Minor Update

Yes, I need more pictures. We'll get there...

I really WANT to put time into fixing all the little irritations that bother me when driving the car but all the available 'car' time has gone into trying to keep the battery pack alive. There have been two solid outright battery failures so far and another is beginning to fail. Obviously a car that needs $200 worth of battery replacements every month isn't going to be very economical.
I have five of the VoltBlochers in place and working. Two more are built but the voltages are wrong for some reason. More time needs to be applied to that problem. I probably built them wrong somehow. I'm convinced that they are what is keeping a couple of the 'lower' batteries alive. I'm very glad we designed the switchable cutoff voltage onto them. The older batteries DEFINITELY like a lower charge voltage.
Speaking of which, I've noticed two other things: The battery monitoring system provides temperature information in the display. I was using that to try and determine what the correct end-of-charge voltage should be. It varies inversely with temp. Last week I put a calibrated thermometer on the pack with some insulation above it and found that the temperature it's reporting is 8-10deg.F higher than the number the monitoring system is reporting. Since the charger has it's own temp.sensor that shouldn't matter all that much. However that 8-10 deg. means the batteries are being charged harder than I thought they were. I though it was charging to about 0.1V above the 'ideal', turns out it's closer to 0.3V above, so;
Secondly, The Zivan charger seems to be charging to a number very close to the 'maximum allowed' according to the battery manufacturer. So if the ideal end-of-bulk-charge voltage is say 14.4V at a given temp. and the max.allowed is 14.8V I find it's charging to about 14.7. Theoretically that's fine. It's staying within the maximum, right? Well, that 0.3V over the ideal translates into an almost 20% reduction in theoritical battery life, and that assumes perfect battery balance. That ain't how the real world operates. The strongest batteries are fine, but the slightly weaker ones come up to voltage sooner and are pushed over the maximum toward the end of charge, weakening them further. Thank goodness for the VoltBlochers. Also I'm going to have to find out how to turn down the charger by 0.2 per battery (1.5V overall).
Should be interesting....