I have included a video drive past

Hello I thought you should see some of the bits that make the van go. The photos below show the traction motor and 2:1 chain reduction gear. The motor bearing and the speed controller.



The weather lately has been very cold and it has had a negative effect on range, so much so that a couple of weeks ago the battery went completely flat on the journey home and I had to pull over for three minutes to let the batteries recover before limping the last mile home at about 5 MPH.
The solution I have discovered is to recharge the batteries every day even if the van is not used.

Every morning before setting off I suck out the Hydrogen gas with a Hoover to prevent the gas evolved during charging from igniting from sparks while traveling.

There is an ominous thud now after heavy breaking when the van comes to rest. I hope its not the motor getting loose on its mountings. The mountings get a real hammering because the motor is used for breaking and acceleration. 13-12-2005

When reversing on Thursday leaving work there was a nasty scraping sound. When I tried to pull the hand brake on I discovered it came up much more than normal and had stopped working.
I decided to continue on my way home and fix it the next day in daylight before going to work.
The next morning I jacked up the OS rear wheel and removed the wheel, however when I removed the brake drum several bits of mashed up mechanism fell out. I realised I couldn't fix it in 10 minutes so I left it and borrowed my wife's car for work.
At work, in a panic, I phoned around for a replacement mechanism.
On Monday I had a day off so I decided to fit an Ah meter to the charger so that I could see the number of Ah (Amp hours) delivered to the battery.
On Tuesday the brake parts arrived and were very rusty and did not fit. I spent half a day thinking of ways to repair the self adjuster mechanism before realising the answer: Fix the adjuster with epoxy glue to make it manual adjustment. I adjusted the brake and refitted the drum and wheel, In fact I had the entire week as holiday so the following Monday I set off for work. The battery voltage seemed lower than normal after a few miles but this could be the dropping temperature as we approach winter.
All seemed well that day but on the run home I'm sure I could smell boiling acid!

After driving for about 3 miles in the rain there was a loud bang sound from directly under my seat. This was very alarming but I decided to keep going because there was nothing I could do. The damage was already done.

I think acid had formed a thin conductive film on the surface of the last cell in the pack and when water splashed up it ignited the Hydrogen gas trapped in the cell during charging.

Later at work I decided not to feel for damage due to the risk of death by electric shock and acid burns.

At the weekend I went to the Landrover Sortout and bought 4 used trolley jacks. When I got home I used the jacks to lower the 1 Ton battery pack to the ground.

I had feared several monoblocks had blown their tops but as far as I can see only the end cell had its top blown off.

I found the broken pieces on top of other batteries in the 36 battery pack.

After sucking the hydrogen out with a wet and dry Hoover I used a glue gun and a paint stripping hot air gun to refit the broken pieces of plastic. The reflowing idea with the hot air gun was a bit stupid because in my haste I overheated the glue and the piece of broken plastic that I had spent some time carefully cleaning and positioning dropped down about 2mm. I decided not to try and re-position it.

The inside of the cell looks quite interesting. I took a picture of the complete assembly before refitting it. 28-OCT-2005

That night I recharged the batteries as usual and set off. It started to rain again and I started to feel very uneasy. The window started to steam up and so I decided to turn on the heater (which had not been used in anger) Just as I pulled away at the lights there was another bang from underneath the van which I felt through the floor! I thought oh dear! I decided to stop at the top of the hill but could see nothing unusual underneath. Anyway the rest of the days driving was uneventful.

When I got to work I decided the only way to eliminate the risk of ignition in a cell was to fit a small vacuum pump to suck the hydrogen out. The pump should run all the time the power was on. In the mean time I decided to use the Hoover to suck out the gas each morning before setting off.

Later I had a look at the top of the originally damaged cell expecting to see a large hole but it was still intact! I am beginning to wonder if the second bang was a backfire from the diesel heater which had gone off mysteriously due to water in the fuel or air bubbles. On reflection I think I tried to relight the heater too early and it ignited unburnt oil vapour in the combustion chamber and exhaust pipe.