It has been an interesting year. Gas prices soaring then falling, housing bubble, the bailout fiasco, hydrogen generators installed on vehicles making HHO from water by electrolysis, elections, recession and the return and coming out of the electric car.
I thing about history from the 1890’s to the 1910’s when the electric car looked like it might become the power source of choice, from the CitiCar of the 1970’s, the 1990’s California Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, GM EV1, Toyota’s RAV4 EV, Ford RangerEV, the hybrid Toyota’s Prius and now possible plugin electric hybrids like the Chevy Volt.

As far as myself…..
I have been working of a few projects on the Saturn this Christmas – New Years holidays.

• —Tachometer, I purchased a speed sensor and magnet ring from www.EVParts.com . First I tried to run the sensor directly to the instrument cluster. Then I ran the 3 wires,

1. to ground,
2.a five volt power signal (used to go to the TPS (throttle position switch) and
3. the yellow and or purple crankshaft position sensor wires that go to the PCM.

tach speed sensor and ring

–Still the little needle did not even tremble. So I used my Snapon Vantage graphing voltmeter and saw no signal wave at all coming out of the sensor no matter how it was wired up. Usually even passing a magnet by hand across the face of a pickup hall effect switch will give me a low voltage (1 volt) wave, but nothing. The part # at EVParts is IN2551 is a 720-12RL Westach item with 3 wires.
The resistance between the green and red is 10K ohms. resistance between red and black
64K and green to black 74k ohms. I believe the part is defective. I emailed EVParts to get this one warrantied but they must be off this week. So when I do get the tach working I will journal and share all the details then.

TV Interview

TV Interview Plugging up

TV interview The local Channel 7 WBBJ news interviewed the SS Saturn and I. Jonquil Newland asked me a lot of questions like why?, how much?, how long did it take?, how does it work? She videos me opening the hood, me plugging up the charger, the EV emblems, 144 Volt emblems, inside talking and driving and a couple of drive pasts. Good interview positive towards EV’s. Hope to get a copy of the video and post it in this journal.

–At Work, Lynn Auto Repair, an AC 120 volt electric outlet was installed on the outside of the building to charge the Saturn. A couple of days later I had to run some new wiring because some of the old wiring, that had gone to an old air conditioning unit, shorted out.

— Working on wiring diagrams some more. I need to record all the wiring I added to the vehicle. I earlier posted the LARGE cable 144 volt schemetic and basic layout location. But I need to show the smaller 144 volt wiring and the added 12 volt stuff. A year from now I will not remember where all these feeds are going.

–Battery Charger FAILED. The Quick Charger brand, OP-144-8 quit charging the pack.
It has worked fine (does take a little long when the pack is discharged and it is cold)
until now. Drove to work and plugged in, and charger blinks red to green and shows 0
on the display. It is set at F2, d2, r1. I checked the 2 DC wires with an ohm meter and
voltmeter and they are connected and good. I checked the input AC voltage and it is 125
VAC. I believe the charger has gone caput.

I cannot drive it very far until I get another charger. I must drive home to get my gas
burner truck. Need quickest way to get it back on the road?
I have planned on getting a dual 240-120 Quick Charger replacement but if that takes a
while I’ll just get this unit warrantied and buy the other later.
I emailed this info to EVAmerica and the owner Bob emailed back the next day this……

My first reaction is blinking red to green indicates reverse polarity on the
connection. Did you check the polarity on the two connections. Did you
change anything recently?

But then I called Mike at Quick Charge; he said the batteries may be deeply
discharged. Please call him at 800-658-2841.

Bob @ EVA
603-569-2100
_www.EV-America.com_ (http://www.ev-america.com/)
It’s not discharged (drove it home 15 miles after that) and not reverse polarity I have been charging fine for 3 weeks and did not change anything.
So I will call him and go from here.
This is the first mayor breakdown!
You know you can’t get one of these at Walmart or Auto Zone.