The Great Race to Phoenix!

Printer-Friendly Version

The Bay Area Phoenix Race Team is coming together!

We have a brand new Saturn Coupe SC2 awaiting the sawzall.

We have $1,000,000.00 worth of Ni-Cads.

We plan to win.

We need you (if you are around here, Bay Area, CA, USA) To help with converting the car, Doing PR work, Arranging transportation, Selling advertising space on side of car, Getting uniforms, Locating an off site work area near Firebird, Getting more sponsorship, etc. etc.

We will meet on Thursday 12/21/95 at 7:30 PM at my shop.

email me for directions,

-Otmar-

--------------------------------------------------------
Otmar Ebenhoech, Electric Vehicle Components Ltd.
"I wish I die sleeping like my grandfather
not screaming in terror like his passengers."
tess@netcom.com (415) 494-9255
--------------------------------------------------------

How could I pass this up? 12/21/95 is my stepfather's birthday. I could meet the party for a quick dinner out and still make the meeting before being too late.

As it turned out the brand new car was a 1991 Saturn coupe SC2 that had been a show room model. This meant that the car had cut away door panels and valve covers, etc., to show the potential buyer how the Saturn was made. The NiCad batteries turned out to be a million "Lockheed dollars" worth of batteries; i.e., expensive space grade batteries, paid for by you and me (government contract tax dollars), and now available to this racing effort for free. OK by me; lets see what we get.

By the end of this first meeting we had the starting of GREAT; Green Racing - Electric Auto Team. This team was indeed great, with over 40 years of EV building and racing experience: from We're It's, (Women's Electric Racing, Educational and International Team) Marianne Walpert, main organizer and veteran of four previous Phoenix electric races, to Bob Schneeveis' electric wheel barrow, shopping cart and of course the legendary Snowhite, electric race car. Not to be over looked is Otmar Ebenhoech, president of EVCL (Electric Vehicle Components Ltd.) and long time EV builder/racer who supplied his shop for the project, Mike Slominski of Mike's Auto Care, a gas and EV conversion shop, and Ken Garges, a previous member of the GM SunRayce team that won the World Solar Challenge in 1987.

The rest of GREAT is equally notable, including many local EVers and technical people. A true collage of individuals that could pull off this feat in the short time before the race in early March.

As with all good things, GREAT had its ups and downs and by the second meeting (12-27) things had changed a little. The car would not be available until the middle of January, which would give us a late start, and the NiCad batteries, which had been optimized for high cycle life, turned out to have lower energy density than lead acid batteries. This was actually not too bad. We would push to get the car sooner (which we did) and working with lead acid batteries was something we were all familiar with. Now if we could only give our competitors the NiCads, we would be set.

With Marianne's persistence, the car showed up on January 5th and the first work party was assembled on the afternoon of the 7th. I got there early and took a look at the car. We had our work "cut out" for us all right. The whole right side of the car's body panels was missing! As people began to arrive, we made room for the car in Otmar's shop and pushed it inside to start the tear down process.

The first thing to do was to make a few measurements and then remove everything we did not need. This meant that the interior, the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and almost everything that went with it, the radiator, exhaust system, gas tank, etc., must go. The work space reminded me of a bee hive on a hot summer day. Around the car was a swarm of worker bees, over, under, inside and out! By the time we were done the inside was stripped to bare metal and the engine had been untangled and was ready to pull. There was a large pile of debris behind the car that punctuated our efforts.

At this point the work party was adjourned and reassembled at a local pizza pub for food and a GREAT photo opportunity. Several design issues were discussed here and at following meetings: can we use the automatic transmission and how a can we reduce the weight of the car? The automatic transmission is heavier and maybe less efficient then a standard transmission. If we went with a standard transmission we would have to get one, and all the linkage for the shifting and clutch. This would take longer. Weight is always an issue in a race car. In our case the more weight we take out, the more batteries we can put in, as long as we stay within the stated gross vehicle weight for the car. The more batteries, the more range and the faster we can run the race.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In the week that followed, the engine and dashboard were pulled out and a few other odds and ends were removed: headlights, windows (to be replace with lighter lexan), seat belts and other nonessential items. The seat belts would be replaced with a five point harness as outlined by the rules for our class. These rules would dictate the basic safety features and minimum standards for the Stock Car class and would be consulted for every modification we made to the car.

Now that everything was out, it was time to put in what we needed. The first thing to be worked on was the mounting of the electric motor. The electric motor is smaller than the old ICE engine, which means that the old motor mounts must be adjusted to fit the new, silent electric motor. Bob had machined an adapter plate that mated the electric motor to the transmission, and after a few test fits and welding on a few new brackets, the motor was in.

We had decided to go with the automatic transmission (for now anyway) and Mike Slominski had taken on the task of figuring it out. The Saturn automatic transmission is electrically controlled - hey, we can do that. The hard part is to make it work without the "brain" that took into account car speed, RPM, load and a whole host of parameters that got removed when we took out the ICE. Mike buried his head in several service books and wiring diagrams and came up with the shift by switches idea. He started by tearing out all the unnecessary wiring and saving just what he would need in the way of wiring, fuse boxes, and relays, in order to make the transmission work. This also got rid of most of the wiring harness and its associated weight. He then installed a small switch panel that controlled the solenoids that shift the transmission. It was late one Saturday (1-27) night when he was ready to test it out. We jacked up the front end so the wheels would spin, filled the transmission with oil and connected the motor to a battery with some jumper cables to test it out.

