BMS Display

I mounted the display/control unit on the stock cup holder where I can easily see it. A couple of screws to lock the cup holder in place and some sticky back Velcro did the trick (yes, it was crooked when I took the picture).
With everything hooked up it was time to see how it all worked. First I charged the pack for 10 minutes and monitored the voltages as they crept up to about 3.5V each. Then it was time to turn the key. I only drove it around the parking lot because the cells have not been brought up to full charge yet, but everything works fine. The car does feel lighter with 500 pounds less in batteries.

All Hooked Up

It's been a while since my last post. Two driving trips to L.A. this month and being way over loaded at work has meant no time to tinker with the battery swap. But yesterday I took a day off and finished hooking everything up. I had a local expert check everything before I made the final connection. I still need to zip-tie lots of wires, put better covers on a few adjacent terminals, and tidy up the wire groups, but I figured I'd wait until I was sure everything worked before adding those final touches.

The Front Box

This was the simplest layout I found for the front battery box. I wanted to keep the higher voltage connections separated but always seemed to wind up with them closer than I wanted. I even tried reversing the cell orientation in two of the 4-packs but it didn't help. I'll just have to be extra careful to cover the terminals and not drop a wrench :-). The main negative cable hooks to cell #1 in the upper left area. I still need to neatly zip-tie the little wires and shield the big ones with plastic insulation, but you get the idea what it will look like when it's done.