In late December, I was toying with some settings on my controller and realized I had an old version of the firmware and needed to upgrade. I tried, and failed. Somehow I screwed up the upgrade process and rendered the ATmega 168 chip useless. No big deal, they are only about $5, but I needed one that was programmed already since I don't have a programmer. My controller can only do upgrades and not initial programming. I emailed the designer of the controller and he said he would send me one gratis, but he was in the middle of a move. I was not worried since I had other stuff to do on the car still. Long story short, I got the chip last Friday and put it in the controller, and bam, just like that, it was alive. Now to reassemble the component board and get the car running again. I did a few things in the meantime.
- I ran 6 gauge wire from the front to the back of the car for the charger. Drilled a couple holes and added grommets for the wires and then put the wire in the flexible tubing that my main battery pack wiring is in
- I took apart the component board and trimmed it up here and there to make it easier to install
- I rethought and adjusted my mounting situation for the component board. I now have bolts facing up, so I can just put the board down on the spacers and screw on the nuts. Much easier than putting the board in and then trying to get the bolts into their mounting holes beneath the board.
- I bought some 5" long threaded bolts to add to the rear battery boxes. This will be for mounting the Lexan cover over the batteries.
- My neighbor is a machinist and he said he would make me some battery hold downs for the rear battery boxes. The hold downs will also act as a mounting surface for the Lexan cover.
I had to remove 20 batteries from the large rear box in order to add the 5" bolts, so once I got the controller fixed, I had to put the batteries back in. Also, I had to add all the electric components back to the component board and wire them up. Got it all hooked up and tested around 8pm last Sat night and thought, why not, so I got the car off the jack stands and took ERX out for a test drive. I got brave and took it around a couple blocks and got it up to 40mph in 2nd gear. I think around 3500 or 4000 rpms, although I wasn't paying huge attention to the rpm gauge. I had my laptop in the car and was checking battery amps. I ended up peaking out at about 310 amps on that run. I still have some issues somewhere in the drivetrain though. When I let off the accelerator, there is some noise as the car is free wheeling. Never any sound during acceleration. A friend at work suggested it could be the axle. It is possible one of the axles' splines are worn down and are not making a strong connection to the transmission. I hope this is the problem as it is the best case scenario. It is also very possible my motor and adapter are not aligned perfectly with the tranny. I may need to take the car to a tranny specialist to see if I need to unmount the motor and check the adapter to see if it is perfectly balanced and then remount the motor with perfect alignment.
The focus now is to get some stuff done that will allow me to get the car inspected so I can register it.
- Install Vacuum brake system
- Make horn function
- Fix brake light wiring
- Wire switch to Windsheild wiper motor
- Reattach fenders and hood
After all this, and once I can get it registered, I need to address the rear springs and shocks as the car is riding very low with the extra 250+ lbs back there. Someone suggested raising springs? Not sure where I can find those for a 1987 Honda CRX. Usually these cars are lowered.
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