Blizzard 2015

Power out? How about an inverter connected to your car?
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Blizzard 2015

Post by kevm14 »

Phase 1: Preps

Got caught completely off guard last night around 4:30pm. My in-laws are visiting and my mother-in-law asked if I could get the latest weather report, since she last heard there would be snow on Tuesday. So I checked. Imagine my surprise when I saw a full blown blizzard warning, and 20-30 inches predicted. WHAT!?

So I spent the next 2 hours running around like a crazy person. My single 2-1/2 gallon gas can was completely empty so that was cool. I ran to Ace and bought two of the most expensive gas cans I've ever purchased. At 5 gallons each and with a fancy easy pour/no spill spout, these babies cost me $70 (that was the regular price).
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But, now I have 12.5+ gallons on premises which is way better than 2 years ago. I put Sta-Bil in the 2-1/2 gallon one for the snow blower. Maybe I should go the extra mile and plan out a siphon/pump solution to remove gas from my various vehicles in case it comes to that. I have a hand pump and some hose but from what I remember, the hose is quite large and barely fits into the filler.

Jamie also sent me for milk and bread which I thought was incredibly cliché. At least I didn't buy batteries. I saw this at the local mini-mart. He seems prepared. There is a Pontiac 6000 under the stickers.
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Bob, I assume those NC plates make you proud.

Because the Maxima is completely unusable right now, I will have to use the Ranger as my scout vehicle for gas runs and whatever else. I put my 320 lbs of Quickcrete in the bed of the Ranger as ballast and my experience is it does pretty well in the snow like that. The ground clearance helps a lot and I have modern all seasons on it this time around. The Malibu also has good all seasons I guess. I will try to leave the Caprice tethered to the house in inverter/generator mode.

Speaking of, I think I will install my mechanical fan on the water pump and unplug the electric fans. That will buy me another ~10A of DC power for the inverter. Hey, that's 150W of AC (128W after conversion) which would handle most of my lighting load. Unlike last time, I have energy efficient bulbs in the entire house, between LED and CFL. But with the mechanical fan installed, I can't drive the car because there is no shroud, and it would probably end up sucking the electric fans into the blades. Here is a demo I tried last March just to prove the concept:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTfIVz7Rfa4

Even without the shroud, I think it pulls enough air over the radiator to cool the engine at idle, especially in the winter, and especially with the new radiator it has compared to 2 years ago. I guess I'll monitor coolant temps initially until I feel comfortable with it. I guess I COULD leave one of the fans connected, and hope the fan controller set point is high enough that it would only kick on if it really needed to.

Based on my experience during Nemo, that extra 150W will be pretty high value as there were several instances where the alternator did not keep up with the load and the battery was discharging pretty heavily. Another thing I wish I had time to look into is a way to kick the idle up a tad, even manually (like triggered by a command for A/C). Alternators have a pretty steep curve at the idle end where even a couple hundred RPMs add significant amperage.
CS-144.jpg
I have the 140A CS-144 (police package).

With a 3.38:1 pulley ratio (Crank: 7-5/8", Alt: 2-1/4"), the alt will spin around 2,500-2,700 rpm at idle, which is good for 110-115A of output which converts to about 1,500 watts. Subtract some power to actually run the engine (ECM, fuel pump, ignition, etc.) and you can see the alternator can't possibly keep up since the inverter is rated at 1,500 output which means it would need at least 1,750 input watts. But if I increased the engine idle RPM by about 200 rpm, that would add 10 DC amps or 135W. I'm hoping that by removing the electric load, I'll essentially get that gain for free, without having to idle a 350 at 1,000 rpm.

Here is the rough curve of engine RPM to alternator raw output:
140A @ 1770rpm
136A @ 1500rpm
130A @ 1180rpm
120A @ 885rpm
110A @ 723rpm
I wish I had a chance to increase the size of my inverter cables as 4ga is a little on the small side for the 10 feet I made 2 years ago. Oh well, there will be a little efficiency lost there.

In the interest of efficiency, I even went so far as to tighten a chronically loose driver's side rear exhaust manifold bolt. Any air leak would fake the O2 into running the engine richer which would obviously decrease fuel economy.

I think I may also try to roll the CTS-V forward in the garage to make room for the snow blower. I guess I'll deal with that tonight. I did finally test my free snow blower on like 1 inch of snow/ice yesterday morning and it works great. Anxious to try it on some real stuff.

I have not tested the inverter since Nemo, which is about 2 years. I guess I should have done that. If I find out it's not working soon enough I could probably make it to Harbor Freight since they don't run out of those before storms.

On the way home from work I'll top off the Caprice which will probably take another 2 gallons. Maybe I'll try to document more of this evolution than I did the first time. With the 23 gallon tank plus the 12.5+ on hand, I could probably make it 2-4 days at a stretch before even needing gas (4 days would require some very judicial usage). Obviously I'll try to buy as soon as I need it.
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Blizzard 2015

Post by kevm14 »

Voltage drop calcs for cable, used to show how much power I am leaving on the table with my 4ga converted jumper cables.
cable voltage drop.png
cable voltage drop.png (8.7 KiB) Viewed 489 times
Looks like I could just convert the other 10 foot section of those jumper cables (i.e. put ring terminals on them) which would cut my voltage drop in half and put me at equivalent to 1ga cables.

