Interior Lighting

Since I've owned the Vogue I have never had the correct dome light for the inside. Since they look pretty rubbishy anyway, and I would have had to cut a hole in our precious headlining, I had decided a couple of years ago to not have a centre dome light.

Instead I have two LED "running" lights on either side of the car mounted on the centre pillar just above the front seat belt mounting points. These are the same type as I used for the number plate light (whoops - I never posted that) except they have a chrome clip on trim instead of a black surround.

The number plate light.

It replaces the normal single bulb version that was getting very tired - the rubber was perished. I haven't shown it lit here but it puts out more light than the incandescant bulb did and lights the number plate really well. I have a few more of these LED lights - I intend to use them for engine bay and boot lighting.

I had to add a mounting point for the bottom screw (circled in blue) - that was a saga - I dropped one down into the passenger side pillar and took 45 minutes retrieving it.

They are held in place with Sikaflex and bear against the inner wall of the centre pillar panel when the light is mounted. The Sikaflex just holds them until the trim and light is installed.
The red arrows point at the mounting holes.
The LED lights have a 60mm lead on them that plugs into the connector in the centre pillar to make for easy installation.

Traction Battery Pack Schematic

Something I haven't included in the blog to date is the Traction Battery circuit.
The little blue connectors that connect some sub-packs to others are Anderson PP75 connectors. They are heatshrunk so as to provide finger-proof disconnects. When the "Traction Enable" is off, the entire pack is isolated from the Controller, Heater and DC-DC converters.
The term "VFD" refers to the motor controller - known sometimes as a Variable Frequency Drive.

(Later addition. I see that this page gets a lot of views so I should explain that the Vogue battery pack is a 600 VDC system - which is an unusually high voltage for an EV. I have divided this into two 300 VDC "half packs" - a positive and a negative set of packs. Each numbered pack is comprised of 32 x 10AH Headway LiFePO4 cells arranged as 16S2P - essentially 16 x 20AH cells.)
(Updated 08 Jan 2014)

Battery Pack and Traction Cable Placement

A bit of retrospective documentation here.
I have had this diagram since I decided on Lithium batteries but since the blog is my documentation I thought I'd better post it. The battery pack numbers are important as I have documented history on each pack as they have been modified and charged. Click on the image for a better view.
(Diagram updated 12th Sept 2011)

Rear Chargers Installed

Simply placing the chargers in their mounting brackets on the rear battery packs didn't turn out so "simple". The 240VAC termination box was about 2mm too narrow so had to be partially disassembled and the holes filed. Then the straps for 3 out of 4 of the packs were in the wrong way around (it has to do with camlock buckle placement). Not wanting to remove all the packs then crawl under the car and unmount the main tray, I used the safety pin and nylon cord approach to carefully remove the strap while pulling the cord through - then pulled the strap through the other way.
Anyway - chargers in position.

Now to figure a way to route the wires so it looks reasonably tidy.

Replaced RCD

I weakened. Much as I like to use as much recycled stuff in the Vogue as possible (provided it's reliable and safe), the 40 Amp RCD and 20 Amp Circuit breaker just take up too much room in the Mains box. I have ordered a 16 Amp combination RCD / MCB from eBay. Similar to this 10 Amp version. It'll give me  a lot more room to play with.

I hope it arrives for the weekend.

Some Fiddly bits

I hadn't expected to remove the controller tray quite so soon so had short-cut on a couple of items. The outputs of the DC-DC convertors were wired directly up to the 150A relay and since it had now become a "wiring loom" I needed to add some easy-to-unplug connectors. I also hadn't put a connector in the wire to the +300V contactor coil. I cut them both at a carefully considered point when removing the controller tray.

Here's a trick when soldering small connector pins. A handy vice made out of needle nose pliers and a rubber band. (Speaker connectors from SRM9000 radio.)

I use the same trick when holding connectors to be soldered. For the 20 Amp DC-DC wires I used a couple of XT60 connectors. These are another connector favoured by the serious RC Aeroplane guys/gals. I wish I had known about these before using the Deans connectors on the chargers.

Car side of connectors finished.
Ya gotta love heatshrink!












Once everything was refitted, the motor went fine with no battery warning alert when run. Strangely, the blue LED on battery pack #2 is faulty again. I'll get to that one night next week - maybe it's just coincidence. Now to fit the tailshaft.

