Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Of Mice and Men

As in, "the best laid plans of." Or, while I'm on film allusions, how about "The Remains of the Day:"


But I'm getting ahead of myself. The car has been running very well - except for the nagging fact that the battery warmers have not been drawing any amps except for the first day they were plugged in. And the batteries have not been kept warm - instead, I've been keeping the car in a heated garage ($$$$). So, tonight I decided to start with the middle battery rack - the one with 3 batteries. It's the easiest to access. So, I pulled the batteries out and pulled the warmer out. Another allusion, "What Lies Beneath:"


And what a mess it was that lay beneath. The clear plastic around the thermocouple was discolored and clearly burnt:


Dissecting the clear plastic, it is obvious that the nicrome wire got too hot and simply vaporized:


Seeing this, I decided to pull all the warmers out. Each one had similar damage. And, in fact, some of them had burn-throughs in the middle of the cable:


Even when the cable had not burnt through, it is clear that the cable produces too much heat for the foam insulation. Here is one of the dual-sided pieces, melted all the way through:


Which brings us back to the pile of stuff at the beginning of the post. I'm very fortunate that no other damage occurred. So, it is back to the drawing board for battery warmers. I'm considering some of the battery heating pads, or other options. Stay tuned.

2 comments:

Ross Cunniff said...

Hah. This is a spam - don't click on the link - but it is so bad I wanted to leave it up. Since the Volt914 is all-electric, it, of course, has no exhaust system...

Unknown said...

Hurrah, that’s what I was trying to get for, just what a stuff Presented at this blog!! Thanks admin of the site.
Autoloanportland.org