Fun fact: be sure to double the total length when estimating voltage drop (or as the cool kids call it, IR drop) because you have a power and ground so the current has to travel twice the length of your cable.

Source: http://www.nmsu.edu/~tdi/pdf-resources/cc80.pdf
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Blizzard 2015

Post by kevm14 »

I located the other half of my 20 foot 4ga jumper cables that I originally used to connect my inverter to my car. Here is the standard process for making the cable:

- Cut the cable. I used a wood chisel (because copper is soft), a scrap 2x4 and a 2.5 lb sledge. It makes a clean cut and is better than any other hacky way of cutting that I could figure.

- Cut back some insulation with a utility knife. I found that making 4 lengthwise cuts and peeling the insulation back like a banana, then cutting the insulation at the base, worked well.

- Slightly twist the cable to bunch it together.

- Insert the cable into the lug. Make sure you cut it in such a way that a small amount of bare wire is exposed. This is how you will flow solder.

- Crimp the cable. We want to establish a mechanical connection. I used a cold chisel and the aforementioned 2.5 lb sledge to bang a divot into the lug.

- Onto the solder. Heat up the lug. I used a mapp gas torch (yellow bottle), and I throttled it down quite a bit.

- Once hot you just flow the solder into the copper strands and it will wick into the lug (and a few inches up the cable it turns out, if you use too much).

- Use the heat intermittently as required to keep everything hot, but not too hot (i.e. a fire or excessive smoking or melting back of the insulation)

- Do use caution when soldering. You can end up with a glob on the flat side of the terminal lug which will make it challenging to connect since you disturbed the flat surface. Just keep this in mind while soldering (keeping the flat part up is a pro tip)

- I like to finish up with electrical tape to cover the exposed section of cable. Shrink wrap would be the ultimate pro move and I was not up to that. A good quality electrical tape like 3M Super 88 is acceptable.

Here is everything connected up to my battery. I bought some marine terminals last time to give me a nice place to connect on my dual terminal battery.
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The mechanical fan is bolted up. Jackass admission: to install the fan I had to remove the 4 nuts holding the pulley onto the water pump. That went fine. Somewhere along the way I decided to start the car and it flung the pulley and the belt (obviously). Moving along....
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I pulled the car close to the garage but left a little room to circulate air in front of the radiator. The fan is quite a ways from the radiator and without a shroud, it will function very inefficiently. But all it needs to do is move enough air to cool the engine at idle, which isn't much at all.
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Managing two cables at the inverter end is a bit clunky and I decided that I'd try to shove the disconnected ends into a work glove just to keep them somewhat managed. I think I could actually leave this connected but I never measured the off state power draw. It may very well use nothing at all. But a dead Caprice battery would be a tremendous inconvenience in the middle of a blizzard so I suffer through it.
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I have a new garage door this time so the gasket makes a better seal around the cables (and a softer landing when I close the door).
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I also laid down my 12ga extension cord to the laundry room, and placed my adapter cable nearby.
Between halving the power loss on my cables (on the high amperage DC side) as well as switching to my old mechanical fan from the electric one, I should have an extra 185W of power available (input side, or about 157W on the AC side). I think this will be a real benefit.

I did test the inverter with a hair dryer. I used high fan setting and medium heat. Worked fine.

Alright, bring it on.
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Blizzard 2015

Post by kevm14 »

Well that was a lot of fanfare seemingly for nothing. Still have power here...
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Blizzard 2015

Post by kevm14 »

Phase 2: The new (used) snow blower

Ok, no power outage (so far). I am leaving the Caprice connected, though, because it is going to be single digits tonight (not unlike after Nemo). I will disconnect tomorrow. I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed.

On the up side, I enjoyed using my snow blower. I did 3 driveways, and after a plow finally came (a Chevy 2500HD not the big one), I went back and cleared those 3 driveways plus my other next door neighbor's.

It runs well. I did notice that it needs some choke until it is fully warmed up and sometimes one click even when warmed up. Not a big deal. The light works pretty well. As far as power, I never stalled it. I came close once. It also seems to be pretty efficient on gasoline but I'm not sure what I was expecting (I guess almost a full tank for a blizzard's worth of driveway but that was not the case at all).

Mid-day, I decided it would be fun to see if my Ranger could make it out of the unplowed cul-de-sac. Nope. Ground clearance issue. We got a lot of snow. The snow blower made quick work of getting it out at least.

I got through the whole day, and then began kind of abusing it to make a parking spot for my Ranger. I ended up using top gear and ramming it into the bank of snow. As I was putting it away, I found out later that I broke a left shear pin (probably doing the snow bank thing). Worse, I bent the low speed auger probably because I kept ramming, not realizing the broken shear pin. Whoops. The auger is made of pretty thin metal and is flexible. I was able to bend it back into position using my boot. Tomorrow I'll take an adjustable wrench and fine tune it to be more of the proper spiral. I'm sure it'll be fine. No other issues. My priming hose fix is still holding strong, too. Awesome.
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