openinverter forum

Gregski wrote: ↑Wed Jul 26, 2023 1:50 pmoften times there are zero replies, and I am left thinking, is anyone looking at this?

I too suffer the fate of over-documenting.

What I have noticed over the years on some people's projects, is that unless people are struggling, usually there's just not much to say about it. Especially after the first 10 or 15 posts, it's more "check up what they've gotten done", the general excitement and encouragement gets repetitive. It just adds to the noise.

Also, Cunningham's Law: "The best way to get the answer on the internet is not to ask the question, but to pose the wrong answer." People do love to correct wrong things, not just to be negative, but, to be able to contribute.

Often when people do things well, you just nod and move on. There's a guy on the DIY EC forums that's re-creating an entire Porsche from scratch. Like, tube frame, all the panelling, all of it. Who among us can even approach that? It's amazing. And yet, there's often very little commentary. ... what can I contribute to that discussion? Dude is creating his own panels, from scratch.

These communities are also fairly small, so there's not a lot of participants. Even then, I check in every day, and I only read maybe 10% of what gets posted. I reply less than once a day.

Sometimes I think "No one's watching this" and then look at the numbers. Likewise for Youtube, I've got several videos with over 100k views. That's a football stadium, watching a video on rewiring transformers or wearing mismatched clothing after an apocalypse to fit in, not exactly mainstream stuff.

Gregski wrote: ↑Wed Jul 26, 2023 1:50 pm is anyone looking at this?

Oh we're looking! Your thread is undoubtedly one of the most useful on here - certainly to other EV novices like me and also I'm sure to others with limited engineering / spannering experience. Keep up the good work

Uppertown wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 9:21 am Oh we're looking! Your thread is undoubtedly one of the most useful on here - certainly to other EV novices like me and also I'm sure to others with limited engineering / spannering experience. Keep up the good work

Agreed. Even though my project is essentially done, I'm still following along mainly with the other projects that are using the GS450h equipment just to see how they are doing it. Or to offer advice if I have any. Plus, the one thing I haven't done to mine (space limitations) is power steering so I'm always paying attention to that!

RetroZero wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 5:03 am I saw in one of your photos of the bmw Contactor box that there is a isolation (current) shunt that you are connected to. Wonder how hard it would be to get it telling you nice amp stories...... I have an e tron one sitting here about to get the @gregski CAN hook up. I hope to get some data out of it, throw it into the forum and 2 minutes later have some magic code made up by a higher being (or 3)

mounted the grill, are there any four eye car fans out there?


so need your advice, this is one of them faded '71-72 grills that had the innards painted black, should I paint that black again, or steel wheel the rest of the faded black off of it and just run it chrome?

and then this happened...

in a freak, tried to stand up from sitting on the garage floor accident !

Gregski wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2023 1:38 pm mounted the grill, are there any four eye car fans out there?

Not an EV, but I like the look of my '86 Mustang before they adopted the aero nose.

Gregski wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2023 1:38 pm mounted the grill, are there any four eye car fans out there?


IMG_6009.JPG


IMG_6011.JPG


so need your advice, this is one of them faded '71-72 grills that had the innards painted black, should I paint that black again, or steel wheel the rest of the faded black off of it and just run it chrome?


IMG_6015.JPG

My 64 has a similar anodized aluminum grille and I decided to repaint the black. Still need someone with a steady hand to paint the letters, but since so much of the stuff I've added has been painted a satin black, I think it adds consistency to the design.

PatrcioEV-ATX wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2023 2:31 pm My 64 has a similar anodized aluminum grille and I decided to repaint the black. Still need someone with a steady hand to paint the letters, but since so much of the stuff I've added has been painted a satin black, I think it adds consistency to the design.

is that pic PhotoShopped, what did you do with all the junk in your garage? LOL

so now that I'm injured, I got a pro off of Craigslist to install my gauges for me, she did it cheap, and it only took her a couple hours

You fell apart... standing up?

What are you 90? Were you built from Ikea?

And why couldn't this have happened last week, before you won the July Challenge? An injury like this surely would have put me back in contention!

This could've been me!



But this is how it goes. You train for the Olympics, you push yourself too hard to be the best, and eventually you hit your limits. If you don't listen to your body, you take it too far. Ambition has its consequences. Like Icarus, you wouldn't listen to Daedalus and flew too close to the sun.

