Sticking out

Ok. I suppose it sticks out... a little.

Air cleaner and water intake prevention

Since it's been raining cats and dogs for a few days and preventing me from driving the bike to work I got anxious to do something about the waterproofing of the DC motor in the kWsaki. Here's what I've come up with.

The tower consists of Biltema part numbers 88463 (hidden inside), 32323 (air filter) and 88471. I have an 8" fan which I'm also planning to put inside the big adapter piece, so that the motor will always have more than enough airflow, even at low rpm. I just don't have the fan with me right now. Pictures of the installation later.

Update: If you're wondering what this has to do with waterproofing, my thinking is that adding the filter and moving it a little further away would mean less water in the motor. Water entering the filter at standstill should also not find it's way inside the motor nearly as much as it does now. This setup also gives me the option of moving the intake filter somewhere else using some flexible tube.

Energy Day 2014 in Pori

There we were. My EVs next to a Tesla. Quite a few of people stopping by and asking a lot of questions. I think my DIY projects gathered more interest than the Model S. It is just an OEM car anyway.

Well, at least there were a lot of people until it started pouring. During the rain, not so much.

I can't say I couldn't some use for one. Looks smaller than it is, really. I'd need mine with all 7 seats.

Something interesting I noticed. Rust. I've heard that the attention to detail is good compared to it's other countrymen, but I suppose an american car is still an american car. Not cool.

kWsaki updated and running again

 

 

With the Energy Day coming up it was time to get the good ole kWsaki back into running condition. I had neglected it and scavenged parts from it for the car. It had lost it's AXE7245 controller, so it was time to give it the Kelly KDH12600D controller I had originally meant for the car, but the AXE had some features I needed there. Such as 0-5V throttle input, which the cheapo model Kelly doesn't have. It only supports 2-wire pot, which the Magura twist grip throttle in the motorcycle has anyway. 

The KDH12600D could go up to 136 volts and 600 amps, but it may not be a good idea to go so high. In any case I moved two SE40AHA cells away from the top row to make the front wheel clear a little better and made a place for five more cells for a total of seven cells in the bottom row. Not really a row, since it's four cells parallel to each other and two adjecent. That means there's now space for four more cells in the top row. That makes 29 cells in total for the whole vehicle and a "nominal" voltage of 84 V. That's actually 92.8 V with 3.2 V per cell, 102.2 V charge voltage and I'm expecting to see 96.7 volts after charging. Should give a bit more range and perhaps a way to reach highway speeds too.

When I had both 60 Ah and 40 Ah packs in parallel in the car, there was a problem that two of the 40 Ah cells were shooting to over 4 volts way before the others reached even nearly full state of charge. I didn't know whether this was because of this parallel setup or not. Now that I took the 40 Ah cells out and charged them alone, the same cells were hitting voltages around 4.5 volts. Scary zone, that is. It does however mean that parallel charging uneven packs may be just fine, just as I thought. Those two cells just have dimished capacity compared to the others, so I put in an order for 8 new SE40AHA cells to replace those two and a couple more cells to get the 29 cell pack together. I'll have 4 cells left over, at least two with lower capacity, but still a probably quite usable 12 volt pack, perhaps for the car or just for my test bench.

Kelly KDH12600D installed. The rusty bits got treated with some black paint.

Driving about

We've been driving about in the EV for a few days. Just short trips to parents-in-law's for Sauna and flea market in the 6th city district. Mainly because I a bit of an issue with flywheel balance. I'll probably try to get hold of a another compatible flywheel and have a new adapter made specifically for that and have them spin balance the whole thing as one. That should give me a little bit smoother ride.

It's still already cool to drive about in a almost zero carbon way (we currently buy hydroelectric power) and hear all the noises around you while being dead silent at stops. Not bad, not bad at all.

The additional fourth support arm of the electric motor drivetrain that I just added seems to be working perfectly and stops the motor from rocking backand forth violently. It'll be shortened and all prettied up... someday.

