Congrats. Many people were in the wings ready to jump on that deal. Lawrence Rhodes.. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 11:36 PM Subject: My new Tropica
> I'm the proud new owner of the Tropica Bruce posted about earlier this week. We were told by the previous owner that the charger was dead, the batteries were dead and perhaps one motor wasn't running. We trailered it home to San Jose last night and took it off the trailer this evening. > > Ok so what have we got here? I got out my DVM to measure the pack voltage. 2.4 volts. No, I didn't misplace a decimal. Well that's not good. I plugged in the charger and the voltage started climbing. I thought, hey the charger seems to work after all. Well no, it put out a whole 4 volts! Fair Radio to the rescue. I hooked up the "charger" and brought the voltage up slowly watching the current. At about 40 volts, I was startled by the tail lights comming on. It was dark by now. What suprised me was that I had the main switch off. A look at the schematic shows that the main switch only disables the drive system. That probably explains why the batteries were so dead. The DC-DC was suppling power to the "card cage" for the whole time the car wasn't getting charged due to the bad charger. I brought it up to 72volts and let it set there for a couple hours pulling very little current. I then raised it up to about 85 volts and the pack started drawing about 8 amps. I let it go a co! > uple more hours but that was all the time I had. I'll measure the resting voltage to see if I made any headway and continue charging tomorrow night. I'm not expecting much. I fully expect this pack to be more than murdered but maybe I'll get enough charge to check out the motors or go around the block. While charging, I checked out the rest of the electrical system and everything seem to work. > > So far it's been very popular in the neighborhood. I got a real kick out of the number of people asking if they could sit in it! I'll pull the charger out this weekend after the EV Rally and check it out. > > I need help with two things, so far. Does anyone have info on the battery watering system? There is a central watering system that is filled from 3 quick disconects in the front. There apparently was a small tank and pump that was available. I'm also looking for information on how to build the battery cart for removing the battery pack from the tunnel. > > > thanks, > Steve >