There were the usual sparks as the cables were connected and the motor came to life. Mike worked the switches but nothing seemed to happen. We figured that there was not enough pressure in the transmission to make it work. Either we were low on transmission fluid or the motor needed more juice then just 12V to drive the transmission. After two trips to a gas station for fluid and using the some of the old fluid, we could finally see something on the dip stick. More power Scotty! We ended up using six, 6 volt batteries to supply the juice that we needed to make things work (36 volts). With eye goggles in place I connected the jumper cables to the motor and we were off. Mike ran though the gears and we all delighted in the fact that the car went nowhere, as the wheels spun in the air, but that the switches worked as planned. I took a picture of Mike, grinning as he worked the switches.

Batteries! Which one should we use? Who will sponsor us? Which ones can we get? How far can we go? Which one is best? It all comes down to batteries. Marianne and I had talked, and decided that we should pick a few from the ones we were looking at, and just go and buy one each to test. You can't be sure of the numbers that the battery manufacturers supply, so we would have to test them. Paul Bell had showed up Saturday (1-27) morning with two batteries to test. We all gathered around to see what might power the car. One battery was black on top and red on the sides. This matched the colors of the car, and almost had to be used for no other reason. The other battery had a built in battery tester, complete with different colored LEDs to indicate the state of charge. This was way cool as engineers (and others) get very excited over blinking LEDs. Well, I guess we would have to test them and find out which was best. As it turned out, and as most of us would have guessed, the heavier battery had the greatest amp-hour capacity. This was the black and red one. At least we would be color coordinated and this might help us pass the technical inspection.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As with any group, things don't always go smoothly. Andrew and I had worked nearly 14 hours that Saturday (1-27) retrofitting an old roll cage to fit in the car. This entailed much heavy metal work, but by 11:00 PM we had the old roll cage tack welded into place. The next day Bob looked at it and shook his head. "We would have been better off not using that old roll cage at all, and started from scratch." He then listed several good design features that could not be accommodated by the old roll cage. They all made good sense, but I was disappointed that all that work would have to be undone. I also did not want to tell Andrew, who had put in most of the work. So it goes. By the next meeting we (Andrew and I) were able to see the advantages of Bobs design and decided the old roll cage would come out. I asked Andrew if he wanted to take it out and he said "No", but that I could. So out it came.

Fitting batteries into a converted car is usually the hardest part: how many, and where. Sunday (1-28), Bob and I weighed the car, as best we could, with two bathroom scales, one wheel at a time. This information was crucial in deciding where the batteries would go. As part of the rules, and for optimum handling, we had to stay within the Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) of the original car. This was also true for the axle weights as well. Armed with this information, Bob figured out how many batteries we could put where, and what that would do to the weighting of the car. With this knowledge we could start to plan and build battery boxes, the next major step.

Thursday (2-1) nights have started to be a meeting night and so was this Thursday. As with most meetings half the people are working and half are meeting until we can get everyone together. The first item is usually sponsorship. Where are we with this? Quite a few contacts have been made, lots of interest, but no cash yet. I did get Vicor to supply us with DC to DC converters. I hope they get here on time. I got Lambda to say yes but then it turns out that we could not use their parts. Skip Barber School of Racing said no, someone else got to them first, but the local office will give us a break on a racing class. I have letters out to several other sources, a few of them could sponsor the whole project - $25,000. This is not that much really, but we got a late start and have only a month now before the race. This in not long enough to even get some parts, if that was the sponsorship. But we were hopeful.

On to the technical stuff, what needs to be done? Battery boxes and the roll cage are still the main labor intensive items. Marianne said Vince had some sponsorship from a sheet metal place. If we could get the battery box dimensions by Sunday we could get boxes next week. I was thinking the same way as Bob; we need battery box dimensions by tonight so we could build them over the weekend. Same with the roll cage. So Bob and I were at the shop until 11:30 designing battery boxes and the roll cage, so that material could be bought Friday and we would be able to work on building both items over the weekend. Just before we left, Bob asked, "So, do you think we will be working until 2:00 in the morning to finish this car?" I said "I hope not, if we can put in the time now, and get it running... ...But then again, it is Phoenix." We had both worked on several cars for the Phoenix race, and knew this is what it would take.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was raining Saturday (2-3) morning and I was off to a slow start. If it had been nice, I would have been tempted to get in a bike ride before heading over to the shop. Marianne called a little before 10:00 AM and asked that I open the shop since I was close by. She said she was making cookies, and would be late. I told her that I would cover for her any time she wanted to make cookies, and that the thought, (making cookies) had also crossed my mind.

Saturday turned out to be a noisy day. Bob had gotten the sheet metal for the battery boxes and scribed out where the corners had to be cut out before the metal was folded up into boxes. Arthur was assigned the task of cutting out the corners with a pneumatic nibbler since we did not have anything better. Bob worked on marking and then cutting out the floor where the battery boxes would go. A sawzall and cut off wheel were the tools of choice, both quite loud. By the time Bob was done, there was a huge gaping hole where the back seat had been. Last Thursday, Dan had cut the trunk out, so the car was looking rather airy and much like a Flintstone's car.

