Wayland’s Words

Hello to All,

Continued from pt. 2…

With the background of this tale now properly set up, and continuing with my tradition of sharing technical info as freely as possible so that others can take advantage of it and help advance EVs by pushing the performance envelope, as promised here are the details of the high power Kokam LiPol pack:

I had hoped that when I got a lithium sponsor, that along with a big weight reduction for the car and the high power output needed to fully feed a hungry Zilla Z2K, that a properly configured lithium pack (read that 300-400 lbs.) might also give the Zombie more than the 30-35 miles of range the lead acid pack gave. I had gotten a sample of the range capabilities of lithium with the borrowed 175 lb. A123. Even though the 880 A123 cells in it weren’t ‘energy density’ types, that tiny pack could still out-range 852 lbs. of lead acid batteries. What could say, twice that weight in lithium do? How cool would it be to have a street legal EV that burns from 0-60 in less than 3 seconds, runs a high 10 second 1/4 mile, ‘and’ had 75 miles range? Do you think that might get the public’s attention? I figured that about 350 lbs. of good lithium power cells would be about right. Anyway, these were the target performance parameters I was hoping a lithium pack could provide for the Zombie, but as I studied the specs of these ultra high power cells and spoke with Kokam’s EE who confirmed that the specs were, if anything - conservative, I began to realize that ‘these’ cells could not only meet my dream specs…they would far exceed them!

The Kokam ultra high power cells really live up to their name, and are seemingly made for EV drag racing. They are considered large format type cells, but at about just 7.5 inches square they’re still smaller than other LiPol type cells. Each is about 1/3 inch thick, and weighs just 1.8 lbs. At 3.7V & 30 ahr, they have a beefy continuous discharge rating of 20C (600 amps) but it’s their <10 second rating of 40C (1200 amps) that puts them in killer territory! Unlike the small cylindrical type cells that have to be paralleled anywhere from 8 - 12 wide in order to achieve the high currents needed for EV drag racing, it takes just two of these Kokam cells in parallel to crank out 2,400 amps for 10 seconds - I’ll repeat that… 2,400 amps for 10 seconds!

Paralleling pairs of cells does more than just making the extraction of extreme currents possible - the pair also effectively creates a 60 hr cell. At the higher C2 discharge rate however, their capacity actually increases to 32 ahr. The cells pass the nail puncture test without exploding (seen it done), without catching on fire (seen it done), and without spewing fountains of chemicals (seen it done)…read that ‘they are safe’. If all this doesn’t already sound terrific, check this out. They have been tested at 100% discharge for 1450 cycles and still had 81% capacity remaining! At 80% DOD they are good for 2500 cycles and still have 91% capacity remaining.

The Zombie started life as Datsun 1200, a little economy car from the early 70’s powered by a tiny 1200cc 4 cylinder gas engine that sipped fuel, and with the body’s small frontal area, its low mass, and its fairly good cd, the Datsun 1200 was rated as America’s highest gas mileage car in ‘73. As a high powered electric car, though it can suck the amps when called on to dispatch a 500 horse Vette, the Zombie’s got a Jekyll and Hyde personality that turns it from a track terror into an efficient EV when driven ‘nicely’.

Before moving on to my predicted specs for the Kokam-powered Zombie, looking back at things (White Zombie History pages makes this easy) will put it into perspective. As we go through this together, forget that White Zombie is primarily a drag racing-focused EV, and rethink of it in terms of usable range per charge. You’ll begin to see why we are so excited about these cells!

Example (1)

The 60, 12V batteries that made up the lead acid pack weighed 852 lbs. and in terms of ‘power density’ could output 1500 amps at an initial sag to 220V at launch, then they would sag lower and lower towards 180V at the end of a run. That’s a max output of 330 kW dropping to 270 kW, or 442 battery hp declining to 362 battery hp. Of all the lead acid batteries I’ve tried over the years, from Optimas to Orbitals and including the various models of Hawkers, the combination of 60 small 16 ahr Hawkers gave the highest ‘power density’ of any lead acid battery, and power density has always been the focus with the batteries used in this car.

