We do a qualifying lap. Cell 26 was probably damaged yesterday
and dies right away today. Cell 11 looks questionable. We are
out of spares. We pull cell 26 and another cell to keep the wiring
right. We are forced to run an 86 cell pack. Cell 11 is in a stack
beneath one of the inverters. It would take too long to change.
We hope it will be OK.
We
put the pack back on charge despite occasional driving rain. The
generator is rated at 4500 Watts continuous. If the charger is
95% efficient, we should be able to put 4275 Watts into the pack.
So 12 amps into our 356 volt pack would be just on the limit in
optimum conditions.
90
degrees and humid are not optimum conditions. The generator emits
a bad smell and stops generating.
The
guys at RTR
Motorsportz are a good group and they offer us their spare
generator. We decide to be a little more conservative and drop
our charge rate to 5 amps. We estimate that we will need 10 hours
to get a full charge. The car will not be ready for today's 5
lap race.
There
is an RV parking area attached to Moroso Motorsports Park. It
has a variety of 110 volt charging points available. All the 30
amp outlets are on one phase and all the 20 amp outlets protected
with GFI are on another phase. This means we can not use our cheater
box to create a 220 volt outlet but 110 volt 30 amp should give
us 7-8 amps into the pack.
We
move the Imp to an outlet and start charging. We discover 6 amps
is about the best we get from the outlet without tripping the
breaker. We settle in for a long charge.