The rules state "The dash panel itself shall not be modified in any way other than as necessary for roll cage installation." This means that the roll cage has to be made such that we can remove as much of the dash as possible. Arthur and I attacked the dash; our goal was to remove the metal tube that held up the dash and acted as a heater vent. What was left of the dash would then be mounted to part of the roll cage later. The sawzall cut though the thin sheet metal with amazing ease. Zip, zap and that metal dash support was out and nine pounds was removed from the car!

By Sunday (2-4), the word about the cookies must have gotten out as we had a bigger crew this day. Paul worked on the motor, Arthur and Bob were bending tubing for the roll cage, Mike worked on the lights and horn, and Shawn and I worked on the footings for the roll cage. It was quite the busy crew. Any more than this and we would spend more time tripping over each other than getting work done. By the end of this day we had the two main side tubes of the roll cage, from front to back, tack welded in place, along with the footings to support it. Andrew had arranged with his work place to use the sheet metal brake to bend up the battery boxes the next evening. Bob had measurements for the cross member pieces of the roll cage so that he could start cutting. All in all, we had a very productive weekend and a good start into working the evenings of the upcoming week.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Monday (2-5) Bob and Andrew folded up the battery boxes as best they could with a short metal brake. Good enough; Bob and I were able to tack-weld two of the boxes in place later that evening. By Thursday all the boxes were tacked in place and the other main parts of the roll cage were also in place. Friday (2-9) I checked the dimensions of the middle two boxes to make sure we had it right; wrong! I called Bob and confirmed the size of the batteries we thought we were using. I then cut some wood to match this size, plus a little more for good measure. The wooden pieces gave me something solid to check the boxes with. We decided the fix was to move the boxes forward about an inch. I marked a line and started cutting with the sawzall. I also had to move forward the back roll cage bars that connected to these boxes. Always put your tack welds where they can be easily cut off! I spent half an hour trying to cut one weld loose.

Saturday morning (2-10) I came in to find the sawzall left in the middle of another 1 inch cut in front of the battery boxes. I guess Bob figured it should go another inch forward. This would be the third time the roll cage was "adjusted". We figured the third time was the "charm", and prayed that we would not have to move it again.

The weekend crew came in and a lot more got done. I spent the next two days and then two evenings welding in the boxes and the roll cage. There is a lot of prep work that goes into welding. Boxes had to be knocked into place, paint had to be scraped off and most of all, the "Weld Not" had to be removed. "Weld Not" is the putty like stuff that was used to cover the metal seams to make them water tight. There was no way to weld over this stuff. It would smoke and burn, and fill the shop with a noxious smell.

Paul had been working on battery sponsorship from American Battery in Hayward. Jim, the owner there, had served many EV owners in the area quite well, and we figured he would be interested in helping us out. Paul was trying to work a deal with Jim for 30 of the red and black batteries we had tested earlier. By this time, a third battery had entered the testing competition and weighed in with the same energy density as the red and black one, but was six lbs lighter. This meant that for the same weight in batteries we could get a higher voltage string, using the lighter battery. This battery was from Interstate Battery: the label said "Work-aholic". This was that the battery for us! Another nice thing about this battery was the terminals were well suited for copper bus bars as battery interconnects.

We told Paul that the "work-aholic" was the battery that we wanted. He said he had already asked Jim for the other ones, and that he did not want to change things in the middle of this deal, afraid that we might loose sponsorship altogether. Bob said that Jim may deal with many different batteries and that this may not be a problem. Paul said he would try to change it, and the next day said that Jim had no problem with that. Jim had the same battery but it did not have an Interstate sticker on it. He could give stickers if we wanted. As it turns out, many batteries are the same battery, only the sticker is different. We planned to get 30 batteries so that we would have 22 to 24 good ones to work with. Ten to 20 percent of a large order of batteries can be poor performers. We did not want to take this chance and have to swap out weak batteries at the last minute to fill in the main battery pack.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I took off a little early Friday (2-16) afternoon to pick up batteries from American battery in Hayward. I had talked my house mate George, into doing the same so we could use his truck for the pick up. When we got there Jim assured us that the batteries he was giving us, although they looked different, were the same battery. Hmmm... When Bob saw the "same batteries" he knew we had to test them to make sure.

Saturday (2-17) I worked on welding in the rest of the roll cage (not compete yet) and the remainder of the battery boxes. Paul worked on getting the dash back in place, while Arthur made the necessary brackets. Vince showed up with body panels for the right side of the car. Now all we needed was the front and rear bumper covers, and some red paint.

Sunday we got the emergency brake back in and put the brake lines back in place. I spent some time figuring out the cable routing and working on putting dividers in the back two battery boxes for extra strength. Paul got some spray paint from Orchard Supply Hardware that looked just like Saturn red. Lucky for us. That evening was devoted to placing the driver's seat in the car. Bob had made the acquaintance of a NASCAR driver from Half Moon Bay. There were several advantages with going with this driver. She was light, only 100 lbs. in racing gear. She was good in her class and she wanted to drive and had a license. We would have to educate her about electric's and what our strategy would be.

