Sunday, September 1, 2013

Orange is the New Black

Over the years since I started work on the ElectroJeep, EV standards have evolved which help provide safety for first responders.  The most prominent standard is "Orange is High Voltage" - this tells first responders to avoid those areas, and not to cut any orange cables.  This standard is why I have gone to orange 2/0 welding cable for most HV wiring.  It is also why I tried this:


I actually do not recommend this.  This is the conduit for routing HV cable under the Jeep.  I used Krylon "plastic paint" to spray it orange.  Sadly, the paint does not interact well with the conduit - it remained tacky for weeks, probably due to an interaction with the plasticizer which makes the conduit flexible in the first place.  This is why the conduit looks so mucked-up in this next picture - it picked up dust, dog hair, grease, and whatever else it touched.  But I put it in place nonetheless - dirty orange is better than no orange at all:


I also painted as many of the battery racks and covers orange as possible.  Here is the upper rear rack:


And here are the box covers.  I neglected to photograph the assembly of the upper rear cover (second from bottom in this photo) and under-seat covers (two small rectangles, second from top):


Here are the rear covers in place.  I'm very happy with how they fit - tight, but not too tight, which means the cells will be very snug and secure (you can also see the new 1/4" polyethylene sides I riveted into the upper rear rack):


Here is the front cover in place.   You may recall that this originally was going to be the bottom of a new rack - but I decided to use the original rack, and flip the box I made, so that the "bottom" became the "top".  I added some tabs so mesh with the original threaded rod mounting points in the rack.  The cover also bolts to the sides for added security:


Finally, here are the covers for the under-seat boxes.  The left and right covers are slightly different, since the boxes are slightly different, which is why they are prominently labelled:



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