doodsangel

Two questions: After an electric conversion, do they still leak oil? Get some pics from your friend fi he doesn't mind and share!

Thank you for the advice.

Afternoon, I see that Blue Nova suggests that maximum drop-in batteries are: 2 in parallel 4 in series Anyone know what creates this limiting factor and if it can be overcome? Regards,

Its one of those things. I can find a tweet hinting to it, but it seems not to be connected to gridcars. So currently it seems like there is a EV station at Riemland Country Shop, but as its not on the predominent apps, no-one will find it and neither will the App. Cool thing is, if this person connects to gridcars, the App will recognise it and route you via Petrus Steyn if it thinks you require a top-up. Even better would be if he can slug in a 50/75/100kw DC charger, it will see those gents with the E-Trons and EQSs but the dozen.

Good question and you might laugh at the answer. At home we plug into the wall sock, so we charge at 10amps. As the Mini is mostly the wife's car for short trips and a few trips to the office, we currently charge her 2-3 times a week during the night and this so far has been sufficient. We did get a wall charger that will do 7.2kwh on single-phase and 11kwh on 3-phase with the car, but that is still in the box. At the moment our solar array 1.5kw panels and 2.2kw batteries only provide backup power that caters for a 5 hour blackout at night. But with the EV, I will be looking to fully populating the inverter with panels (currently at half) and then upgrade the battery so that we can charge her for "free". Realistically: With the current Eskom costs, virtually "Free" is charging via the grid rather than spending R30k to be able to charge her for "Free". To make that cost up, I will need to consume roughly 9400kwh from the grid in charging costs. That equates to 60,645km of driving we will need to do with the vehicle (which will take my wife 3-4 years to do). So the upgrading will be more towards NOT getting stranded should there be a Municipal Supply problem in our area. On batteries I will just do the needful, as Sun is "cheaper", so she will charge during the day. But with that said, I will set the Mini to Low (6A) this weekend and plug her into our modest Solar array this weekend and see what happens.

So this is very interesting. The Mini seems to report two different ranges. A type of Instantaneous or last few measures kwh/100km and similarly for the trip. Using the trip one seems to be the best. Then when the GPS is active, you can split the screen to show you your range (based on the trip kwh/100km) vs the amount of distance you need to travel. That seems to be very accurate. This is where you can play around with Mid/Green/Green+ and your speed to ensure that the bar on the left (range predicted) is longer than your actual destination. And as a driver you can influence this. I always adapted speed to give me at any one time a 16-20km buffer. I think the most amount of stress is the South African infrastructure. When you drive an ICE and run out of fuel, AA is there to help. Currently the AA vehicles aren't equipped with Generator units and aren't driving Ford F150 Lightnings or BYD Sharks, which do have onboard facilities allowing you to charge another EV next to the road, should they run out of juice. As Mini told us, currently if you get stuck, you need to phone Mini assist and they will come tow you to the next available charge station. But then what helped with stress and dynamic and static loads, please see the next part. A Better Route Planner was a valuable tool in reducing stress. You select your car and can add stuff like battery degradation, how much additional weight is added to the car, what the state of charge you want at the next charge etc. etc. etc. when planning your route. The App mostly accurately predicts said achievable distance, taking into account the elevation (going up - more power and going down - regenerate power) and other settings just mentioned. It will then also tell you how much charge and for how long you'll be charging to reach your next stop (charge station) with your chosen battery arrival SOC. We used this and didn't charge to full at every stop, only what we needed. It will even (if you set that it is allowed to adapt speed) tell you that on this stretch you can do the speed limit and on which stretches you need to do it at a lower speed than the speed limit (example do not exceed 100km/h for this stretch). Then once you start your trip, you can say drive on the App and then as your trip progresses, you can slide a bar on the App for the amount of battery percentage you have to match that of the car. We found that the way we were driving, about every 10-15km, we needed to add 1%-2% on the battery on the App. So for Shoemanskloof, we were supposed to hit Millys at about 4% battery left driving at 90km/h, but driving the first part of the road on Green+ afforded us to switch to Green with aircon at 95-100km/h for the last part and rolling into Millys with 13% battery (Mini range estimator and the App - via the minor adjustments). So ABRP alleviated a lot of stress, but I assume, as we drive these cars more and more, it will be like the fuel light comes on on your ICE and you know you can probably do 50km or so. But for now, App assistance really helps. And if you go Premium on the App, it will even take into account real-time traffic (assume this will lead to more starts/stops adding more regeneration) and real-time weather (because a very windy day will affect what you can do). Thank you for the tip. We will try this next time. While at Crystal Springs, we plugged in at our unit starting with 80% every morning for exploring except fathers day where we charged at Highwayman's for the fun of it while having pancakes. In terms of public chargers, we had the following: Silver Lakes: 9.2kwh @ T64.38 = R6.997/kwh (charge to 99%SOC). Alzu: 16.52kwh @ T121.47 = R7.353/khw (charge to 76% SOC) Dullstroom: 12.77kwh @ T75.14 = R5.89/kwh (AC charger didn't give the SOC) Millys: 12.15kwh @ T85.02 = R6.998/kwh (charge to 54% SOC) Alzu: 24.55kwh @ T180.51 = R7.353/khw (charge to 95% SOC) Menlyn Maine: 12.95kwh @ T95.22 = R7.353/kwh (charge to 49% SOC) Pilgrims Rest: 19.07kwh @ R112.23 = R5.89/kwh (AC Charger didn't give the SOC) - this was just for the fun as we could charge at CS so left out in below round trip cost and km plus it wasn't part of getting from Randburg to Crystal Springs and back. So road via Dullstroom: 387km @ R260.99 Road via Schoemanskloof: 438km @ R360.75 Total: 825km @ R621.74 Our other option was the Mahindra Scorpio Adventure @ 7.75l/100km. Doing it in Diesel (at today's [19-06-2024] Diesel price of R23.80) would have been: R1521.71 About the Schoemanskloof road. Arriving at Alzu, there was a gentleman with a Volvo charging and he said he also did Schoemanskloof and the car reported that he regenerated 7% charge on that road (the Mini doesn't give this stat).