Kimberly (the driver) showed up Sunday night with a crew of about three or four and they worked with Bob to get the seat in place. The trick to having this many people in the shop and getting your work done is to not stop and talk. Keep going and do what you can. This did not work too well and most of what we did was to get the seat in place, with a lot of talking. We did learn some things from Kimberly's crew though. The seat should be firmly connected to the driver's side roll cage and less firmly connected on the right side to the car frame. That way, if there is a side collision, the roll cage and seat will be moved into the car together as the right side of the driver's seat comes loose from the car. If the right side were firmly tied down the driver would be squished on a side impact.

So the batteries that we got from Jim did not test out very well. It is getting very late in the game to still be trying to get batteries. The one we liked best was the "Work-aholic" from Interstate. Tuesday I put some stiffening supports in the back battery box. Wednesday (2-21) I dropped by the shop and saw Batteries! The "Work-aholics" were there. All Right! I talked to Bob later that evening about how little time there was left and he said "Yeah, it will take some vacation days to get it done." This was not what I wanted to hear.

We had the dedicated people on Thursday evening (2-22). I worked on putting a separator in the middle battery box. Paul worked on body panels, Bob worked on the battery dump pack for quick charging, and Andrew worked on windows. I got the rest of the battery box ready to paint first thing the next morning before the regular shop people got there. This Friday I had off so I got to the shop early and painted the battery boxes. The weather was nice that day so I took a long lunch and got in an hour bike ride.

After 5:00 PM that evening, people started to roll in. I started to put the batteries in the battery boxes. This was a satisfying feeling as the batteries were placed in the boxes for the last time. There was a sense of completeness as the car received its long awaited energy source. The car also got very heavy as the 1300 plus pounds of batteries were lowered into place. With the batteries in place we could now make the copper bus bars that connected them together and complete the routing of the high voltage cabling. Ken wired in a battery monitor system that he had been building; the circuit board for this system still needed some work. Ventilating fans for the battery boxes were mounted into place and lot of other work was done: bumpers, windows and more.

At one point, Otmar wanted to know if he should stay late and finish testing the controller we would use for the car, or could he keep a date he had made for that evening. Both Bob and I said that we had canceled any plans that we had had, and that if all went well, we could autocross the car the next day (Saturday). Otmar was not very happy with this but ended up staying until 3:30 or 4:00 AM working on the car, trying to get the car ready to run.

The sun got me up the next (same) morning around 9:00 AM, and Ken, who had stayed at my house that night (morning), and I got to the shop around 10:00 AM before anyone else. This day was not so productive as the previous days and we decided to finish the car for the Phoenix race and not worry about or get distracted by autocross possibilities.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Events become blurry at this point. With so many long days and late nights/early mornings (2 to 4 AM), I am not sure what got done when and by whom. I do remember some dinner time conversation we had that evening. We were tired but in good enough spirits. Now Bob is a practical man, and of reasonable politics, so when he asked Otmar if he had a gun, we were wondering what was up. Otmar said "No." To this Bob replied, "You will need a gun to shoot the horse." Otmar: "To shoot the horse?"
Bob, nodding his head: "To shoot the horse you will get when you trade the drill press for it."
It took us a while to get it, but soon we were roaring with laughter. Although the drill press was a useful tool, it was not in the best shape. The chuck key did not fit very well, the table was hard to move up and down, and now the return spring was broken so that the drill spindle would not return to the top of its travel. This was especially amusing to me because I had lent the drill press to Otmar while I was storing it for a friend of mine. I guess I was more tired than I thought.

After the bus bars were ready and the cabling was all laid out, several people asked if we should connect it all up. I said no. We don't need that kind of potential voltage lying around if we are not ready to seal up the battery boxes and run the car. At 264 volts DC, this was too much to put in place if we were not ready to use it, and we still had other things to do.

Dan came in and worked on the suspension. With all the batteries in, the car was riding very low. Dan got some old springs from Bob and with a torch and hand tools, hammered out some new springs that would raise the car back to near its normal ride height. Dan had done this type of thing before and was done in about three hours.

(Sunday 2-25) The DC to DC converters were the next item to be worked on. The DC to DC converters supply the car with the 12 volt power to drive the 12 volt system on the car, lights, accessories, etc. The DC to DC converters convert the high voltage battery pack power to 12 volts, and replace the alternator and battery in a gas- powered car. We actually got two sponsors for the DC to DC converters and chose Vicor, because they had a wide input range, which we would need, since we were running a high voltage pack. Several people had worked on the DC to DC converters and by the time I got to them, they certainly looked that way. I made an adjustment circuit to control the output voltage, and then made a back cover to cover all the high voltage connections that looked like spaghetti.

I had arranged to take Monday (2-26) off and work on the car. I spent most of the day wiring in all the gauges and meters that would let us know how the car was doing and what the energy usage was. This included battery volts and amps, motor voltage (similar to a tachometer for a gas car), motor bush temp. and an E-Meter that would tell us amp-hours and kilowatts used. This was another string of spaghetti that started in the engine compartment and went up to the dash. We had some trouble with the battery volt meter so we left it out, since the E-Meter also had a battery volt setting we could use.

We had a good crew in that evening, as we were down to the wire. The question from the weekend people was, "So is the car running yet?" No, it is not. The "where were you?", was implied but I tried not to let it show. I did not want to turn anyone off. We needed all the help we could get. I had worked four days straight on the car, with long nights/early mornings and the prospect of going to "Work" at 7:00 AM was not a pretty one. I got in late (8:30) and asked my supervisor if I could take the afternoon off; the car was not finished yet and we wanted to leave tomorrow. He said yes and I got to the shop some time after 1:00 PM.