Got rims

I got myself some retro rims today. They need quite a bit of work to look all shiny and pretty, but I got a good deal on them. Whether they'll ever look pretty depends on the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but they suited my sense of whimsy, as Jack Rickard likes to say. They don't seem too bad aerodynamically. At least compared to a lot of rims out there. I'm pretty sure they'll fit into the Xsara, but I'm not a 100% sure. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Energiapäivä 2014 Pori

I promised to bring a handmade EV or two to this Sustainable Energy Fair on 7th of June in Pori.

Faith in the system

Some faith in the system was restored today. Trafi had sent the vehicle tax information and to my great surprise they had done the right thing after all and decided to tax the vehicle based on zero emissions! The alternative would have been to tax it based on weight, which is the default for pre-2001 vehicles under 2500 kg.

Actually I now noticed that it actually says so on the Trafi web page:

Autojen, joiden ainoa käyttövoima on sähkö, perusvero määräytyy päästötiedon 0 g/km mukaan.

I hadn't noticed that before and obviously the person I asked this about earlier hadn't either.

The downside is that electric-only vehicles are blessed with a separate tax to counter the fact that they don't use any heavily taxed gasoline. That amounts to 0,255 cents per day for this vehicle, while the base tax is 0,118 per day. 136,14 € total per year.

In any case, at least I'm not getting any extra punishment for converting such an old vehicle. As a bonus I'll save some money in the yearly inspection, since the vehicle needs no emissions tests.

The downside of torque

Well. Turns out what was fine for mounting a relatively huge 1.8 liter petrol engine doesn't seem to work out too well for mounting a tiny electric motor with gobs and gobs of torque.

After a bit of repair work on the motor mounts and making one of the mounting arms out of 25mm or 1 inch steel tube, the non-hollow type, I proceeded to test the car a little. It all ended quite abruptly with a bang and a gear stick that moves back and forth quite freely, but sideways not at all.

I'm really not converting another car with a transverse engine. Ever.

I didn't have time to look into it. I hope the gear shifter has just dislodged itself from whatever it is supposed to be lodged into. I suppose the worst case scenario is that the transmission is stuck into third gear forever. Not that it's a bad gear to be in. Just that reverse is kind of useful too.

I've come to the conclusion that I need another mount point. Currently the transmission plus motor is mounted to the vehicle at three points. Above the transmission on the driver's side, at the end and quite high above the motor at the other side and at the drive shaft of the right front wheel. This setup seems to leave quite a lot of room for the motor to rock back and forth in the engine bay, which results in all kinds of nasty stuff. The sheer mass of the petrol engine must have kept it at bay originally.

I'm thinking of adding a sort of a torque arm from the motor adapter plate to directly towards either the rear or the front of the car, with a rubber mount at the vehicle side. It's the only way I've come up with so far to stop the damn thing floating about. We'll see what I end up with.

I wonder, which is worse, having a working vehicle which you can't drive on the road, or a vehicle which you could drive on the road, but can't because it's broken?

kWsara inspected and street legal

Yesterday was the day. 

I set off to the inspection with 172179 km in the odometer.

It was a little rainy, but no matter.

After everything got inspected and even the regular yearly inspection passed, to my no small surprise, we proceeded to weight the vehicle.

I was prepared to lose a seat due to gained weight, but it was not to be.

The front showed 674 kg and rear 448 kg. Those two plus a 75 kg driver equals 1197 kg! Only 7 kg more than original curb weight. I couldn't have done better even if had carefully measured everything.

So no seats were lost and all was good. I even stayed below 1200 kg, which means I'll save on taxes, which are calculated based on weight on an old car such as this.

When all was said and done I was handed this beautiful piece of paper. Propulsion: Electric and Power: 12,8 kW. The power was printed on the identification plate of the motor and that sufficed.

Good times. Now back to the bench. The motor support had bent again and needs even more reinforcing. What I don't have to fear anymore is the bureaucrats suddenly changing the rules.