Zach’s Electric Diablo

My seat is now bolted to the floor and the racing harness is installed.

I also installed the Mac mini, 12v power supply and an LCD screen (the LCD mount is temporary until I mount the dash). This setup will be helpful during testing to display battery status and speed information.

Now that I am starting to accumulate the 12v devices, I thought it was about time to officially wire up the DC to DC converter. It takes the pack voltage and charges the 12v lead acid accessory battery.

My Dad came into town for a few days and Saturday morning was our time to work on the car. He helped me install the repaired axle and the new spacers I made. Everything fit perfectly. Then we took it down to Big-O to get it aligned. After about an hour of working on it, the guy got it “mostly” aligned. Apparently, my rear a-arms don’t have the proper geometry to get it 100% aligned properly. I’ll go into more details about this later.

When we got back to the shop we took it out for a spin. I don’t have a speedometer yet, but we must have got it up to 50-60mph in and around the parking lot. It felt REALLY good. It accelerated very quickly and handled quite nicely (though, I don’t have seatbelts and my batteries are not 100% strapped in so I didn’t push it too hard). I’ll get some video on Monday.

I will be installing my re-assembled axle tomorrow and I wanted a little insurance to make sure it doesn’t come apart again.  So, I cut out a 1/2″ spacer to go between the axle and the transmission:

I also welded up an aluminum battery box for the auxiliary battery:

It still needs to be painted.

While waiting for my axle to come back, I decided to spend some time cleaning up the wiring. I replaced the short pieces of 2-0 wire with some custom copper jumpers (like the ones that came with the batteries.) for the short connection from the fuse to the shunt and from the shunt to the relay.

I also machined some aluminum offset connectors so that the cables can easily exit the battery box.

I wired up my Iota 55 DC-DC for the first time. It spit out 13.6v just like it’s supposed to.

I also spent some time making a short term to-do list:

1. Re-install the axle and do a proper test-drive (with video documenation)
2. Build harness for auxiliary 12v battery.
3. Buy and install seatbelts/harnesses
   (a coworker showed me his 6-point racing harness. Very cool. Very expensive.)
4. Bolt down the driver’s seat
5. Build the 12v relay panel
6. Install Mac Mini and power supply
   (mainly this is designing a mount for the Mini)
7. Start dashboard layout
8. Revise the BMS design
9. Design safety cover for the high voltage electronics
10. Install the heater/AC unit
11. Figure out motor-to-AC compressor system.
12. Weld the firewall closed
    (there is a big hole where the fuel cell was supposed to be mounter)
13. Weld / reinforce the the center console area.
    (I cut out a big portion of the center console to make it thinner. It was wide where the fuel cell sat)
14. Mount the body on the chassis (this is mainly building the mounting points for the roll cage)