JD's VW Bus Conversion EV project (2 of 2)

[oatnet]

This bearing I was talking about is in the center of the flywheel, and supports the end ot the tranny shaft. Sometimes it is a bushing. It may be actually on the engine, so maybe you don't have it anymore anyway with the electric motor.

I looked it up, and it is in the end of the crankshaft on my year, and you are right, there are no provisions for it on the CanEV hub. I read about someone else having a similar problem (above 4000 RPM) and their solution was to bore a hole in the end of the motor driveshaft and press in a bearing. Looks like the motor will be easy to move in and out, so I'll get it running first so I can move it back-and-forth and sort out the problems later. While I was under it today I noticed the wheelside CV boot was split, so I have to do the half shafts too and wheel bearings while I'm at it - but if the bus is moving I can pay professionals to do it for me. <grin>

GOOD NEWS!

Fernanando reappeared out of the blue, reported a death in the family had him out of touch for the past few weeks, and dropped off the flywheel/pressure/clutch combo. I can hang onto the ones I ordered friday.

I also sorted out my drilling jig for making strips to join the cells. I put a narrow copper strip and drill a 6mm hole every 39mm. Then I put a 12mm M6 set-screw point first into the potted end of the cell as far as it will go. Then I put the set screw through the copper strip and screw in the main-case side of the cell.

Cells showing set screws_5652.JPG (52.41 KiB) Viewed 841 times

Below you are looking at a 6.6v100a (2s10p) "pack" capable of 500a continous output. The copper strip serves to parallel the (10) 10a cells into a 100a supercell, and I will land the fuse for the charger lead on one end. By putting the next charger lead on the opposite side of the supercell, the path through all the individual 10a cells should be electrically equivalent, so they should all get the same charge. 48 supercells will get me the 144v pack I am looking for.

Steven of Kelly Controllers told me that although the KHD14500B Controller puts out 500a on the motor side, it never draws more than 400a on the battery side. I am going to build the actual pack at 8p for 80ah and 400a continious output. I intend to eventually mount this pack in the gas tank, but during testing I am going to build it on the floor in the middle of the bus, one cell high (1/5"). The space is 60 inches wide and 48 inches deep, so I can build a row of about 10 supercells from one side of the bus to the other. I'll builld a wood enclosure of plywood sheets and 2"x2" to hold and separate the rows. I can build fit 3 rows of 10 supercells (fuse between each row) into the space, good for about 30 supercells or 96v. I can see how far/fast that gets me and get a better sense of how big the pack needs to be. Once I know what I need, it should be very easy to reconfigure the pack into its final location.

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6.6v100ah_portrait_5654.JPG (97.09 KiB) Viewed 841 times

And linemans gloves for messing with kilowatts!

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EDIT 12/12/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

[oatnet]

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Here is the brand-new motor!

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This is the hub and parts that came with the red adaptor place. The Flywheel and Flywheel locking plate bolt to the hub using the 5 bolts in it. The four short bolts mount the motor to the red adaptor plate shown earlier. The four long bolts attach the adaptor plate to the tranny bell housing, the big long one on the upper right by the starter. Oh, and the little rectangular block is the key that connects the motor shaft to the hub.

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motor and hub_5637.JPG (85.92 KiB) Viewed 836 times

This is how the adaptor will position over the motor - the end of the the tranny input shaft will be inside this hub, almost to the end of the motor shaft (I Hope)

============================================

EDIT 12/12/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

[oatnet]

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clutch kit and fernando flywheel_5655.JPG (77.71 KiB) Viewed 840 times

fuses and fusebox_5659.JPG (74.31 KiB) Viewed 840 times

battery strap jig_5661.JPG (73.16 KiB) Viewed 840 times

EDIT 12/12/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

[TylerDurden]

Nice pix.
I found, that once I had a spare clutch-disk on the shelf, the current disk lasted much longer.

[dogman]

Funny how that works. A guy I know bought a new car and a new engine for it together twenty years ago. Now he's too old to drive anymore, in his nineties, and still has a brand new engine in a crate in the gargage. He says it's the only car he ever owned that never needed a new engine.

