Has anyone installed the enginer PHEV?

Wow! That 4kw kit sounds great for my commute. And I am for Jack coming back to this PC. We need all the intel from this kit as much as possible. Hey, does the BMS shutofff when the swicht is turned off?

 

The BMS doesn't shut off until the batteries are balanced. So if you do get an alarm, turning off the switch will not stop the beeping. It's best not to alarm at all.

 

I would like to see Jack back also, after all this is not China the last time I checked.
That's my 2 cents.

 

FWIW, I can only be blamed 50% for Jack's ban, and as soon as I found out, DAYS AGO, asked the mods for his reinstatement!
I never asked for a ban. We'll see where that goes, I don't make the rules.

Also, isn't it weird that *nobody* from Hymotion has used PC to my knowledge, in these past THREE years that I've been a member here. Or any other PHEV rep.
It's always individuals that talk about their mod.

So the way I figure it, Jack should invest in hosting for his site to also include PHP & MySQL, that's like 5$ a month, and setup a forum there, since PC is a non-seller's site but a consumer site.

That way Jack benefits from great user input for cheap, will improve his product, and keep costs down.

So I gladly post in this thread as a future user of Enginer.US PHEV. Say next spring, as I would drive down from Montreal Canada to have it installed, I'll have to take a few days vacation. Then I'll have going down / coming back MPG stats.

Until then, I invite people to start their own threads & photo albums of their PHEV install. Peace.

 

Well guys, as promised..

I've completed the install of my Enginer PHEV pack. Jack ran out of 4KWH kits, so he just sent me a 2KWH kit that we'll be swapping out on the 14th/15th.

The install took about 4 hours. Most of the trouble came from not having the right equipment/parts. They were supposed to be included within the kit. I made a work around to that.

To be honest, this kit is MUCH EASIER to install than the Plugin Supply kit... I kept the Plugin Supply controller in the car, though.. This allows me to cut the engine when I feel like it

What to watch out for during the install

When connecting the Ignition Ready lead from the kit to the HV ECU on H16-2, make sure you really are connecting to pin 2. The pin out reference in the manual is the view from the front of the ECU, not the actual cable. The H16-2 cable should be green, not blue.

Oh, and... if you trigger the master warning light, you most likely swapped a cable somewhere.. or just forgot to put back in the service plug/fuse into the HV battery.


Results

I finished the install sometime around 8PM last night. I let it charge for a few hours, then gave it a test drive. The first thing I noticed was attempting to lock my car using the smart key entry system while the battery was being charged. There's some kind of interference that the receiver is getting as it is so close to the kit. Another thing I also noticed.. If you have a backup camera, the PHEV DC/DC emits so much noise that you'd notice that the camera starts to shake. This can be solved easily I think..

I've been living out in San Diego for work.. Some people might have realized this, San Diego has massive hills and stuff.... My MPG was affected.

There is also a fault with my controller or battery... The PHEV switch with the green and red LED states that the batteries are low.. even after a full charge. I'll be troubleshooting this later on today.

MPG Results

I haven't had the need to drive too far... I drove 5mi round trip and averaged around 99.9 MPG.

BTW, Prius Chat, I'm one of Jack's authorized installers in the Los Angeles / San Diego area.

 

Hey Boss,

Was it necessary to drill the holes to mount the kit? I don't really see why we would need to, from what I can tell from the install pictures. I am thinking of buying some rubber feets and just sticking them under there. It weighs too heavy to be moving around. And who's going off road on a Prius?

 

Have you ever though about "in case of an accident" having the battery case and all or partial of its content flying inside the cabin and the injuries and damage it can cause? This is a SAFETY issue!!!!!

 

Hey Boss,

If I get in an accident where the battery of that size and structure end up in the cabin, that means I got hit by an 18 wheeler. And in that case, no airbags, seatbelts, and etc. is going to save me. Peace.

 

I've been driving my 2007 Prius with a 2kWh kit since Saturday when I picked it up from Jack. I am loving it. I haven't checked mileage yet, but I made about a 100 mile round trip and the fuel gage was still showing full. I had done some other driving prior to the longer trip which was a combination of city and highway driving.

 

That's cool but I don't have the kit and I drove 195 miles so far on my tank and it still shows full.

 

"Was it necessary to drill the holes to mount the kit? I don't really see why we would need to, from what I can tell from the install pictures."



I am totally going to mount the kit and drill holes to securely fasten it in place. This is definately a safety issue. If I need to get to the spare, I will have a tool kit stored in the side of the car to remove the bolts holding down the Enginer kit.

JOANNA

 

i believe they are saying that there is minimal heat buildup when charging so the "cooling fan" runs only an hour. but hard to say, the link is broken. could also mean the charging circuit cycles every hour to prevent heat buildup... run an hour, off for a certain period of time, then run another hour

 

Not necessarily. Think rollover -- quite survivable if occupants (animate and inanimate) are restrained.