Bob had completed his testing of how the quick charge would work and found that there would be a large initial current surge as the quick charge started. The hottest part of the quick charge circuit was the 1" X 1/8" copper bus bars. We decided that we would need to double the bus bars to keep things safe, if we were going to try to get back 60% of our charge in 3 to 4 minutes.

So we cut up some more copper Otmar had around the shop and stacked one bus bar on the other. This time we were ready to make all the connections. All the battery terminals were brushed clean with a wire brush and the copper bus bars were sanded to a shinny copper color. All the high power connections had to be clean and tight. A dirty or loose connection could mean a melted battery terminal or worse, and at high currents, nobody wanted to find out what "or worse" might mean. A conductive anticorrosive paste was put between the battery terminals and the copper bars before the terminal bolts were tightened down. Mike checked the bolts I had tightened as I checked the ones that Marianne had done.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was 1:00 AM when we got to connecting the last battery connections. I wondered why it was always a late hour like this when you get the high voltage wired in and ready to test. There was a small spark as the battery plus connection was made, but no smoke so we took note of this and continued. Mike got a shock off Battery plus and the car chassis, which was not good. We got a meter out and soon found that the battery minus was somehow connected to the chassis. We disconnected the meters that went to the battery minus and soon found that the E-Meter was the culprit. Some of the wires that went to the E-Meter were frayed at the connection to the E-Meter. We cleaned these up and the battery pack was now isolated from the car chassis as it should be.

We tested the 12 volt system first, the horn, tail lights, battery ventilation fans, etc., and everything worked fine. The car was jacked up to test the controller and drive train. Otmar had left instructions on how to test the controller and we proceeded: 1) DC to DC converter on.
2) Turn on the pre-charge to charge up the capacitors in the controller.
3) Watch the battery voltage rise on the E-Meter as the caps are charged.
4) When the caps are charged with the high voltage still off, hit the accelerator and see if the motor lurches. The energy stored in the caps should be enough to make the motor move.
Nothing.
Since there was no smoke, I tried turning on the high voltage and hitting the accelerator. Maybe the transmission was dragging the motor down.
Still nothing. Damn!

Well maybe there was a key switch input that was missing or something. I knew that Otmar had tested the snot out of this controller on the bench and had been able to drive 600 amps into a test load: a 1/2" X 1/8" X 36" piece of iron glowing a dull red. There must be something that was not hooked up on the car that was hooked up on the bench.

Andrew had been working on the last part of the roll cage. We had left off the door bars so that we could get in and out of the car to work on it. Now it was time to weld them in place. We looked all over the shop and found all the bars except one. Where could it be? I had remembered that Clare had come by several days ago and had been asking about extra stock for her roll cage (a 914 porsche). We surmised that she must have taken the missing roll bar piece. Clare had left for Phoenix that morning and was supposed to be in LA that night. We asked Mike if he had seen it in his shop where he was working on Clare's car. With no further descriptions Mike drew out the missing roll bar. We called down to LA and left a message. Mike went back to his shop to look for the missing link. We were not happy with this missing link. Mike came back empty handed and the call from LA said that the missing piece was in Santa Cruz locked in a trailer. The logic of this we could not understand. Andrew got some more roll cage stock from Bob's house and proceeded to make a new piece.

It was now 3:00 AM Wednesday (2-28) morning. Andrew had just finished welding in the new roll cage part that he had made, and I was as far as I could get with the controller. If this had been a movie script I would have fixed the controller and Andrew and I would have taken the car out for a spin. But this was not the case, and we made a long list of the items still to be done. The list ended with "Shoot the drill press." This would save us the trouble of dealing with a dead horse.

Somehow I got to work a little earlier today (Wed. 2-28). My supervisor got confused on the days I would be taking off and thought that I was not going to be in today. I should have left then but instead went in to see him. He was telling me about all this new work that was lined up and I said that I might take the afternoon off again. I got home about 3:00 PM and called over to the shop. Otmar answered and said they were just taking the car out for a spin. He had found the problem and everything seemed to be working! I said I was on my way over!

When I got there, the car was on a flat bed trailer that Andrew had arranged for our use, and Otmar was trying to pull it out of the shop through a muddy bog that had developed with all the rain we recently had. Bob bet Otmar a pitcher of beer at a local brew pub that he could not get the car out on the first try. Otmar bet Bob he could do it, and that Bob would have to buy a pitcher of beer in Phoenix. Well, Bob lost the bet and we soon were ready for the first test run. Otmar got in the car and Bob and I followed in Bob's VW bus. The car took off like a shot and could squeal the tires, on a wet road anyway. At least it could outrun a VW bus! Otmar said he could not get 3rd gear. Oh well, I guess we will have to fix it in Phoenix; I know we had it working earlier.