So we did it. Trip Update Report. Yes, being able to stop at Emalahleni would've have been great, but, thanks to Friday traffic it wasn't possible. We charged up at Silver Lakes, then we did the stretch to Alzu. We were quite a bit conservative with power as it was our first time, so did 90km/h on Green +. Ended up reaching Alzu with 30% battery left. The rest was uneventful with some serious pothole dodging between Dullstroom and the turnoff from the Orighstad road. Cruising around was no problem as we could charge at Crystal Springs as well as the Charger in Pilgrims Rest (not a DC charger). The return home. The most daunting probably still was the Schoemanskloof road coming back (we did Dullstroom going there) being very up and down. ABRP estimated that we would reach Millys with -6% battery left. Yes, that is minus 6. But we decided to tackle it and make a call at Sabie to go Mombela (safe) or Schoemanskloof. 45km to Sabie and used about 18% battery. We felt confident, but not stupid, but still tackled Schoemanskloof. With 82% battery, we opted for Green+ and 90km/h for the first 80km, we were doing quite well and did the last 49km in normal Green mode with aircon. 95km/h seemed to make the Mini happy on that stretch and we reached Millys with 13% battery left. Knowing the car was a bit pessimistic on our going there, we did a solid 100km/h coming back, aircon set at 23% and at night (lights). We ended at Menlyn Maine with about 12% battery left and a quick charge (to 50%) for the final stretch home in Randburg.

Thank you. The temperature during the stretch, if you can trust the weatherman, should be between 18-20, which seems to be the optimal operating temperature. And I do agree. We will probably turn on Green+ which switches off all the creature comforts. Tyres and rims are EV-specific low drag. "Until you have some good long distance stats for your own car, take any paper numbers with a pinch of salt." - time to get these I guess 😁 The wife drives quite a bit of Highway at normal speeds and the car's energy meter reports about 16kwh/100kmh

We have been advised to use Waze after Dullstroom and GO SLOW. so that should really spare batteries. It is a pitty. I grew up in Lydenburg. Funnily, the return trip part is not a worry, stretch Pta -> Alzu is uphill. Return Alzu -> Pta is downhill. With "ABRP" We should reach Alzu leaving Pta with 6% battery @ 100kph, when we do the return, charging at Alzu, we should reach Pta with 12-14% battery also at 100kph.

Sadly it is not the new 50kwh battery. It seems that at a push, doing the stretch at 90km/h (uphill) would see me just make it. But we will try to catch Emalahleni. That'll be first prize.

Good morning, We recently acquired a Mini Cooper SE (had it for about two weeks) and will be attempting our first "long" trip from Randburg to Crystal Springs this weekend. With range anxiety, I think the most daunting stretch would be the Pretoria -> Alzu stretch. It seems that the only charger in between is located at Emalahleni and its at a dealership, so no access after hours. Will advise how and/or if it went after the weekend. Also trying out "A better Route Planner" to assist with routes. It is quite configurable, vehicle additional weight. From planning a to and from trip on different plans, it also seems to take elevation into account as the same route gives different total trip time. Thanks Joe Slow for the tips!

Thanks for all your help. Your guess was 100% spot on. After all the checking and confirming that transistors and Mosfets are good, the wife sai, its been disconnected from power very long. She thinks with all the draining of caps, this would constitute a Cold Start, so close it and hook it up. As soon as I plugged it in, it fired up, but then I remembered I disconnected ALL cables, solar, loads everything, just battery connected. Which means I have to shut it down and get everything connected again. When I switched it on, it dead again. Waited a while, switched it on again and TADA. There was lights!

D13 Red Cathode, black Anode: 344 Black Cathode, red anode: OL CE: 344 (black on collector) CE: OL reversed CE: 346 (black on collector) CE: OL reversed CE: 326(black on collector) CE: OL reversed Mosfets numbered from 1-16 with 1 closest to battery connection terminals. DS: 406 (black on drain) DS: OL reversed DS: 406 (black on drain) DS: OL reversed DS: 406(black on drain) DS: OL reversed I have checked and the FUSE on the Anode of the battery connecter inside the unit hasn't burnt. Somewhere a powerup circuit must've gotten damaged.

With my limited electronics knowledge, I took the plunge in the meantime to check the Transistors. IN the picture I have numbered them 1-9. These are the readings: #1-4: GP40660 GE: 49.5k GC: 700k CE: 650k However, that is initial reading. The longer you hold the meter there, the more the number climbs. SO this feels a little off. #5: IRGP47500 GE: 46.6k GC: 1095K CE: 1175K This one appears a little off #6-9: IRGP47500 GE: 22 GC: 185K CE: 185K These were the only ones measuring apparently what is expected. D13 +-: 860k -+: OL

Hi Coulomb, So I charged all the 3.7. Get a good 55V reading. Put it on inverter and it is still dead dead. Sorry, the inverter is an old RCT Axpert Model: RCT-AXPERT-5k Rater Power 5000VA/4000W