Before, During, After

Before: We thought we didn't have Comp(fire) coverage.
Fortunately S. had included it, so we're looking covered.

During:

A shot provided by Ron and Jackie from the "During" period.
This is the big puff of smoke/steam from when they knocked out the side window and were spraying down the insides to cool things off before using the foam shown in the earlier post.

After: We had a meeting with the very nice insurance adjuster guy 'Chris' and spent an hour-and-some filling out a bunch of paperwork. Next business day a flatbed tow truck came by and hauled off the vehicle, now known as the 'Crispy Marshmallow', off to a yard in Eugene.
They did a 'condition assessment' there and turned it over to some sort of analysis team who are going to try and figure out what happened. More on that here once we know.

Insurance: Turns out they don't do it like you'd expect.
There is a separate arm of the insurance co. (or maybe they're outside, I don't know) that establishes the 'before' value. There were no dealer 'used' sales for them to look at so they had to survey dealers for new prices and then discount from there. Then they add back in the accessories (at 100% since this is a 'motorcycle') ...and came up with a number that was greater than what we paid. Really odd. They have the original paperwork with the price paid and most of the accessory adds right there in black and white. Mostly black, since the paperwork was in the car at the time... You think they would pay attention to that, but no, they have their process. Not complaining mind you since they're paying out over a grand more than what we have in it. We're the luckiest unlucky folks you know.

A teensy problem. HOT! or was that NOT!

Further update. There may be insurance after all.
Turns out it's the OTHER vehicle that doesn't have
'comp' coverage. A break! Finally! Maybe...

Update as of 10/15/09 below ----

Hot time at work today.
Went out to look when there was a commotion near quitting time and it turned out it was our car on fire.
Had been sitting there since lunch charging, happy as a clam. Clams like it hot?


There wasn't that much damage in the front, but the seats got going toward the center. I suspect it got pretty hot in there.


As you can see it burned up in the middle/right under the back seat. Funny thing is those are the batteries I *haven't* replaced.


Yep, this one probably qualifies as a total loss.

"Gosh, what started it?" you ask.
Hard to say. Seems like the biggest part of the problem was toward the center-right of the rear seat but we may have to pull a few bits out to have any chance of figuring it out. Right now it's cold, dark and raining. Oh, and it smells really Really REALLY BAD. More later.

Update: Had a bit of time to look it over today. The 12V system is still running we think,. One relay keeps clicking on and off despite the main pack being disconnected at both ends. Strange.
Looking for clues we pulled up the back seat and part of the battery cover. The most intense part of the fire was definately under and immediately forward of the rear seat. The 'firewall' metal cover under the rear seat did it's job, but the fire 'leaked out' just in front and eventually caught the rear seat cushion on fire. The batteries under there are VERY melted/burned. The connector posts are sticking up out of the mess and look like they're mostly in good shape. Note that the posts are NOT lead. It's looking like things lit-up there and traveled forward and sideways. The front seats appear to be relative latecomers to the blaze. Still no idea what lit it off.
The top(rear) battery, controller and motor/gearset look to be in pretty good condition as are most of the things in the dash. Some smoke damage of course.

Eeeewww, Battery Death

OK so here's my problem. The car came with some batteries that were not maybe real well known for reliability from a company called HAZE in China and were nearly a year old when I got the car plus who knows how they were treated while EcoMotion (the original dealer) had them.
There was also this one single DEKA Intimidator battery from the East Penn Co. in the US. Added to bring the pack voltage up to 84V. Supposed to be top quality. Same 100 Amp-Hour rating as the HAZE and fairly expensive, like $220 or $240 each. Guess which one dies? Yup, the DEKA lasted about thirty cycles - despite - the high bucks BattEQ battery management system.
So, we get ahold of the dealer, who turns us over (quite appropriately) to the battery maufacturer's rep, who eventually says "Yeah, we'll get you a new one." and after a week or two they pick up the failed battery and a week or two later (after some nudging) they drop off a new one. Total elapsed time is like TWO MONTHS.
I wonder how the battery guy would feel if his new car developed a gas tank leak and the gas tank supplier took two months to get him parts (which he would then have to install himself...) I don't really know him, but I bet he'd be really pissed-off to be without his new car for two months.
Fortunately I had a spare battery.

In the mean time the BattEQ system gets recalled and I get involved in the design of the VoltBlocher boards as noted earlier. I didn't have enough boards for the whole pack. Battery #5 was behaving really well on it's own so I didn't put a board on it for like two weeks after all the others had their's. Guess maybe it wasn't doing so well after all because it started to fail about two weeks later. Right about the time the new DEKA arrived. What a stroke of luck!
Just to make sure it's OK (and to break it in a little) I ran a couple cycles of charge test. Discharge at 5 Amps until the voltage drops to 10.8 and then charge up (Bulk charge phase to 14.5V - etc.) Funny thing happens: at 5 Amps (actually 4.93) disharge rate, a 100 Amp-Hour battery should last 20 hours. The most this one will do is 16 hours. 20% low. Hmmm.
Maybe it takes a few more charge cycles to come up to full capacity? We'll see. Swap it into the car in battery slot #5. A fully charged pack should be capable of going over 20 miles. This pack would only do about 18 as the original #5 was a little weak by the time I tried this. Still with a worst case commute of 12.8 miles we should be fine, eh?
Not for long. The new DEKA seems almost fine for a while. It was 0.3V lower than the others pretty much all the time. Seems a little odd, but I have one other that runs a little low and it's holding up fine. I set the VoltBlocher to limit it to 14.4-14.5V during the high current bulk charge phase and a little higher during the later (generally lower current) phases.
All goes well for about 20 charge cycles. I limited the initial miles/charge as the battery got broken in but it was running the longer commute (12.8) within a week. About two weeks later I have a 'short' commute of 7 miles (with charging a the other end) which I had been doing for a couple days at that point. I ended up going an extra 2 miles that day and the new battery dropped way off in mile 8. The next day I fired up ye olde data-collection system and captured the voltage spikes down as the new battery crapped out at just about the same place. By around the 26th or 28th cycle on the new battery it was effectively dead.
Me and the battery dude are going to have another dance. You watch, they'll try to blame it on the charging system. I OTOH have actual data. We'll see. Meanwhile I'm cycling one of the other 2+ year old batteries to see if I can swap it in while we wait. Again.
Moved the VoltBlochers further forward between the seats so I can keep a better eye on things. That part seems to be working good.