In terms of ‘energy density’ with twin strings of 360V @ 16 ahr C20, the combined pack was 360V @ 32 ahr C20, but lead acid being lead acid, at EV currents the actual ahr the combined pack could deliver at the real world C2 was about 16 ahr, resulting in 5.8 kWhr of what I refer to as ‘usable EV capacity’. Even at its heaviest 2660 lb. lead acid state, with the drag radials pumped up hard to 35 psi, the Zombie rolls quite easily and is efficient to the tune of about 190 Whrs per mile @ 55 mph. With the lead acid pack hanging at 375V at 55 mph, the ammeter indicates just 25-30 amps of current being pulled from the pack, so this backs up the 190 Whr per mile claim. An hour of continuous driving at 55 mph would then, give 55 miles range if the batteries could produce about 10.5 kWhrs…but they couldn’t. At 5.8 kWhr, you could get 30 miles of range, and 35 miles at lower urban speeds, hence the 30-35 miles per charge I rated my car at. The battery to vehicle weight ratio (BVR) was 32% so it all fits with the accepted calculations for a lead acid powered EV. Though the Zombie’s primary mission has always been acceleration, it’s also been great to have a decent range per charge (for lead acid) that has allowed the car really be a functional street legal drag car, with the emphasis on the word ’street’. Being able to drive to and from the track (16 miles one way) with opportunity charging at the track, for me, has always added credibility to the car’s mission. As the lead pack aged, that 30-35 miles became more like 25-30 miles. This was again, pretty much proven that Friday night in July of this year, when running on just half of the pack (covered in pt.1) the car did 13 miles of spirited 65 mph freeway driving, then started to fade away, stranding me about 2 miles shy of my place…call it 13 miles of good driving. If both strings had been working, that comes out to 26 miles range @ 65 mph.

Example (2)

Borrowing the crazy little A123 motorcycle pack was an enlightening experience on many levels. Like the Zombie’s lead acid pack, the 175 lb. ‘box ‘O batteries’ was designed with one thing in mind - power density! Bill Dube could care less about energy density when trying to push Killacycle ever quicker and faster through the 1/4 mile…it’s all about power density! 1400 amps from 175 lbs. of cordless drill cells is pretty amazing!

Lithium being lithium, even when the chemistry and the cell’s mechanical design is oriented towards power density, compared to lead acid chemistry you still end up with outstanding ‘energy density’. Point in case…just 175 lbs. of these cells made 6.9 kWhrs of usable EV power (880 cell pack configured at 8P110S - 2.3 ahr X 8 = 18.4 ahr - 3.4V X 110 = 374V - 374V X 18.4 ahr = 6881 Whr or 6.9 kWhr) You can look at it as 5 times the energy density as the lead acid pack, lb. for lb., or perhaps more entertaining, is that a little box 1/5 the size and weight of the lead acid pack, that fit inside the spare tire well area instead of taking up a large portion of the car, made ‘more’ kWhrs, at an impressive 6.9 kWhr vs 5.8 kWhr! To back this up, in an unplanned range test, I put on 32 miles without a recharge driving the Zombie back home from PIR after a night of racing, then drove it back the next night. After 32 miles the pack’s voltage was still ‘right there’…I probably could have made a few hard runs without recharging! Those 32 miles ate up 6 kWhrs of juice, but true to the reputation of lithium having a very flat discharge, with just .9 kWhr left in the pack it seemed quite ready to keep going!

OK, with this out of the way, here’s what I decided would be the best way to utilize the Kokam ultra high power cells to push the Zombie to the next level:

When going from lead acid to lithium, it takes a bit of adjusting one’s thought process on pack voltage. A lead acid pack comprised of 12V ‘nominal’ batteries is pretty easy to figure out, as everyone knows the ‘actual voltage’ of a fully charged 12V battery is about 12.85V or so…call it 13V. If you design a 360V pack, you know it sits at about 390V unloaded. You also know that at full charge when still connected to the charger and in the final constant voltage stage, each battery goes up to around 15V, so the pack rises as high as 450V. You also know that immediately after shutting down the charger, that the 450V rapidly goes away and the pack is below 400V in seconds. By the time you key-on, the pack is in the 390-395V range, safe for the Zilla, and ready to go. Things change with lithium. Knowing that I could pretty much name the number of cells I wanted, I thought of going higher in voltage for the pack. thinking that 208 cells (2P X 104S) would be perfect and would give 384.6V nominal. The problem is, these cells get taken to 4.2V at full charge, then off of charge only drop to 4.1V, for a 426.4V resting voltage after charging…Zilla, not happy I’d have to drop the pack voltage.

