The Topsail High School Electric Vehicle Team won the EV Challenge final event for the 8th consecutive year this past weekend at the NCCAR complex in Roanoke Rapids NC. Placing First and Second overall in the competition against 14 schools from as far away as Iowa and Miami. Our now Lithium powered MR2 actually posted a better time than a $110,000 Tesla Roadster in the autocross event! Our Ford Ranger scored a perfect 100 in the Vehicle Design category, a feat that has never been accomplished. The Ranger team dominated in every category and tallied a perfect 10 cumulative score....the best score possible(Low score wins like golf).The following students won awards:
Truck Team
Troubleshooting - Zach Fouty, Sal Castoro First Place
Oratorical- Sean Bullock, Stephen Henderson First Place
Vehicle Design- Alexis Demetrious, Chris Raynor First Place
Range- Alexis Demetrious, Todd LeMaster First Place
AutoCross- Joseph Graves First Place
Modified Car Team:
Oratorical- Zeke Hartner, Joseph Graves Second Place
Vehicle Design- Tony Capace, Joey Godfrey First Place
Range- Tony Capace, Joey Godfrey First Place
AutoCross- Sean Bullock Second Place
Website Design- Shelby Sessions First Place
School Initiative- First Place
This has been by far the best class I have ever taught while a Topsail High School. They represented the school with pride, dignity and class. The class went into the competition with the motto "Dominate", and they did just that. As Sean Bullock said, "Preparation = Domination", a formula that has worked for THS EV for 8 years!
We finally got around to removing the Raptor 1200A and installing the Synkromotive 900A in the MR2. The Raptor has served us well over the last 9 years, making appearances in three different installs. It is a very powerful controller, but that is all, it does not allow for programming or data logging. The Synkromotive controller has been working flawlessly in our Ranger for over a year, so we decided to install one in the MR2 as well. 
Today the truck had the opportunity to show off at a local classic car show, the Classy Chassis Car Show at Poplar Grove in Wilmington. The show was rained out for Saturday and we had to cancel, but thanks to Ryan Mowrey and his family, we were able to show the truck today for most of the show. Ryan and his brother Mike, a former EV team member from several years ago, picked up the truck and drove it to the show where they were already showing Ryan's classic pick up truck. Needless to say, there were plenty of questions from a crowd that is not used to vehicles that don't make any noise!
Today we had the MR2 and Ranger on display at the Wrightsboro Advance Auto in Wilmington. We had a great time talking about the vehicles and selling hot dogs as well. Five of the EV12 team wee there including, Parker, Shelby, Tyan, Dylan and Roman. A special thanks goes out to the Mowry family for their support. Being on display helps the team to gain confidence in displaying the vehicles while raising awareness of EV's.
Wow, what a week! We had the awesome opportunity of representing the EV Challenge at the Plug In 2011 Expo this week in Raleigh. Not only were we able to gain experience about emerging EV technologies, we also were thrust into the spotlight as hundreds of vendors and guests viewed our MR2 and asked questions about our program. Wonderful exposure!
We braved the rain and crowds at the 2011 Spot Festival in Hampstead, NC on Saturday to display our vehicles. All 10 members were in attendance to help raise awareness of our program and the feasibility of electric vehicles as a practical means of daily transportation. The crowd was a bit less than last year because of the rain, but that did not deter the class from reaching out to anyone who had questions. A great day of camaraderie for the EV12 Team!
Wouldn't you know it, our MR2 motor has developed a very rare problem. The balancing putty has broken off the armature and in turn has created a bad vibration within the motor. Supposedly, this only happens if the motor has turned over 9000 RPM's. Not likely this has happened, but nonetheless, NetGain is repairing the motor for free. This week, we removed the motor in the MR2 and shipped it off to Warfield Electric for repair. Of course, we have a competition November 3rd, so hopefully we will have the motor back in time to install before then.
We removed the battery to find that it had been leaking around the side seal near the top of the battery. We contacted Fred Wehmeyer at US Batteries and he suggested we try to fix the leak by melting the side where the seal was broken, and if that did not work, he would try to get the battery replaced under warranty since it had been leaking since the day we installed them. The fix did not work, so Fred contacted Larry at Battery Specialists in Greenville, SC, a distributor, and arranged for us to have the battery replaced. Larry assured us that we would have the battery before our event on November 4th! Stay tuned.
