Tweaks and Testing: Day 2

Bill reports:

All the wires under the van have been tidied up!

Spare-tire holder is back in place. (Bill was worried they might have misplaced the spare during the van's stay at NMTCC, but I had to shamefacedly admit that it probably was lacking to start with. Bill cautions me, "When you buy new tires, you should always buy 5 at a time." I promise to buy one more tire and a jack set for roadside emergencies.)

Good news and very bad news and good news.

The good news was that the missing seat belts for the rear seat were found. The bad news was, they were jammed under the 400-pound rear battery box! Whoops, I guess that installation was a little rushed! The good news is that Bill unbolted the rear battery box and hold-down and retrieved the 2 lost male ends of the rear seat belts. This was a real pain in the neck, he reports -- not to mention a waste of time. But it's all taken care of now.

Bill has trimmed the rear box top to clear the main battery cables and ventilation tubes. Now he is scheming: how to have those vent fans come on whenever the charger is plugged in? He'd prefer not to have a separate toggle vent fan switch. Ultimately the design should be that when the 120-volt AC cable is plugged into the van to charge, one leg goes to the charger and another to a 12V DC transformer which will power the fans automatically. But while we are still swapping the charger back and forth between our two EV's this may not be practical.

Dan has some clever suggestions for workarounds -- we'll see if Bill can implement one of them this week.

Vent fan & ventilation tube in the battery box.

Bill did find some mysterious oil on the vacuum pump, will watch to see where that's coming from. Other than that it all looks good -- no oozing or overheating during and after testing -- and we brought down the charger to give the battery pack its first official charge overnight.

Next: distance testing!