What did you do to your Volvo today? Topic is solved

[MrAl]

Little update on today's work....

Apparently the solar panel is working. It is the first time ever i saw the battery voltage climb up a little. Normally after the engine is turned off the voltage continuously falls, fast at first, then slower as time goes on. After about 24 hours it can drop to as low as 12.01 volts.
Now, the voltage initially fell somewhat, then started to climb as i think the sun got brighter. It's up almost as high as when i first shut the engine off after running for some minutes. That's pretty amazing, and if this behavior keeps up this could be my solution to low battery problems, and i would suspect other people can do the same thing if they have battery problems.

There may still be a problem however. That is, right now the sun is quite bright, but once we get some cloudy weather the effectiveness remains to be seen. Will it perform well enough in that kind of weather.

I'll be keeping a close eye on it over the next few days, and nights, and see how it fares after one night with no sun at all.

Hello again,

Well here we are today, one day after installing the solar panel.
Last night the voltage went down but not as low as usual and that's a good sign.
This morning it did not start to creep up until around 8:15am well after sunrise. That's because during the first two hours there is a lot of shade blocking out the sun.
After that, the voltage actually went up from 12.03 volts to 12.04 volts !! WOW aint that great (ha ha). That was a good sign though because it meant that at least it may be able to hold the voltage from falling down more which would mean discharging more and that's bad.
So after about an hour it went up to 12.16 volts which is a really good sign. 0.1 volts is a lot for a 12v battery, and it's not near noon yet when the sun is in the most ideal place in the sky.

It is going up more now too so i'll see if the battery starts smoking soon (ha ha ha). Ok i seriously doubt that but i hope it at least keeps it up during the day that would reduce the total drain over a 24 hour period. I am looking to get away with starting the car just once every 3 days unless i have to go somewhere of course.

The normal trickle charge voltage is 13.8 volts i think but i dont think i want it that high. That's if it could ever do that anyway.

Another thing though is the sun is still pretty bright out there today so it's not the best test yet. The best test will be on a gloomy overcast day with lots of cloud cover. So unfortunately even if it works very good today it may not work very well on a cloudy day.
We'll see i guess and i'll update again then.

[volvolugnut]

Hello again,

Well here we are today, one day after installing the solar panel.


Another thing though is the sun is still pretty bright out there today so it's not the best test yet. The best test will be on a gloomy overcast day with lots of cloud cover. So unfortunately even if it works very good today it may not work very well on a cloudy day.
We'll see i guess and i'll update again then.

Have you tried to align the solar panel to the angle of the sun? If not, that should help efficiency in low angle winter days. I assume you have placed it inside with view of the sun through the car window.
volvolugnut

[scot850]

I had considered LED's but have read that they don't like variable voltage/current and tend to have a significantly shorter life in that type of use. The radio lighting is connected to the instrument/dash lighting system which has the variable brightness rheosat beside the light switch.

As this is a bit of a swine to do and the removal of the front plate on the SC-815 has limited number of removals before those break, I stick to the incandescent bulbs for this application. It may be interesting though to try it on the SC-816 which is easier to access.

Personally I nearly never adjust the dash brightness, similarly I never use a sun-roof so maybe LED's might work.

I will eventually offer all these radios for sale fully tested and maybe a video to prove operation. Mind you by the time I get there most will probably swap the head units out for bluetooth optioned ones.

Neil.

[hausmeister]

Put the headlight wiper motors mostly back together, but I suppose they need to be adjusted? There is one gear that switches a contact, I reinstalled that the same position, but since all other positions changed I don't think that will help. Maybe If one does not disconnect the red gear from the plate it would work, but guess what I did
trial and error? In any case that needs to happen while connected to the car (not any time soon).

I'll post some pics in the wiper thread once everything is tested/working (or not ).

[scot850]

I always mark the gears before removing them to try to prevent having to do this. Easy to be smart after you learn a lesson!

Might be worth considering testing off the car with a battery and a couple of leads to get you in the rough area before reassembling the cases.

Neil.

[454cid]

If you can't see the link it is down to the same problem I can't see Amazon links posted in the US. God knows why not.

Go to Amazon.com

Post this thread in the search:

20W 12V Solar Battery Charger, Waterproof 20 Watt 12 Volt Solar Panel Trickle Charger & Maintainer, Built-in Intelligent MPPT Charge Controller for Car Boat Marine RV Trailer Automotive

That should find it.

Neil.

I can't see Amazon links either. I think it's Firefox blocking them. What I do is quote the post, and then I can see the link, and just copy and paste, or copy the numbers in one of their short links and search Amazon for that.

When I post an Amazon link, I remove the "http://" portion and then it will show up for me/everyone.

[454cid]

Hi,

Yes as Steve said you can measure the voltage inside the car on pin 16 which is positive and either pin 4 or pin 5 ground.
If you have trouble getting to the OBDII connector you can get an extender on places like Amazon. You can even get a connector with breakout wires.

Either way, I'm out in the cold. Also, I always disconnect the charger when checking the battery voltage, and that's connected directly to the battery. It's no big deal.... I pick and choose when I feel like doing it. I checked on the battery in the LeSabre today, and the charger is showing green/charged. I'm leaving both the LeSabre and 850 connected so the chargers can do whatever desulfating they may do. I really have no idea how/when that works.

[MrAl]

Hello again,

Well here we are today, one day after installing the solar panel.


