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Ranger EV Battery Replacement Manual





Ranger EV Battery Replacement Manual










Copyright 2006 Chris Bangma



WARNING!
The Ranger EV operates on 312 volts. This voltage can be lethal!
Even a dead battery pack contains enough power to cause injury
or death. The procedures in this manual should be done by
qualified personel only! You must take proper precautions when
working with high voltage, and you must use insulated tools, and
insulated gloves at all times. Chris Bangma takes no responsibility
for and damage or hard to persons, equipment or vehicles while
performing these procedures. This document is for informational
purposes only.

Battery Balancing

You will have receive 26 90aH batteries. These batteries should be
placement-Manual/' >pretty well charged. It is good practice to charge them all
individually before they are installed in the placement-Manual/' class='doin' >truck. A good quality
electronic or computer battery charger should be used for this.
Please do not use a cheap charger, since there is a chance the
batteries may be overcharged. Sears sells several computerized
chargers which are designed to work with sealed gel batteries.
These are the correct chargers to use. By charging all the batteries
before installing them, you will ensure that they are all close to the
same level. Otherwise some may run down earlier than others
during the first few cycles on the placement-Manual/' class='doin' >truck. The Ranger will
automatically balance the batteries, but this will take 6-10 cycles of
charging and discharging, and you will notice that the truck takes 8
hours to charge instead of the usual 4.



Battery Removal:

Please refer to the Ranger Service Manual for instructions on
battery pack removal.
Once the battery pack is removed from the vehicle, you will need
to remove the screws which fasten the top of the pack to the
bottom. You may want to use WD-40 on the screws prior to
removal, since they are often rusted. Once the screws are
removed, you will need 2 people to remove the top cover. One
person should lift from the front, and one person should lift from
the back. You will need to lift straight up to clear the batteries.

After the cover is off, you will see the stock 8v batteries. These
are held in place by plastic carriers. You will need to remove the
plastic carriers from the batteries so they can be removed. Also
you will see the orange high voltage wires, and the smaller
multicolored wires. The small wires are for the battery
management system, battery heaters, and battery temperature
monitors. Also in the pack will be a black box, and a silver
colored box. The black box contains the contactors for the battery
system, and the relays for the battery heaters. The silver box is the
battery management computer. Both of these will need to be
disconnected and placed to the side to make it easier to remove the
batteries. Before you remove them, you will need to break the
pack. Using insulated gloves, and an insulated wrench you will
need to remove one of the high voltage cables from one of the
batteries on the top layer at the front of the pack. Flip the
protective cover up on each end of the battery cable and unscrew
the nut from each end, and remove the cable. This will then
separate the battery pack into 2 halves electrically, and make it a
little safer to work on, in case you were to contact an adjacent
battery.

Labeling:

All of the battery management cables are currently labeled by
Ford, but after several years, the labels may become brittle, and fall
off while handling the cables. You will notice on each side of the
connectors, there will be a numbered piece of tape. Be careful not to remove these, as it will help when reconnecting everything later.
You may want to get some address placement-Manual/' target='blank' class='doin' >labels, and label each side of
the connector as you remove the batteries. The wires are also all
color coded, so you can match them up by color later, but it is
easier if they are labeled.

Individual Battery Removal

You can now proceed to remove all of the batteries. The battery
connectors have Nygel in them, which insulates them, and prevents
corrosions. You may want to try to save this for when you put the
new batteries in. You will want to disconnect the connectors on
the battery management cables, and start to place everything to the
side as you work. When you get down to the lower batteries, it is
helpful to have a prybar on hand. This helps to lift the battery, so
you can get your hands around it. If your truck has cold weather
battery heaters, you will want to carefully remove these from the
batteries, if you plan on re-using them. At the bottom of the pack
there will also be a heater. This often seems to have some tar
leaking from it, which can make the batteries hard to remove. Best
it to try to rock the battery out of the tar.

Battery Holder Removal

Once all the batteries are removed, you will notice black plastic
supports glued to the bottom of the battery box. These will need to
be removed. They ome off quite easy, if you use a chisel or
screwdriver on the corners of them. This will break the glue, and
they should pop right off.


Cable Preparation

You should now have a large pile of cables. You will need to sort
all of these out before we proceed. Each orange high voltage cable will be labeled with its battery number. There will also be 2 cables
for the ends of the pack. These will be labeled 1- and 39+. You
will need to cut the battery management cables from the high
voltage cables, since we will be using them in a different order.
Before you do this, you will need to label the cables before they
are cut. If you look at the orange cables, you will see a heavy
gauge orange wire, that goes between the 2 batteries. Then coming
off of one end is a smaller gauge orange wire. If you follow this
wire, it will go into black shrink tubing, and there will be a
multicolored wire out the other side. In the black shrink is a 30.9k
resistor for the battery management system. You need to be
careful not to damage this by bending it. We will need to cut the
smaller gauge orange wire between the battery connector and the
resistor. You will want to cut roughly in the middle between the
two. Leave yourself enough space on each side, since you will be
reconnecting these later (they will be in a different order though).


Resistor Preparation

In the kit will be 2 packages of resistors. There will be one pack
with 1.4K and one pack with 2.8K. These will form the voltage
divider for the battery management system. You will want to take
one of each resistor and twist the leads from them together. Do
this for all the resistor sets. You should now have 30 resistor Ys.
Next you will need 3 different colored wires. I suggest red, black
and green. Solder 18 of black to the free end of each 2.8k resistor
and 18 of red to each free end of the 1.4k resistor. Finally solder
18 of green to the end where both resistors are twisted together.
When finished you will want to protect this with heat shrink tubing
or electrical tape. Place smaller tubing over each resistor, to
prevent them from shorting to each other. Then after you have
shrunk these two, place a larger piece over the entire assembly.
Make sure you solder connections are good, and everything is properly insulated, since you dont want to have to drop the battery
pack and fix it at a later date.

Battery Placement

Please refer to the battery placement diagram, for battery locations.
There diagram will show the orientation for the batteries. The are
placed in the different ways, U- for batteries which are in a
conventional orientation, with the terminals facing upward. S-
with the battery terminals facing to the side, and laying on the long
face of the battery, and E- for batteries placed on end, with
terminals facing the side, and sitting on the small face of the
battery. When placing the batteries, you will need to push them
into the center as much as possible. This will help the top cover to
clear the batteries. You will want to do a trial fit before doing the
cabling, to familiarize yourself where everything will go.


High Voltage Cabling

Once you have done your trial fit, and know where everything
goes, you can start cabling the batteries. First we will need to sort
all of our high voltage cables.