As mentioned in pt. 2, I wanted to assemble these cells into modules. I worked closely with Rich Rudman on this with many brainstorming sessions over pie and scribbled-on napkins, and also with him back in Missouri where we ran the concept past the Kokam engineering team. The idea was to keep the design clean, simple, and accessible. It’s the accessible part that dictated a modular design, because having a large assembly of cells all ganged together in the trunk space of the car, makes a package that although small compared to the lead acid pack, is still too heavy and bulky to work on. It also makes it difficult to quickly get to cells if there’s a problem. With a possible TV show in the works (more on this in pt.4) and with Kokam interested in being a supplier of cells for that project, I wanted the modular design so other packs could be configured by adjusting the numbers of and the placement of modules for a given vehicle. Other factors that shaped the module’s design were weight, physical size, shape, current carrying ability, and cell numbers per module. I wanted each module to not be too heavy, so 35-37 lbs. was the goal. Rudman’s newest BMS board is an 8 channel unit, meaning it can keep track of 8 cells (or 8 paralleled groups of cells). At 1.8 lbs. per cell, and needing to have pairs of cells in parallel, a 2P X 8S, 16 cell module made sense. Each module would be made of tough clear Lexan, and the cell’s output tabs would be tied together with high current nickel plated copper buss and clamp bars. With just shy of 29 lbs. of active material (cells) and the heavy 3-4 lbs. of copper interconnects (needed to pass 2.4 kiloamps), hitting that 35-37 lb. goal would be a challenge. At 29.6V, 64 ahr @ C2, and ~36 lbs. per module, and with pack voltage, space constraints, and a pack target weight including cabling and hold-downs of 450-460 lbs., I went with a 12 module, 192 cell design for a 355V nominal, 22.7 kWhr @ C2 power package capable of outputting 2.4 kiloamps for 10 seconds! The very low voltage sag at high currents is very impressive with these particular cells. Graphs provided by Kokam reveal that for every 5C rate of discharge, the cell sags ~.1V, so beginning at 3.8V if one were to extract 150 amps, the cell drops to 3.7V, and at 10C or 300 amps, it goes to 3.6V, so at its continuous rating of 20C or 600 amps, the cell drops and stays at 3.4V…this is very impressive stuff! In theory, at the 10 second rate of 40C -1200 amps, the cell still hangs at 3V! Do the math for our 2P96S pack, and this equates to a staggering 691 kW! It’s amazing, that 345 lbs. of Kokam cells will generate 926 battery hp! This is terrific power density.

As exciting as the prodigious power density of this pack will be, there’s that other side of things, energy density, that is equally exciting for my street legal EV. With a full 22.7 kWhr @ C2, and with 190 Whrs per mile efficiency, White Zombie’s highway driving range will be a dream-come-true 110-120 miles! Remember, it doesn’t hurt these cells to take them down 100%…they can be taken there 1450 times and still retain 81% of their original capacity! Being conservative and just using 100 miles per 100% discharge, and being conservative and stopping at the 1000 cycle point, this equates to 100,000 miles of driving!

Knowing that my Datsun is a Nissan, it seems very handy for comparison’s sake that Nissan is unveiling its new electric car, the Leaf. Larger than a Datsun 1200 and heavier by more than a half ton - the Leaf weighs 3400 lbs. vs the predicted Zombie curb weight of 2275 lbs., Nissan’s new electric car has a 24 kWhr pack made from 192 flat-shaped cells, and they claim 100 miles per charge. Other early testers have this to say:

“The Leaf sports a 24 kilowatt-hour lithium manganese battery…air-cooled battery provides enough juice to go 100 miles”

“The Leaf, an all-electric five-door hatchback, will have a 100-mile range…driven by a 24-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.”

“…said the 100-mile range suggests the car will have a 20-kilowatt battery.”

