Hole in the Bucket

Happy Holidays! It has been a while since I have posted. We have moved and also confirmed we are having a baby, many changes occurring. A few things have changed on ERX as well. James made the motor mount and I got it attached and then got the car towed to our new dwelling. Unfortunately, I do not have a garage now, so the car is covered sitting in the neighbors entrance area to their garage. Luckily they just use it for storage. I forgot to take a picture of the mount, but James did a great job.

A couple weeks ago I started cutting holes in the hatch area floor for the battery boxes. I only made two cuts, and today I finished. I didn't pay much mind to the measure twice, cut once rule, so I made a wrong cut which you can see in the picture below. I had to make two more cuts because of it. It takes a while because I am using a simple compressed air metal cutting wheel and not a plasma cutter.

First hole for 20 Batteries

I then double checked my measurements and started the second hole. Once again, problems. I got the measurements right, but neglected to see that the axle was directly below the hole and not far enough down for my batteries to fit the way I want them, so I need to extend the second hole by another 3 1/2 inches.

Second hole for 10 batteries - See the axle there?

Here are a few other photos from the day. All and all, I made some progress.

I also took some measurements up front to see where I am going to put the remaining 15 batteries, and the control board with all the electric goodies on it. Hopefully you will hear from me before 3 months passes again.

Wheels turning

Exciting news today! We finally got the motor and transmission mounted into the car. The transmission is bolted in at two spots and James is going to make a bracket for the motor mount. The motor is attached to the transmission and is sitting on some pieces of wood and the jack is under it as well. Once he makes the bracket we can attach it to the motor mount and that part of the job will be done.

Motor/Tranny mounted

Plenty of space to the right of the motor. I could have gotten the Warp 9 instead of the Impulse 9.

 One of the critical issues today was something I have been worried about for a while. I didn't know how much clearance I had between the motor and the CV joint on the half shaft. There is about 1/4 inch gap between the motor and CV joint and less than an 1/8th inch between the CV joint and the aluminum adapter plate. This is not the greatest shot of it, but you can sort of see it is a pretty tight fit, but will work.

CV joint, Motor and Adapter plate

The greatest part of today was testing the motor with it mounted in the car. It was only a 12Volt test, but it was nice to see the wheels turn. Everything spun smoothly, even without transmission oil.

I will now move on to planning the electronics board which will be mounted over the motor. Probably on a piece of aluminum with piece of lexan on the bottom to isolate the high voltage wiring from the body of the car if a wire comes loose. Also, I will order the aluminum sheets for making the battery boxes. James may be able to cut and bend them at his school, but if not, I will have a metal shop guy in Burbank do it.

Yeah, a new post

September was frustrating. I didn't get the batteries from China because the third party importer misplaced my order. I hope to get them in November at some point. Hopefully sooner than later. The adapter plate and coupler arrived, but the mounting holes for the motor were wrong  for my motor. James came over and drilled new holes so that should be OK now. The transmission shaft is too long, so I purchased a little pneumatic metal cutter and James came over again, and cut the shaft down. It is almost the right length now. I think we need to take another 1/8" off or so. I am a little concerned the Motor shaft is actually too long and the coupler is hitting the back wall of the transmission bell housing which would mean we would have to cut a bit off the motor shaft or add spacers between the motor and the adapter plate. Not sure I want to do either, but a decision will have to be made this weekend.

We are moving to a rental house next week so life is much more complicated at the moment. It is tough trying to fit any time in for the conversion. I am really hoping once I get the motor mated to the transmission and installed in the car, I will pick up some speed. Then I would need to start laying out the board for all the electronics and start creating the battery boxes as well as cutting holes in the hatch for installing the boxes. Still a lot to do, but to see the motor and tranny installed and see the wheels spin would be very motivating at this point.

The excitement is growing

Tested the controller with the motor tonight. James came over and we got the motor out, set it up and then hooked up the controller. Amazingly, it worked! Here is the video. Enjoy!

Incredible end to the day. I still need to redo one bolt on the controller and do some work to button it up, but wow, I am still amazed it worked. Still along ways to go to get the car moving, but a great first step.
Special thanks to Paul Holmes and Adam Brunette for the controller design, kit, software and trouble shooting help.

Controller update

I finished the power section and joined the brain with it. All of the soldering is done. I am in the process of testing it now before I hook it up to the motor. As far as I can tell, it is performing as expected. I am waiting on a reply from one email about how to tell if power is leaving the controller correctly. Once I find out how to measure that, then I will hook it up to the motor and and watch it spin. No magic black smoke has escaped from it yet so that is a very good thing.


Here are a couple more pics.

Just need the cover and the end caps

Mosfet Side

Capacitor side

Hopefully James can come over tomorrow or Wed. evening and we can get the motor out of the box, set it up and try out the controller. I cannot express how exciting that will be!

Power Electronics

I made some progress last weekend on my controller. I soldered most of the high voltage power components and here are some nice photos of it. I was a little afraid to do this step for a while since I had never soldered larger components before, but it seems like I did fine. When I finish assembling the whole controller I will hook it up to a small battery and start testing it to make sure it is working properly.

It is a bit more beefy than I thought it would be, which is a good thing

Close up of the Mosfets - The pads I haven't soldered yet are for the resistors that connect the power section with the brain

Diodes on the left and Capacitors on the right

Soldering on the back side of the board

I need to get some thermal grease for the base plate and a good glue that can withstand heat to glue a couple components down, then I should be ready to put the whole thing together with the brain section and put it in the case. I had hoped to be almost down with this project by now, but as these things go it takes a lot longer then expected, especially if you have a full time job and a family. It also doesn't help that I have never done any of this before so I am unsure about stuff and hesitant to jump in at times. My new goal is to get it done by the end of the year and start the new year with the EV Grin :)

Photos of Transmission, clutch hub and wrong adapter plate

I am posting these photos so I can easily link to them for the guys who are going to re-do the adapter plate and coupler.

Adapter plate held against the transmission

Left holes of Adapter plate don't line up

Clutch disk

Clutch disk with coupler - Note size difference of Spline

I think the coupler is only an 1/8" off, but I am sending my clutch disk along with a tracing of my bell housing back to them. Maybe in a week and a half or so I can start mating these parts. In the mean time, I need to finish building the controller, so I need to make a trip to Fry's to get some larger solder for the power board. Also, I really need to sit down and make a list of the things that need to be done and then put them in some sort of sensible order, so we can start moving down the list and checking things off.