New year, renewed effort…

Met with David Ratliff, he based in Loganville, GA about 15 miles from my house. He has a very nice conversion which he has been driving for about 3 years and is working on a ground up E-trike – V.cool.

Picked David’s brain about my selection of components, he had the following recommendations and suggestions based on his experience:

Motor – Net Gain Wrap 9 good choice for the bus, nice motor good reviews – plenty of power.

Controller – David mentioned Logisystems (formally golf cart controller maker), started a range of “Curtis replacements” about 2x power, same price, with future support. I had previous thought Curtis over Kelly from a keep it simple thought. The more reviews I see about Kelly and initial good reviews about Logisystems. So I leaning towards the 144-156v 750A spec unit. The price is still reasonable and I have option adding an extra battery or two in the future…

Charger – David has the Zivan NG 3, his only comment was it not field reprogrammable and you are stuck with output voltage and battery technology. He said that the plug and play then forget was a nice feature. He has just brought Manzanita Micro PCF 30. This is a universal charger, both voltage and battery type. Priced above the Zivan and others but for the ability to accept any voltage 60-250 at the input and switch battery technology and packet voltage in the future (without return to supplier for configuration) make it worthwhile investment.

The only problem now is 20, 30 or 50Amp sizing… the price follows the amp with a fairly linear relationship. 20A or 30A is probably best, since most of the time I will on my 220V at home, and when away I could only grab 10-15A from a friends outlet anyway… So for extra fast charging at home is $500 worth it? Don’t have to make that call just yet..

Safety features:

David also had a manual disconnect – much as I had thought about earlier, one nice enhancement was connecting it to pull cord in the car, so you could from the drivers seat pull on the cable and throw the manual disconnect – Nice safety enhancement.

Extra safety feature not considered was an inertia kill switch, so in the event of an impact the contactor circuit is broken – again good safe practice worth following.

One item I hadn’t put on the list yet but definitely worth adding is a charger interlock, so the bus cannot be driven with the charger connected – for the slow brain mornings.. 🙂