As with any production factory EV, you are not allowed 100% discharges from the battery’s capacity, so it’s safe to assume those 100 miles are accomplished on anywhere from 20-22 kWhrs. I am predicting 110-120 miles in my smaller car with its lower frontal resistance and that only weighs 2275 lbs. and with close to 23 kWhrs of usable battery capacity. Coincidentally, my old Nissan uses 192 flat-shaped lithium manganese cobalt cells @ 23 kWhrs while the new Nissan uses 192 flat-shaped lithium manganese cells @ 24 kWhrs. …it makes for a very interesting comparison:

Nissan Leaf:

3400 lbs. curb weight
mid-sized, 5 passenger
24 kWhr
100 miles per charge
0-60 in est. 8.5 seconds
est. 1/4 mile ET 17 seconds
top speed 87 mph

Nissan / Datsun 1200 ‘White Zombie’:

2275 lbs. curb weight
small, 4 passenger (2 now due to 6 pt. roll bar)
22.7 kWhr
110 - 120 miles per charge
0-60 in est. 2.5 seconds
est. 1/4 mile ET (at 1/2 power level) 10.8 seconds
top speed est. with ratio changed to 3:50, 135 mph

345 lbs. of these Kokam cells are 59% lighter than the out-going lead acid pack that was comprised of 60, 14.2 lb. Hawker 12V batteries that weighed 852 lbs., but considering module packaging with their built-in copper interconnects, cabling and hold-downs for the 12 modules, as stated, the Kokam pack as installed in the car should be 450-460 lbs. The lead acid pack had 852 lbs. of batteries, but with the copper interconnects, long cabling between the rear seat and trunk areas, the twin string bridging contactors, compartments and hold-downs, the actual lead acid assembled and installed pack weight was 906 lbs. On the surface, it seems the car will lose 450 lbs. or so, but other structural mods to the car adds back some weight. You’ll have to tune in to pt. 4 to get that and other interesting info on how things are progressing.

See Ya…John Wayland

Hello to All,

Just in time for Thanksgiving, here’s the second installment:

Continued from pt. 1….

After a two year drought seeking lithium, in the period immediately following the Wayland Invitational IV races things really started to happen. Figures, it all happened ‘after’ the races! Oh well, I guess I shouldn’t complain!

It took me a while, but I finally realized that sometimes it takes a team approach to get things done, and that’s exactly the change I made in 2009. I am fortunate to have good friends in the EV community, and many assisted in my efforts to acquire a high power lithium battery maker’s sponsorship. I had been working through Dick Brown to get in contact with Kokam. It was Dick Brown who had acquired sponsorship from Enersys in 2005 when a friend of his was high up in that company. This man, like Dick, knew and appreciated the value of proving a battery’s power and reliability on the race track. Soon after though, he left Enersys and moved on to form Kokam America, becoming the company president. Dick and I were in contact with him about the possibility of a Kokam sponsorship for the Zombie project, months before the WI-IV races. At the same Jim Husted and my new friend Bob Fagliano had also been talking with Kokam engineers about cells for another very high profile project. For those who were at the races and may have met him, Bob’s the guy who had that glossy-black ethonal powered T-Bird at the WI-IV races on display. I had met Bob in the weeks just before the WI-IV races, and we hit it off from the start. If you were at the Wayland EV Juice Bar enjoying the backyard craziness and social time, Bob provided those twin big coolers packed with icy-cold refreshments. Bob is heavily involved with alternative energy - ethonal, electric power, solar, wind, you name it, he’s into it! Like Dick Brown, Bob’s one of those guys who seems to know everybody, and as I’ve learned, he’s a guy who can get things done! Perhaps his best quality though, is that he’s just a good guy.

Bob had also established a relationship with Kokam’s national sales manager. Kokam’s markets have been mostly military and medical, but they have plans to get deeper into the EV market. Stimulus money was looking good for Kokam’s expansion plans to build an 800,000 square foot facility in Midland, Michigan that would produce advanced large format superior lithium polymer batteries for EVs. The sales manager is a sharp guy and saw the value in proving Kokam’s LiPol cells’ power and reliability in a stressful environment like EV drag racing, and he was convinced that showing off the cells in a high profile street legal electric car - not just a pure racing vehicle, was a great opportunity - the White Zombie project seemed a perfect fit. He also liked the whole TV series thing that was also brewing in the background. As it turned out, several of Kokam’s USA based engineers had seen the OPB video and were already hip to White Zombie. During the ongoing conversations and tech talks with the sales manager and key engineers, Dow was ironing-out their their partnership deal with Kokam America. At about the same time we were looking into a very special ‘ultra high power’ type lithium cell Kokam had made for a defense project, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $161 million federal grant to Kokam for developing a new generation of high-power battery technology for supplying the automotive industry’s electric vehicles. All of the pieces were falling into place.