Yea! Pictures!

Da car, nestled into it's "Motorcycle Parking" spot at work. You can't see it but the charging outlet is on the post behind the car. Thanks again to my workplace for providing the charging facilities.

So, the warrantied DEKA 'Intimidator' battery was delivered about ten days ago (just over two months after the first one failed) and I stuffed it in to replace battery#5 that was failing pretty rapidly. I discharged and recharged 'cycling' the new battery several times to get it broken in. Yes you do have to do that, tossing a new horse into the team and running them hard can cause stumbling and crashing problems...
I pulled off all the Volt Blocher boards before swapping in the battery and did a little testing and tweaking and then remounted them in a more managable arrangement. I got a few resistors swapped around and now all the boards operate within about a tenth of a volt of each other. I put the boards that operate a little low on the batteries that operate a little low, makes everybody happier.

"What, the batteries aren't balanced? Heresy!! "
There are batteries of three different ages and two different manufacturers in the pack. Of COURSE they aren't 'balanced' Don't be silly.
In fact I think the battery balancer that was on the pack (until it was recalled by the manufacturer) was part of the reason for some of my battery failures. Even when 'new' both the original and replacement DEKA batteries seem to run 2-3 tenth's of a volt lower than the HAZE units (which have a couple tenths of variation between themselves) and having something that's trying to bring them all to the same voltage seems to cause the units that run naturally lower to overcharge just enough to vent a bit. The venting causes a reduction in capacity, which increases the tendency to overcharge, and vent, and 20-30 cycles later you have a failing battery.
The traditional fix for this problem is to throw money at it. Just replace the whole pack. Then they'll be balanced...if you're lucky. Being cheap, I don't much like the $1500 solution.
My fix is to have the Voltage/Overcharge limiting boards set so they match the battery they're attached to. The 0.3V difference between the switch settings on this version of the VoltBlocher boards turns out to be just about right. (Brian, take note!)
As a result, when it's nearing the end of the 'bulk charge' part of the charging cycle with the pack sitting at around 60deg.F I'll see voltages of 14.7, 14.3, 14.5, 14.5, 14.3, 14.5, 14.5
#2 is a two year old HAZE and #5 is the new DEKA. If I take the boards off, some of the voltages will shoot up to 15.0 or 15.2 wich will kill them in short order.
I'm not sure what the deal is with #1, it always runs a bit high, though part of that is maybe measurement error. Anyway, we're now at 2000 miles...and with only four (total) battery failures...Huzzah!!

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....

Volt Blocher

Well, it's been a long time between posts but here we is again.
Updates: There's been battery failures, the battery balancing system actually got recalled by the manufacturer...the vehicle still tries to dart into the oncoming lane, attracts valdalous whackos, won't steer straight, and bounces up and down enough so you can hear the seats creak. Despite all that we've put on over a thousand miles in the last six weeks. What can I say, we're kinda stupid that way.
As mentioned earlier I've been working with a guy in California to 'morph' his existing battery charge management system into something that will work with the AGM Lead Acid batteries in this type of car. His name is Brian Blocher, so since the board progressively bypasses current to 'block' the voltage from getting too high the product is called Volt Blocher. Clever, huh?

Here's the first functioning prototype I've built.

The big white things are resistors the dissipate the excess heat (current) to keep the peak voltage under control during the charging cycle. Even a couple tenths of a volt too high can shorten the battery life considerably. The switch is so you can set an appropriate voltage for a given temperature range: Under 50F, 45-80F and above 75F respectively. There is one board for each battery so I've built seven of them. Three worked correctly right from the beginning, one is real close and three others are off by a bit more. Troubleshooting is ongoing.

I'm very glad I got three done since we had two batteries that really needed them and one that wouldn't mind a little help. Both got 'swapped in' from the other car when we had two of the originals fail (both still awaiting warranty replacement) and since they have a little less capacity (mainly from being older) they would charge up sooner than the others and begin to vent off gas as the voltage gets too high. The electrolyte lost that way cannot be replaced. So, the battery would loose capacity, charge up even quicker, vent more, lose capacity...you get the idea. The road to ruin (kinda like the US economy...)

More to come on this topic as the rest of the boards get put in place.
In the mean time, it's driving to work and school and everywhere local.

MiscUlanEous Factazoids

Big testing excitement today:

1.) Under any sort of real world load it's become obvious that one of the batteries is failing. Only good for 6-8 miles now and that's without any really high current loading (no 300A blastoffs or hills.) We captured one of the failure events with the datalogger and sent the file off to Sean. He agrees it's bad and apparently it will be warranted. May swap in a battery from the other car to get this one back on the road.

2.) Load test: we went out with four people on the car. Not a long drive or any hills to speak of, but the people weren't exactly lightweight either. It wouldn't hit 45 with four of us in there. Scotty to Bridge: She's givin'it all she's got captn'!

3.) The specs for the new battery management board are pretty much set and Brian may have first prototypes available by mid month. Way to go! Update: Prototype boards arrived and are reported to work exactly as expected. Should have final parts in two weeks. Cool.