 

Alright, more updates regarding MPG:

Well, apparently I tripped the GFI at my apartment I didn't notice that the thing wasn't actually charging *doh*...

I'm currently at 31 miles according to the MFD, averaging 94.6 MPG. I was chilling at 99.9 until the battery ran out

A cool thing about the kit... As you all know, it's supposed to recharge the traction battery. The Enginer kit tries to keep the battery full. The SOC has been showing 8 bars!!(I think that's 8 if I can count right.. What ever, it's a full battery). I've never hit that in my life!!!(Except driving down a huge hill).

So, another thing I've noticed. The DC/DC converter gives off a nauseous smell... I don't quite know what that smell is.. but it's definitely coming from the DC/DC or the LiFePo4 batts. Any ideas?

Another issue about my kit:

My Chargery balancer is totally broke!

It thinks I only have 4 cells plugged into it... not only that.. it thinks that the first cell is at 5v, second cell at 4.7v, third cell at 2.0v.. It doesn't see the rest of the cells.. Verifying the voltages of the cells with a multimeter, everything checks out at 3.3V.

Jack is overnighting me a new balancer (BTW, the SECOND balancer for the second 8 cell string works fine)

Also, another issue... For some reason, the low light LED is being fired when the battery pack is full... This may be due to a faulty DC/DC program set. Jack is also replacing this.. The car is still drivable, though.. With the kit on at least. It still knows when to not discharge the battery pack after it has been depleted.

Since the kit is in it's early stages, just like the Hymotion and Plug-in Supply kits, quality control isn't as tight. In addition, all of these kits have had some type of bug due to software or hardware. The Enginer kit is doing VERY well overall.

More info soon to come!

 

I would definitely like to see something to indicate the SOC on the Enginer unit...some indication of how much charge is left before one of those low-voltage alarms trips and beeps the rest of the day until I get home to recharge.

In the Software world, this stage of the product is called Beta. We need to be keeping the folks at Enginer informed immediately whenever we encounter glitches or outright failures.

 

Some of what we're seeing in terms of PMs and banning and other
interaction may stem from cultural differences regarding how
advertising is done in China. It seems a bit more in-your-face
but the public is more inured to it and can ignore a higher
level of babble when needed. Blasting out PMs to potentially
receptive people might seem like perfectly reasonable practice
where Mr. Chen hails from, but we here [particularly some of the
internet long-timers] might be much more sensitive about it. One
only has to look at the amount of spam that comes from otherwise
well-meaning Chinese-based companies to see that difference.
.
Couple that with the tone of some of the other posts here, where
it almost sounds like some people have become shills for Enginer
and much of their writing would fit well into a "testimonials"
page. And lots of testimonials raises red flags for other folks,
who see such rhetoric and think "oops, scam". Not that this
is a scam, but I would encouraged remaining balanced [so to
speak??] about this. Discussing who is intending to become
"authorized installers" of such a new offering tends to build
on the suspicion a bit, like it or not.
.
Reports of bad cells and outgassing inverters aren't going to
help, of course, but if you want my weigh-in on any of this ...
I think the *idea* is sound, and as I pointed out over in my
CleanMPG post it answers a long-held question about how much
"stray" current you can inject into the system without the car
complaining about it -- basically, I think a controlled current
source that the car also sees is the RIGHT way to do any of these
conversions. Being able to also collect regen would be kind of
nice too, except that the methodology of keeping the base SOC
fairly high doesn't allow much overhead for screaming down the
mountain roads. A PHEV kit has no knowledge of what sort of
terrain is coming up so that would require a little more driver
control, and simplifying that to the level everyone would
understand how to use would be challenging at best.
.
Enginer seems to be sincere, although the latest reports have them
scrambling a bit to address deployment problems. I already
spouted my piece on material source and build quality, but I
do wish them the best on getting all that sorted out and producing
a reliable product. As people pointed out, access to a nice
*simple* and inexpensive system will make the PHEV market much
more accessible to more people which can't be a bad thing overall.
Time will tell about the subtleties and gotchas, but so it also
has with the other kits as well.
.
_H*

 

On the other side of that coin, when someone accuses a poster of actually being Jack and turns them into the "The Mod" to investigate if they have the same IP address . . . it tends to build on my suspicion that someone needs some meds

 

i sure hope the traction battery is not over 80% SOC... would the Pri sending a code if that happened? have you ever heard that whining sound that happens when the Pri is bleeding excessive charge?

do you have a way to monitor the SOC?

 

with canview at my disposel and canbus logging software with a laptop and canbus adapter i would be a perfect person to do some great data logging

but... i am not in the states... and with shipping and taxes 35 % ( 19% federal tax and 16% import tax ) its not that a cheap option anymore.

 

According to Jack, the battery Icon should show seven bars. It may just be a matter of adjusting the converter output a bit lower. The eighth bar turns on at about 75% SOC. At 80%, the ICE kicks on and fights against one of the MG's to burn off the excess charge. That's probably the sound that you are referring to.