Bob had been in touch with one of Kokam’s top engineers, who besides being an expert on lithium cells, was very much into hi pro cars. Bob had been talking with him about White Zombie when he recommended the perfect cell for a street legal drag car - a cell with very high power density, yet also a cell with high energy density as well. Could it be, that the Zombie could have both insane levels of instantaneous power ‘and’ have a pack with enough energy density to up the ante in the miles-per-charge game? I had checked out the specs on this ultra high power LiPol cell, and quite frankly, was blown away with the stats!

While doing my daytime gig of wrenching on lift trucks getting beat up and covered in hydraulic oil, Bob called me in the very late afternoon, saying ‘he had something for me’. As it turned out, he and I were both in the same Oregon City area, so we arranged a top secret meeting in the darkened parking lot of Shari’s restaurant, and in the early evening, like some illegal drug deal, we met where he handed me ‘the package’. The box was a flat affair, about the size of a thick dinner tray and weighing maybe nine lbs. I opened it, to find a pair of vacuum-formed black plastic trays stacked together, and inside each were a pair of Kokam ultra high power lithium manganese cobalt polymer cells, looking like square pancakes sealed inside static bags and with two wide metal tabs at the top side. In my trembling hands, I was holding less than 8 lbs. of not-yet-available-to-the-public lithium cells that if connected in series could effortless crank a highway tractor - over and over, while making more instantaneous power than the tractor’s standard 200 lbs. of 8D lead acid cranking batteries!

One thing led to another, and I suddenly found myself in very positive negotiations with Kokam America. I studied the specs of these cells, and the more I read and the more I talked with Kokam’s engineers, the more excited I got over the possibility of getting enough of these to power-up the Zombie! Kokam America’s national sales manager even came to Portland for a face-to face meeting with team Plasma Boy. One of the team’s longtime members is Rich Rudman, who’s steadfastly supplied me with ever-increasingly more powerful chargers, BMS, and track side support from little known weeknight racing outings to full blown NEDRA EVents. Rich has always been there for me. Rich and his Manzanita Micro guys have been working with various brands of lithium and the BMS for it, for years now. Kokam was comfortable that we could handle the BMS to keep the cells alive.

We still had not been given the full go-ahead on cells, but we were very close. After being invited to visit the Kokam America plant in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Rich and I were on a plane to the Mid-west. To say we were treated well, is an understatement. After a terrific night out to dinner, the next day was all business and a very productive meeting ensued. I wanted to design a modular type system for the Zombie, and the assembled Kokam team agreed with the plan. Kokam added that they would provide engineering assistance with detailed mechanical drawings and all the EE help we might need, As part of the plant tour we received, we got to see the stack of ultra high power cells with a ‘Plasma Boy Racing’ label on the rack! Kokam America had worked with the US Navy on a special limited run of these ultra high power lithium polymer cells they had been developed for helicopter rotor crank duty, one of the most stringent applications for any battery.

Not long after returning home from Missouri, 210 of the special ultra high power cells found their way to Portland…we had our lithium! It’s ironic that these LiPol cells were developed for helicopter rotor crank duty, because the very first version of White Zombie used helicopter rotor crank NiCads! From the June 2009 Design News magazine:

A little more than a decade ago, virtually all racers considered electric vehicles to be glorified golf carts. That began changing in 1994, however, when the Oregon Electric Vehicle Association decided to stage an electric drag race to show the public that environmentally-acceptable EVs could be “fun and exciting.” The organization cordoned off a little street in downtown Portland, grabbed a few stop watches, and laid chalk lines on the cobblestone surface. Wayland, however, was not about to stand for the idea of a genteel, 30-mph drag race. He found the concept offensive; it was as if someone had tried to paint a smiley face on his soul. “I thought about the 72-volt cars that could barely get out of their own way, lumbering and wheezing uphill at 30 miles per hour,” Wayland recalls. “And I said, we can’t show this to the public.” He didn’t. Wayland used a helicopter battery and transformed his Datsun 1200 into a 175-volt race car. “They weren’t expecting cars like mine,” he says now. “Here I came with my Datsun, burning rubber in all five gears and smoking the tires. Women and children were running for cover!”

