Thursday, July 25, 2013

New battery layout

In the past few months, although I have not done a lot of building on the Jeep, I've done a lot of thinking.  I've figured out the exact battery layout I need - using the existing racks.  Here is the schematic layout:

There are 30 cells in the front rack, 3 in each of the under-seat boxes, 26 in the upper rear, and 34 in the lower rear.  This totals 96 cells - a little less than the 98 I was originally going for, but not enough to make a significant difference.

The front box sits in the original front rack, with some room to spare:


The lower rear rack is nearly filled with its 34 cells.  It will need some plastic inserts to retain the batteries in their positions:

Under each rear seat, there is not enough room to put the BMS on top, so it goes on a separate plastic insert/retainer on the side:


And the upper rear rack's 26 cells fit in the original rear rack with room to spare - which will allow for some extra components, such as a mid-pack fuse, the BMS controller, the amp-hour counter/sender.  It will also allow all cabling to be inside the boxes, which will eliminate high-voltage cabling from inside the passenger compartment:


Back at it

I've been busy with other things over the past year, but now I have a couple of weeks - and I think I can get the Jeep back on the road with its new LiFePO4 pack in that time.

I've created a Google Docs Spreadsheet of the to-do items - you can see it here and follow progress.  I'll also try to blog what I've done in the meantime, but the focus will be on completion not documentation.