Frank in Thailand
making mistakes so you don't have to...
Yes.In the last pictures, why are the studs different diameters and different lengths? Sometimes on the same cell and sometimes on different cells?
Welcome to Thailand and first month's of Covid postage service.
In Thailand at the start they desinfect all parcels from China with....
Alcohol spray. Almost no address survived, faded away, not usable.
After this 21 days quarantine.
AliExpress blocked my account for 6 months, as I claimed too many parcels that never arrived.
Only after written statement of Thai postage service about their desinfect method and loss of addresses, my account was restored.
Many parcels never arrived and never got refunded.
My real life situation.
Some hardware shops have some grub screws, a few.
Thailand is a total mess with Mm and inch.. not uncommon to find M6 studs and only 1/4 inch nuts.
That took me a long time to get used to.
Now I know, just go to the next shop, they might have it revested...
And this is not a Joke!!
Bangkok area, for sure different.
650km from BKK... I can't go to buy there. Besides lockdown, no inter provincial travel.
Simply using what I could get my hands on during a bad situation.
Found out quickly that the screws provided where bad news.
I used M6 bolts for a while
That worked, but obviously can't use Loctite....
My collection of grubscrews, none enough for all the cells (160 studs)
As result of a few remounts and replace of BMS wires, many threads where lost.
39 to be exact.
Different thread shows the repair.
Some could be fixed with helicoil (tap to M7) some times that tap would fail in the soft aluminium.
then M8 was the next step.
Challenging times we live in.
Rural Thailand on its own is already challenging to find usable and quality products.
Many times I waited for a trip to Holland and went to the local hardware store to get what seems impossible to find locally.
Ox-guard? I forgot how much exactly..$60 or so for a tube.
JB weld was $45 from China
Thanks to @Just John the stuff to repair the threads arrived from the states.
I've shown the pictures of $160 Amazon asks for shipping and handling for a tube of glue... Of $10 bucks.
I'm relieved that this struggle has come to an end.
Cascade of events, location and environmental changes.
And obvious me in the center juggling to keep the stuff together and working.
Some one wrote : "the best advice was to take pictures"
I hope that the best advice people can take from this is preparing.
You should be prepared for electrical fire.
I was, and it saved out house.
Not fully prepared, no hand held fire distinguisher.
Now we do have.
If anything, please..
Be aware that it might go wrong.
Even professional builds.
There are EV that go up in smoke without accident, spontaneous.
Be prepared for it.
Your storage location safe enough to withstand several hours of fire and smoke detector alarm to warn you and family.
Take care and stay safe!!