GFCI and Baking Soda maintenance

[tim.moore]

A BIG Thanks goes out to Rich Carroll, John Jeide, and Ted Lowe for helping me diagnosis my battery charger problem.  It actually turned out to be  a battery maintenance issue.  In my seven years of driving my EV, I have never baking soda cleaned my batteries, always just wiped them  off.  Now with a GFCI battery charger, I learned how important it is to clean with baking soda.  Thanks to Rich for explaining that I did not have to bath the batteries in baking soda, just a couple tablespoons in a bucket and damp cloth, Rich also explained that I had to isolate the batteries from the motor and controller which helped with the meter reading check.  This is a club to be member of.  THANKS AGAIN!!!

[ted.lowe]

Great Tim!!!  DO NOT follow the Ted Lowe battery maintenance protocol :-) 

Curious, did you try using a 3-prong to 2-prong adapter to (temporarily) circumvent the GFCI fault?

[rich.carroll]

Glad to hear it worked out.

[tim.moore]

Two to three prong did not work. 

[tim.moore]

I spent Christmas Eve 8hrs,  today 26th 8hrs on washing, bagging, changing all my insulation, checking  and repairing any cables.  I still have a tripping problem.  Any solutions??? 

[john.emde]

Tim
    Let's narrow this down a bit.

  After you've done all your cleaning and insulating and with the battery pack disconnected at BOTH ends, do you still get a voltage reading from any or all battery terminal(s) to chassis ground ??

  If you do, there still is a dirty battery or one of your cables has a crack in the insulation allowing moisture in and causing your fault.   Make sure that there is no direct connection of pack negative to chassis ground anywhere in the system.

  If there is no voltage reading, the next step would be to connect the charger to the pack and only the pack. Nothing else, and activate the charger. If the GFCI still trips, I would suspect a fault in your wiring from the charger to the batteries, or your 120 v ac line. Could be that the hot and neutral wires are reversed.

  If by chance that the charger works fine with both ends of the pack disconnected from everything else, and you reconnect one end of the pack back to the car wiring and it faults out again, then the fault is in the car wiring, the motor has carbon tracking, the controller has a bad or going bad capacitor, some tracking around the main contactor, the dc/dc converter is causing a fault, your electric heating element or heater relay has a fault, the circuit breaker and or fuse or shunt has tracking around it.  All the small wiring that carry pack voltage are suspect.  Wires running to the voltmeter and ammeter are usually small and can get damaged and cause this kind of fault.

 If there are flooded lead acid batteries under the hood of the car, every device also under the hood is suspect, because the fumes (mist) from charging the batteries gets on everything.

John Emde

[tim.moore]

John, I think your first thought was correct way in the beginning when I talked with you.  Tell me if I am right, that you were right in the beginning when you said it was in the motor. 
1. Disconntect most positve  and negitive  lead while keeping charger wires on NO TRIP  reconnect leads
2. Disconntect Albright  from motor A1  TRIP
3. Disconnect Albrignt A1 and Controller M1 from motor S1 TRIP
4. Disconnect  "                    "                  "          controller B+ from A1 motor--NO TRIP.

Tim
    Let's narrow this down a bit.

  After you've done all your cleaning and insulating and with the battery pack disconnected at BOTH ends, do you still get a voltage reading from any or all battery terminal(s) to chassis ground ??

  If you do, there still is a dirty battery or one of your cables has a crack in the insulation allowing moisture in and causing your fault.   Make sure that there is no direct connection of pack negative to chassis ground anywhere in the system.

  If there is no voltage reading, the next step would be to connect the charger to the pack and only the pack. Nothing else, and activate the charger. If the GFCI still trips, I would suspect a fault in your wiring from the charger to the batteries, or your 120 v ac line. Could be that the hot and neutral wires are reversed.

  If by chance that the charger works fine with both ends of the pack disconnected from everything else, and you reconnect one end of the pack back to the car wiring and it faults out again, then the fault is in the car wiring, the motor has carbon tracking, the controller has a bad or going bad capacitor, some tracking around the main contactor, the dc/dc converter is causing a fault, your electric heating element or heater relay has a fault, the circuit breaker and or fuse or shunt has tracking around it.  All the small wiring that carry pack voltage are suspect.  Wires running to the voltmeter and ammeter are usually small and can get damaged and cause this kind of fault.

 If there are flooded lead acid batteries under the hood of the car, every device also under the hood is suspect, because the fumes (mist) from charging the batteries gets on everything.

John Emde