Reversing solved and Battery warning identified

Shortly after the previous post and before removing the controller tray, I got reverse working. I had removed a 'function block' from the FB list in the controller knowing that my configuration didn't use it and the Lenze manual said they didn't - well they do! It was a block called ANEG which takes an analogue signal and makes it negative. The particular block was used to feed the low torque limit in the motor control block.
Anyway - now the motor runs either way - good.

The problem of the low-battery alert going off was not caused by the battery pack. The pack/BMS tested out fine using a couple of fan heaters as a load. I was able to duplicate the error by lifting a connection from one cell-pair to another momentarily and it got me to thinking. The motor cables go very close to the pack that was spitting the error.

Right at the point where the motor cables go next to the pack - on the inside of the pack - are the BMS wires - lots of them and running almost parallel to the motor cables.







So it's reasonable to assume that there is either capacitive or inductive coupling  at play here.
To help with capacitive coupling I did the following:

Take an offcut of brass fly wire and attach some heavy wires.

Cover the mesh with waterproof gaffer tape. What a mess - but I'll hide it under the trays so no-one will ever know. Well almost no-one....












And re-install the pack in the car, adding bullet connectors to the wires connected to the fly wire sheild and grounding them. Actually the pack from this location is now in the boot and this is a different pack (pack #5) - just to see if pack #10 really did have a fault that I missed.
To help avoid inductive coupling, the motor cable conduit is now tied well away from the pack.

A vew from another angle to show height separation, grounding wires - and the messy tape.

Now to stick the trays back in and try it...

Commissioning Woes

Well the Engine Bay wiring was pretty much completed by Monday at about 4PM. Everyone stood back at a safe distance and we turned the key to 'Start' - nothing happened. A quick think and I realised that the Charger inhibit wire to the boot (so the car will not go if the charger is connected) was not connected to anything. I clipped it to vehicle ground and turning the key to 'Start' resulted in a satisfying clunk as all the contactors closed. The 12 V battery now read 13.7 volts - good.

The completed engine bay.

Now the problems.
The controller has 4 digital outputs and 6 digital inputs. I need 4 of each. One digital output is used as a 24 VDC source for the 24 V logic on the digital inputs to the controller. This output appears to be 'fried'. No matter what I do it stays at 0 V. It turns out that digital input 4 is the culprit. For some reason it draws enourmous amounts of current and destroyed the output I was using for 24 Volts. I had assumed (when you assume you make an Ass out of U and Me) that the outputs would be current limited - not so - they just blow up. Anyway, I stopped using that particular input and swapped to another output for 24V and got a bit closer to everything working.

Once the above was sorted out we broke for dinner and afterwards I downloaded the prepared configuration into the controller. This is the first time I have run the controller in Torque mode and - IT WORKED!

Next problem - it would not make the motor go in reverse. I left that until I had time to think about it and review the configuration.

One final issue is that when I selected forward or reverse, both of which enable the motor outputs of the controller, I get a warning from the low 3 battery pack opto bus - the packs UNDER the controller tray. (Couldn't it have been any of the other seven battery packs?) Crawling under the car showed the the indicator light for pack #10 (the rearmost of the three packs under the trays), was going out when the alert sounded. Strangely, measuring the voltage of the pack when the problem happened showed 52.7 VDC - the same as the rest of the packs.
So 2 hours later with pack #10 removed for examination, I took this picture.

Pack #10 is now on my bench inside with the lid off. According to my modification notes (when I modified the packs), pack #10 was the only one that had clear signs of a short when it was being made. A flat washer had a quarter blown off and there was black residue on the top of the cell it was attached to (no, I didn't do it).

Now where do I get a 5 Ohm, 200 Watt resistor to use as a test load? Counting portable electric heaters now - each one is good for about 2 Amps at 50 Volts...

Chargers, Contactor/Fuse and DC-DC Mounted

It's been a pain getting everything mounted. Even though I made the hard-to-get-at bolts captive (epoxied from underneath), it still took an hour and a half to get these components mounted.
Then the thought struck me. I had always intended to make everything on the controller tray plug into the rest of the wiring so I could get it out easily - fully populated (except for the actual controller).
Why on earth didn't I mount everything first?
The reason is that the controller tray does not easily go in if the top battery tray is in - well it isn't.
Never mind - as long as I remmeber it next time I have to remove the trays. Remove the top battery tray FIRST!
Picture of chargers (right and centre), Contactor/Fuse box and DC-DC (left).

Now add the motor Controller.

