I’d been thinking for a while about how to set up the mounting/foundation for the solar installation. I settled on “Superstrut” rails that normally are used to hold plumbing and electrical from building frames. The way these work is they’re hung by threaded rods, and then a clamp bolt, which is just a small metal […]
Wheel/hub inspection
I wanted to pull the wheel off to take a look at the springs closer, and practice with the torque multiplier. While off I cleaned up the crust on the wheel and gave it a spray of enamel paint to freshen it up. Reminded me a lot of working on Unimog wheels – about the […]
BMS Programming
After wiring all the components together, it is time to program the BMS so it’s handing the battery properly. This involves mostly hooking it up and see that it’s operational, then setting the minimum and maximum per-cell voltage, setting the charge top balance window, and battery chemistry with the OEM software.
Battery pack wiring
Wiring the battery pack took some time to get right. I had a rough plan in mind already, driven mostly from the way the pack has to be put together. I started with the geometry dictated by the bus bars. Those were set because of the layout of the frame itself. You can see on […]
Bus bars and battery interconnects
I’ve been drilling a lot of holes in copper bars – these bars are what connects the banks of battery cells to form the whole battery. I think there were 198 holes drilled. It was enough holes that it made sense to fix my drill press. Once the drillpress was fixed it was super fast […]
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Leaf pack modules and thoughts
So at this point, I have a bunch of potentially dangerous sardine cans that I’ve extracted from a Nissan leaf “battery”. Sometimes all this disassembly reminds me how everything in the world can be considered objects and classes of objects. Car Battery enclosure Battery group Battery module Parallel cell group Pouch cell Lithium plate stack […]
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Nissan Leaf battery pack disassembly
A week or two ago, the time was finally right to try and purchase a lithium battery pack for our bus. I’ve been planning on this for several years now, and in fact our whole project revolves around the energy density afforded by lithium power storage. I don’t think I’m doing anything particularly novel here […]
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Big lithium bus battery design criteria
I’ve been thinking over various design ideas on the big battery pack. This might sound sort of obsessive but really this conceptualizes the core of the ability to live off-grid, and it presents so many positive opportunities it would be a disservice to not consider them. Some of them major concerns I had, and perhaps […]
This acrylic VHB tape application is rated for 11,000 lbs of adhesion.
This acrylic VHB tape application is rated for 11,000 lbs of adhesion when in a shear force spread over 140 inches. In a moving vehicle, make sure your appliances stay put.
#skoolie #broccolibus #rv #3m
A brief off-grid solar primer
I wrote a post on a facebook forum about adding grid independent power to your RV. It seemed to be helpful enough for someone who’s new to the concept, so here it is for your reading. It would be nice to add some graphs and charts. https://broccolibus.com/off-grid-solar-kurz-gesagt-in-brief/