To see photos of the first time I used helicopter batteries in White Zombie, go here:

<http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/reviews.php#1994>

Stay tuned for pt. 3 where I get into the nitty-gritty specs and details of these cells, and tell all about the many changes being made to the car to better handle the new power level. How much power did I say? The answer, in pt. 3!

See Ya…John ‘Plasma Boy’ Wayland

Hello to All,

It’s been a while since I’ve put together a full-blown Waylandesque post, so here’s one coming at you! As I never really got around to writing much about the Wayland Invitational IV races, I’m making this a combined story covering what led up to the races, what happened immediately after the races, and then I’ll get to the exciting stuff happening right now - the late ‘09 tear-down and rebuild of the Zombie that includes the design, creation and assembly of what I consider to be the ultimate battery pack for a high performance street EV!

From Rod Wilde:

>I can’t wait! It will be Sunday in less than 6 hours I have been a bit >bored lately and could use a Wayland tale for a lift in spirits.

OK Rod, there’s a lot of details to follow, so kick off your shoes, grab a cup of hot coffee, and sit back and enjoy the tale…

From Rod Hower:

> I always read your posts on this list, but I might have missed one about the >details of your ‘most potent ever’ White Zombie. Inquiring minds want to >know what’s up your sleeve.

No, I haven’t really talked too much about this, but since you asked…it all started like this:

Ever since tasting the forbidden fruit more than two years ago when we borrowed the spare A123 lithium pack from the Killacycle team, I have been engaged in a quest to get lithium for White Zombie. As some will recall, in the Summer of ‘07 we pulled the heavy 852 lb. lead acid pack and dropped in the 374V, 6.9 kWh, 880 cell assembly that once powered Killacycle. It was the smallest of the three different lithium packs used in Killacycle. The 880 cell pack was the first one, then the team pulled and replaced it with a new pack at 990 cells, and now the current pack is at 1210 cells. With the heavy lead out of the Zombie and a tiny 175 lb. pack of lithium replacing it, the curb weight fell to around 1900 lbs.! Though the A123 pack didn’t quite match the fives time bigger 1500 amp-capable lead pack, the suitcase sized package of cordless drill cells still cranked out an amazing 1400 amps! Minus all the lead weight in the back seat and trunk areas, the car had a poor launch and excessive wheel spin that occurred throughout the entire run - even still, White Zombie still posted an 11.4 @ 114 mph ET. If we had more time to experiment with controller settings, tire pressure, and driving techniques, Tim, I, and most everyone else who were there that night, knew that the lithiumized Zombie was a high 10 second runner! Once the car ran broke through the 11.5 second barrier however, without a roll bar system and a fire suit for Tim (NHRA and NEDRA safety rules), we were politely escorted off the track and were not allowed to make any more runs. The next day, Sunday, we pulled the feisty A123 pack from the Zombie’s trunk, and with a tear in my eye, handed it back to the Killacycle boys

Following that exciting July weekend, it was tough going back to 852 lbs. of lead Even tougher, was installing a six point roll bar system knowing it would add close to 100 lbs. to the car! The Zombie’s curb weight ballooned to a porky 2660 lbs…by today’s standards about an average weight for a compact car, but for a 70’s economy car that used to be just under 1600 lbs., way too heavy! Even so, with the lead acid pack unleashing its full 1500 amps, in August at the NEDRA Nationals 10th Anniversary races WZ turned in an 11.882 @ 109.58 mph, the quickest ET it had ever run on lead acid - considering the amount of weight to move, not too bad! Back at PIR one week later at the ‘Street Warriorz’ drag races, the Zombie had launched hard carrying its front tires more than 100 feet as it walked all over a hot Corvette Z06. Looking at the timeslip’s 1/8 mile stats the Zombie was on its way to an 11.7, but damage to the Siamese 8 in the last 500 feet wiped that notion away as Tim shut the car down and it power-off coasted to a 12.07 ET