I am using Anderson PPL connectors for the + and - 300 VDC (and pack centre) connections to the DC-DC and heater. Shown are the blue/white/black connections for the DC-DC convertors. (The DC-DC convertors take the + and - 300 VDC and change it to 13.7 Volts DC at up to 40 Amps to run the Vogue 12 V electrics - headlights etc.). We carefully set both of them to 13.7 Volts with a 200mA load so that they draw the same from both halves of the full pack.

Lower Batteries Re-Installed

I have started re-asembling the electical system in the car. The lower three battery packs have been secured and the charger cables attached. I used two 300kg camlock straps per battery pack for these three. It's going to be a real pain tightening them later on. Even so I decided not to have the buckles under the car. As mentioned earlier in the blog, these three have waterproof tape around the joins as they are more exposed than any of the other packs in the car. (Note that packs #10 and #12 have their numbers transposed here - this has been corrected.)

The grey wires over the top of the packs are for the battery monitoring system.
After tidying up the wiring, the controller tray was installed.

Shortly after taking this picture I realised I had trapped the motor temperature monitor wire under the tray (the black wire at the rear right). I loosened the rear bolts and freed it - fortunately it wasn't damaged.

Engine Bay Relays Mounted

The DC-DC Isolator, Start/Run and Fan Control relays are all mounted. I have also updated the control circuit diagram here to reflect the fact that I have moved the Start/Run latching relay to the engine bay. The wiring will be tidied up as it is terminated. The heavy red wire comes from the boot BMS monitoring. The loose wires draping down toward the battery tray will be used to connect to the relays, so I might modify the wiring loom on this side of the car as well - then again I can hide them pretty easily.
The odd looking mounting positions are due to using existing tapped holes that were previously for the ignition coil, starter solenoid etc.

DC-DC Relay

As mentioned many posts ago in this blog, I have two Switch Mode Power Supplies (DC-DC converters) that will supply up to 40 Amps for the 12 V systems in the car. I do not want to connect them directly to the little 9 AH, 12 V battery because if the car is left idle for some time the DC-DCs will drain the 12 V battery.
So there will be a relay in between the DC-DCs and the 12 V Battery. The relay will turn on when the high voltage system is energised.

A Tyco 150 A relay seems to be a good overkill. Seriously - I had it - and it gives me some convenient 6 mm terminal posts to connect things to. The coil doesn't draw any more current than one of those automotive Narva (or similar) 70 A relays.

The two purple wires go to the coil.

I will try to get it mounted and partially wired tonight.

Horn Relay Mounted and Wired

The original Vogue did not have any relays in it. The result that on a wet, rainy night with heater, wipers and headlights on, beeping the horn got no sound at all. The rest of the time they worked fine. Just too much voltage drop in the wiring.

The relay location is just above the left "fender" where the original Generator regulator used to live.
I did something I said I wouldn't do - I modified the Vogue wiring loom.
Not too serious - I removed wires that extended the loom to the Generator. They were redundant and messy. It was the first time I have got greasy and dirty since beginning the re-assembly process. When I unwrapped the loom tape there was lots of oil and grease underneath. They also used black tar tape about every 100cm which made a heck of a mess. The remaining wiring here is original except I removed two large spade connectors and replaced them with 6.25mm spades so that they would plug onto a standard relay.

Radiator hole blocking and Horns mounting

The Vogue has twin horns that used to mount in the engine bay but I needed the space.
This is where they were.

It so happens that there is room behind the two side grills - so that's where they were moved to. This picture also clearly shows the radiator hole blockout panel.

View with the grill in temporarily. They should be good and LOUD!

More Easter Progress

This is a view of the passenger (left) side of the car. The red cable is the BMS monitoring wiring that runs from the boot (trunk) to the engine bay. It, and the original Vogue wiring, is temporarily held in place by gaffer tape until the interior trim is fitted. (I have also elaborated somewhat in the previous post about Easter progress.)

Easter EV Progress

I often hear of English cars being critisized for poor electrical systems.
I can kind of see why. After pulling the trim off the passenger side it revealed that the wiring has missed the channel allocated for it and been glued below it by the trim adhesive.

   

The result is that the wiring was too short to go around a corner and was pulled tight across an edge of metal.

The purple/white wire is the door switch wire for the interior light. The metal is sharp where the wires drape over the top.

It would not have been too long before the interior light was doomed to flicker on and off of it's own free will.

The cover panels have been re-fitted to the firewall. The remaining hole is for the heater wire cable gland.

