After YEARS of not understanding why the BMS would not read out battery cell voltages and taking EVERYTHING apart twice to look for wiring errors without finding any errors at all, we bought another BMS and plugged it in. The moral of the story is to always open eBay electronics and see if the boards look right before you plug them in. We seem to have gotten TWO bad BMS modules, we plugged the third in and all is happy. IT is GREAT to get it back on the road and out of the workspace.
Being that it has taken so long to find that one problem, we had moved our focus on to another project. That project has tighter timelines associated to it and takes priority, so with much learning in hand we are looking to permanently move this project out of our space and thus will place it up for sale. Charitable offers welcome, funds will go toward the next project. It has been extremely rewarding working with all the folks and students over the years and seeing their brains light up along with smiles; oh yeah, and the car is really fun to drive!
The "eGolf" is a fully saleable clean title car, licensed in the state of Illinois as either an EV OR Gas, and insured as a standard VW Golf car. It should go to an owner/group that can finish it up. Now that it is communicating properly several final enhancements can be completed with minimal additional wiring needed to match the programming that could be added to automate charging and other neat things that were in the works.
The next post will list finishing suggestions.