As positive as 2007 was, most of 2008 was anything but! The problems started with motor parts delays, then there was the EVDL censorship nightmare that led to soured relationships and the cancellations of both the Wayland Inv. and the NEDRA Nationals in Portland. In spite of the troubles, I was busy all through 2008 trying to get lithium sponsorship on many levels. The l-o-n-g delay in the airing of the now infamous OPB ‘Electric Drag Racing’ video that we had put a lot of effort into and had hoped would be a catalyst for sponsorship, only contributed to the sponsorship drought. The EV drag racing story kept getting bumped off OPB’s play schedule, there was nothing new to show potential sponsors, and nothing materialized while the Zombie sat out the 2008 racing season.

After shelving it for a year and a half, in November of 2008 OPB finally aired the story in their weekly show ‘Oregon Field Guide’. To the surprise of the series’ executive producer (who had held its airing back) it immediately went viral. In fact, in their ‘20 Years of Oregon Field Guide’ three hour long anniversary celebration show aired at the end of the year, the show’s executive producer went on camera to announce that our EV drag racing episode had been was unofficially voted the #1 Oregon Field Guide video of all time - unofficial because it was aired too late in the year to be in the list of shows to vote on, yet the votes still piled in! In a few short months, there were over one million views at the OPB on line videos page! The OPB story was followed with the December 2008 release of the center fold-out feature story on my twin 1200 EVs in the Jan. issue of ‘Retro Cars’ magazine, and the media frenzy continued into 2009 with lots of interest pouring in - including being contacted by numerous network TV series producers who, inspired by the OPB video, had ideas for a Zombie-based TV series…more on this to follow.

In the early Spring of 2009 I was negotiating with an LA based TV series creator, who understanding the importance of having powerful lithium batteries in White Zombie, was making follow-up calls to prospective lithium companies on my behalf. I was getting closer to a lithium deal, and was ‘really’ hoping to have a lithium pack installed in the Zombie in time for this past Summer’s WIIV races - alas, that was not to be.

In July, with the EV drag races bearing my name about to happen, a White Zombie no-show was not an option, so I swallowed my pride and accepted the fact that the car would run slower than it had in the past. Tim and I resurrected the nearly three year old Hawker lead acid pack by initially pulling and replacing eight weak batteries, thanks to generous help from longtime friend and past sponsor, Dick Brown, who had scrounged up and sent eight new Hawkers to me just in time. It was Dick Brown who had gotten me sponsorship from Enersys (Hawkers) when a friend of his was high up in that company. Tim and I went through the pack that had little exercise during first half of ‘09, save for a few EV car shows and an occasional 10 mile run & recharge. We found that the majority of the batteries were all sitting at 12.6V or so, but we did find eight of them that were bad. It was ironic that we found exactly 8 bad ones, when Dick had sent exactly eight news ones. Through various techniques, we got the new batteries pretty well matched in SOC with the old ones, then we reconnected everything back into the twin 360V string affair it had always been. I took progressively longer trips followed by recharges for a few days, and the pack seemed to be getting stronger and stronger.

Hoping for maybe mid 13 runs so as to not be too embarrassed, the Zombie surprised us all when Friday night when it broke out of the gate with a 12.694 @ 96.7 mph! The ET was better than I had hoped for, but the low trap speed had me concerned. When Tim returned to the pit, we could see a mist on the Lexan cover for the back seat area portion of the pack…not a good sign, and we both knew the pack was in trouble. The second run came in slower at a 12.996 and just 89.60 mph, so before the car came back to the pits I knew what to expect. This time, the Lexan was fully drenched from what I thought were numerous batteries letting go…we were done for the night. I told Tim that we had made a good showing for what we had to work with, and said we’d just be good hosts Saturday.

The drive home from the track with fully exercised and hot batteries is usually one the Zombie can make on the freeway at a good clip all the way - this was not the case Friday! I felt the pack going soft about 2 miles shy of the Wayland EV Juice Bar and had to pull over as the pack was sagging lower and lower. I had to be towed back by my crew, and I was now fully convinced the pack had done its swan song and would never power the car again.