Thanks to Bob Batson at EV America, and George Hamstra at NetGain motors, we were able to get our old motor covered under warranty. Not only that, the motor that we received was actually the new Warp 9 with 28 improvements that will help overall efficiency! The new motor went in without a hitch, but we seem to have noticed a new problem with the transmission that we never noticed before, a rattling at certain RPM's. We think it was pre-existing, but we can not do anything with it until after we compete in the NEAT Rally competition next week at the NCCAR facility in Roanoke Rapids, NC. We think it may be a synchronizer, but will not know until the transmission is removed and taken apart. We only hope it hold out until after the NEAT Rally.
The Topsail Electric Vehicle Team travelled to the 17th annual NEAT EV Rally in Northampton County this past weekend at the NCCAR facility. The students competed in seven events and tied for first place overall in the competition. The team had many compliments for their attitude and work ethic. They represented Topsail High and Pender County with class and dignity...as always. One instructor even wanted to take Ryan Mowrey back with him to show his students how to act! The weather cooperated for the most part, and the vehicles performed very well. Our truck, nursing a battery with a bad cell was only able to manage 12 laps of the NCCAR 2 mile track. The Toyota MR2 drove 56 miles in the range and could have travelled another 25 miles but had won the event. The lithium batteries make a huge difference in the range and performance of the car. 
Our BMS arrived last Friday and needless to say, we are overwhelmed. The MR2 has to be totally rewired top to bottom to accomodate the new component. The BMS will monitor all cells during charge and under driving conditions, giving us real time analysis of the Lithium batteries. This technology will help preserve the lifespan batteries and help to keep them a balanced set. The performance of the MR2 should be more consistent and we will have the opportunity to data log our charge and discharge cycles. Two students are working on a program that will create an interface that incorporates both the Synkromotive controller and the BMS parameters on the same in dash display.
We have removed all 48 cells from the MR2 and have wired them in parallel for a balance charge. As you can see in the picture, we have set the voltage to 3.6 volts and will be monitoring the current as they charge. As they charge, the current will slowly get close to zero until they are balanced. No telling how long this will take, but we will be baby sitting for as long as it takes.
We had always kept the Zivan NG-3 charger in the trunk, and this posed problems with heat, and aesthetics. Plus, we never utilized the "gas" door location for the power plug during charging. We now have relocated the charger in the engine bay away from the elements, freeing up the trunk area and now allowing for a neater install plus the ability to use the "gas" door for the charge port. The charger will be integrated along with the BMS, with the BMS controlling the charger at all times. This should be an interesting journey!
After a two months of research and design. Careful consideration has been put into the BMS system and wiring of the unit and and batteries. We top balanced the 48 cells and let them stay wired in parallel over the last two months. Now we are prepared to re-install the batteries and label them for the wiring of the Orion BMS. We cleaned each cell, labelled them and installed them back into the battery boxes in the correct orientation. Our next step is to carefully wire the harnesses for the BMS.
Well, it is finally time to begin the daunting task of wiring the Orion BMS in the MR2. We took a while to figure out exactly how the wiring would have to be done including the routing of the wires from each cell back to the BMS. Thanks to the excellent customer support of Andrew at Orion, he approved our wiring diagram, and away we went.
We are trudging our way through the BMS wiring as you can see. There are many wires that need to be terminated correctly and hidden as well as possible, since we always believe half the battle is aesthetics. The cell level terminations are coming along nicely, but the wiring harness wiring is another story altogether. We found that the wiring had been done "backwards" from the diagram, if that was not bad enough, during testing of the harnesses, a ground lead accidentally touched a high voltage lead causing quite a spark, so we are getting a new set of harnesses and connectors. Lessons learned!
Well, normally, any right minded teen or teacher living in coastal North Carolina would have taken advantage of the beautiful weather during our recent spring break. You would think so....but not the Topsail Electric Vehicle Class! We worked Friday through Tuesday on the vehicles making changes and modifications needed to be ready to compete in the upcoming EV Challenge final event April 21-22.