[oatnet]

Last weekend, I lost all of my data for the last three months to a virus... So I had lots of pics to post, but now they are gone.

Today I finished a row of (10) 80a supercells, thought I would share a pic before another virus deletes it. It is 53.25" long, 12.5" wide, and 1/5" high. It is made up of (80) 0.75lb cells, and weighs 60 lbs. The floor of my bus has space to lay (3) rows of these, for a total of 90v80ah rated for 400a@5c.

For now, this will be good enough to get the bus from one side of the street and evaluate how big a pack the bus needs. My next goal will be to build that pack and relocate them to all to a special rack where the gas tank was.
-JD

10 supercells_5766.JPG (61.86 KiB) Viewed 2302 times

[oatnet]

duplicate

[Stevil_Knevil]

Cheers!

[dogman]

Wow, I don't know whether I do or don't want to see pics of that many headway cells. You might want to reconsider street parking for that bus once it has a few thou worth of cells in it! The crime of the future is gonna be stripping lifepo4 packs out of ev's.

[oatnet]

I finally got a chance to work on the Bus today, and got the motor assembled and installed. I drilled a 1.5" hole in a piece of 4x4 to accomodate the tailshaft, and stood the motor on end on top of the 4x4 so that all the parts would lay flat when installed.

01_key_5769.JPG (64.03 KiB) Viewed 834 times

First I had to insert the key into the shaft. It was not easy to fit, and when laid directly against the key slot it would rotate rather than go in. I finally laid it against the corner of the slot at the end of the shaft, and was able to tap it in with a hammer. More careful hammer taps slid the rest of the key into the slot, and a few more slid it flush with the end of the shaft.

02_hub_5771.JPG (61 KiB) Viewed 834 times

The hub is now slid over the shaft and the key. This also was a tight fit, and the key was roughly cut ad the ends, so I had to file the upper edges for it to clear. It took a few taps of a rubber mallet to sit the hub flush against the end of the motor. In the next photo you can see the two holes for the set screws; each hole has a pair of set screws, one to contact the shaft, and the other to lock in the first. Lacking guidance, I torqued them to pretty effing tight. NOTE: these do NOT use loctite. DO NOT USE THREADLOCKER HERE! I wish this hub came with a pilot bearing (or someplace to press one in) but it doesn't. I hope this isn't an issue, it is probably fine when the clutch is clamped, but it certainly makes me less inclined to change gears once in motion.

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Then the red adaptor plate is bolted to the face of the motor. Lacking guidance, I torqued them to pretty effing tight with blue loctite. The center hole is tight so the plate rocked a bit, and didn't lay flush until torqued down. Note that 1 of the 4 bell-housing bolts is thicker and longer than the others, it goes next to the starter on the upper right side of the bell-housing. Make sure your adaptor plate is bolted on to orient A1/A2/S1/S2 the way you would like or you will be yanking the flywheel back off to change it. I chose to have these bolts facing up, so when looking at the shaft end of the motor, the big bolt hole is on the upper left.

04_flywheel_5774.JPG (75.15 KiB) Viewed 834 times

The flywheel is installed, with the bolts torqued to 80 foot/lbs in a "star" order (per vw manual). I used (4) slide clamps to keep the flywheel from spinning, and held it as tight as I could with both hands, as my petite wife put her all into pulling the torque wrench. We are both sore from this one, but got it done. I used blue locktite which I hope will be adequate, maybe after I verify it is all working I'll tear it down and use red.

05_complete_5775.JPG (77.5 KiB) Viewed 834 times

Then I laid the clutch disk onto the pressure plate, and centered it by eye as best I could. It helped to have the motor standing on end so I could spin the flywheel and see where the clutch was off-center. Then I carefully laid the pressure plate on top, inserted all the bolts for a few threads to make sure it was lined up, then loctite-blued each bolt in turn and hand-tightened it. I finished by torquing each pair of opposing bolts in turn, to 18 ft-lbs (per vw manual).

EDIT 12/14/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

[oatnet]

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I got a GREAT 450lb tranny jack at harbor freight http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=39178 that almost seemed designed for this task. Even better, it was $10 cheaper at the store, $79.99 plus tax.

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The 143lb motor is now strapped down and ready to roll!

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The motor on the jack was about 1" too high to slide under the bus. I was about to jack the bus up, then I tipped the motor forward on the Tranny jack's front wheels, which dipped the adaptor plate low enough to clear. Here you see the motor and the bell housing it is about to be bolted to. This motor has a tailshaft which only had a few mm clearance from the back while it was jacking up, because I also had to clear the tranny input shaft.

08_installed_5782.JPG (82.32 KiB) Viewed 1572 times

The Tranny jack can tilt forward, but it wasn't enough to line the input shaft up with the motor. I used a crowbar to lever up the rear of the motor so they would sort-of line up. It took a few trys to get the input shaft inserted, and even then the bottom of the adaptor plate was flush with the lip on bell housing, but there was a 1" gap at the top. I managed to get the top left bolt through and when torqued it pulled the motor flush, and I was able to get the big bolt through the top right, next to the starter. The starter made this really difficult to access the nut for this bolt, so it took a while. The bottom two bolts went in easy as pie - and I was done! Naturally, I still need a rear mount to support the motor, but this should be good enough for moving from one side of the street to the other.

I have been dreading the mechanics of installing the motor, but with the tranny jack it was a simple 1-man job. It only took about 3 hours from drilling the 4x4 to lowering the jack, I hope it is correct! Now I can focus on the electronics.

-JD

EDIT 12/14/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

[pwbset]

Sheesh... if I'd have known any of this was even remotely doable I would have never sold my '89 Westy two years ago (needed to in order to buy a house... dumb idea in retrospect ). I miss that old beast and would have loved to electrify it. Loving this thread.. thanks for sharing!

[dogman]

I'm hugely impressed with the can ev adaptor plate. Very nice stuff, not just a cut up piece of sheet stock. And the pix on the thread are first class. Ya got us all drooling.

[oatnet]

I'm hugely impressed with the can ev adaptor plate. Very nice stuff, not just a cut up piece of sheet stock. And the pix on the thread are first class. Ya got us all drooling.

Thanks Dogman and Pwbset! It is comments like yours that keep me wanting to post pics of my Journey with this project.

Since my last post, I heard back from Randy @ CanEv, and he said he uses threadlocker blue - so I guessed right, and thank goodness I don't have to tear it down and put in red - or have to worry about being able to get it apart at all. Important note I didn't initially put above - per the instructions there is NO threadlock on the set screws that secure the adaptor hub to the motor shaft.

At any rate, over the past two days i built a case to hold 3 rows of Headway Cells. After the batteries are in I'll put some heavier plywood on top. I started to slide the first row of 10 supercells in, then I realized I had better screw the copper ends in before dropping them all they way in. So, tomorrow I'll drill them out and finish mounting the cells I have so far... soon I should be ready to try to make it move!

-JD

tray_in_5786.JPG (42.78 KiB) Viewed 191 times

[Dee Jay]

A car conversion is in my future me thinks.. thanks for sharing great info!

J

[dogman]

BTW do keep the burn marks on the rear end. Excellent theft proofing, and keep the EV labels off it too, so they don't know about all the battery money inside. The way it looks now you could park it with keys in the ignition.

[oatnet]

The way it looks now you could park it with keys in the ignition.

You are catching on...

So the past two days I spent making 3 buss bars, one to join two rows of supercells, and two for the ends of the pack where I will be taking off positive and negative power. With these, I can finish assembling the battery and move onto the control system.

Each buss bar is made up of (6) 1" wide copper strips that add up to 5mm total. I''ll mount 400a silicon fuses against each of the pack-end buss bars and bolt the 4/0 cables to the fuses. I still need to cut out large holes where the end of the cells will contact the bar, small holes for the screw head, and a strip where the fuses will contact the end bars. Covering them with heatshrink and cutting holes is probably overkill, but I try to minimize exposed conductive surface to reduce the possibilities for accidental contact.

-JD
EDIT 12/14/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

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[dogman]

I have always believed in alternative theft proofing. 4 huge bloodhounds at my house takes care of that, Not sure I could even tell you where the house key is. The truck gets washed at most once a year. Nobody steals what looks broken. 20 years ago a hot spring I liked to visit was plagued by native americal theives who broke into all the cars while the hippies were soaking. Mine was always untouched because of all the voodoo looking shit I kept on the dash. Nobody wanted the hex of some damn skinwalker down on their heads.

[oatnet]

It took me about 6 hours today to cut holes in the buss bars' heatshrink, and finish up the 48v80ah pack (128 cells) This is twice what it took me to install the frakking motor - and now all I need is a control system and a charging system. I was not precise enough when I drilled the parallelling/charging strips, I tried to add some space for expansion and not all of the holes were the same distance. That is fine for the strips (I intended to bend the slack towards the positive terminals) but I used them as a template for the buss bars without thinking, and that caused all sorts of trouble. I wedged them in though. I had to cut grooves in the wood between the rows, to allow space for the fused charging wires.

Anyhow, below is a shot of the buss bars ready for installation, and another of the 16 supercells installed! The white cylinders sticking up are the two 400a silicon fuses, wrapped in unshrunk heatshrink (for safety), that will serve as the positive and negative terminals of the pack for the time being.. You can see 53.4v on the multimeter, I expect that will be enough to move the bus around for street cleaning while Ifinish building the rest of the systems (vacuum pump for brakes, asst safety/control/monitoring systems, etc). None of the fuseholders on the red wires have actual fuses in them, so while they look dangerous by crossing the rows, they can't short the pack.

Can anyone tell me, if I put my multimeter on the ends of an individual cell, will I read the voltage of that cell, or the voltage of the entire supercell? I only checked the cells that I added today, and I am not sure I checked all of the cells I added earlier. One of headway cells I tried to add today was discharged to 0.42v, I'll try to charge it up again but with v that low I am skeptical about its chances - I want to make sure it is the only one, but I am not ready to tear the pack down to do so. Two cells stripped their screws holes pretty easy, I figure I'll use them as end cells later with a slightly larger screw.

-JD
EDIT 12/14/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

Holes cut for the battery ends and screws - the negative side of the cells is slightly larger than the positive. Note the 400a silicon fuse mounted as it was ulitimately installed on the pack. I had to cut out some wood to clear the fuses.

strips3_5790.JPG (39.8 KiB) Viewed 223 times

It's alive! 53.4v of power - the existing watts in the pack are from China as I haven't gotten to the charging system yet.

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[voicecoils]

Can anyone tell me, if I put my multimeter on the ends of an individual cell, will I read the voltage of that cell, or the voltage of the entire supercell? I only checked the cells that I added today, and I am not sure I checked all of the cells I added earlier. One of headway cells I tried to add today was discharged to 0.42v, I'll try to charge it up again but with v that low I am skeptical about its chances - I want to make sure it is the only one, but I am not ready to tear the pack down to do so. Two cells stripped their screws holes pretty easy, I figure I'll use them as end cells later with a slightly larger screw.

Nice work!

Yes, you can measure the potential (voltage) across any individual cell, regardless of how it is connected to other cells. Just jump in with a multimeter.

You can also charge or discharge any individual cell in the same fashion, while connected to the others. The circuit (say the multi-meter with probes on each end of one cell) is only 'closed' around that cell, so that's all it sees.

[oatnet]

Nice work!

Yes, you can measure the potential (voltage) across any individual cell, regardless of how it is connected to other cells. Just jump in with a multimeter.

You can also charge or discharge any individual cell in the same fashion, while connected to the others. The circuit (say the multi-meter with probes on each end of one cell) is only 'closed' around that cell, so that's all it sees.

Thanks voicecoils!

I am suprised about the charge/disharge though - I used to have 2 36v LiFe packs in parallel on a Tidalforce, each charged by a 36v charger/balancer (the old "Flintstone" charger if you remember them), with 13 leads so each cell had it's own individual sub-charger. When one charger died, I discovered that it was charging both packs at the same time - one via the single-cell chargers, and the other through the leads that connected them in parallel (no schotty diode). It seemed that the sum of the single-cell chargers output went up through the power leads.

-JD

[oatnet]

I charged up that .42v cell today - it was on the charger for 7-8 hours, the charger never went green so I thought it was useless. Then I tested it with the CBA, and got 9.6ah from it! Maybe it never got its initial factory charge, I'll put it through a few cycles and see what I get.

A few weeks ago I mounted the controller, a kelly 600v contactor, and shunt on a wood board, and hooked up 4/0 cables for the battery and motor. This helped me think through the layout and is good enough for testing, but I will need to remount it on an aluminum plate to help drain heat from the controller, and add a 2nd contactor (ev200) on a separate circuit as an emergency disconnect.

Today I screwed (4) cells together with set-screws to make a 12v10ah "stick", mounted a waterproof fuse and on of my old ebike switchboxes to the positive side, and paralled that to the contactor and the KDH14500B's J2 connector wire 1. Then I paralleled the other side of the contactor, and J2(3). This worked like a charm and I programmed the controller. no problem. I connected a new PB6 throttle to J2(2) and J2(5), then took the whole mess downstairs, and hooked up the power cables. I wore my linesman's gloves for the battery leads, fumbling on nuts with those things was a major pain, albeit not as much of a pain as burning my arms off without them. The install is ugly, but complete, the next phase will pretty things up and make them robust enough for regular duty.

I had my wife come down to take video of the maiden voyage. The contactor clicked when I hit the power switch, I had the tranny in neutral and was braced for a runaway that never came (yay). I hit the throttle - and nothing happened. Damn. No error code on the controller, I measured correct voltage at the inputs, disconnected the microswitch, no joy. Rather than face the linesmans gloves again to unbolt everything, I brought a PC into the driveway to reprogram the controller. I made the configuration as plain Vanilla as possible, turning off high throttle etc.

The KDHB manual shows (3) choices for throttle and says "potentiometer can be used to output 0-5v". When I choose 0-5v the motor will not turn. When I choose 5-0v the motor spins full speed (thank goodness I was smart enough to have the tranny in neutral) but moving the throttle to full on does not slow motor. It is nice to hear it spin cleanly- that means everything works - but it would be nice to control it too. After powering everything down I unbolted the s2 lead so I can reconfigure the controller without spinning the motor up. In retrospect, I guess I could have just disconnected one of the contactor control leads instead.

Anyone have an idea what I am doing wrong? Here are my settings from KDHB Configuration Program:

Foot Switch: Disable
Throttle Low end dead zone: 20%
Throttle High end dead zone: 80%
Max Current: 100%
Startup Wait time: 0.5 sec
Control mode: Balanced
Under Voltage: 18v
Over Voltage :180v
Throttle up/Down rate:4
High Pedal Disable: disable
Top Speed: 100%
Half Speed on reverse: Disable
Half Current on Reverse: Disable
Motor Temperature Sensor: Disable
Stop Output Temperature: 125C
Restart Temperature: 110C

EDIT 12/14/12: replaced pictures lost when the forum crashed a few years ago.

The temporary control system layout.

board_5796.JPG (55.17 KiB) Viewed 223 times

Red '+' 4/0 cable to A1, Yellow 'm-' cable to S1, and a short Yellow 4/0 cable connecting A2/S2. Wonder if the ICE went CW or CCW?

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The motor hatch cover removed to allow the 4/0 cables through.

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When troubleshooting is done, I'll screw the controller board to the battery box until I remount to aluminum.

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The PB6 in the foreground, the 12v "stick", and the (air-gapped) switchbox from my first TidalForce!

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[oatnet]

Its Alive!

I emailed Steven at Kelly Controller about my throttle issue. As usual, his response was quick and complete - one of the many things I like about using Kelly products.

He said that I should modify my PB6 with a third wire to 5v (J2 pin 7) to convert it a 0-5v throttle. The controller does support a 2-wire throttle, with a 1k resistor, but it is “less preferred."

So, I opened the PB6 case. I thought I was going to have to mess with the return spring to get at the pot, but that assembly remained intact. Naturally, the center connector is the wiper, and the two end connectors are the + or -. The '+' end is the open pin in the first picture, so I soldered a red wire to it. When I soldered the PB6 yesterday, I connected the black wire to ground - to me, ground is always negative.

