Pack 2 is in and running

I've now mostly got the second pack installed. It's running and the extra range has been great. Still have some tidying up to do, a bit of paint and put some rivnuts in to hold the lid over the top. Sadly I couldn't get them perfectly inline in the old spare wheel well, just wouldn't fit. Also the location isn't ideal, but needs must. What's the range? I don't know to be honest. I get between 1 and 1.5 miles per amp hour, and I've got the BMS set to 46 amphour capacity. With me having full control, I can if I know I'm going to really need the range, charge right up to 4.2v per cell (96 cells) and discharge right down to 3v really push the pack, but generally I tend to charge to 4.1 and discharge to 3.4v to take it easy on them.

Think I can fit a 3rd pack somewhere?

There's now another bit of sheet metal welded to this to cover the bottom, and it's painted in primer, so getting there.

What you can see is the VW contactor box, with fuse, so that outside of the front and rear battery boxes there's no HV outside of them, unless charging or driving. Both packs fused with high voltage DC fuses.

The 2 packs have clashing canbus ID's so I've made a quick can bus device that adds an offset to the ID's then sends them on to the BMS, which required some code changes to support the additional ID's properly.

The video below covers this with a little more detail

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DVLA Inspection

I decided to try get the DVLA to update the V5 to electric for the 4th or 5th time, but this time I was told I'd need an inspection before the change could be made. The inspection was by a 3rd party company. The guy turned up and took a load of photos, looking for the changes I'd made, and tallying up the points against the points system they use to decide if it's radically altered or not. Your vehicle must have 8 or more points from the table below if you want to keep the original registration number. 5 of these points must come from having the original or new and unmodified chassis, monocoque bodyshell or frame. Part Points Chassis, monocoque bodyshell (body and chassis as one unit) or frame - original or new and unmodified (direct from manufacturer) 5 Suspension (front and back) - original 2 Axles (both) - original 2 Transmission - original 2 Steering assembly - original 2 Engine - original 1 Given that I had the original gearbox, suspension, steering assembly and only

DVLA Refusal to Update V5

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Golf GTE Battery Disassembly

Having deliberated over battery pack options, I was convinced I would go for a pack from a BMW plug in hybrid or the Outlander PHEV, but a pack from a Golf GTE popped up on eBay for £500 delivered, which was too good to let pass by, at 8.8kwh it works out at £57 per kilowatt hour, a bargain. Tearing it down wasn't the easiest task, and with 350v - 400v under there, a little nerve wracking. The lid was glued down with some serious adhesive. The pack consists of 4 modules, each module is 2 strings of 12 cells, with a cooling plate between them for liquid cooling. Each of the 12 cells has a BMS slave board, which reports the voltage of cell cell to the BMS master, along with the temperature of the string. Each module can store just over 2 kwhs. The modules communicate with the master via a CAN Bus network that's internal to the battery. I've put up a GitHub repo with a DBC file for interpreting the reported frames https://github.com/jamiejones85/DBC-files if you are looking at

EV Beetle Conversion Project

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