Monday, May 13, 2013

Battery Sag?? Not so fast.

Back on the road and enjoying the morning commutes when I notice that my batteries are sagging pretty bad on the hills.  This is odd.  I slow down and get to the charging station on campus.  There wasn't a problem with energy - I made the trip without problems, had plenty of juice left.  The problem was power, not being able to pull the usual 250 AH going up the hills.

As I drive up to the charging station, it dawned on me.  The water cooling pump and motor fan aren't running. Hmmm...  It must be the either the DC to DC or the relay that turns them on.  Because I didn't have any tools with me I decided I would recharge then limp home pulling no more than 100 AH.  Thank goodness there wasn't much traffic behind me.  With 80 degree weather, clearly the controller was fighting the heat. Once I got home I began looking at the relay and connecting wires.  Even after I replaced the relay, I decided to change the "switch" to the controller.  (To be honest I couldn't remember what the switch was actually hooked up to.)  My Solitron Jr has several outputs that are capable of doing different things.  In this case I wanted it to turn on the water cooling pump and motor fan after it started up.  This required connecting my laptop to the controller.  Since it's been awhile, I had to refresh what to do by looking at the manual.  The setting I needed for the output dialogue box was battery power. 

Unfortunately, while making the change, I accidentally pressed "factory defaults."  Oops!

Now I had to start all over for everything, including the throttle settings.  I'm not sure what changes I made from the previous settings but I sure do like them, I have this rush of power.  Caveman voice: Ummm...power good!!!  Me like power.

Here's a wiring diagram for a four post relay, in case you get confused like me.







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