You can't just... stand up... from sitting. You fool. You damned fool.

MattsAwesomeStuff wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2023 5:14 pm You fell apart... standing up?

What are you 90? Were you built from Ikea?

And why couldn't this have happened last week, before you won the July Challenge? An injury like this surely would have put me back in contention!

I'm dying over here laffing. They would get their viewership up if those were the real announcers. and gee I don't know Nancy

Do you think you should be concerned that everyone is either ignoring or making fun of your pathetic misadventure?
I mean, most people break themselves falling on the floor, not getting up off it

Alibro wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2023 10:23 pm Do you think you should be concerned that everyone is either ignoring or making fun of your pathetic misadventure?
I mean, most people break themselves falling on the floor, not getting up off it

small price to pay for being an influencer, lol, jk

It's been one of them days:

1. the knee still hurts like he11 but I don't know how to sit still

2. thought I be smart and stay off of it by doing some Arduino coding, upgraded to the latest IDE version 2.x and noticed it ran super slow, VCU updates took 15 minutes instead of 20 seconds, and then it crapped out my laptop, Arduino crashed and took down some DLLs with it, I literally uninstalled everything off of it except for Windows and it still is dog slow

3. then I thought lets take out some frustration on the media blasting cabinet, well first all my media was all lumped up like concrete from sitting there over winter, funny this did not happen last winter, anyway sent that through a strainer, fired the shop vac up and noticed a gaping hole in the vacuum hose (the media blasting hose kit is brand new less than 1 years old) so duct taped that, fired up the compressor, remembered my gloves were torn, so mounted brand new gloves I had on the shelf, then noticed my gun keeps getting stuck in the on position, so took it apart, brake cleaner sprayed it, lubed up the o-rings, put it back together, and 2 minutes later it jammed again, replaced that gun with a spare gun, 3 minutes later that gun jammed in the open position, all this time I can't see shiet through the viewing glass, and its brand new too but I leave my media blasting cabinet outside, so the sun must have had it's way with it, look up Grainger my part supplier, yup CLOSED TILL MONDAY...

4. go to get a beer, they're all warm

5. I can't even remember

EV Converter Top Tip: a day will come when your project can move under it's own power and free up the garage, resist the urge to disclose that information to any of your family members, specifically those with their own vehicles


modern cars suck (on my '71 it's two screws to replace a headlight, you don't need an engine hoist to do it)

ROLL BACK THE ARDUINO VERSION. For reasons unknown the python plug in just doesn't work with the newest arduino version.

Took me half a day to figure on that one.

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM

so I go to make a high voltage connection from my Chevy Volt charger to my fuse box which is already connected to the Safety Box and serving the DC DC converter, but something tells me to check the voltage first with a multimeter, so I do that and I got 200 volts DC live on that fuse block, that shouldn't happen the S-box is OFF ?!?!

um, no, no it is not, I can NOT turn off my BMW Safety Box, oh it clicks like it is turning off but the voltage remains

a quick audible continuity test and ...

ah yup, both contactors welded shut !!!




it must be a logic flaw in the automated BMW Safety Box code that is supposed to pre charge the inverter and then close both contactors

You can give the contactors a couple whacks with a hammer or screwdriver handle and they should pop free... should.

delgadb2 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 4:21 pm You can give the contactors a couple whacks with a hammer or screwdriver handle and they should pop free... should.

I see you started off by playing nice..... started off I said. Sorry to see you have work cut out again.... I know that feeling. I suppose it's running pwm once closed.

I don't think a sledge hammer was the recommended hammer, but oh well

crasbe wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 7:04 pm I don't think a sledge hammer was the recommended hammer, but oh well

this was the positive contactor, I also removed the negative contactor and tried tapping it with a proper hammer to no avail

To be fair though: A once welded contactor usually has a pretty severed degradation of the contact surfaces, leading to either a unreliable connector or repeated welding in the future. It might be fine, it might not be.

Either way, a contactor that loses contact mid-drive or a contactor with high resistance, leading to higher power dissipation is pretty undesireable.

crasbe wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 7:14 pm To be fair though: A once welded contactor usually has a pretty severed degradation of the contact surfaces, leading to either a unreliable connector or repeated welding in the future. It might be fine, it might not be.

Either way, a contactor that loses contact mid-drive or a contactor with high resistance, leading to higher power dissipation is pretty undesireable.

indeed