Inside Pictures

Here is a update with pictures from the inside of the car. 

When we get the new charger we are going to make a video of the car when we drive it around. 

We want to show the top speed, acceleration and sound levels. 

Front seat

Backseat and Battery box

From the back

Engine compartment

It Drives

When we got the car back from the PAF carnival and Rockoff we had 12 days to install all the wiring and test everything for the inspection. We did not have much time to take photos of the things we were working on but i will soon post pictures of how everything looks under the hood.

3 days before inspection the charger dies but as the charger is not a must have for the inspection we towed the car the night before to the inspection and managed to use the power we had left in the batteries to drive in to the inspection.
 

We passed the inspection, only a small problem with a parking light.

The day after that we towed the car to the 22th Bugnic meeting witch is a annual VW car meeting on Åland. 55 cars showed up this year and our buss got second place in the air-cooled cars category and we also won the people's choice award. 

YEA!

Now i am having a brake while we get the new charger.

Done with the Almost Everything

So for the last 2 weeks me and Simon have been working hard on finishing the car for Paf carnival. 

This is how it looked when we got it back from the painters. 

 We started with painting the inside.

Here we see me painting the roof. 

The roof and the sides was painted with a white that contains a little blue in it so it will match the blue seats.

The yellow and black that still is visible will be covered by carpet and side panels. 

 Michael our contact person on Paf came and helped us with the car.

Michael painting the floor black.

 We also got help from Paf with putting in the carpet.

Ulf putting in the carpet and me and Simon preparing the controller.

 Our seats and side panels arrived and we were very impressed by how sweet they looked. They are refurbished with used jeans from Paf employers and the driving seat is made from mine and Simon's old jeans.

Test sitting the refurbished seats.

 Because the doors and back hatch was still in painting we continued to work with the details.

Here we can see the carpet is in place and a few of the side panels installed.

 We mounted the motor and controller.

Simon is happy.

 Two days before deadline we got the doors and the back hatch back from the painters.

Here we can see the doors inside and behind the car. 

 While we prepared to put in the doors we tested the inside lighting.

Ledstripes that you can change color with your phone. 

After a little more work the car was in good enough condition to be shown to the public. We still need to do some wiring and install a few electrical components to be able get the car moving on its own. But that we will work on after the Paf carnival, because they are only going to use it as a stationary bar and is not in need of moving.  

The car is ready for transport.

 The inside become awesome with the jeans seats.

Under the seat you can see the battery box. 

Here we go.

 We stopped by Paf so the employers could see the car before we took it to town were the carnival was being held.

Many questions and a lot of touching.

While the car is at the carnival Simon and I are going to take some holiday.
See you later.

Back to Work

Hello. After a long time we finally got the car back from the painting. And now we can continue our work. The original deadline was on the first of July. But because the paint work got got super delayed we have to delay the deadline.

Paf wants to show the car at the Paf carnival event that starts the 4 July and ends 13 July. We will not get the car in driving condition to that date but the outside is going to be done to that date. 

Here is Simon attaching the rope so that we could hoist the car up on the trailer.  

We started with painting the inside and putting in a rug. We still have the doors at the painters and we were promised that they would be done before the 2 July.

It is almost a car now!

So now we are working day and night to finish the car for the Paf carnival.
Back to work.

Preparing for the Paint and Building the Box for the Batteries

I am not updating so often anymore because we are working so much on the car and much of the work now is kinda boring. But as soon we get it back from the paint job I will start posting regularly again.

I have worked on preparing the car for the paint and Simon started to build the battery box.
We will paint the inside our self and much of the sides will be covered with panels.     

Rear left side before the paint. 

Rear right side after a little paint.

We also tested the motor and transmission assembly to see if there was any weird noise or vibration. Now it is ready to be put in the car.

Controller, motor, transmission and cables.

 Simon started to work on the battery box that is going to be under on of the seats.

Sturdy metal frame to hold over 300 kg of batteries

Now I will end this week with doing some paperwork and getting some rest.

Batteries, Blasting and a Tesla

We have been very busy the last weeks. A lot of school work and a couple of major events happening to the car.
First we got our batteries, they are 30Ah, 12V and all together they weighs over 1.2 tons. 

120 UPS batteries ready to be tested.  

The batteries is from PAF´s UPS system that were scheduled to be exchange for new ones. We are not going to use all 120 of them. So after a load test we picked out 32 of the best batteries. The plan is to use 32 or 40 batteries depending on how much the car starts to weigh. The rest is going to be a backup.

Next big thing was that we got the car soda blasted.  

Ready for transport.

When we got the car back it was filled with soda. So the first job was to clean it and start preparing it for the painting

Nice and shiny.

At the front we noticed a lot of small surface rust rings, this is probably from stone shots.

A little paint and this should start looking sweet.

At an event here on Åland the company Tesla Motors brought 2 Tesla Model S for the public to take a closer look on. You could also take one of them out for a test ride.  

Here is Simon doing some industrial espionage again.

The next week we are going to prepare the car for the painting and we are also going to do the final mounting of the motor.

A Hard Week of Work

This week we have worked a lot on the car.

Simon started with the controller mounting and I continued on the brakes.

Last week when we tested the motor we found that the flywheel had some uneven surfaces that made it to vibrate. So after we were done with the controller mounting and brakes we went and adjusted the flywheel.

The flywheel after the adjustments. 

The next step was to mount the motor and transmission in the car so that we could take some measurements for the motor mounting. So before we mounted the transmission we wanted the change the oil in it. When we started to drain out the old oil we found some scrap metal stuck to the magnetic plug.

Not a good sign.

It looked like plain bearing that had broke inside the transmission. And that is not good at all.
So we had to open the transmission and see what had happened.
Seconds after opening up the transmission we found out where the metal was from.

There is your problem

Here we see a picture of the inside of the transmission were the axle is going out to the motor. The sharp edges we see is were the metal scrap used to be. First we thought it was a plain bearing but after looking in the car workshop manual we could not see that it should not even be a bearing there. We called the local VW workshop and asked them if they knew anything. They did not. We talked to some mechanics and one of them suggested that it could be a metal spiral that leads the oil away from the axle seal.

It is a big mystery

Well at least it wasn't a big problem. We put it together again and filled it with new oil.

Then we could mount it on the motor and put the hole thing in the car.

Ready for action

Last week we went and checked out an electric car that Ålands Naturskola had bought. It is a ELCAT that have they replaced the lead batteries with new lithium batteries.

Simon is doing some industrial espionage.

Testing of the Motor and Finding Out Why EVE Got Bankrupt

This week we wanted to test the motor and controller.

Our first problem was that we had not gotten our batteries yet. But Simon went on a hunt and managed to get a hold of some batteries. We still were missing two so we had to borrow our car batteries as well. 

We tried to set up the controller but because we did not get a manual for the controller (the company EVE, went bankrupt) it was hard to know how the inputs should be connected. I had earlier opened the controller so i could reverse engineer it. The controller had a 3kW charger (for the battery bank), a small charger (for the 12V battery), 2 fuses, 3 relays and the controller unit. The controller unit is a Curtis  1238 controller and that we had a manual for. So i could with the help of the Curtis manual figure out some of the inputs and outputs, but many of them still depends heavily on how EVE programmed the Curtis. We could get the computer program that is needed to access the Curtis from a PC, but it cost a lot and it is not in the budget at this time.   

When everything was set up we held our breath and twisted the key, and nothing happened. We tried a couple of things but nothing helped. We took a break for the day and I went home to study the Curtis manual to see if I could understand what was wrong. 

The next day we tried again and I had actually found something that we missed the first time. It was an input that is usually programmed as a safety latch, so we put 12V signal on that input and then the master relay said click. The motor was still not turning, but it was progress. 

Now the Curtis flashed a error code, and according to the manual it was signaling "motor short circuit". Simon started to measure if there actually was a short circuit and I consulted the manual. After a few measurements Simon cried out that something is very wrong here.   

What we found was the most horrifying, idiotic mistake I have ever seen. But to understand the problem we need a little back story.

When we got the motor and controller we also got a few switches, signal cables and 3 shielded 50mm² motor cables. EVE had already put on cable terminals and heat shrink tubing with the yellow/green earth cable sticking out from the heat shrink tubing.

When you have a AC motor that is controlled by a frequency controller you must have shielded cables between the controller and the motor. You also have to ground the shield in both ends of the cable, if not you will get a lot of interference in the signal cables nearby.

The common way to do this is to take a yellow/green earth cable and stick it in next to the shield, and then you earth the cable. 

So when we saw the cables we said:

-"Great that they already have prepared this for us".

Nothing weird here, just a ordinary motor cable.

So we connected every shield cable together and bolted it to the chassis.

Motor cables connected to the controller and the earth cable is ready to be bolted down.

Okay so back to the problem Simon found.

He noticed that the cables was indeed short circuited and it was because the earth cables was not connected to the shield but instead connected to the motor cable itself. 

WHY!!!

It is so stupid that i almost got brain cancer. EVE must have been employed by idiots.

Not a surprise that EVE got bankrupt.

We are so happy the Curtis controller is protected against short circuit.

So after solving jet another problem EVE manage to create we could at last test the motor.

Ready for testing

Weeee, it works. We are so happy that it is working.

It is alive, ALIVE!

Next week we do not have any lectures in school so we are going to mount the motor and controller in the car and schedule an appointment for the blasting and paint work.

/Oskar

Almost Done With the Adapter Plate and Axle Adapter

The work on the adapter plate and the axle adapter is almost done now.
Here we have some pictures that Simon took while working on the parts.

The adapter plate being transformed.

Testing if the adapter plate fits on the motor.

The finished axle adapter resting on top of the motor.

Here we can see the adapter plate in the CNC machine

Marking out where the holes is going to be.

Almost done.

Everything assembled on to the motor.

Top view of the assembled motor. 

 We have also worked on getting the batteries and the final parts to the car.
Next update we are probably going to show when we are testing the motor.