Hello, I've just become the proud owner of a 1984 VW Rabbit convertible that was converted to EV in 1998 using a Mike Brown kit. The car was working up to a month ago, when the owner said it just stopped in the middle of the road. The battery pack is original, and the owner said he was getting about 10 miles out of it.
The battery pack is not in the best of shape. There is a lot of "stuff" (i.e. while chalky stuff and blue foamy stuff), around the batteries. There is also some rusting/corrosion on the brackets used to mount the batteries. My plan is to first clean everything up. I've read that one should use 1 lb. of baking soda to 1 gal. of water for cleaning the batteries and terminals. After cleaning do I just wash off the solution with water? I just put in a new driveway, and don't want to stain it. Will this stuff damage my concrete? My next step is to fill all the batteries and charge them up. Next, I'll check the charge on each battery per the instructions on http://www.uuhome.de/william.darden/dcfaq.htm If everything looks ok, and the car still doesn't work, I'll start looking for other problems. Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, .....Ken
