Bradley GT II EV Conversion » Gauges

Interior Lighting -OR- Yes, Ground Wires are Filled with Smoke Too

Administrator — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:01:44 +0000

Today I set out to accomplish two main goals. The first goal is to set up a central ground terminal so I have ground within reach of my fiberglass dashboard. The second goal is to hook up the dash lights. Both goals were accomplished. The ground terminal I found is the same kind you would use for your house wiring. By installing this terminal I have already eliminated a number of wires. I hooked up the dash lights to the light switch and they work. This I am thrilled about because I have had to use my cell phone at night to see how fast I was going. While I was in wiring mode… I decided to hook up my last gauge, the volt meter which tells me the status of my 12 Volt accessory battery and my DC to DC converter. I found a wire coming from my fuse panel titled “Gauges” and used that for my hot lead. everything worked flawlessly until I attempted to tuck some wires to close the instrument panel. That is when the main headlight connector shook hands with the small ground wire I used for the tiny incandescent lights in the dash. The result as you might guess was all of the smoke that was previously contained in the little ground wire was released like a Genie out of a bottle the wire turned bright orange. There was no damage to the big headlight wire. I fixed the damaged ground wire, tested the system and all is bright for EV1E’s future.

Mission Accomplished! (for real)

Administrator — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:59:29 +0000

I drove my EV1E to work in daylight conditions and, back at night. A total of 56 miles, 26 of which was freeway driving. I didn’t push the pedal all the way to the floor but I still got 60mph on the freeway….A great day

Gauges and More Wires

Administrator — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:51:47 +0000

Hi all! Today was spent trying to figure out why my ammeter wasn’t working properly. After consulting with the folks at Electro Automotive (Gary Snyder, Bill Lentfer) we determined that I may have the wrong type of shunt for my system. A shunt is a device which when hooked up to the main pack allows a small amount of voltage to be used for the “calibrated”gauge. This allows me to use small wires to the gauge instead of big battery cables. Since I have regenerative braking I have to have a shunt that allows current to flow in both directions. I am not real sure of the structure of the shunt but I think it runs by Thermal Dynamics, metallurgy and some kind of magic incantation. So once I realized that i was not going to fix that one today, I moved on.
My next task was to hook up the “State of Charge” gauge. This went flawlessly since, I already ran the wires when I made the loom which runs from my relay board to the front of the car. lastly I hooked up the DC/DC converter. This device acts like an alternator on a car, When the key is on it pulls juice uniformly from the main pack and uses it to charge the auxiliary 12V battery. After I got it all hooked up I put my volt meter leads on the aux batt and it read 12.42V, then I activated the DC/DC by turning on the key. When I measured this time it read 13.55V. This told me the DC/DC converter was charging the aux batt. The only pics I took today were of the State of Charge gauge.