The non-update

Not much to be told at this time I'm afraid. The lack of a warm, clean garage is slowing me down. I did get the Power Steering pump working though thanks to this blog post I found. It was just as simple as they told. Just connect the two big wires to the 12 volt supply and two of the control pins to plus and it ran. Ran quiet too. I think it will make for some excellent power steering. Possibly even better than what the car originally had. Now I'll just have to get the piping fitted.

Still trying to find an electrician who would check my high voltage connections. Well, it's not even high voltage really. It's really, really low voltage at around 80 volts DC, but the rules say they must be inspected. Apparently it's enought though that the eletrician checks just the high voltage circuit and general installation of high voltage components and the rest of the E100 paper can be dealt with at the inspection. That means I'm pretty much ready for the inspection. Well, maybe I need to install those charging plugs and bolt the battery box to the car, but other than that it should be all good.

The rest of the components for the brakes and heat did also arrive. I should now be able to construct the vacuum assembly for the brakes. Not expecting any problems there. Just a matter of some tubing, a relay and a piece of aluminium to keep them in place. I'm kind of hoping to get that done within the next week. Either that or the heat, which will consist of three 500 watt PTC elements. I will replace the pollen filter in the car with those elements and see if the result is sufficient heat to pass the inspection. Fingers crossed.

I'm also constantly thinking about replacing my expertly welded motor to transmission adapter with an industrial flexible joint. It may have to wait until later though. The thought of once again removing the motor is not extremely appealing at this point. I will need to improve the motor mounts though. Oh, such a long list of little things to do here and there.

Parts galore

So I've got plenty of parts now. A vacuum pump from VAG (Audi), a blue funny-shaped pressure bottle also from an Audi, power steering pump from a Peugeot 307 (just like my daily driver!), a couple of 80A relays for the charging connector and some trailer connectors I was thinking I'd use for plugging in the charger. That way I could put the same connector on my motorcycle as well and switch chargers between the two at will.

For the power brake setup I'm still waiting for a vacuum switch to arrive which would allow me to control the pump via relay to switch on and off based on amount of vacuum in the bottle. The pump itself works great and doesn't make too much noise. It had a three pin connector, but once the plastic around it got removed along with a little relay board, there were just two normal connectors on the pump, which simply take 12 volts to run the pump.

The power steering is a bit less clear cut at this point. The pump has a metal tube coming out of it for the high pressure output. That needs to be somehow made to fit the original plumbing in the car. Luckily I have some contacts to a local hydraulics company so I'm guessing they might of help there. The pump also has a number of wires in addition to what are clearly the main 12 volt power lines. I tried to plug the 12 volt wires directly into a 12V battery, but nothing happened, so there must be a board with some logic somewhere in there. I'll have to try to find a pinout for the connector with all those little wires or take the damn thing apart to see if I can find a way to "hot-wire" the pump into action.

Other than that the only thing that I don't have parts or a plan set in stone yet for is the heating. The current thinking is to replace the pollen filter with some PTC heating elements. The simplest, yet the most expensive solution, would be to get a ready made hot water system and plug it into the existing plumbing. But we don't usually go for the expensive-but-easy solution, now do we.

Little progress here and there

There's been a little bit of progress here and there. I've connected the DC/DC converter to the 12 volt system and succesfully too. The little voltmeter that plugs into the cigarette lighter outlet now shows 13.5 volts when I have power on. The converter was drawing about an amp when just charging the auxiliary lead acid battery, but with all lights on the current draw jumped to about 5 A.

I've also mounted the Cycle Analyst display in the dashboard. It's blocking the view to the tachometer and fual gauge, but they're not working anyway. Also it blocks the bright out-of-gas light as well, which was rather intentional. It does not block the speedometer or any other useful signals though.

In addition to the Cycle Analyst you can see a red flip switch in front of the gear stick. It has two positions. Forward or "AJO" activates the main contactor (provided that the car is turned on using the original key) and lights the switch red, albeit dimly. Flip towards the rear of the car or "SEIS", the main contactor deactivates and the car will not move by it's own power. Should be pretty easy to do that even in an emergency. Also you can always switch to neutral by hand, which should be doable even without the clutch.

I was also looking into some heat. I dismantled a 1000 W 230 VAC cabin heater that I got for 9,99€, but unfortunately the PTC heating element inside didn't put out any useful amount of heat at 80 VDC. Also it was quite small and pushing all the air though that small element would have been less than ideal. I did figure out a place to put it in though. There's a pollen filter that's easily accessible that I think I might be able to adapt to hold whatever workable heating element I can get my hands on.

Regarding UNECE R100 (aka. "E100-sääntö")

I have been talking to the local vehicle inspector about the UNECE R100 rule, also known in Finland as the "E100-sääntö". I thought it would help fellow converters in Finland to share what I've discovered.

As you may or may not be aware, the R100 is required from all conversions done in Finland. The local inspector whoever doesn't know anything about electrics, so what you need to have is someone with the proper qualifications to check the vehicle.

The next question is which version of R100 do you need to follow. The answer depends. Any vehicle must adhere to a version. Even if it's 1961 VW Beetle, you have to pick one to follow. There wasn't a R100 paper then, but nevertheless you need to follow one.

For a 1997 vehicle like mine you could go with the version that was in effect at the time of the first registration of the vehicle. That would to my knowledge be the 1995 version. However I can't find a version of it in finnish and the 2002 version, strangely published in 2009, seems to have pretty much the same text. So I'll probably go with that. You can always use a newer version.

What you don't want to do is pick the fresh August 2013 version. It seems to have some horrible requirements for the battery box construction, testing and so forth. Just goes to show that the OEMs are really trying to do everything in their power to stop people from building their own EVs.

All of this of course only applies to M and N class vehicles, or cars and vans. Motorcycles have no such requirements as far as I know. Unless of course they're new enough to require EMC testing.

As for the paper itself I still maintain that you should probably only be concerned of section 5, since it's the only section which really lists the requirements proper. The rest of it is definitions and type testing approval crap, so I believe you can ignore that. YMMV though...

ps. I've prepared a document with checkboxes to give to the electrician. It's in finnish. If you'd like a copy, throw me an email. The address is at the top the blog. It is still untested however.

Good old back and forth

I had a little bit of the good old back and forth fun with the car last week. That's to say I got the 12 volt systems wired up as well so I could jump in the car, turn the key, flip a switch and press the acceleration pedal. Not just that, but even make the car move by doing so. And move it did. Shamefully I have zero photographic or video evidence of this event, unless you count this picture which shows that the vehicle has indeed turned around.

I tried third and fourth gears which both seemed fine for taking off. No clutch required, or available, for that matter. Reverse gear was a little bit more problematic. Too much power available resulting in jerky movement unless pressing the pedal extremely gently and letting go at least as gently. Probably this jerkiness was what bent my support structure too. Oh well. At least my welds were stronger than the thick angle iron! That's worth something, I suppose. Also goes to show much power a small 8" electric motor has.

It's also quite amazing how simple my 12 volt electrics are. Especially compared to the complicated original wiring of the petrol engine. I have most of the original wire bundle ziptied in place just to get the three wires that are required for the speedometer to work. Perhaps I will remove more of the extra wiring later. All the new electric car wiring is on top of the case which houses all the high voltage wiring and the 0-5k throttle. Just a few fuses and a single relay so far.

I've also been talking to the authorities and my plans for power brakes and steering seem solid. I'll need to implement more heat that I'll ever need, but I think I'll figure that out as well. For the UNECE R100 regulation the final word is that I'll need to have my wirings checked by a certified professional and get a paper for it. That should be enough for the "MOT" check. Sounds reasonable to me.

Aux battery still needs to be secured in place.

Needs a bit of tidying up.

The mess of original wiring. Actually in use: 3 leads.

WattiViestin lukijoille

This post is in finnish, mainly for the readers of my writing in the local WattiViesti magazine.

Muutama lukija on ottanut yhteyttä WattiViesti-juttuni johdosta. On kyselty mm. mistä käytettyjä komponentteja mahtaisi saada. Omat moottorini löysin Sähköautot - Nyt! -sivuston foorumin ilmoituspalstan kautta. Valitettavasti käytettyjä komponentteja on Suomessa liikkeellä mielestäni varsin harvoin. Toisaalta kerran hankitut omat komponentit on mahdollista kierrättää ajoneuvosta toiseen. Eri asia sitten on, kauanko Trafi suvaitsee hyväksyä mitään muutoksia. Suunta ei ole ainakaan parempaan päin. Syytä toki pitää etsiä myös kauempaa sekä paikallisesta lainsäädännöstä että EU-tasolta.

Toinen kyselty asia on sähkömoottoreiden teho. Jotain osviittaa käytettyjen moottoreiden tehoista saa esimerkiksi katsomalla Kostovin moottoreiden vertailua. Sähkömoottori kuitenkin eroaa polttomoottoreista samaan tapaan kuin esim. Diesel-moottori eroaa bensamoottorista, mutta vielä radikaalimmin. Tehohuippua ei esimerkiksi ole vaan moottorin täysi vääntö on käytettävissä heti kierrokselta nolla. Muunnetulla sähköautolla voi täten lähteä liikkeelle paikaltaan ilman kytkintä esimerkiksi jopa 3- tai 4-vaihteella. Oma kWsara-projektini ainakin näyttää kotipihassa liikkuvan näillä vaihteilla ihan hyvin. Peruutusvaihteen välitys on turhankin tiheä ja auto tahtoo singahtaa taaksepäin.

Moottorin lisäksi tehoon vaikuttaa toki myös käytetty ohjain ja akusto. Omaan autooni tuleva ohjain toimii 120 volttiin ja 600 ampeeriin asti, joten sen laskennallinen huipputeho on 72 kW. Todellinen mitattu teho voi sitten olla jotain ihan muuta ja tuo vääntökäyrän erilaisuus kannattaa edelleen pitää mielessä. Sähkömoottorin vääntö kun on tasainen aina sen huippukierroksille asti, jonka jälkeen vääntö alkaa loivasti laskea. Näiden asioiden lisäksi akuston tulee myös pystyä antamaan riittävä määrä ampeereja ja voltteja "kyykähtämättä". Teho on siis sähköautossakin monen tekijän summa.

Voin listata käyttämieni komponenttien hankintapaikkoja sitten kun olen varmistanut, että niillä todella pääsee muutoskatsastuksesta läpi eikä Trafi ala vaatia jotain sellaista, jota heidän ei mielestäni pitäisi.

Get your motor running, again

Yesterday I spent the whole day working on the car. It was worth it though. I got the high voltage parts all wired up and the wheels spinning using the controller. Here's the proof.

I had the idea of putting the high voltage cabling inside some clear plastic tubing, but the cables didn't want to go in so I just gave up on that idea. The cables routed below the car doesn't look half to me though.

Plenty of room below the car now. Kind of makes me sad to have all that space that cannot be easily put to use. Oh well. At least I got a lot of crap out that could fail the yearly check.

New cable

I finally found a good place to get some proper, orange 50 mm2 cable and other useful stuff for my electric car conversion. To my surprise the place to go to is IKH. They sell all kinds of tools and tractor parts, but also heavy cable and such. They had up to 70 mm2 right there in the shelf. I figured I could get away with 50 mm2. Especially since I'm not exactly creating a supercar.

I got 10 meters of the cable. I had some red cable from Biltema before that was 6 m in length, but it turns out it wasn't quite long enough. I hope 10 will do. Maybe I should have measured how much I need. I also got some clear 40 mm diameter tube to use as a conduit from the back of the car to the front. I got the idea from this Damien Maguire's youtube video:

Very nice, clean and hopefully durable solution. My cabling from first go from the trunk to below the read seats, where there are a couple of holes already available for bringing the cable down to the underside of the car and then using the exhaust pipe tunnel into the front.

The heater in the picture is a cheap 1000 W cabin heater. I'll see if the heating element would happen to work on 80 volts DC as well. The fan most likely will not work in any case.

Tank out, batteries in

Yesterday I finally took out the gas tank from the kWsara. Main motivation was to make room for battery cabling. I've decided to have a single simple battery box in the trunk for now. It's actually an aluminum box from Biltema. Right now it houses the 25 CALB SE40AHA 40 Ah cells from the kWsaki motorcycle. They should be good for about 30 kW and 3 kWh.

The battery box also houses the main contactor and a cut-off switch. Essentially all electric power can be contained within the box simply by turning the switch off. I also got some gland nuts for the cables to exit the box in a clean and secure way. Cables within the box are just 35mm2 for now, but the longer cables are 50mm2. I'll need to get some more though. The 6m roll of cable I got earlier doesn't reach to the front of the car and back.

Taking the tank out took some doing. First few bolts came off nicely, but just as I though I had them all out I found the last one. For some reason the last one always turns out to be the one rusted out and nigh impossible to remove. Eventually it did give up and I was able to wiggle the tank out from between the handbrake cables. Spilling of some gasoline left in the tank could not be completely avoided.

I also used a 5 V 2.5 A D-Link power brick to top up the the cells which we're a little lower than the rest. Now they seem to be quite happily resting at about 2.95 to 3.02 volts like the rest.

Taking apart

Yesterday I proceeded to take apart the battery pack of the kWsaki motorcycle. I'll need the cells for my initial build of the kWsara electric car. I'll see if I can get more batteries later for the car and/or the motorcycle. Of course if I can't get the car to pass MOT then I won't have to.

In any case I thought it would be a good idea to empty the pack before dismantling it. This way it would have the least power stored in case I mess something up in the process. It turned out to be a little challenging and I couldn't avoid letting some sparks fly, so I guess I was on the right track. The minus cable of the pack had slipped into contact with the positive end of the 12 V lead acid battery. A little slip of a wrench into the chassis of the matorcycle resulted in some fireworks along with the bolt in the end of the minus cable welding into the battery terminal.

So yeah, let's be careful out there. Other than that there were no mishaps. I had pushed the pack down to 50 volts, about 2 volts per cell, but it had bounced back to 74 volts by the time of disassembly. All but two cells were at 2.95-3.00 volts. The remaining two were at 2.71 and 2.80 volts. Not sure why, but I may have sucked them a little bit more empty while bottom balancing, they may have been worse cells, I may have hurt them by sucking them too low or maybe some of the sparks I've made have caused them to get a little bit more empty. The difference isn't very big though, since the voltage drops very quickly below three volts. All in all I'm not worried and will just add some more juice into those two cells or suck the others a bit lower.

The cells aren't very clean due to my open design of the battery box and the fact that the braces had rusted rubbing some of that rust into the cells. The cells whoever seemed quite uninterested in their external appearance. Perhaps a more close box would be in order though. The next incarnation of the battery pack will be different anyway, so I'll see what I can do. That's for next summer in any case. I took the bike off insurance for this season.