Not a Drop to Drink...

"Why don't you just start a used car lot?" - Friend

When I first bought this EV, I was told outright that the batteries were dead and needed replaced. The current range on these batteries: 2 miles.

As I was storing cash to replace the pack, I figured I'd at least check them out. Just for fun, I popped a cap off of a battery. Bone dry. Dry? Wait a sec... I popped all 4 caps on all 16 batteries and every single cell was bone-dry. No wonder it only goes 2 miles.

Well hell, distilled water is only .75 cents per gallon so I bought 4 gallons and added it to the batteries. In the end it took a total of 11 GALLONS of water to properly electrolyze the batteries. Talk about neglect.

Now for the scary part...charging. I had no idea what would happen if I tried to charge these severely abused batteries. Nothing? Explosion? Thermal runaway? A fire? I plugged the car in for 10 minutes and unplugged it. I touched every battery and interconnecting cable and nothing was hot. I resumed charging in 30 minute intervals for a few hours. Eventually I was confident and just let the charger finish.

The moral? Be kind to your batteries. Keep them clean and keep them hydrated.

Now here's a story for you...

I was browsing the ev photo album website: http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/ when I found a shiny red Bug named "Reba". Closer inspection showed that this HAD to be my car. Every little wiring and construction detail matched my car. I emailed the guy and he confirmed it. The batteries in the photo were the same ones still in the car. They were about 5 years old. At least a year past the normal lifespan. I took the chance to ask the builder some questions about the car:

1. Why 8 volt batteries instead of 6v? Doesn't this shorten the range a lot? Or does it?

2. I found a lot of other converted Beetles in the website. All of the 8 volt conversions claim to get a longer range and higher speed than yours. Why is that?

3. Why do I have to hit the toggle on the dash before I turn on the car? What are the household lightbulbs under the hood for?

He responded with some interesting answers:

1a. 6 volt batteries made the car a total slug. 8 volt batts gave it enough "umph" to keep up with traffic.

2a. The other people are overly optimistic about their cars. He was being brutally honest under his driving conditions and habits for range and speed.

3a. The Curtis 1221B controller is only rated for 120 volts total. The car has 128 volts total. This is overdriving the controller. When you first turn on the key, the inrush of current to the controller capacitors is beyond it's rated limit. The toggle charges the capacitors through the lightbulbs which are acting as resistors. This is much more gentle and within the controller's rated limit. The lightbulbs glow briefly and die out indicating that you're ready to drive. It takes about 3-5 seconds. If I had a 1231 model, I could get rid of all this pre-charging nonsense.

I was still skeptical about the choice of 8 volt batteries but I figured he knew better so I decided to stick with them. I found a distributor in Delaware who would deliver for free. Since Delaware has no sales tax, this was an added bonus. I researched 8 volt batteries and this is what I came up with in terms of cost and quality:

1. Sam's Club: 8v (110 min) Energizer- $63.00/ea Quality: Worst.
2. Trojan T-875- (117 min) from $134-114/ea depending on distributor. Quality: Best.
3. Trojan T-890- (132 min) from $144-159/ea depending on distributor. Quality: Best.
4. US Battery 8VGC- (121 min) $89.00/ea from Tri-State Battery Quality: Excellent.
5. Astro-lite Power Master (121 min) $83.00/ea from Tri-State Quality: Unknown.

Now the Astro-Lite is actually a Dekka battery from East-Penn manufacturing. Dekka batteries are often used by EV'ers and claim to be excellent quality at an affordable price so I bought these. The salesman could have just pushed Trojan's on me and made more money but he stated that these are excellent batteries that would give me performance and save me money.

Here's hoping.