2000 Early

Carnage

1. At Woodburn races...Blew up Hawker battery.

2. At Woodburn races...after replacing bad battery, destroyed Kostov on 3rd run! I'm not sure who captured this moment, but this was not a staged photo. Plasma Boy litterally scratches his head after smoked rolled out from under the hood, the car slowed to a halt, and the Kostov met its end :-(

Plasmaboy Quotes

1. Desert Kilowatt Challenge "My fifth and final run was a blast! We again completely recharged in about 8 minutes... My light then tripped and I hit it. I could no longer keep my head straight as the Zombie slammed it back against the headrest with the car surging forward. As I accelerated towards the finish line...I looked at the gauges and saw the battery amps still hanging in there at 620 and the motor volts going past 250v before I had crossed the finish line, I lost any desire to win the bracket race and with an irresistible urge to find out how quick that big Kostov could push the Zombie through the traps, I kept the pedal down. The motor volts continued to rise and went to approximately 260v (the gauge only goes up to 250) as the needle went off the scale. At the timing slip shack, I was excited to see that I had indeed, broken out with a quick 13.347 @ 95.859 mph!"
2. 

   
   Woodburn 'Suck Amps' races "Seeing a little 'ol Datsun economy car conversion dueling it out with a tire-smoking 'Stang would be another fun example of how far we've all come with this EV drag racing thing...in the arena of gas vs electric, it was the 'Stang vs the Zombie!
   
   My first run against Ken and the 'Stang was a lot of fun. This is a real clean example of a '93 Mustang, and with a capable driver at the wheel (this guy can drive!) low 14's and even high 13s are possible. As we both pulled into the burnout pits, Ken got the crowd going with a nice smoky burnout, and the throaty sound of that Ford V8 seemed to be taunting the Zombie. In great restraint, I opted to not light up the tires in an effort to conserve the Zombie's precious battery reserves. We staged up to the lights.
   
   We both hit the 'go' pedals and I could hear the 'Stang's V8 thundering and its tires screaming as Ken put the hammer down, but the 500 ft. lbs. of electric torque provided by Mr. Kostov sent the little white Datsun out of the hole nicely, and I took off and immediately began to pull away.
   White Zombie got the win with a nice 13.7 run...though Ken had given it his best, the electric car beat the V8 pony car by a full second! At the end of the run, as I turned off the strip to return to the pits, with Ken right behind me in the hot 'Stang, I decided to give him another taste of electric muscle and I goosed the throttle and did a power burnout that had the car fishtailing and smoking the tires....childish? Yes, but oh what fun, and Ken dug it!
3. Woodburn 'Suck Amps' races "I felt the car seemingly running flat on power, when I punched the throttle as I had done before.. the car sputtered and slowed down, grinding to a halt...smoke rolled out from under the front of the car...not good! Engaging the line lock, I locked up the front brakes and proceeded to load the motor (and the batteries), but the Nitto drag radials bit in hard. Instead of staying in one spot with the rear tires smoking, the Zombie plowed ahead with the front tires smoking and skidding along on the pavement! At this point, the motor acted normally, so I kept up with the load test. I have the 'Zilla programmed to extract 800 amps from the Genesis batteries, an overload they can usually take for approximately 12-13 continuous seconds under 1/4 mile drag racing, but in my load testing, I wasn't paying attention to the amount of time we were skidding along with the front tires making long gooey black streaks.... it must have been about 20-30 seconds though. Then it happened....KABAM!!!!!....all of a sudden we are being engulfed in thick black smoke as one of the Genesis batteries let go. Thankfully, the NEDRA-required Lexan battery shield did its job and contained the acid spray and molten lead...there was metal imbedded in clear cover! Back in the pit area, we removed the blown battery, cleaned up the mess, and installed a fresh spare battery.The Zombie was now ready to rock again, and so round three of the 'Stang/Zombie grudge match was at hand. We staged, launched, and took off, but I immediately felt the same shuddering and power loss as before, and with smoke rolling out from under the motor compartment, this would be the final run for the car. It appeared that the Kostov had suffered some kind of field winding failure, and though I was not entirely certain about the failure mode, it was was clear the Zombie was down for the count."
4. Post-Woodburn 'Suck Amps' races "At the Woodburn Electric Drags, after romping all over a 5.0 V8 Mustang, on its third run of the day White Zombie had motor problems which I and another knowledgeable EVer had attributed to arced-over field windings.... this was our guess at what was wrong with the Kostov. A couple weeks later that I was able to pull the big electric motor to see what the damage was. nce we had the motor pulled apart, to my pleasant surprise, we foundthat the Wayland/Warfield/NetGain mods to the brush rigging, commutator, and armature werein tact, and after all the hard runs down the track, the com looked perfect, and aside from a small amount of trailing edge pitting, the brushes looked good, too. The output shaft end of of the armature's windings though, was pretty toasty looking and that entire end of the armature was cloaked in flat black charcoal soot. The field windings were burnt-looking and there was a spattering of 'copper snot' all over the place. I found two big blobs of melted copper, one on the corner of an interpole winding and the other on the facing corner of a field winding. The charred armature windings had molten bits of what were once windings...it would cost more than $1200 to build a new armature for the Kostov. Using a VOM, a continuity check between most all of the com bars to the armature's steel laminations showed a dead short, due to the melted insulation of the armature windings. And so it was, the Zombie's Kostov had indeed, gone to that great plasma ball in the sky. As I took the charred remains back home, I realized that my drag racing season was over and that the Zombie would not make it to the Sacramento Electric Drags.....bummer!"
5. Post-Woodburn 'Suck Amps' races "The Zombie, powered up by that one big and very powerful modified Kostov... an awful lot of fellow EVers told me the direct drive idea would never work, that the motor would blow right away, that I'd never clear 15 seconds, etc., etc. Two years later and after setting many new records with the car in this configuration, the motor did finally give up, but not without taking out a 5.0 Mustang first :-)"