We took the car over to my house since Otmar's driveway was so muddy. We had to put on the battery box cover and install a second bulkhead that went between the battery boxes and the driver, as required by the rules if the driver was to stay in the car during quick charging. We also had to finish the charger wiring. Andrew, Otmar and I finished up these jobs while Bob and others cleaned up the shop, got the tools packed up and got the trailer rigged for lights. It was 12:30 or 1:00 AM Thursday (2-29) morning before the truck and trailer were loaded and ready to go.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This was the time I was waiting for. The car was on its way and it wasn't even that late. I packed up for my 7:30 AM flight and went to bed. 5:30 AM, the alarm went off. I have never been so groggy before. I hoped that I had packed everything because there was no way that I would remember it now. I was worried about getting to the airport without falling asleep. All went well enough and by noon, Arizona time, I had met Dale and Greg at the Phoenix airport and was headed to the hotel. We checked into the hotel and then went off to get registered for the race. I saw many familiar faces at registration and one entrant asked: "So you are the ones with the Saturn and a million dollars of NiCad batteries." "Ah, yeah that's us," I said. Otmar had kept outsiders guessing about what we were really up to and I guessed it worked.

Bob and Otmar got in about 6:30 that evening after driving straight through. We all went out to dinner and then Bob and Otmar crashed out. I went off to find Mike; we had to work on 3rd gear. We got the car off the trailer and started to check it out. There was a loud scraping noise from both front wheels on the first test run and 3rd did not work. We checked the voltage to all the solenoids in the transmission, and as long as we got the switches right, everything seemed to work. We decided there was a lose plug and maybe a faulty ground wire. We fixed both and also added more transmission fluid. The noise from the front wheels was from bent brake guards. A hammer fixed this up just fine. We took it out for another run. Mike and Greg were in the Saturn, Greg holding a flashlight so Mike could see the gauges, while Dale, Henry and I were in the chase car. The Saturn had no lights so the chase car drove on the side so Mike could see where he was going.

We ran the car though the paces. We found the "red line" for second gear. There was a loud bang that sounded like a back fire. This can happen in a high voltage motor when the motor voltage gets too high and an arc happens between the brushes and the motor housing. Otmar had noticed this on the first test run, and had put a red mark on the motor volt meter to indicate "red line". This line was indeed in the right place. Mike was careful not to "test" this limit any more and we finished the testing. The car did very well. It could scratch off the line, and going into second gear. Our "test track" was rather short and the highest speed we got was 65. Mike said there was plenty of accelerator left at that speed so we were quite happy. It looked as if we had a race car after all, and none to soon.

We took the car back to the hotel and hooked it up to the chargers. We were lucky that the rooms had air conditioning that ran off 220 volts AC and had the same connector as our chargers. We ran one charger from our room and one from Mikes room on the next floor above us. It was another early night - only 2:00 AM - not too bad except that the "air conditioning" ran all night.

The next day (Friday 3-1) we wanted to go through the technical inspection as early as possible so that we could make the 10:00 AM practice session. This would work only if everything passed the inspection which was unlikely. I got the car in the tech. inspection line as soon as I could but there were already several cars in front of us. Finally they got to us:
Team name?
"GREAT."
"Driver?"
"Kimberly Myers."
"Car number?"
"We were #1 but we would like to change it to 65." "OK...."
And so it went.

Then they got to the electrical inspection. The first thing they checked for was any short from the car chassis to the high voltage battery pack. To our surprise their tester smoked! This indicated a short from battery + to the chassis. Not good! I thought that we fixed this in the shop a couple of days ago. The tech. guys asked us if we were using an E-Meter and said that they had seen problems with this. We said yes, but that we had checked this and it seemed to be right. Oh well, back to the "garage" area. We had to fix this as soon as possible. With rubber gloves and volt meter in hand, I started to try to track down the short. We checked out the E-Meter and it did not seem to be the problem.

Otmar came by and took over the hunt for the short, as he was more familiar with this kind of debugging than I. Otmar soon had it isolated to the motor. The suspected culprit was the "back firing" that had happened during testing. Some of the arcing could have left a slightly conductive "trail" or other damage and caused the short we were looking for. Otmar went into hyper mode and with several other team members, had the motor completely out and apart within an hour. He soon found that the problem was in the field windings. He cleaned up the armature and replaced the brush housing with another brush housing from a spare motor we had brought.

After all was said and done, the motor was back in the car and there were no shorts to the chassis. I put the E-Meter back in place and we were ready for another technical inspection that afternoon. This time things went much better. All we had to do was to add some more foam padding to the roll bar and tidy up a few wires, tape the tail lights and straighten out the paper work. We made it through tech. just in time to run the qualifying laps. Hooray! This was the first time our driver, Kimberly, had a chance to drive the car. Kimberly was a little nervous about driving the car for the first time and having to qualify, but what could we do? We told her to just go out there and have fun. We were quite pleased with the way Kimberly drove the car. We could see that she was pushing it and finding the limits of the car in the corners. GREAT! If we had any doubts about her driving ability, they were gone now. All she had to get used to was watching the gauges and shifting by switches.

We placed 3rd in the qualifying laps. Just about where we wanted to be. One thing we did notice was that the back end of the car was too high. We had debated whether or not to change this before we got to Phoenix. We wanted to see how the car drove before we changed anything. Well, now we knew, and it had to come down. Otmar again went into hyper mode with the help of other team members and got to work on cutting one coil off each rear spring. This would lower the car by about an inch, which is what we guessed would be right. Sparks flew into the darkening night sky as the last cuts were made and the springs were tie-wrapped into place. We were lucky that the Drag races were that night, otherwise we would have been kicked out before we were done. As it was, we finished up in time to get the car over to the charging area and plugged in for the night, and still saw most of the Drag races.

