My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck

[Gregski]

those pics are on top of a 2 foot by 4 foot piece of plywood for a size reference, looks like I can fit 9 batteries in that space

[Gregski]

it was nice of these plastic pliers to show up right after I shot the last battery video, cause you know, safety third

[Gregski]

yeah, it's winter and I am procrastinating, but when these brand new German (pronounced: "Expensive") BMW high voltage battery cables showed up, I decided to treat 'em right

[Gregski]

they got these god forsaken never seen before dingle dangle proprietary connectors on 'em that are made from unobtanium

so they had to be liberated

[Gregski]

Why you ask? well we are trying to connect this German BMW 530e high voltage battery pack to a United Statesian Tesla Model S battery charger so that we can charge it and it's like fitting a square peg in a hole that's round

[Gregski]

so over at our Organic Out Doors Precision High Voltage Battery Cable Modification Facility commonly referred to as the OODPHVBCMF

[Gregski]

now we can provision a much more civilized connector such as this handsome Anderson SB120 in crimson red

[Gregski]

and here is a super fun rant (not by me) on how not to treat an Anderson connector

WATCH THIS BEFORE BUYING ANDERSON CONNECTORS!!! SBX350

[texxxan]

Just checking in. It looks like I have quite a bit to read.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by texxxan

Just checking in. It looks like I have quite a bit to read.

Good to hear from you, and you could always cheat and check out my Good Enuff Garage YouTube channel

[Gregski]

Ah Yeah! The Crimpulator 3000 is here! not bad for $32 bones on AMAZON

[Gregski]

and so we got to work on my test battery cables, I decided to add a little color coding to the two solid orange main leads, first some black heat shrink tubing went on both ends of the negative cable

for this I needed a bunch of yellow tools

[Gregski]

and here is what the six cell modules look like all connected just the way they were inside the 2018 BMW 530e high voltage battery pack

Note the short orange wire on the far right, that's was the original main Positive lead that came off of Cell Module # 6, I decided to replace it with the same orange wire that runs from Cell Module # 1 on the left (that is what the original looked like) so now both leads match

One lead was originally shorter than the other. BMW did that because the leads ran to the Safety Box which was located on the right side of the battery pack closer to Cell Module # 6

[yuccales]

Nice clean end of the run on that cable. I'd never have a use for a crimping tool like that, but for 32 bucks seems like a good deal!

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by yuccales

Nice clean end of the run on that cable. I'd never have a use for a crimping tool like that, but for 32 bucks seems like a good deal!

thanks, no doubt, they messed up on two counts, first here's what I paid and here's what it is today

for the record they played the "Your order is delayed game with me, in a failed attempt to get me to cancel it"

[Gregski]

and check this out, this is what I ordered and this is what they shipped

[Gregski]

think positive

[Gregski]

and here is the completed DC wire harness with an Anderson SB120 connector in red

[Gregski]

i heart this battery pack


[what? .... too soon!]

[Gregski]

and how do you plan on charging this BMW battery pack?

[Gregski]

Why, by using this 34 lbs Tesla Model S Gen 2 charger of course!

[Gregski]

so since I am going the Open Source (pronounced: "Used Electric Car Parts") route we need to open up this Tesla onboard battery charger and perform a lobotomy on it by replacing it's "logic" circuit board with an open source one, see how that works?

The open source circuit board fools the charger into thinking it is still in the Tesla vehicle and that everything is honkey dory and we can charge.

[Gregski]

then we bag 'n' tag the evidence

[Gregski]

and because there was an electronic parts shortage during the filming of this movie, I had to harvest some connectors off of the old original logic circuit board and transfer them to the new board

Fun Level = -2

[Gregski]

mandatory Stare and Compare of the old Tesla logic board and the new "naked" open source one

and by naked I mean not fully built yet