Another thing though is the sun is still pretty bright out there today so it's not the best test yet. The best test will be on a gloomy overcast day with lots of cloud cover. So unfortunately even if it works very good today it may not work very well on a cloudy day.
We'll see i guess and i'll update again then.

Have you tried to align the solar panel to the angle of the sun? If not, that should help efficiency in low angle winter days. I assume you have placed it inside with view of the sun through the car window.
volvolugnut

Hi,

Oh sure, that's the first thing i did when i placed it in the car. That's an important point, probably more than anything else.
Since the sun does not stay at a fixed position in the sky i had to choose the best angles (solid angle). That appears to be perpendicular to the sun's rays at around 12 noon. The plane of the panel being perpendicular to the sun which is considered a point source. This is often referred to as the plane being 'normal' to the point.

When i worked in the industry going back some 35 years or more, i partially designed and tested power converters that got their input from a huge huge solar panel and pumped the energy into the line (120vac or 240vac) so the end user (power consumer) could get a pay back from the power company, so it helped reduce their electrical energy bill.
That panel was huge can cost over a million dollars. One consumer up in Connecticut bought one and used it in their million dollar house and back then that was a very expensive house. They also used a huge water tank for storing hot water heated by the sun in the daytime. Pretty amazing house a lot of stuff was fully automated an that was back when this kind of thing was not yet popular so no Alexa yet (ha ha).

I considered using a two axis solar tracker but it probably wouldnt do much better. Simpler just to install a second panel and angle them both slightly off normal at 12 noonish.

I havent worked with a decent solar panel in many years now although i have fooled around with smaller ones to charge small batteries like your standard AA rechargeables.

So to sum up, right now it looks like i wont be able to determine the effectiveness of the panel until maybe a week or two has passed. I also may have to clean the snow off the window of the car or else it wont get much sunlight after a snow, maybe even after a light snow. There are many pitfalls i have to work around here.
So far it's not doing too bad, but that's after one and a half days of full sunlight. I think today may be sunny too. We get plenty of cloudy days here though so it wont be long before i get to see that.

[MrAl]

I had considered LED's but have read that they don't like variable voltage/current and tend to have a significantly shorter life in that type of use. The radio lighting is connected to the instrument/dash lighting system which has the variable brightness rheosat beside the light switch.

As this is a bit of a swine to do and the removal of the front plate on the SC-815 has limited number of removals before those break, I stick to the incandescent bulbs for this application. It may be interesting though to try it on the SC-816 which is easier to access.

Personally I nearly never adjust the dash brightness, similarly I never use a sun-roof so maybe LED's might work.

I will eventually offer all these radios for sale fully tested and maybe a video to prove operation. Mind you by the time I get there most will probably swap the head units out for bluetooth optioned ones.

Neil.

Hi Neil,

Oh that's interesting because the life of an LED goes up exponentially with a decrease in current. So if you run at one half the rated current (usually by choice of resistor) which is also approximately half as bright, the life could extend 10 times the rated life. I used to have a formula for this not sure if i can find it right now though. Also, LEDs almost always outlive incandescent light bulbs but the bulbs dont do too bad with reduced voltage. The main reason for failure is vibration and a little bit of element material loss. Thermal shock can also play a part in that. LED's have almost none of that. With the right choice of max current, they would outlive all of us probably two times over.

But as far as testing, you would have to test at least one, and because of the blue diffusers i think a frosted LED would be better and i would assume white although color could be interesting too, and of course the high brightness type.

If someone wanted to send me a bulb with the black base and blue diffuser and maybe a white base (as per video) i could test it and match the brightness and check the brightness pattern to make sure it was similar to a bulb.
Also, i would think a white LED would look nicer too because the color temperature is nearly pure white, unlike most incandescent bulbs which tend to look orange yellow especially when driven by a lower voltage for increased life.

If you feel like testing with one of the simpler radios that would be pretty cool, when you get time.

[MrAl]

Hi,

Yes as Steve said you can measure the voltage inside the car on pin 16 which is positive and either pin 4 or pin 5 ground.
If you have trouble getting to the OBDII connector you can get an extender on places like Amazon. You can even get a connector with breakout wires.

Either way, I'm out in the cold. Also, I always disconnect the charger when checking the battery voltage, and that's connected directly to the battery. It's no big deal.... I pick and choose when I feel like doing it. I checked on the battery in the LeSabre today, and the charger is showing green/charged. I'm leaving both the LeSabre and 850 connected so the chargers can do whatever desulfating they may do. I really have no idea how/when that works.

Hi again,

Oh ok that's cool (literally ha ha) but i like to sit in the car so i dont get wind chill. If you are in a garage though you have it made already ha ha.

Oh the desulfator works by applying a very high current, very short time pulse to the battery terminals. It supposedly breaks up the coating on the plates. I dont think that always works though. I tried doing this with some small AA NiCd batteries and it helped for a little while, but the batteries need it again pretty soon after being used again so i discarded the whole idea. Simpler and less bother to just buy new batteries.
I designed and built a desulfator some years ago and tried it on a lead acid battery and it didnt help. The battery was a sealed lead acid 12 volts and had a 8 ampere hours rating. They sell them now pretty cheap as battery maintainers and they also have 3 or 4 stage charging too so they work pretty nice. Maybe that is what you have already.

Hey good luck with your batteries. The cold weather provides for the best test ha ha.