Friday, July 27, 2007

First Driving Test!

Well, I carefully fixed the black grounding wire to the motor encoders and the system seems to work fine now. I got the AC motor to rev up quite quickly in neutral. Both forward and reverse movements are fairly smooth.

For yucks, I drove the car around the block. It has very slow acceleration, probably due to all the battery weight. I drove it in second gear. Third gear seems to not want to go in, at least while the car is stopped. The regen braking seems to work fine. The front end is rather heavy with batteries and the tires scrape something in the wheel wells when I back out of the driveway down the small cement slope on the curb.

There is much to do, but I at least know it runs and that I'm probably not going to race it at Nedra...

Off to celebrate with a brownie and a very much needed nap. Yay!

7 comments:

Joe said...

Outstanding! Good job, I've watched the amount of work (and time) you've put in, and it's great to know that it's running.

onei57 said...

In the manual they have ajusting the torsion springs on the front end after instalation of the conversion kit and batteries. This might help the front being low and scraping. Did you rev the motor when tring to but the motor it third gear and slip the clutch. The gears in the transmission may not have been lined up for third gear.

Have fun trouble shooting, your still ahead of me!

Roger Daisley said...

CONGRATULATIONS!
A really big milestone!

I'm about five days from a test drive, but ... my XM satellite radio works!

/roger
/www.96-volt.com

pjorg said...

Tim, great job. We were all waiting to see if it really works. With regard to the acceleration, perhaps there is a setting in the controller which limits the current which will limit the acceleration. We will be waiting to see how it goes.

Ross Cunniff said...

Congratulations! It's good to know it's all possible (I wonder sometimes...) I'm about three weeks behind you - I hope to be on the road by the end of August (assuming I can coax the last parts out of EA...)

Steve said...

Nice job! When you have it going, maybe you can film a ride and youtube it to your site.

TimK said...

Thanks to everyone for their support. It's been a long process and there's still more to go. I wish you all the best in getting your own EVs running.
Cheers,
Tim