Been meaning to close out this thread and post an update.
After I smoked the BMS, ended up sending it to @Inwo for repair. He got it back up and running, sent me the connector for the Delta-Q to be managed by the BMS and that got my charger up working and controlled by the BMS.
Spent some time doing cable management and trying to get things as tidy as possible. Ended up securing the batteries with a combination of wood blocks secured to the battery tray floor and some straps. Heavy duty Velcro to secure the BMS in the battery compartment and the display to my dashboard.
A little worried about the suspension issue, I left the wet cel batteries in the front battery trays. I’m using them to power the stereo and light-bar. I have a 12 volt marine 2 bank battery charger mounted under the rear seat to keep them charged and maintained while in the garage. Down the road, I might just add 2 more volt batteries up front and power the 12 volt stuff off the Delta-Q. For now, I just want to spend driving the car and enjoying for a while vs tinkering with it.
With that done, did some ripping around the neighborhood. Just like everyone before me reports, the performance is fantastic!!! Not surprising the ride is rough. Honestly though, I don’t think it rode all that great before so I’m not sure I notice a difference between before and after lithium conversion.
Couple of things I’m still working on that I’ll probably spin up a different thread and/or do more research.
- I was getting pulsing and really inconsistent response from the accelerator similar to this thread. 2002 Loss of Power after Lithium Conversion.
Before diving into the conversion, I would get a pedal stuck error code every now and then so I just replaced the pedal with a direct replacement from linemaster. At $135 for a full replacement, why not just refresh everything in there so I can pull the pedal out of the equation. This mostly seemed to solve my problem; although I’ve noticed that because of the rough ride… my foot bounces around a bunch which translates to the speed pulsating. Wondering if I can tune out the sensitivity in the pedal with a controller setting?
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BMS balancing… i parked the car a couple of weeks ago and the cell diff was around 50 mV. 2-3 weeks later, it crept up to 150mV difference. I have balancing on during charge and storage. Not sure why i’m getting further out of balance and probably need to mess with some settings.
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Suspension is on the list of something I want to mess with. Been watching this thread very closely to see what folks come up with - A little fresh air(shocks) never hurt anybody I’m game to go the QA1 route but figure a bunch of folks are already headed down this path so just waiting to see what they come up with.
All in all, what a fun project and I’ve learned a lot. Thanks to everyone on this board for posting about their experiences and how they did their installations. Couldn’t have done it without this forum and the supporting community. Now I just want to get my hands on a couple more GEMs so I can do it again and play with different configurations.
Anyone reading this with wet-cells thinking about lithium, do it!
