacuum.
The basics necessities for a car come down to: speedometer, gas gauge, some form of engine temperature, and a tachometer for manual transmissions.