The work was not over. On the qualifying run, the motor was too hot. Some kind of ducting and a blower fan would have to be set up to help cool the motor. After dinner that night, we wandered around a Walmart, looking for material that would be suitable to build the ducting we would need to cool the motor. Two plastic trays and an RV drainage hose caught our eyes and the mission was accomplished.

Meanwhile back at the ranch..., Marianne, Bob and Arthur were playing fetch for the quick charge battery pack. This entailed going into town and picking up 40 batteries; 2,400 lbs. of lead along with the wire and crimps that would make up all the interconnects. That night there was going to be a stripping and crimping party. Lots of fun! Come on down to room 110 at the end of the hallway. I decided that I would be more useful holding down the Jacuzzi than hammering on some crimp lugs, so I did my stripping out by the pool side. It was about 1:00 AM when the hotel manager came around to the window where Arthur was working and asked that the hammering stop. Must have been a complaint from one of the non-racing patrons.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Saturday (3-2) We got to the track a little after 9:00 AM. The first order of business was to check on the car and see if it had gotten a full charge and make sure no breakers had flipped in the middle of the night. One of the chargers had tripped but the car was almost full up. After about a half hour the car was topped off and we were ready to go to work. Andrew worked on the ducting and I was working on a make-shift "ice box" that would hold dry ice in front of the blower that would blow cool air into the motor. Greg worked on rewiring the switches so that we could get 3rd and 4th gear instead of 2nd and 3rd. Dale and some other folks were working on the temperature gauge and the speedometer. We got everything working before the race except the speedometer and put the car into the charging area to top it off right before the race started.

Today's race was the "sprint" race. It was 40k (23 miles), so most of the cars did not have to worry about energy management. Just go out there and do it! And that's what we planned to do. The change in gears was to help keep away from the red line and to hopefully enable the motor to run cooler. We were late to the starting line and lost our 3rd place start. This did not make too much difference as we were more limited by motor temperature than by anything else.

And the race was off! Rodrick was taken out on the first corner as he spun out and was hit by Tom Sneva. Dave Cloud and #13 were in the lead most of the time with the exception of the Aerovironment car, which was running in a different class. As I mentioned we were limited by motor temperature and not by "juice". We began to move up in the race as the other cars began to slow down. The red Karmanghia lost a rear wheel and was out of the race. One other car had some kind of trouble and was out. By the time the first car finished the 20 laps, thus ending the race, we were in 3rd place. Not too bad, but we could have done better if the motor was not too hot.

That night we had a strategy meeting and tossed around a lot of ideas. Sundays race was the long race, and to win it, one would have to be very energy conscious and drive by the numbers. Kimberly had very consistent lap times, this would serve us well in Sundays race. We planned to do a quick charge about 2/3rds of the way into the race. Since we would be in the pits for about six minutes quick charging, we would have to run a little faster than the rest of the cars. On the basis of the energy numbers collected that day, it looked as though we had a good chance. All we had to do was to keep the motor cool and we would be set for tomorrow.

The meeting broke up and so did the group as each went off to dinner at various places. The group needed some time apart. I ended up walking next door to dinner with Bob and Ken. I was getting a little nervous about the quick charge as Bob asked many of the long time EV people we ran into about it. Had they done this before and what would they do if something went wrong? Nobody had done a quick charge quite like this and we could only guess and make up scenarios about what might go wrong. What if you started an arc some place? How do you stop a high current 300 volt DC arc?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The next morning I checked on the car and reset the breakers as we had done the day before. We had some work to do that morning. Since we were driving "by the numbers" we had to wire in another meter and we had to do something about the motor cooling. We decided to abandoned the "ice box" and go for ducting that came from the front of the car. This would increase the air flow to the motor as the intake would be in a high pressure area. We also would mount the transmission radiator in front for the same reason. We packed the motor in dry ice as we worked on the other parts of the car. This should give us a little extra cooling. By the time we were done with the ducting, the car looked as if it had a black eye on one side and was winking on the other. We had put the transmission radiator where the left head light cover had been, and had cut out the right head cover to make an intake duct for the motor. From an old cigarette commercial, it looked as if we would rather fight than switch.

We wired in at least three more meters: battery voltage, 12 volt auxiliary voltage, and battery temp. This would allow us to have several ways to know what was happening with the car. The battery temperature meter was necessary for the quick charge. Batteries heat up when charged that quickly and the quick charge would end when we had transferred enough energy or when the batteries got too hot. Bob had run the quick charge battery pack, which was on the trailer that we had used to haul the car on, through the technical inspection the day before. It had passed, but Dave, the battery guy, was not very happy about it. Dave had stayed up Saturday night and found a few things that he wanted to talk to Bob about.

We finished up work on the car soon enough to put it in the charging area for about an hour to top it off. During this time Marianne had a GREAT meeting where we assign tasks for the quick charging and who would time each of the other cars in the race so we would know where we stood as the race progressed. Andrew would be the "plug man". He would plug in the quick charge pack and unplug it when done or if anything went wrong. I was the battery temperature monitor. I would monitor the battery temperature and yell out mark every 15 seconds. Bob, who was controlling the quick charge battery pack and the flow of energy to the car, would read out battery voltage and current on my mark. Olaf and Marianne would calculate the amount of energy the car was receiving based on the numbers that Bob was giving them, and let Bob know when we had enough juice to finish the race. Andrew, Bob and I were all wearing gloves and eye protection as required by the rules when working with this much power.

