IT IS ALIVE !

Yes, the best part just happened. It works!! After 3 weeks of long hour days the truck is running on 100% electricity. It’s battery powered! First test was down the alley and back. I was so nervous and excited but it actually went pretty smooth.

Actually, not so smooth. I will write a more detailed rant, I mean blog post, later about the lack of documentation, schematic errors, manufacturing defects, etc that I had to overcome to get this thing running. Let’s just say that troubleshooting stuff that should have worked but didn’t due to the slack standards of the EV conversion industry put me behind by 2 or 3 days. They must smoke a lot of dope in California or China or wherever they design, assemble and sell the components.

Picture this. The day of reckoning. High anticipation that the initial test run is minutes away. Check and double check everything.

The general procedure is you do a “smoke test”. That ‘s to see if anything smokes or melts or burst into flame the first time you throw the switch. The traction battery pack is disconnected and the 12 volt accessory battery also. Starting with the “low voltage” 12 volt circuit. Connect the battery cable of the 12 v battery. Look for smoke or sniff for burning. If nothing then turn on the ignition. Nothing, great! Now connect the traction battery pack. I had left one battery cable at the back of the pack unconnected. Connect that, check, all good. Then throw the power on thru the massive Heinemann 200volt 500 amp fuse. Nothing, all good. Turn the ignition key and Voila! the gauge lights up and sez hello.

I had one rear wheel jacked up on the truck. You don’t want to apply power to the motor without a load. In other words, when it is in neutral. SO press on the gas and the tire should spin. Except… it turned but very slowly and with a stutter. Oh no! What the hell??

A quick email to Randy at Canev and after waiting for the reply the answer was to switch the U and W cables connecting the motor to the controller. Well that makes no sense. The U cable goes from the U post on the controller to the U post on the motor. Clearly marked on the posts. Clearly marked on the diagram. Same for the 2 other cables. But I switched them, pressed on the gas and Voila!! the wheel spins fast without a stutter. The only problem was it was going BACKWARDS!

So my solution was to switch the forwards wire connecting the controller to the throttle with the reverse wire ( which normally is unused if you have a manual tranny).

Yeah that worked. And I could drive it in the right direction in the right gear.

Climbed in for the maiden voyage. Half a block up the alley. You can see the video here: