Throttle success

Thanks to picoamps I now have a working throttle solution using the car's original carburetor and TPS. The throttle shows correctly 0% with no "gas" and 100% when gas pedal floored. And I have video to prove it.

 Jake_offset_4p is the one I've got in the controller now. It was picoamp's idea to have that notch in the beginning. They use it in their products to take the play out of the system. I'm excited to try it out. Now if I could only get the motor back in. Perhaps which a clutch after all...

ps. I can't recommend picoamps enough. They've been really knowledgeable and fast to reply.

Battery and throttle installed... poorly

It's been pretty quick and dirty all the way, but this is pretty ugly even for me. I installed the 12V battery and the original carburetor on a aluminum plate and bolted that next to the power steering pump. Maybe I'll clean it up later. Maybe.

The TPS in the carburetor is working fine. I found +5V for it and it's giving a nice signal of about 0.65V to around 4.50V. The problem is that at the other end it's too high for the AXE controller and at the other too low. With the best custom throttle curve map I found online I get 6% minimum and 80% maximum throttle. So it's a bit of mixed bag. It works, but not prefectly. I've sent an email or two to Alltrax and hopefully they'll be able to help me out.

If anyone else has a tool for making hex-format maps for AXE 7245, do throw me an email.

Power brakes too

Today I installed another long standing piece of the puzzle. Namely the vacuum pump for the power brakes. In addition to the pump itself the system consists of a vacuum sensor, a relay controlled by the sensor, a vacuum tank and tubing. The pump is installed on some flexible rubber mounts to prevent extra vibration noise. The pump doesn't seem to come on too often, so there's plenty of good vacuum there.

The wiring needs to be cleaned up. Again. I also now have the AXE 7245 controller instead of the Kelly I had before, because the AXE can use the 0-5V from the carburetor TPS, which I'll try to use as the throttle.

A bonus picture: Vacuum pump and a valve I attached with Sugru. The valve stops the vacuum from escaping. It's made from a 4.99€ brake bleeding set from Biltema. Inside the metal part there's a ball and a spring, which let air go out, but not back in.

Power steering success!

Great news, everyone! I finally got my electric power steering pump installed and it works like a charm. That really sounds like not a lot of work when you write it like that and I have to admit that the actual installation only took a couple of hours, but I had to have a part made and think the whole thing through more than once.

Lithium battery lecture

Extremely interesting lecture on lithium batteries and what affects their lifetime.

I may add more comments later, but here's the quick take:

Charge fast + cool temperature + low end voltage = LONGEST LIFE
Charge slow + hot temperature + high end voltage = SHORTEST LIFE

Rather sounds like Bottom Balancing done properly might just be the best way, eh?

Prolonged Top Balancing at artificial high voltage? Not so much.

Heat or no heat

So my pretty heating element seems to be another disappoinment in the heat department. Perhaps I'll need to look into burning some dinosaur fuel after all to keep the officials satisfied. Oh, well. We'll see.

On the other fronts, which there are many, I've made some progress. Well, at least some steps forward and some back. The good news is I think I've found a good place for  the charger and a way to make it pass the inspection.

I think I'll mount the charger this way and put it all behind a big piece of plexiglass to make it untouchable by inquisitive fingers and inspectors with their testing sticks. I'll need to make sure there's some room below the charger to allow the fans move air as they are meant to.

My potentiometer based throttle has always seemed a bit flimsy, so I thought I'd give the carburetor and it's TPS (throttle position sensor) a go. Well, success ensued. 5 volts and ground in, 0-5 V signal out. 0.65 V at the lowest and 4.75 V at the highest with a cheap 5 volt power brick.

Problem is, the Kelly controller I already have mounted in the car only does 0-5K potentiometers. The AXE7245 I have the motorcycle accepts just about any imaginable throttle input. Looks like I'll need to swap the controllers. The motorcycle uses a 0-5K hand throttle, so the Kelly is fine there.