12 Volt battery mounted.













With battery. The battery is very secure - surrounded by rubber. The packing strap may be enough to hold it in. You can see the red rubber to the right of the battery with a 10mm hole ready to finally secure the top battery tray. I am using a 9 AH AGM deep cycle battery. No real reason for the deep cycle other than it was easy to get.

The red cable draped around the area in all the engine bay pictures is the BMS monitoring wire that comes from the boot.

This is the 12 VDC to 240 VAC inverter that runs the motor fan. (They could not supply a 12 VDC version way back when I ordered the motor.)

The inverter is mounted where the old ignition coil used to live.

I used two peices of aluminium angle that were offcuts from the rear battery tray and ran a peice of 2 mm aluminium over the top. The inverter sits on a piece of black neoprene rubber with another small strip under the aluminium that loops over the top.

Another minor problem solved. When I opened any door to the wind-stop position then closed the door again it made a sound like a gunshot. The door wind-stop rivets had to be drilled out when the car was re-painted and the bolts that they were replaced with were too loose. I reemed them out to 7.1 mm and fitted uncompressed stainless steel rivnuts (nutserts). A nice clean close now with almost no sound.

Start/Run Control Circuit Diagram

The control interface to the Vogue has changed a bit over the past two years. It has got simpler and simpler.
Here is the almost-final circuit.
If the user tries to start the car with the Forward/Neutral/Reverse switch in either Forward or Reverse, it beeps at them. The contactors will only engage in Nuetral.
Also the contactors will only engage or stay engaged if the Intertia switch, Charger lockout and Manual disconnect are all closed.

Text in brown is wiring within the 8 way cable from/to dash to motor controller. Text in blue indicates existing wires in the Vogue loom.The multiple wires from dash to engine bay is because the SW60 contactors are on the passenger side of the engine bay whereas the DC-DC relay and EV200 is on the driver side.

(Note: Image updated 29th April 2011 and again 11th May 2011 when the Start/Run relay was relocated to the Engine Bay)

Engine Bay Wiring

I'm pretty much ready to finalise the Engine Bay control wiring so I thought a bit of planning would be good. I have only fleetingly thought about this in the past but now I have allocated existing and new wires.
here is take #1. I have left the detail of the control wiring to the Motor Controller out for now. The wiring route is indicated though.
Brown wires are existing high-current wiring. Green wires are existing instrument wiring. Blue and Red wires are new.
The purple cable is a shileded wire (plus one conductor) for the battery pack current sensor.

The diagram shows the Engine Bay of the Vogue with the front of the car at the bottom. Where the wires go from side to side across the car is the dashboard side of the firewall. For instance the Start/Run relay is in the cabin behind the dash. Click on the image for full size.

LATER EDIT: I also have not shown any high voltage wiring nor some connections to the controller. For instance accelerator, motor shaft encoder, motor temperature monitoring and BMS monitor wiring.

Traction Cabling in Progress

This post preceeds the previous post in time - pictures taken over the past two weeks.
Here are some photos that my son took while installing the main cable and battery trays shown in the previous post. This one is me heat-shrinking a crimp. I wonder how these crimps done in Melbourne's recent very humid week will last.

Another action shot.

Engine bay prior to installing the controller tray and top battery tray. I really will replace the garbage bag tie with cable ties when I tidy the wiring.

This is the contactor and current sensor box. These two contactors are for safety only. They join the return paths of the positive 300V and negative 300V halves together. This is not necessary for operation but makes the car a lot safer when the ignition is off. The small circuit board holds the AC752 hall-effect current sensor that will be used by the speedo cluster to measure and display battery current. The twisted pieces of copper that make the connection are more of the old copper fireplace screen used previously here.

The boot battery trays. Neoprene rubber lined like all the battery trays.

The tray for the four boot battery packs with cardboard battery pack. More neoprene....

William got this great shot from looking under the diff forward to the motor. I really have pressure cleaned the underside but I think it needs scrubbing as well - there is no loose dirt left.

The conduit going past the motor rear mounts. This way it won't get in the way if I have to remove the motor.












He got a better picture of the conduit going over the axle too.

Here is how the conduit gets into the boot. This is under the boot mounted contactor/fuse box on the left side of the car. It's all siliconed up now. You can just make out the conduit bracket on top of the axle that is mounted to the axle limiting rubber buffer. There has been no need to drill holes in any chassis rails.

Finally, a picture of the traction cable wiring prior to putting the top battery tray and controller tray in. The orange conduit running low down alongside the motor is the front-to-rear conduit shown a few pictures above. More garbage ties....