The next day during the crazed afternoon Wayland EV Juice bar activities with a congress of Teslas, a Tango, Crazy Horse, and all the other EVs being either recharged or repaired from Friday’s racing strewn all over, Tim was inside the Zombie quietly checking out the carnage… the idea of sitting out Saturday night’s track action wasn’t part of his plans! Though I was convinced the tired old pack had thrown in the towel, Tim talked me into joining in the post mortem exam. To our surprise, only ‘one’ of the old batteries had caused all the trouble, and it had let go in a spectacular fashion and was totally open-circuited. ‘Now’ I understood what had been going on during both runs and why the trap speed was so low…with one string having the troubled battery in the loop, that battery’s initial high resistance made the string weak, then when it fully opened, it essentially took the string out of the picture entirely. The resultant good string was doing all the work, and sagging very low while doing it…low volts equates to low trap speed. This also explained why the car felt so strong for about 12 miles on the way home from the track, then simply took a dive…it was running on only one string all the way home. All of this was verified, in that the batteries in the good string were very heavily discharged - but they were all very ‘evenly’ discharged and all sitting at a stone dead 11.9V. I had gotten lucky we didn’t reverse cells in a few batteries! The batteries in the string that went down with the one bad battery, were all nearly fully charged…proof the Zombie had been running on just one of the two 360V strings, and still managed to run 12s!

Fresh out of new Hawkers, I rummaged through my forklift service truck and found an old spare Hawker that had seen rough service, thought ‘what the heck’, and after getting it charged up, put it in the pack that had the weak battery, as the rest of them were fully charged. I did a replay of the ’short trips followed by recharges’ and the pack seemed to be OK. Because of Tim’s failure to give up attitude (why he gets to be the car’s driver) the Zombie would return for a second night of racing!

We weren’t the only team with technical problems. After the extreme effort and exhausting drive from Anchorage to Portland, the Crazy Horse Pinto team of Mike and Hank, like us, had problems at the track Friday night. They felt their problems were in part, caused by a weak battery in their traction pack. Side bar….though we’ve tried many times, we’ve never had a good solution for the Zombie’s 12V system, as DC-DC converters seem to die in the application…something about a wildly-swinging supply voltage as high as 450V at full charge and a low of 180V at full discharge racing currents plus demanding high reactance contactor coils seems to take them out! Thus, the Zombie has had a sub-standard 12V system simply supplied by an unassisted 16 ahr Hawker battery - exactly like the traction pack units.

From Ken’s post ‘Frustration’:

>Another major part of that frustration is Hot Juice Electric projects that I >can’t get to. Work on the Chassis Juicer has not been touched in over six >months! I feel awful about that because I promised John Wayland a Chassis >Juicer for the White Zombie. It was promised for the Wayland Invitational >and it is still not done! Please wait… Pardon me - I had to go scream.

Knowing our racing friends from Alaska needed a Hawker, we pulled the healthy under-hood 12V Hawker and gave it to them to get the Pinto back on its game. Thinking we could get by with one of my ‘50%’ type extra Hawkers on the shelf, we grabbed one and replaced the one we pulled for the 12V system with it. I figured recharging it hard between runs at the track would help it keep up. At the time, I was wishing Ken had brought a brand new beta unit Chassis Juicer for us - but he didn’t It was sure great to have Ken and Heidi at the Wayland EV Juice Bar just the same

Back on the track Saturday night, the pack was acting like it had two years ago, and the first ET of the night was a surprising 12.418 @ 100.7 mph! There were no indications of battery problems at all, and the Lexan stayed dry and clear. The 2nd run was even more impressive, almost dipping into the 11s with a 12.073 @105.53 mph! Wow, we were on track to run an 11 the next pass! Remember that 50% 12V under-hood battery? It raised its ugly head and bit us in the ass when on the 3rd run contactor dropped in and out, and the pass came in at 12.468 @ 102.11. The 4th run had even more sagging 12V system problems, this time not having enough juice to pull in the parallel contactors and rebooting back to series mode for the entire 1/4 mile run that came in at 13.804 @ 87.43 mph. Oh well, we gave it a good try, and our best run was only 2/10s off from WZ’s best lead acid ET two years ago when the pack was fresh, with an 11.882 @ 109.52 mph. A pretty respectable showing, enough to stay well ahead of my new Tesla friends, and a wonderful final curtain for the mighty Hawkers!

Stay tuned for pt. 2…

See Ya…John Wayland