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.

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.

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.

Much school work and a little car work

So first some pictures of things that we finished last week but i forgot to take a picture of.

Good as new

Left door after its makeover

I had started to renovate the gear rod and now it is fixed.

Old vs new

I also took out the transmission so that we could get more room when working on the adapter plate.

I think it likes to be tied down.

Simon got out the brake pistons from one of the calipers. But on the other one the piston broke and we started to look after new ones. Alternative we buy a new caliper.

Left front brake is done. Now i just need to fix the brake pipe system.

Simon started to work on the right side door. Not as much damage as the left side so it soon was in working condition.
Then he moved along the right side and fixed various rust damages and old repairs.

Next week we have more time for the car and we hope we will get much progress done.

/Oskar