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

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.

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.

Adapterplate, Cooling system and Controller update.

This post is very delayed because it took long to set things in motion and we wanted to wait a little so that we could show a little more progress.  

The last couple of weeks we have been working a lot on how we are going to mount the motor on the transmission. First we made contact with a local workshop and asked for advise. The workshop had worked on a electric car before so they could give us much relevant information. They also said that they could help us build the custom parts we needed. We started to make drawings and after that we went out searching for some metal.

What we need is a axle adapter between the motors axle and the transmissions axle. And we also need a adapter plate that holds the motor in place on the transmission. 

At a junkyard we found this crazy big clump of metal that was perfect to use when we are going to make the adapter plate. 

400 mm diameter axle is perfect for us. 

We also found this old propeller axle that we are going for the axle adapter.

100 mm diameter axle.

 We did not have a big enough lathe to do the initial processing on the adapter plate so we had to send it to a bigger workshop first. They where going to cut it down to 328 mm diameter and make a hole in the middle of it.

Here we have it before it was sent to the workshop for the processing.

400 mm diameter and 50 mm thick 

While we waited for the adapter plate to be done we started to work on the cooling system.

We went to the car scrapyard and found a easy to dismantle and small size radiator. Simon started with checking if the heat sensor and fan motor was working. 

Here you can see him boiling the sensor and testing at what temperature it outputs a signal.

It is switched on at 91°C and off at 86°C.

Then he tested the motor and found that the system is working great.

He is heating the sensor with the heatgun and after awhile the motor started to spin.   

I have worked hard on trying to backwards engineer the controller we got. As you may know we did not get a manual for it and the company we got the controller from is now bankrupt. I got in touch with a exworker from the company and we have gotten a few question marks solved but i still have a few problems left. 

The controller

After a while we got back the adapter plate and we sent it to our friends at the small workshop. So that they could make the final processing.

A shiny adapter plate

The adapter plate next to the transmission.

Surprise! More Bodywork

This week Simon has started to replace the bigger side plates.

Rear left

The new toy we got.

It bends the metal so the welding is super easy.

The new plate in place.

 Then he started to work with the rear right plates.

The new parts.

The battery tray.

Cutting away rusted parts.

Preparing for the new plate.

 I have started to install the new brake lines.

The front part of the brake system.

The rear part of the brake system.

I still have 2 pipes left to install, but i need to wait until we have the parts we are missing for the right side brakes.

We also have talked to some guys about the adapter plate between motor and the transmission. They gave us valuable information about how we could solve our problem.

While we were talking we noticed a weird thing on the motor. The company that have made this motor fucked up and drilled wrong. They somehow drilled the hole for the flange and the hole for the hoisting ring at the same place. So they had to drill a new hole for the hoisting ring a little to the side.

Prime example of a fuck up.

You can see how only half of the thread is left.