After the meeting we did a dry run of the quick charge procedure and then got the car out of the charging area. We left enough time so that we were not too rushed and so that Kimberly could suit up in a leisurely fashion. I pulled the safety cover off the quick charging port on the car and placed a single piece of duct tape over the hood access port to keep the dust out. This was it! We rolled out of the garage and into the starting line up. I hurried over to the hot pit where we were set up for the quick charge and the tracking of the other cars. Bob and Dave were still talking battery safety. There had better not be anything wrong. It was too late in the game to change the rules or disqualify the charging system; we could not pull too many more rabbits out of the old racing hat.

Dave said we had to have the driver get out of the car during charging. This would waste too much time and we had designed the car, according to the rules, so that the driver did not have to get out. We had installed extra bulk heads between the driver and the battery boxes for just that reason. Bob, having gained Dave's confidence through their various inspections, carefully explained to Dave what we had done. Mean while, on the other side of the track, where the cars were lining up, our car was missing a sticker that said "Driver OK". This was the sticker that would tell the race officials that Kimberly could stay in the car during charging. This is the sticker that Dave would have to give us. He finally said yes, and I ran the sticker around the track to the starting lineup. That was the last rabbit left!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The cars lined up just before the start/finish line in order of their class and finishes the day before. This would be a rolling start: after one slow lap, if the cars were all in place the white flag would come down and the race would start. As the cars came around for the flag, Tom Sneva was out of place and the cars had to do another lap. Tom is too good a driver to let this happen by mistake, so we were wondering how this might benefit him. On the second time around the flag came down and the race was off! The cars were moving slower this time, except for the cars that were quick charging. The quick charging cars had to make up laps for the time they would be off the track charging.

Kimberly was making steady progress through the field of cars on the first couple of laps and then it happened. Andrew, also "radio man", heard from Kimberly that the car was smoking! There was smoke coming out from under the hood. Well, there was not much we could do. Andrew instructed her to pull over and just how to turn off the car and what meters to check. It was any body's guess what happened. Most thought it was the controller; as Bob had said "If you let the smoke out of the little black parts in the controller, it won't work any more." It could also be the motor; it had taken a beating over the last couple of days and maybe its time was up. Or it could be something else we had not thought of. In any event, we were out of the race, and it was disappointing to say the least.

Andrew asked Kimberly if she wanted to get out of the car and she said she was happy to stay there. She had cool air blowing through her helmet and something cool to drink so she watched the race from the car. But the rest of the race went on. Tom Sneva was busy trying to lap the rest of the cars as many times as he could so that he would not be too far behind after his quick charging. His competition, the Airovironment car, which had the most energy on board of any car out there, was setting a fast pace that few chose to try to match. The real race was, however, between Dave Cloud's number 44, and Gary Jackson of Little Guy racing, number 41. Both of these cars were packed to the gills with batteries and were somehow still under the gross vehicle weight of their cars. They were in for the long haul and had the juice to do it.

The only other cars that were likely to challenge them, besides us, if we hadn't dropped out, was Rick Rodrick of Wild Evolutions, driving a Ford Taurus and Marianne Chapman driving Clare Bell's number 13, a red Porsche running the advanced lead acid Horizon batteries. As the race went on, it was clear that it was between number 44 and 41. Number 44, Cloud's car, had won the short race the day before so his driver, Gay Gabrielle, had proven he could get around the track. Number 41 had won the long race last year, with Dave coming second, so this proved to be quite the match up. We were now rooting for Dave as many of us had worked on his car the year before.

Number 41 was in the lead for most of the race until the third to last lap, when he spun out and hit the wall on the tower corner right in front of the grand stand! This put 44 in the lead at just about the right time and 41 could not catch up, and ended up taking second in the street stock race. The Airovironment car won the race over all in the super stock, running with Nickel metal-hydride batteries. Tom Sneva had taken too long to do his "quick" charge and came in behind 44 and 41; though he did run the fastest lap of any car that race. Rodrick was third with Marianne Chapman fourth. In general a good race, except that we were not in it.

After all the other cars were off the track, our car, number 65, was towed off the track. We pushed it up on the lawn overlooking the track by the "garage" area and took photos for our sponsors. We finally took the hood off and checked to see what had smoked. In looking around and sniffing things over, it seemed to be the motor. Oh well, that's racing. We never got to try the quick charge. Bob was convinced that it would have worked. He had done all the tests and wanted to see it in action. Dave, the battery guy, was relieved, and I was a little of both. It wasn't until after the car got home and Otmar had taken apart the motor that we knew the real story. Some of the plastic ducting around the motor had been sucked into the motor and started to smoke and burn.

Well, in the end we all agreed on one thing, and that was that we were going to take sometime off, and move the "shoot the drill press" item to the top of the to do list.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
David Coale was the Technical Coordinator or the Public Relations person for this GREAT effort, depending on which GREAT sponsorship proposal you read.

EVs in the News

Main Menu

dcoale@wdl.lmco.com                   ___o\____
(408) 473-6481 (w)              =)----/()_____()\
(415) 493-4503 (h)