Quite a few weeks since the last post, and not so much work done on the car, due to two weeks in the motor home and one week getting over a hernia operation, caused by doing physiotherapy.
The guard under the car, under the sill was finally installed. Designed to protect much of the wiring from being exposed to the weather.
For regular viewers you may have noticed that my web page has a big change. I moved to GoDaddy, not totally recommended unless you are prepared to wait a very long time on the chat line.
The foam rubber was stuck around the edge of the windows and front lights. If you don't know how to locate and create the holes where the screws go my solution is as follows. Keep the backing tape on the rubber strip. Lay the rubber in place, a short length at a time, may be 250mm. Mark with a felt tip, non-permeant, where the hole is located. Punch the hole with leather punch, I have one but worth buying. remove the backing tape from the section, stick in place and then continue around the window or light cover.
Cete who supply the mock exhaust noise are still, requiring me to make some modifications to the Can outputs of: Throttle position, Motor Speed, Mode (So that I can change the sound output to Sports, cruise or whatever.), and On Off.
What we have done on the MoTeC is to make a specific channel for Cete that transmits only the channels for Cete but allows them to be manipulated.
So for example, the throttle actually when at zero shows negative 31 so we have put in an adder of 31 to make it transmit to Cete Zero.
The speed is not sensitive enough, so we have put in a multiplier of 160 to resolve that issue.
I recorded through the MoTeC Can Inspector the data outputs at various throttle settings and speeds so that they could be examined in Germany. I hope to have a noisy car soon.
I did have an issue with the rear wheel being very tight on the stud, this was resolved by turning the stud down a fraction on my lathe.
I purchased a temporary license to drive the car around the block and having done some modifications to the hand break, it held on a steep hill, although I think it is on the limit of the actuator. So a 1200 Newton, with potentiometer, to change electronically the limits, has been ordered to replace the 500 Newton one that I have now.
Openinvertor have a comprehensive setup sequence, for the Tesla. I went through this but found little change in the feel of the motor with the various changes in settings. I think this is an area I will go back to once I get the feel of the car.
Sam, my engineer came for a day, to check that all the car stood up to the regulations. Most things were ok other than:
A sticker had to be put on the break reservoir. Resolved.
Windscreen demister not working. Wired and Resolved.
Tyre placard needs to be made and attached. Thanks to Roaring Forties.
Passenger seat belt binding. Resolved, I hope.
And here comes the worst one. If the indicator light bulb fails I need to get a warning. I have tried to do this through the MoTeC but with no joy. At the moment it looks like I have to install flasher relays. This requires complete rewiring of the indicator circuit, that goes against the grain. So I am doing some research on this.
I had been told that my LED headlights were not to Australian standard, so I bought some incessant lamps and fitted them. You can guess what I will do once the car has passed.
There was an additional issue. We did a break test, where a pressure sensor was strapped to the break peddal. We drove to a reasonable speed then breaked hard. The aim to achieve a specific G force in breaking. This achieved the break pedal pressure was obtained. The issue is that too high a force was required! Robert at Roaring Forties believes that a bit of hard breaking will wear in the pad and the problem resolved.
The next job was to get the wheels perfectly aligned. So I booked the car to go to Pedders about 10 k away. I noted that there was a bit of play in the steering, and naturally told them. They were not prepared to continue with the tuning of the suspension until it was fixed. So the car came home and literally in one minute I found the location of the play and fixed it with the tightening of one bolt. I therefor decided not to go back and asked for a reference from Glen Autosport Electronics (MoTeC), he put me in touch with John Fowler Autosport who has a workshop full of boy racer cars. I was booked in last Friday, but it bucketed it down with rain, so I had to cancel. In the last 6 months we had had only 21mm of rain. I have booked for next Friday.
As I had a bit of a drive in the car to Pedders I noted that there were things on the display that were hidden by my hands, so a bit of moving about was required.
I also installed a small power board that is able to transmit up to 8 different mp3 sounds to a single small speaker. Previously I had 4 separate speakers. FN-BC08
Tim has still not got the charger working. I made the decision to make a third CanBus, that is just for the charging mechanism. Tim had long talks with contacts in China but still no joy.