The AXE manual states 0.15 V as the lowest value, but the TPS gave 0.65 V. Remains to be seen if that's a problem. Of course I have the whole motor coupling thing still on the table as well.

More explicit motor pics

As you can see, I managed to take both TTL200C motors apart. Identical shafts except that the other one is splined and the other one has a keyhole. I'll probably end up using the keyed one after all, but it all depends. I'm once again rethinking my coupling, but more on that when I have something to show.

Also took apart the other one a bit more to reveal a bit more rust. I'll need to get some of it off and put some paint on instead. Also turned the bolts that hold the brush holder to face outward so I can more easily swap whatever I decide to use as finger protection. Everything under the hood must pass the finger test, which means no live parts should be touchable with the UNECE R100 test finger.

Interpretations

How to interprete me. If I say I'll leave something be for a while it means that I'll probably go do something about it right away. Example follows. Yesterday I wrote a post and honestly thought I'd leave the car be a while, but then inspiration stroke and I just had to go see if the rather unsettling noise the motor had made was because of my DIY coupling, transmission or the motor itself. Turns out it was, at least partially, due to the motor. I took the motor off and spun it, which resulted in more than usual twisting about and a rather nasty whiny noise. So I  pulled the motor from the car completely.

A point to take home from this is "Don't open the hood if it has 10cm of snow on it. It'll rain down on everything." Well, it's just snow. The equipment should be able to handle it. Otherwise it won't have a very long life in a car anyhow.

Since the motor was making a nasty noise and I had been thinking of swapping the insides of my two otherwise identical motors due to them having different shafts and only once casing having the required identification plate with vital information despite obviously being otherwise identical, I decided to give the TTL-200C motor disassembly a go. It turned out to be much easier than I had ever dreamed.

Hooray. Looks like I'll have some cleaning up to do. I'll also see if I can detach the other end of the motor which holds the brushes. The only reason would be to clean it up a little and perhaps give it a fresh coat of paint. The old paint is pretty much gone and rust has started taking it's place, which doesn't make it really pretty. Oh and I'll have to see if I can get those bearings off and replaced for good measure. Especially since the casing I will be using had that nasty noise, most probably caused by the bearing at the brush end. As you can see the motor has no fan built-in, so it probably needs some external help to move the extra heat away.

Waiting for the sun

Enough said? Project somewhat on hold until that white stuff goes away. Well, I guess I can work on a couple of things, but I'm not expecting to register the vehicle before the summer. I'm giving electric heat another go. I have a 12V 1000W heating element shipping via ebay. It's originally from a Citroen C5 so it's actually going to do exactly what it was meant to do. Even the brand of the donor car is the same as mine. I just don't know how big it is and if it will fit inside the usual air ducts, but we'll see.

Winter slowness

The winter has been extremely mild so far and we've actually kept above freezing pretty much the whole time, which is quite unusual. It's about to change soon though. The mild weather hasn't stopped me from not progressing with the car however.

I had a car at a shop some years ago and after it had been two weeks I decided to call them if they had made any progress. They told me they'd ordered a part, but it had been wrong. The owner went on to explain that when this sort of thing happens they get a bit depressed and haven't done anything after that, but I suppose they could try to get the part from a junk yard. That's pretty much the situation with me too since the heating plan I had failed to function as I had hoped.

I did find an electrian to do a check on the car, but I don't have everything ready for that either. I did manage to quickly see where the Electric Steering pump would go so here's a photo or two on that.

The plumbing will be fine. I'll just have to figure out how to fix the damn thing into the chassis of the vehicle. It's not like I haven't continuously kept thinking about that and other things like 12 V battery mounting, possible additional battery box placement, which batteries to get more of and so on. Nothing concrete however.

Actually I've spent most of my hobby time at the basement playing drums and constructing the music room for them. That's progressing nicely however. Next up, sauna. Oh, and back to work as well.