Street Legal

Busy week, eh? Went down to Roy's service station today and got the EV inspected. No big suprises, he ran through the checks and slapped a '96 inspection sticker on it. Fifteen dollars...thank you.

Let me say just one thing about that: Yeehaw!!!

Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

Here's a slightly better shot of the Zivan battery charger. It has (from right to left) an AC input, a temperature probe on a long cable, and the DC output. I stuck the probe in the middle of the battery pack. I thought I read in the flyer that it shuts down at a certain temp, but I can't seem to find that section again. I did find an interesting sentence: "With the K2 model, it is possible to use a microprocessor logic unit, by which it is possible to have any type of charging characteristics, by changing the software." Very interesting. Now to find out if there is documentation that covers this. Oh, and there are three LEDs on the top of the charger: red for heavy charge, yellow for low charge, and green for full tank.

Speaking of programming, the above photo is the Zapi optional programming console. It allows access to all of the programmable parameters of the Zapi (and there are quite a few) as well as changing to different "modes" of operation, test functions, and error logging. A very handy device.

And here's an extra photo showing the tops I fabricated for the front two battery boxes.

Also I just finished making a tachometer circuit. I scrounged this optical switch sensor from an old 30meg Seagate hard drive. Basically it has an emitter (puts out infra red light) and a detector (electrical switch that turns on when infra red light hits it) seperated by a small gap (1/8 inch?). If something opaque is put in this gap the detector is turned off. So I ground down an old CDROM disk, put two notches in it (places where detector will switch on) and screwed it onto the back shaft of the main motor. Then I mounted the optical switch up against the edge of the CDROM disk so that as the motor spins the CDROM notches spin by and cause the switch to turn on. This on/off signal goes to the car's existing tachometer in the dash which translates it into the number of revolutiringper minute. I'll try and post a photo...

My list of things to do is diminishing. The biggest one left is the exhaust fan for the rear battery box during charging. In the meantime I'm opening the trunk.