In a resistance pot setup it the ends don't really matter, but in a 0-5v it setup it obviously does. I had a 50/50 chance of wiring it correctly, but once I opened the pot, I could see that the wiper was wired to black, and the negative side was wired to white. Rather than undo all my other work, I swapped the white and black wires at the pot (as seen in the 2nd photo). Besides being easier, it is more intuitive for me in the future.

That said, I took the new control harness outside and hooked up everything but the contactor so the controller wouldn't spin the motor at power-on - I left it programmed in 5-0 mode last night. I reprogrammed the controller to 0-5 mode and re-enabled the high-pedal cutoff. The motor now responds to the throttle! I put it in reverse, gradually added the throttle, and the bus lurched backwards with far more torque than I expected for 53v, more bite than I remember from the ICE. Of course, it could well have been supplying 25kw (50vx500a), 33 electric horsepower, and the ICE was 66hp. I am eager to see how it performs on the street, but I have more to do to make it roadworthy.

Having it MOVE in a controlled fashion is a major milestone for me. To be honest, I have been stressed out about this project since I started. I have been absorbing tons of information, found out I didn't know half of what I thought I knew, and was concerned that I would miss something important or trash something or hit a roadblock beyond my skills.

The motor part really concerned me - I've never even handled a clutch or flywheel before, and if I had hit a problem (something doesn't fit, etc) I don't have the skills or tools to fix it. Ultimately the motor was the easiest part of the whole installation, everything just bolted on.

The rear-engine aircooled VW configuration compliments an electric motor installation very well, I bypassed many of the hurdles one would face converting a more modern car with a front-engine layout. I should give credit to the CanEv kit for simplifying the process too; I was considering another kit that uses a taper lock that had a lot of precision adjustments that I think were beyond my skill set, and the CanEv simply bolted on.

One must be vigilant about things including high-voltage issues, working with heavy masses, and keeping the driveline disengaged (be aware of the risks, do your homework to be safe), but with that in mind I would like to pass on to others: if you have ebikes down, converting an aircooled VW to electric is easily within your skill set. I did every single element of this conversion single handed, the only help I needed was torquing the flywheel bolts and my 5' 100lb wife helped with that. Most of the tasks here are things I never tried before.

The next step was charging. I bought (7) brand-new Vicor power supplies (as recommended by Dr. Bass - thanks for yet ANOTHER great tip Doc!). I got that many because they were new, dirt cheap, and all 8 slots filled with 48v4.2a subchargers, capable of 33.6a when paralleled! I thought these would be a nice compliment to the 48v-3.7v DC-DC converters I bought here fore single-cell chargers. I'll still use those as balancers in the future, but for now I'll charge the cells directly with one of these. The modules were all turned down to 30v, but the set screw allowed me to adjust them up to 56.2v. I tuned them to 52.8v to charge 16 cells to 3.3v/cell. By combining the 8 sub-modules in parallel and series, and adjusting set screws, I can hit any target voltage from a single charger, no matter how I configure the pack. It will only supply 1200w at 120v AC, so the higher the pack voltage the slower the charge.

So, tomorrow I hope to pump some juice into the cells, and get started on the Vacuum pump/reservoir to assist the brakes. After that, I'll mount the PB6 to the throttle cable (with a separate return spring). Then I'll work a permanent aluminum-plate mounting for the controller and the Jumbo-Screen Cycleanalyst I've had in storage. Then this will be ready for basic road testing to see how many watts/mile this uses to size the final battery pack. Then I am ready for the final, permanent install of all systems.

But today, today it moves!

-JD

NOTE: THESE ARE THE RAMBLINGS OF A RANK AMATEUR ON HIS FIRST EV CONVERSION JOURNEY - LISTEN AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

Before - No third wire!

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After - white=wiper, red=pos, black=neg

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The awesome vicor power supply!

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[dogman]

yay!

[TylerDurden]

Kudos!

(Safety tip: If this is your first EV-auto, it is very easy to forget the vehicle is turned on; since there is no engine noise, no idle... your parking brake can help keep your garage-wall (or other cars/people) intact.)

It might even seem a bit freaky to drive bus that's quiet for the first couple of months.