Back To Six Chargers

Last week my new Kelly 7210 charger arrived - the one with a 84.0V max charging voltage. Giddy as could be, I swapped it into the place of the old one and plugged 'er in. And VOILA! Nothing. Green light on, meaning it is "fully charged". That shouldn't be when pack voltage is at 75.2V. It should charge and then cut off to float no matter what. So I took the Electric Booger for a hard run around the block. Now the pack was at 74.2V, so I plugged 'er in again: NOTHING.

So Kelly #2 was DOA. After a few emails, Kelly wanted to send me another one. Instead, I am sending it back for refund. I don't want it anymore, which I will now attempt to explain....

After my giddiness was squashed I meticulously topped up all batteries individually with a 12V charger. Turns out that my batteries have gone WAY out of balance. Some batteries took quite a while to top up. My nifty regulators have done nothing, other than illuminating my batteries in the dark. Then I plugged in the 88.2V charger and watched voltages. Things got quite wonky very quickly.

What I have concluded is that the three odd ball AGMs in the pack have a different internal resistance than the rest, so the pack is unable to keep balanced. After topping up all batteries, these rose to about 13.8V while the rest stayed around 14.8-15.3V. Before topping up, the three odd balls were usually the way-too-high ones. So unless I purchase three more brand new AGMs to match the rest ($450), balance will always be an issue.

I decided to once again go with six individual battery chargers. Well - seven if you include the one used to keep my accessory battery happy. Unfortunately, I have already sold five of my six original chargers to guys at work. But wouldn't you know it, Canadian Tire has 10A chargers on sale for half price ($29.99), so I bought six.

Anyway, enough boring stuff. How about some pictures. Here is the rear battery pack in its final form:

Note my "Battery Pack Restraint System" in case of a crash. That's right, the original rear seat belts. I would hate to be squished by 504 lbs of lead if I crashed.

Here is the "charger array":

Today I scored a beautiful piece of black plexiglass and cut it to size to make my official rear battery cover:

It sure beats the piece of shag carpet that it replaced! About the only thing I have left to do is fasten it to the rear seat back and then the car might just be...well...done! For now, anyway. Can a project like this ever actually be finished?

Oh, and did anyone notice my tribute to Clark Griswold in any of the pictures above? I will make it easy and show a nice, clear, zoomed in picture. This is how you power a butt load of chargers with one extension cord: