Super beetle EV conversion

Car stuff

2011-11-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Updates:

Got my new vanity plates - "1K AMPS". Sorry no pictures yet.

Went to a local VW club gathering a couple weeks ago. The car was quite popular. Gave some rides and stuff.

I got invited to the Pierce College Automotive Department to show off the car to a class - college kids are extremely interested in this type of stuff. The school paper reporters were there and took some pictures and interviewed me. I'll probably get an article written about the car soon.

Sunday morning it was raining so I decided to test the car in the rain - it did not do well! After about a block the motor started to jerk and I couldn't get it to go over about 1000 RPM so I turned around and hobbled back home. At least the hazard flashers work. Later in the day after it stopped raining, the car ran fine after drying out. I suspect that the motor connections got wet and caused some leakage current to the motor case, which confused the Zilla. I should do some more testing and possibly protect the motor from direct moisture somehow.

The car does come in handy...

2011-10-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday night my wife was about to leave for a Halloween costume square dance. Shelley was away at her Marching Band competition (they won first place in their category and first place overall!). The Highlander had a dead battery and wouldn't start, and Debby had to leave right away. She asked me for the keys to my truck and I said "but I have to pick Shelley up later!" and Debby said "use the bug!" I thought, "duh, she's right, why didn't I think of that?"

At this point the biggest drawback to driving the bug is having to remove the car cover and putting it back on later. I'm such a lazybutt.

Facebook test...

2011-10-19T12:20:00.001-07:00

Hi there facebook

2011-10-18T16:51:00.001-07:00

Follow this blog

LA County Fire Department Car Show

2011-10-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

When I set up at the West Hills Fall Festival two weeks ago, the Fire Department had parked one of their rigs nearby for kids to gawk at. Sometime during the day a fireman walked over to me and gave me a flyer for the LAFD car show, and told me I should take my car there. So I did - the show was yesterday.

When I built the car I didn't really give much thought to taking it to car shows but as long as people tell me I should, and as long as I have the time free, I'm thinking what the heck. It does give me the chance to spread the word about how cool electric cars can be.

So yesterday I showed up and got placed in the parking lot along with a whole bunch of souped up and restored classic cars. It was pretty much:

blue '55 Chevy
green '55 Chevy
green '55 Chevy
me
brown '55 Chevy
red '55 Chevy
yellow '55 Chevy

You get the idea. Anyway as a car owner you get there, pitch up your EZ-up, unfold your lawn chair, and plop in it. The other guys to either side of you do the same, so after a while you end up having conversations with your neighbors. Later in the day the guy next to me (the one with the '55 Chevy) said that my car seemed to be getting the most attention. People would walk down the aisle saying "nice car, nice car, nice car, WHAT THE HECK?, nice car, nice car", etc.

Some pictures from yesterday:

West Hills Fall Festival

2011-10-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

I took the car to the West Hills Fall Festival yesterday to show it off, what the heck, free booth! I wanted to see if the general public would be interested. The festival was in the parking lot of Field's Market. I got an awful lot of traffic. At an event llike this, you really meet all types, let me tell you. At one point Ed the grocer came along and was all surprised to see what his whacky customers are up to.

I made a little sign with a poster board on it and my daughter Shelley did the artwork. She's quite the artist. Nice poster, Shelley!

Recent stuff

2011-10-01T15:01:00.000-07:00

Thursday was a school holiday for Rosh Hashanah so I could go to work without having to drop four kids off at two schools, so I drove the bug to work. I didn't really get a lot of work done since we are an engineering company and everybody wanted to see it.

(work needed to be done) / (bunch of nerds) + (homebuilt electric car) = not much work done

Yesterday I took the day off so that Debby and I could go to the Alternative Energy Vehicle Expo at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. We drove the bug, of course. At first I had a little range anxiety so I brought the charging cord plus an extension cord. We left our house, went on the 101 to the 405 to the 10, and to the event. We ended up parking in the general parking area where there were no outlets. For some reason my range anxiety had fizzled out and we just attended the show. When we left we came home down the PCH and over Topanga into the valley. We got home with plenty of battery left! Total trip was over 60 miles. Someday I will find out what the maximum range is, but I'm in no hurry.

Tomorrow is the West Hills Fall Festival at Field's Market. Shelley has a Jazz Band performance there so I figured I'd ask the event coordinators if I could set my car up for exhibition, and they said yes. I don't even have to pay for a booth! Should be fun...

Another week gone by

2011-09-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

The car is a blast to drive. I scoot around now shifting all the time just like a normal stick shift car. It's pretty perky. Every time I get home I plug it in just to keep it topped off. This morning I went on another early Sunday morning drive on the freeway. I wanted to see what the top speed is but there were more cars today than before so I only got it up to 85.

Most recent pictures, taken when the car was charging this afternoon.

An early morning drive

2011-09-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning. 7:30am. Nice day - I decided to get in the car and drive on the freeway. Where to go? I went to work and back, kind of a test commute. Too bad I take 4 kids to school in the mornings on the way to work - even when I put the back seat in, I'll only have seat belts for 3 passengers. And bug back seats just aren't that roomy in these days of 60-pound fifteen cubic foot backpacks - what's with kids and their stuff these days? Worse yet, no radio. They would lynch me.

Anyway I went to work and back on the 101. There was hardly any traffic so I got it up to 80mph no problem. There was more GO pedal left but I decided that a) I just finished building this car and maybe I forgot to tighten something and I didn't want to find out the hard way and b) I didn't want to risk a ticket just yet. Who knows what kind of reaction a police officer would have to an all-electric VW bug. He might tip off the DMV or something. Don't want to open that can of worms just yet.

Shifting gears

2011-08-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

I took the car to the softball field today to pick Amy up from practice. This meant that I had to drive down Fallbrook Avenue for a few miles, which is a local drag with a 45 MPH speed limit. Most of the time you can't get up to 45 what with all the people who apparently can't read speed limit signs - ah don't get me started. Anyway up to this point I've been using only two of the gears in the transmission - reverse, and second. In second gear it's pretty much like an automatic transmission. Press on the GO pedal and go, let up and step on the brake to come to a stop, step on the GO pedal again to go again, etc. To go backwards, come to a stop, move the shifter to reverse, back up and stop, move the shifter to second, and go. No clutch, ever.

Second gear pretty much tops out at 45 MPH, so I wanted to try third gear on Fallbrook. What the heck, I thought, how about trying starting out in first while I'm at it. So from a stop, start in first, shift to second, shift to third, and cruise just like a normal car with a stick shift. Use the clutch too, to avoid being too mean to the synchros.

It was fine. The acceleration from a stop is a heck of a lot faster than a normal bug, let me tell you. Of course, you may say, I'm using a Zilla controller for heaven's sake, which was designed for electric drag racers. Fallbrook was fairly empty so I took it up to 55 for a minute, tee hee.

Someday soon I think I'll try the freeway...

It just gets better

2011-08-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

I've been busy doing some tweaks on the car, and getting familiar with the charging process. I've come to realize that a deep understanding of charging is the most important part of using an electric car. Driving it is easy - get in, turn the key, and drive around. Driving uses up the energy in the battery pack. The amount of energy in the pack determines your range. Accelerating faster and driving faster will reduce your range accordingly. This would all make total sense to anybody, but actually DOING it brings out all of the little details that you need to know to maximize the amount of energy stored in the car.

After a week or two of occasional use there is something that is really sinking in - the fact that this is just like a "normal" car, but it uses NO GASOLINE. The motor compartment just does not get dirty, other than dust from the weather and the occasional rodential intruder (which appears to be a thing of the past, BTW). Other than the lubricants in the transaxle (which is synthetic at the moment) and the grease in the wheel bearings, the closest thing to oil in the whole machine is my finger oils on the steering wheel.

I suppose that I should make an effort to eventually figure out what the cost is of the electricity that I use to drive around. The problem is that I just don't care that much. I know that it's costing me less money than using the equivalent amount of energy in gasoline, but just how much less I don't know yet. But why do I need to know that? I'm not looking for a return on investment. I'm doing this because I wanted to know what the fuss is all about, firsthand. Is electricity really a good solution for personal transportation?

I'm not about to go on an opinionated soap box tirade in this post - maybe later. Opinions are like - ah, never mind that metaphor... Opinions are what's left over when you've run out of facts. I'm still gathering the facts at the moment.

No smoke? No problem.

2011-08-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

It's rather like a normal car now. I had a social gathering to go to last night and I thought, "hey, I'll go there in the bug". I waffled a bit and decided not to be a chicken and just go for it, so I drove it. OMG it was great. Big hit with everybody. It was a combination of admiration, incredulity, confusion, and disbelief. I showed one girl the iPad setup and she said "that's not geeky, that's HOT!"

Drove home at night, headlights on and everything. Absolutely no problem. I think I'm already over the worry hump.

Observations of an electric car builder driving his electric car - I took one of my daughter's friends dad for a ride today, and while we were driving I was thinking about what I could be worried about. How far would I have to walk home? What expensive part would I blow up and have to replace? What brush fire could I start? What body part would I loose? Answer - none of the above! Just charge it and drive, dummy!

A day of driving around...

2011-08-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

Well OK more like an hour of driving around. I spent the early morning manually balancing the traction battery pack cells (I will save the gory details for the EVDL mail list). Mark came over and I put the license plate on the back of the car and said to him "get in". I drove up to the gate and when it opened, we were off into the wilds of West Hills.

We did this a couple of times, terrorizing the areas around Orcutt Ranch and the Chatsworth reservoir. I wonder if anybody noticed a Volkswagen Beetle that made no sound? The rides were uneventful. Which is a good thing. I mean there were good events, like everything was working fine. No bad events. No funny noises or funny smells or smoke or sparks, stuff like that. Mark was a lot more excited than I was - I was like "of course it works" trying desperately not to upset the smarmy-karma.

Once I get more charging cycles under my belt I can get a better idea of the car's range. Things are looking good at the moment.

The EV Grin

2011-08-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

Yup, got the grin today, a few times.

The term is used by EV home builders to describe the involuntary smile you get when you drive your EV for the first time. It's like the scream you let out on a scary roller coaster - you can't stop it, it just happens.

I worked on the car again this morning before everybody else was up, but the whole time I was thinking "ya know, I could just get in and drive this right now". So I decided. I took Debby for a quick ride down and up our street, while she had her iPhone recording. Then I took Amy, then I took Shelley, and then Isabel showed up to work on her quilt and I gave her a ride too.

If Mr. Rat was hiding in the back somewhere, I hope he enjoyed the ride.

The car runs fine - how could it not? I've been pretty thorough in my testing. I found myself not being very surprised that it ran so well. Did I think I was going to yell and whoop and do cartwheels, like "hey, why is this thing running so well?" But just then fate stepped in. There was a brand new puddle of brake fluid under the master cylinder after the first run. The Universe was obviously trying to taunt me, like "oh so you think you're so smart, Mister Smartee Pants, here's a new twist for you". Ha, I said. Nice try. Leaky hose between reservoir and master cylinder. Not on the pressure side, so no danger of plowing through the street gates. Hose clamp temp fix. Quick trip to the VW store, new hose. Take that, Universe.

I spent the rest of the day doing charging experiments (it's charging right now, as I type this). The Manzanita fired right up and it appears to be doing exactly what it's supposed to. Since it's set at the factory to a volts trim setting that's lower than my traction pack final voltage, I need to run the charger, wait for it to hit the voltage limit, increase the voltage limit trim, and repeat until I see the charger go into timer mode when it reaches the right voltage for my batteries (about 201 volts).

There are some niggly things that I noticed, so I will type them here while they are fresh in my mind:

Niggle list:

The steering wheel makes a scraping noise when you turn it - the plastic trim collar is rubbing

Somebody said the brake lights weren't working, easy fix if true

Digital motor amps meter isn't working - do I really need this, since the same data comes out on the iPad? Albeit, it's in hex.

Fix brake fluid hose

Need to install HV fuse in rear battery box

Need clear cover for rear battery box

Huh - is that all? Whatever, if's there's more I'll add it later. Back to charging now.

OK so the Zilla isn't crazy...

2011-08-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

It was my error - I had accidentally reset the default settings in the Hairball console, probably by typing the wrong thing into the iPad. I set the Hall Effect pedal option back ON, and the Zilla controls the motor speed normally with no error codes. Duh.

The DC-DC cable problem and the missing HV fuse are easy to fix. The EMS display is going to be tougher - I disconnected the pack + input to the EMS computer, but LCD still goes blank when the GO pedal is pushed. At least it clears up when the pedal is released now. I tried a ferrite cube on the composite video cable, no change. I tried a 0.22uF cap on the 12v input to the computer, still no luck. Oh well, I can think about this since I've realized that I don't really need to know what the display has to say while I'm driving. It would be nice, but not essential. Just another distraction in fact.

All I have to do now is drive it (sort of).

2011-08-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

It works. I put the car up on jackstands last night, put in all the fuses, and turned on the key. I moved the key to the Start position and the Hairball turned on the main contactor. All the good LEDs came on and none of the bad ones. I pushed on the GO pedal and the rear wheels spun up. Holy smokes.

Now I must say that if everything went perfectly, something would be wrong somewhere. The perfecter things seem, the wronger something would be. So there are some things that need to be fixed. Whew!

Not perfect thing #1: After the wheels spin for the first time after a power up, the Hairball is throwing a 1214 error code, the Hairball Error LED comes on, the serial port locks up, and the Check Engine LED in the dashboard comes on. Error code 1214 means "open pedal wire". I need to check the pedal cable.

Not perfect thing #2: The EMS battery display is just peachy all the time except when the Zilla is in motor control mode. I assume that this means there is high-frequency PWM noise messing with the composite video signal. Naturally this means that I am in for huge amounts of noise suppression experimenting, unless of course the first thing I try fixes it. That tends to happen with me a lot, for some reason. Either I'm way smart, or just lucky. Since I have plenty of evidence that shows that I am not very smart sometimes, I'm betting on the luck thing.

Not perfect thing #3: The DC-DC converter didn't power up. I discovered that the pack voltage input to the converter has a bad connection. Easy, but annoying.

Not perfect thing #4: I forgot to put the big HV fuse in the rear battery box cabling system. How did I miss that? A little too eager there Gene, Duh.

Not perfect thing #5: I don't know what this is yet, but it's out there somewhere...

Rat? What Rat?

Just when you think you're done

2011-08-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

I did it this morning - the last bolt. Up to this point I was thinking that as soon as I fastened the last bolt, I could just turn the key on and see if all the subsystems fired up OK and if they did, I would be ready for a test spin up and down the street. Ha! Silly me.

By the last bolt I mean the connection between the traction battery and the main contactor. But let's backtrack for a minute. Thursday night I added the cell terminal to 2/0 cable connections to the rear battery pack. Last night I put in the remaining umpteen-hundred screws in the traction battery cell terminal posts - that took a while. This morning I cut, crimped, heat shrunk, and installed the 2/0 cable in both the front and rear battery packs. At that point, I was done. Finished.

But wait. I was about to connect the last bolt on the cable between the positive end of the traction battery pack and the main contactor. This would complete the circuit and theoretically, if I put all the fuses into the fuse blocks to turn all the subsystems on, I could just get in and drive. I literally was holding the cable, about to mount it on the bolt, when I paused. I thought to myself, "hang on, this is the main traction pack voltage, if there is anything that I missed somewhere there could be some major flames". So instead I went and got the voltmeter to see if there was any potential between the cable and the bolt. There was, about 180 volts! Then I noticed that the voltage was slowly decaying towards zero, meaning that I was charging up some capacitance somewhere and this was not a dead short. Probably the controller main contactor precharge circuit.

I did want to have the main traction pack connected for at least a minute or two to make sure the EMS computer could see the whole thing. I got a small piece of very thin wire to touch the cable end to the last bolt - if there was any flame danger, this wire would turn bright red and melt harmlessly. As I touched the wire to the bolt, it did spark, but then the wire stayed cool. Good, I got rid of the charge difference. THEN I put the cable onto the last bolt. I went to the front of the car and flipped on the main breaker - this is like Dr. Frankenstein throwing the big switch on the wall to bring the monster to life. For that matter, the big breaker does look like something out of a Frankenstein movie. The EMS display showed the pack voltage properly. I managed to suppress an outburst of "ITS ALIVE!" not wanting to wake up the neighbors. Or my kids. Wait, nothing wakes them up before 11am anyway. Satisfied, I removed the cable from the last bolt.

Later in the day I filled the controller cooling system with antifreeze and saw that there was a big puddle of antifreeze under the car. See? Things do go wrong sometimes! I thought to myself "Gee, I hope there aren't any dogs around" (antifreeze is deadly poison and it smells and tastes like sugar water, so I hear, and dogs will go for it). I turned around and there was the neighbor's dog a couple feet from me, a little black and white boxer, eagerly looking at me. I am not frikken kidding. I took the stupid dog home and came back to continue my work. The drain plug at the bottom of the radiator had a busted O-ring and was the source of the leak. First I thought, "great, now I have to go out on an O-ring hunt" but then I realized that I could probably make one from a sheet of rubber. Do I have rubber sheet? Of course I do, I'm me. Problem solved.

No test drive yet. I need to do this right. I need to check the DC-DC converter operation, to make sure the inrush limiters I added to it don't get too hot. I need to make sure the controller lights up the motor accessory relay board and spits out good status to the iPad. I need to make sure the charger lights up and feeds current into the traction pack. I need to adjust the charger end-of-charge voltage setting. I need to design and build an adapter between the EMS computer and the charger so that the charger shuts off if the traction pack starts to get over-charged. Lithium Ion batteries are quite safe, except if you over-charge them they tend to catch on fire. YouTube it.

Taking a step back and looking at the big picture there are a few deep and profound things I've discovered about doing a project like this - both about the project itself, and about me myself. It's kind of like a Hemingway novel - me versus the metaphorical fish:

1. The final design bears little resemblance to the original design, other than in the crudest block diagram format.

2. For a first-time EV conversion, there is no way that you can have the final design be the same as the original design - to be at the top of the mountain, you have to take every individual step on the way. There are no shortcuts.

3. Because of this, you can't just buy everything you will need in one trip to Lowes or Fry's or Pep Boys or Harbor Freight, despite what your wife says :) You end up making hundreds of trips, like it or not. So much for my green contribution to the Earth by building an electric car...

4. You learn to balance eagerness with contemplation. You need to keep a keen awareness of the consequences of just going for it.

Do these metaphysical concepts have an application in my life adventures on this Earth? Or have I just had too much coffee?

Cell Monitor Boards are in...

2011-08-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

Got home from work today and found I had a couple hours to spare, so I decided to go for the cell monitor board install. I knew that I only had a limited amount of daylight and lots of screws to screw in, and I had to watch what I was doing so that everything ended up oriented in the right direction, plus I had to solder a few cables which means dragging the extension cord out of the garage blah blah blah...

I tend to get a lot done when I'm under a time crunch so I got them all installed before dark. I then decided to fire up the EMS computer to see if it could see all the cells, and sure enough, it did. I scrolled through all the screens to see all of the individual cell voltages and temperatures. This is all extremely exciting but I'm trying to be cool about it so yeah, it all works, big deal huh. I was so unimpressed that I ran (nonchalantly of course) into the house to get the camera. The monitor boards each have green LEDs on them so it was quite the light show. By then it was getting dark, so the flash came on, which of course drowned out the LEDs. The picture of the EMS LCD was likewise quite boring, so no pics today, folks.

And I'm not even going to talk about that other thing, that you-know-what thing.

Chipping away at the remaining tasks

2011-07-31T20:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I fiddled around some more and as a result got some stuff done...

I found a spot for the EMS computer by the front battery box and installed it and wired it up. I figured out how to get the hazard switch to flash all the lights and wired that up, and reinstalled the dashboard. I recently got an iPad mount from Amazon - it's actually a back seat headrest mount but it was cheap and for that price I figured I'd hack it up to make a dashboard mount. I got it mounted on the dash but it was pretty floppy, so I drilled a couple holes and bent up some sheet metal and made it all stable. Good enough for now.

I stuck the fuse for the EMS in and sure enough, the little LCD came to life. Everything that I do seems to work right the first time - this project just may actually be surprisingly amazing... Gosh, I hope I didn't just jinx the whole thing...

There is not a whole lot left to do:

Fill Zilla coolant system

Build rear battery pack 2/0 cables and connect to front pack and Zilla

Install seat belts

Install cell monitoring boards and connect to EMS computer

That last one looks good on paper but I know that it will take some planning and at least a full day without interruption. It's something that I need to finish once I start, since a partial job will cause uneven discharge of the cells. Perhaps I will take a day off of work.

Once I get the battery pack and EMS system done, I can fire up the PFC-20 for the first time. There's a lot of energy involved so it should be interesting. In a good way I hope.

Still no sign of Mr. Rat.

My first Plasma Event...

2011-07-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

There has to be one. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Kinda like learning to ride a bike - you always get a scrape at some point.

I was in the back seat area of the car last night, removing screws from the battery terminals in preparation for installing the cell monitors later. While I was in there I decided to add the cell pack interconnect straps that I just got on Monday. Since the rear batteries are on their sides, gravity is not my friend. There is a trick to sitting awkwardly scrunched up against the seats whilst grappling with little screws and their washers, trying to hold a screwdriver and the interconnect straps as well.

I got one screw into an interconnect strap and was fumbling with the next one, when good ol' F=gmm over R squared decided to step in. Sparks! I discovered that in a situation like that, my mouth lets something out. I don't even remember what it was, at least it wasn't a bunch of punctuation marks. Something like "GAAAK!!" or "BLEAHHH!!" or some such. I know I must have unscrewed the existing screw and then tossed the partially melted strap out of the open door, but I don't really remember doing it.

Darn it, I said to myself, I know better, I'm a friggin' electronics engineer. I've blown plenty of stuff up in my life. I must have gotten complacent. I hate it when I get complacent.

Anyway, out of curiosity, I got the DVM out and measured the cells involved to see if they were affected at all by this. Nope, both still at 3.305 volts, just like when I got them. So infinite amperage for a second or two doesn't seem to harm them. Good.

What about the rat, you may be thinking... he's still gone. Maybe I should go to the pet store and get another?

Not far to go now...

2011-07-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

Last night:

Cabled up front battery box fan to 12v DC power supply that comes on when car is plugged in
Cabled up said power supply AC power to power cord inlet
Bought extension cord to use as car charging cord, cut end off and attached L5-30 socket

Everything works.

Next:

Remove dashboard again, figure out how to install EMS LCD where the Link10 used to go
Cable up motor loop current sensor and connect to Motor Amps meter on dashboard
Cable up temperature sensors and attach to temp display meter on dashboard
Figure out Hazard switch wiring

The EMS computer and remaining bettery interconnect straps for the rear battery pack shipped yesterday and I should get it all on Monday.

Maybe I should put some food out for Mr. Rat to make him come back? It's just not the same without him.

The first iPad test

2011-07-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

My original plan was to use a Windows PC with a touch-screen monitor to run ZillaView (written by Claudio Natoli down under). The motherboard I got my hands on has four serial ports, and the Link10 and PakTrakr both have serial ports that spew useful data, so my thought was to gather all of this data and make some kind of display for all of this. Exactly how I was going to do this was to be figured out later, as long as I had the PC hardware in the first place.

Well, I still have the Zilla, but it looks like the Link10 is going to be redundant, with its functionality replaced by the Lithium Ion battery EMS display from Elite Power Solutions. And the PakTrakr was designed for lead acid batteries which I am no longer going to use now that I have the LiOns. The whole PC thing started to get unnattractive, especially since there are so many pieces involved. I was impressed by the size, simplicity, and power of my wife's iPad so I wondered if there was a way to use one of those instead. I did some research and found a serial port app that didn't require jailbreaking the iPad, so I bought an iPad, the serial to docking port cable, and the "Get Console" app.

When I installed the wiring harnesses I included a data cable that runs from the Hairball serial port to a DB9 connector behind the dashboard. Last night I decided to power up the Hairball with one of my laptops connected to the serial port to see if I could get it to talk. Although I do have a serial port cable that goes directly from the Hairball to a laptop, I decided to just skip that step and see if my harness serial cable would work. It did! The Zilla configuration menus popped up in HyperTerm. My cable worked fine.

I then went and got my iPad and brought it out to the workbench in the garage. The Get Console cable has an RJ45 connector that is designed for Cisco Router consoles, so a quick google search gave me the pinout. I created an RJ45 to DB9 adapter (with a little help from the oscilloscope), stuck it on the cable, and hooked the iPad up to the car. I fired up the Hairball and - success! Zilla configuration menus on the iPad.

So for now I can at least monitor the controller status with the iPad while driving the car. I'll put the Hairball into DAQ mode, which spits out ten lines per second of hex values, so I'll have to get used to deciphering that, but hey, I'm a nerd. Then maybe I can talk real nice to my wife and convince her to write an app for the iPad that makes a prettier and more friendly display...

Still no sign of Mr. Rat, BTW.

The batteries are no longer in the garage

2011-07-18T16:19:00.000-07:00

I was messing with the batteries in the garage over the weekend, trying out the inter-battery connection straps to see which ones I was going to use (Rick at EPS sent me a bunch of different ones to try). I wanted to figure out what direction the batteries should face in the boxes so that things fit together nicely and to make sure that the front-to-rear cables didn't tangle up with each other. One thing led to another and I ended up putting the front batteries into the car and cabling them up, completely. Next thing I knew the front battery pack was finished. I came to the realization that the cell monitoring boards have to be installed with the batteries in the car and the interconnects installed, so what the heck, get it over with.

Undeterred by my progress, and finding time on my hands, I got to work on the rear battery pack. As long as the front batteries were already installed, I wanted to get the rear ones in so that they all could sit through day and night under the same environmental conditions so they all age the same. Kind of like bottles of wine...

The rear battery pack has the batteries on their sides, facing the interior of the car, so they need some kind of securing structure across them to keep them from falling out of the box if you slam on the brakes. I designed and built some confinement bars to do this. Now I am waiting for the next shipment from EPS, with the remaining interconnect straps and the monitoring computer thingey.

I also cleaned up the last of the rat mess in the motor compartment. I miss him.

Waiting for the computer

2011-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

The batteries came with an EMS (Energy Management System) which is Marketing-speak for a bunch of little circuit boards that mount on each battery cell and are daisy-chained to a little microcontroller (which EPS calls the "computer"). The computer gathers voltage and temperature information from all the cells and drives a little monitor (an automotive backup camera display) to show the stats. It also has outputs for low and high voltage alarms, which is a good thing when you have a pack of Lithium Ion cells.

The installation sequence is as follows:

1. Install and wire up the "computer"
2. Install the cell monitoring boards onto the battery cells
3. Install the batteries
4. Cable up the cell monitoring boards to the computer
5. Install the main battery power cables
6. Drive around

The computer thingey is back-ordered, so you can see how that may affect my first test drive by looking at the list above.

Rat update - no rat. I removed the traps and the sticky pads on Sunday. When Mr. Rat sees that the coast is clear, he may come back, at which point I can pounce into action with whatever new hair-brained trap idea I can come up with. The little devil on my shoulder whispering into my ear tells me that I want to finally see his cold little body. The little angel on my other shoulder whispering into my other ear tells me that Mr. Rat is probably a daddy and has a little rat wife and little rat kids and as long as he's gone from my car the cosmic karma can stay in balance. Darn it, sometimes it's no fun being a Taoist.

Oops too much coffee I guess.

2011-07-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

Ok I admit it, that was a dog toy. I must be getting desperate for an end to my rat problem.

On a more productive note, today I installed the small 12v power supply that comes on when the charging cord is plugged in. This powers the battery box ventilation fans and the AC current meter for the PFC-20 charger. I also installed the backup alarm beeper and wire brushed the rust off of the front disk brake rotors.

And it's my wife's birthday today - happy birthday, honey!

Mission Accomplished.

2011-07-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

Today is a day of victory. I have vanquished my foe. My morning started early. I could not sleep any longer, having an epiphany in the last vestiges of a particularly lucid dream state. I had the key - coffee. I know that coffee makes me smarter. I've noticed that when I have several cups within a short period of time (what other people, especially the jealous neurotic ones, would say is "too much") I can drill my way to a brilliant solution to a complex problem easily. As the morning sky gradually blossomed into daylight, I re-positioned the trap to what I finally, through my new insight, knew to be the habitual path of my enemy. I would then wait and check again later.

I got the Sunday paper and read the whole thing. I went into the back yard and skimmed the pool. I went into the garage and built up some brackets for the charger current meter and back-up alarm beeper. I figured that since it had been five minutes, I should go and check the trap.

No Rat today either

2011-07-08T20:43:00.001-07:00

Test Fit of the Batteries

2011-07-07T20:51:00.000-07:00

Amy and Shelley had a Basketball game today, they won 20-17. Yay!

After we got home, I moved the batteries into the battery boxes to see how they would fit. Keep in mind that these battery boxes were originally designed for twelve Odyssey PC1500 AGM lead acid batteries, four in the front box and eight in the rear box. The boxes were specifically sized to exactly hold these batteries with very little room to spare.

The GBS 100AH 4-pack Lithium Ion batteries are a bit smaller so I got 14 of them (more voltage = better performance). It turns out that I can fit five in the front box and nine in the rear box, perfectly, with a little room to breath to boot. The GBS dimensions have nothing to do with the AGM battery dimensions, but due to some cosmic serendipity they fit in my boxes as if the boxes were designed around them. I'm sure that there will be some interconnect cable drama ahead, but I know that I will figure it out. I always do :)

Here are some pics:

Another Rat-free day.

2011-07-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Next step: figure out where the batteries go.

I don't need to make fake batteries out of foam board to do this, they're light enough that I can use the actual batteries for fit tests. Light is good.

The Batteries in the garage

2011-07-05T20:28:00.000-07:00

Important update

2011-07-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

In order of importance:

1) Still no rat
2) The batteries have arrived.

Another Rat-Free Day...

2011-07-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

The dashboard that I've put in the car is intended to be temporary. I want to install as many electronic control and monitoring devices as I can, so that I can figure out what is important and the best place to put things. I need to wait till the batteries get installed - they come with a battery management system that requires a display monitor, so there's another thing to position somewhere. I also have decided to ditch the XP-based PC hardware computer idea - there are just too many pieces (motherboard, power supply, hard drive, video card, monitor, cables, etc.). I'm going to try something a lot more compact, more simple, more powerful, and way cooler - an iPad 2. I've already bought it. It is so cool.

I have a custom fiberglass dashboard and center console for the '74 SuperBeetle that I (painstakingly) found on the web. That will be my final dashboard, once I've driven the car for a little while.

No acorn mess today. No rat body. The trap is still set. Just one little rat turd.

More pictures:

Still no Rat.

2011-07-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday. No Rat. No Acorns. Been three days. Did he abandon his haven? Did he realize that I was on to him, and that he was no match for me, the very pinnacle of the evolutionary tree? Did he sulk off in dejected surrender forever, never to be seen again? Has he snatched victory from my hands, leaving me with a spiritually unfulfilled vendetta for the rest of my days? Am I taking this too seriously?

More progress - wired up the license plate light on the rear. I took out the dashboard to put on some final coats of stain and clear coat. I've been working on the 2-digit digital tachometer on the workbench with a function generator to check that it will work. I discovered that it will probably need a divide-by-2 circuit at the front end to accommodate the 4-pulses-per-revolution output of the Hairball. All this time I'm thinking that two little digits will not make for a good at-a-glance indication of motor RPM anyway (it's RPM times 100) so I bought an analog tachometer at Pep Boys. I tried it on the workbench with the function generator and it works perfectly. I'm going to add it to the dashboard.

Gene versus Rat update, and photos

2011-06-30T12:07:00.000-07:00

Rat update - no rat this morning. Empty trap, empty sticky pads. Maybe if I clean out the acorn mess the rat will notice that things need dirtying up again.
Photos - here's some:

And I do have a stowaway...

2011-06-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Here's something you blog watchers can follow along with - who knows, it may go viral!

A few weeks ago I found a pile of chewed up acorns on the base pan of the motor compartment. Some animal had been eating in there, obviously. I vacuumed them out. Next day, same thing. Vacuumed them out again. And the next day, and the next...

I was getting tired of this. How was he/she/it getting in and out? There is a gap between the base pan and the bottom of the transaxle bell housing and I figured that this was where the critter was gaining access. I found some garden screen in the garage and covered up the opening. Did it work? No way, more acorns the next day.

I got some gopher pellets from the garage (we do seem to have a little of everything in there) and made a little pile. Did it work? Nyet. Pellets scattered around, more acorn mess. Guess they weren't tasty enough.

OK now this is getting to sound a little like Bill Murray and the gopher in Caddyshack (which I have not even SEEN, BTW). With a smirk on my face I decided that this had become somewhat of a personal challenge. My task is to outsmart the little whatever-it-is. I got a big ol' rat trap from the garage (yup, got those too), smeared some peanut butter on the trigger pad, and stuck a few peanuts in it for good measure.

Did it work? Nope. More acorns, trap still set. They were fresh peanuts, even. I figured this would eventually work, so I started checking it daily, moving it around a little in case the bugger had a set routine. Still acorns.

Then a couple days ago I opened up the hood to check on things, and there he was, looking at me. A rat. A few moments of man/rat eye contact, and he scampered off - behind the controller bulkhead! The single most inaccessible place in the whole car. I needed a new strategy since the trap wasn't working, and I was thinking about some new kind of poison. But then I realized that if this intruder ate poison and then went back behind the controller bulkhead to die, it would be stink city. Not what I want for my beautiful shiny newly completed electric car. So I got some mouse/rat sticky traps from Lowe's (apparently we were out of them in the garage) and set them out. Clever, huh.

Took a look this morning - more acorns, sticky traps still just like new. I'll try to update daily.

2011 update...

2011-06-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

I know, been a long time since the last update...

Lots of progress that has gone on. The car is pretty much finished, with the exception of the traction battery pack. Recent activities:

12 volt fuse blocks and harnesses
Motor compartment finished
Motor compartment component relay board under rear seat built and installed
12 volt battery cables, mounting, fusing, and top-off charger under rear seat
Temporary dashboard structure fabricated and installed
Temporary dashboard faceplate instrumentation installed and wired up
Carpets, door panels, window cranks, rear view mirror, and sun visors installed
Front seats installed
Headlight high beam control box installed
Charger door interlock switch installed

The 12 volt fuse assignments were created on the fly, with some functions ganged up on the same fuse to save space.

The motor compartment has everything in it - motor cooling blower, controller liquid cooling system, and moisture protection covers for the Zilla and Hairball.

The motor compartment component relay board uses the Hairball main contactor control signal to fire off an intermediate relay that enables the main contactor, motor cooling blower, controller cooling system, and cooling system fans. Once the Hairball gets the Start signal from the iginition switch, and determines that all systems are functioning, it will turn on all of these things. When this happens, all the fan and pump noises will start. This will probably be the loudest thing about the car, except for tire noise when it's moving.

The 12 volt battery is an Optima blue top AGM, with a big honkin' ANL 100A fuse to protect all wirning.

The temporary dashboard structure is made out of wood and will hold the dashboard faceplate, that contains the (left to right) Link10 (always on), Speedometer with status LEDs, digital 12 volt system voltage meter (always on), digital RPM counter, DVM for motor amps, DVM for six LM34 temperature senders (locations TBD), the controller Valet switch, the rear window defroster switch, the Hazard switch, and the 12 volt accessory socket. I didn't add any heater or defroster hardware - I decided that I could use a portable heater/blower that could be placed where desired and powered off of the accessory socket (when not using a cell phone charger etc.).

Carpets, interior accessories, and the front seats all went in without a hitch.

The headlight dimmer switch is on the turn signal lever, and provides a short to ground whenever it's pulled towards the driver. To avoid having to hold the lever in the pulled position to keep the high beams on, I built a control box with a flip-flop for a pull-on, pull-off action. The box has a 2N3055 transistor driver for the high beam relay.

The charger door interlock switch is a microswitch mounted on a bracket that is activated by the position of the charger door (which used to be the gas cap door).

What else - oh yeah, pictures! Need to upload those next...

Also, I mailed off a check to Elite Power Solutions in Phoenix for the traction batteries and BMS. I'm going to use the 100ah 4-pack Lithium Ion GBS batteries. I decided to skip over the AGM idea and go for the gusto.

Incremental progress, and design changes...

2010-07-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Most days I don't get a chance to work on the car. Get home from work, clean the pool, find ticks on the dogs, go to marching band parent meetings, stuff like that. But, every morning and every evening I walk past the pile of parts on the garage workbench and I think about one pending task or another.

Recent progress - bolted in the front battery box. Ran 2/0 cable from front to back in the conduits. Ran 6ga cable from front to back in a third conduit for the charger connection to pack positive. Drilled a hole between the gas tank area and the dashboard area and ran wiring for the car lights into the dashboard area. Wired up the brake light switches. Wired up the reverse light switches.

Since I'm making this up as I go along, some design changes are inevitable. Install one thing, then install another thing, then install another thing ("this looks like it will fit here nicely"), then install another thing, and suddenly you think "uh oh, I'm kinda running out of room here". I'm going to put the 12v accessory battery where the original 12v battery goes (under the rear seat on the passenger side) and I was going to put the DC-DC converter under the rear seat on the driver's side. But I ran out of room in the motor compartment for the multiple relays that control the main contactor, coolant pump, radiator fans, and motor brush blower, so I decided to move the DC-DC converter up front next to the charger in the old gas tank area and put the relays under the rear seat. I was a little worried about the DC-DC converter under the seat anyway - under full load it will probably be giving off a lot of heat, and if some kid's butt is six inches above it, I'll probably get an earful of complaining.

The HV fuse block for the DC-DC was next to the Zilla, and now it's by the DC-DC up front. Now the mounting plate in the gas tank area is getting crowded...

More pictures next time.

Slowly but surely...

2010-06-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

I can't work on the car every day, but I am making some good progress. I made the wiring harnesses for the lights and brought them all together where the gas tank used to be. I still need to run the connections from the lighting harness into the dashboard area. Once I do that, I will install the front compartment component plate onto the gas tank mounting rails which will cover up the lighting harness terminal strip. I figure that once the lights are working from the dashboard harness, I won't need to mess with it again and I can cover it up.

I also installed the Link 10 shunt, 500A fuse, and PakTrakr Hall Effect shunt on the wall of the front battery box. The components are bolted to phenolic blocks and connected to each other with heavy copper busbar stock.

I also have been wiring up the components in the motor compartment. I crimped and heatshrinked the 4/0 motor cables and the 2/0 contactor cables. The connections to the Hairball are brought out to a terminal strip. The cooling system component hoses were installed - that blue thing is the coolant reservior. The Hall Effect accelerator pedal and motor RPM sensor cables are connected directly onto the Hairball. I put the orange main contactor precharge wires in a split-loom tube that I spray-painted orange. In electric cars, you're supposed to have the high-voltage cables colored orange. Policemen and firemen have been trained that orange means high voltage, so if there's an accident they know to not cut those cables. I hung the split loom from a tree branch in the front yard to paint it.

Progress so far...

2010-05-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

Did some more work on Sunday. I installed the controller and cooling system to test fit things.

The green box above the motor is the Zilla power section. The green box to the left is the Hairball. The blue thing to the left of that is the coolant reservoir. On the bottom of the compartment to the left of the motor are the coolant pump and the radiator (with two fans).

Here's some shots (including a finger) of the liquid-tight conduits that run from the motor compartment to the trunk up front:

You can see the ends of the conduits near the bottom of the motor compartment. Also I ran four pool vacuum hose extensions from the motor compartment to the old heater duct holes under the rear seat, to provide routing for all the wires that need to go up to the front of the car.

In the 4/0 cable loop between the brush end of the motor and the field terminals is the 600A hall-effect current sensor.

Still working on it...

2010-04-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

In high-tech manufacturing terminology, it can be said that I am in the process of creating the subassemblies that will go together to make the car. The high-current fuses and hall effect current sensors have been mounted on phenolic blocks to give them mechanical stability. The controller liquid cooling radiator has been mounted in an aluminum frame so that it can be positioned on the bottom plate of the motor compartment. Of course to do all this it would take too long to use a hacksaw, so I got me a new bandsaw (thanks Harbor Freight) (again).

Whenever I get a spare couple of hours contiguous (not common during girl's softball season) I set up a little production line in the garage.

I have also installed the hall effect accelerator pedal. I noticed that it's the identical part to the pedal assembly in my wife's Highlander Hybrid (and probably the Toyota Prius too).

Hey look, the cable runs down the original throttle cable tube. Cool huh.

The rear battery box is installed and bolted in, and the front battery box is mostly done. The four liquid-tight conduits running under the car from the front to the back are installed. I did a cable-pulling test (actually cable-pushing test) with the 2/0 orange welding cable and it snakes through easily. I built my first high current cable, about one foot long 4/0 between one motor terminal and a hall effect current sensor (in the armature/field loop of the motor) to test my cable-crimping abilities. A lot of crimping force is needed but it's not unmanageable. Shelley was fascinated by the heat shrink process.

Rear battery box:

Woof

2010-01-22T11:35:00.001-08:00

The motor is installed (again)...

2009-12-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago Mark and Harold came over, and we installed the motor using the borrowed engine hoist. I got the Optima battery and jumper cables, and fired it up on the jackstands. The wheels turned! In the right direction even! Oh oh, problem - the clutch did not disengage when the clutch pedal was pushed. I speculated that the clutch was disengaged and the clutch disk was just dragging along due to very low friction of being on the jackstands, so I put on the emergency brake and tried again. No luck! The wheels still turned and the motor didn't seem to care (shows how much torque it has). Had to take the motor out again. We put it back in the garage and re-mounted the flywheel, about 0.10" closer towards the throwout bearing direction. I knew we were pushing our luck as far as clearance goes - I'd been pretty thorough with the calipers several times.

Last week I tried again (no help this time, I'm getting good at this). Rats - now the flywheel is rubbing on the bell housing. Back into the garage for the motor.

Think think think... I noticed that the clutch diaphragm fingers were pushed in a lot, so the throwout bearing would not have a chance to push them in further. OK, I put the flywheel back to its original position and put washers between the pressure plate and the flywheel face under the mounting bolts, to push the pressure plate towards the bell housing. This made the diaphragm fingers move out some, and it looked like the throwout bearing would have a better chance of disengaging the clutch.

Also I wondered if I could install the motor from the ground up, on the floor jack. I made a wooden platform for the motor and screwed it on to the floor jack pad. I did notice that the engine compartment sheet metal that was causing us install/deinstall grief wasn't needed (it's for the rubber gas engine tin seal) so I got out the metal saw and cut it away.

Harold was over yesterday so we decided to give it a try. Jack the car up (hey that extra little floor jack I've had for years came in handy), and slide the motor under. Jacked up the motor, but it didn't seem to want to slide onto the pilot shaft. Jacked the car down to the ground and tried again, and that worked. Bolted the motor up to the transmission.

We put the rear of the car up on jackstands and got the battery out, and hooked it up. The wheels turned again. Harold stepped on the clutch pedal, and the wheels stopped turning! Success! Now I can move forward with the conversion - it was essential that I get the drivetrain working before I do anything else. Now there is nothing stopping me (except for daily life and work...).

The car's back in the driveway...

2009-11-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

Need pictures, I know... it gets dark early these days.

Fully painted and upholstered now, still an empty shell. I replaced the lubricant in the transaxle with Royal Purple synthetic in the hopes of reducing friction as much as possible. When I was draining the old oil, I balanced the drip pan on the floor jack frame. Of course it flipped over. Found some really good driveway degreaser at Home Depot, so every oops has an upside.

I turned in the old dead flooded battery as a core and bought an AGM (Optima Blue Top) from Pep Boys to experiment with charging and discharging. I want to get a feel for how to treat an AGM before I buy a dozen expensive ones for the traction pack. Besides I needed a good battery to test the motor/flywheel combination.

I borrowed an engine hoist (thanks Craig!) in anticipation of motor installation. I still want to remove and install the flywheel on the adapter hub until I find an acceptable level of runout. It's balanced at the moment but there's a runout at the ring gear edge face of about 0.025". I'd rather take the flywheel on and off multiple times than take the motor in and out multiple times.

Strategy as I see it from today:

Get carpet kit for rear storage area behind back seat, test fit
Test fit rear battery box
Test fit engine compartment component bulkhead
Determine the best way to fasten box and bulkhead together through firewall
Find best locations for cable openings
Determine optimal liquid-tite conduit routing
Trim engine compartment component bulkhead as needed
Drill firewall, battery box, and component bulkhead for mounting and cables
Test install
Drill engine compartment and front trunk area for conduit end fittings
Install conduits and holding straps to underside of floor pan

Nerdy Technical Details

2009-09-24T15:18:00.001-07:00

Spotted a couple of errors in the new schematics as soon as I posted them:

Note: do not read this post if you are not a nerd. Your brain will lock up.

The "Pack Neg" prescaler signal gets moved from the battery side of the Link 10 500A shunt to the Load side. Nothing but the most negative battery post should be on the battery side of the shunt.

The BRB ("Big Red Button") switch needs to be placed in series with the coil of the negative EV200 contactor that's activated by Keyswitch ON. You gotta have a BRB that you can slap if something starts to smoke while you're driving.

The SPST switch in series with the Hairball +14v SLI input is the "sleep" switch, to be placed somewhere near the Hairball in the engine compartment. This is so that the SLI battery can be spared the 70-80 milliamp drain when the car sits for extended periods of time.

Which brings me to a general description of the schematics:

Page 1

Page 1 is the high voltage direct current system. The 12 AGM batteries in series make up the "traction pack", i.e. the pack of batteries that provides the motive power to the traction motor attached to the vehicle transaxle. The voltage across the pack is completely isolated from the metal body of the car. Between the 4-battery sub-pack in the spare tire well and the 8-battery sub-pack behind the back seat there is a 400A 160V Hienemann DC circuit breaker. (This thing is about the size of a loaf of bread.) The breaker is used to "turn off" the traction pack for safety purposes, like battery maintenence or (shudder) flame eruption.

Both the positive side and the negative side of the traction pack have a Kilovac contactor to connect the pack to the rest of the system. When the car is off (no key), both contactors are open and the pack is connected to nothing. When the key is ON, the negative contactor closes. When the key is moved to START, the Hairball will close the positive contactor, making the system "live" (assuming it doesn't detect a problem condition somewhere - remember, it has a computer inside). With both contactors closed, if you step on the "go" pedal, the motor will turn and the car will move. Assuming the wheels are on the ground, of course. Notice how we do not call it the "gas" pedal anymore. That would be sacrilege.

The Zilla controller, which is controlled by the Hairball, is the high-power valve that gives traction pack energy to the traction motor. A little to go slow, or a lot to go fast, or anything in between.

The DC-DC converter takes the place of the alternator in a regular gas-powered car. Something has to keep the 12v low voltage system (lights, turn signals, etc.) battery charged up. The DC-DC converter "steals" a small percentage of the traction pack's power to keep the 12v battery charged up.

The PFC-20 is the battery charger for the traction pack. It is a very high power (e.g. dims your house lights) charger that jams large currents into the high-voltage pack after you drive, to restore the car's motive energy.

Page 2

These are the dashboard meters for displaying important system parameters.

The Temperature display allows selection of multiple temperature monitoring points in the system. Really really hot temperatures in any of these places means that some part of the system has failed. Really cold temperatures for the batteries means you're not going to get very far.

The Motor Amps display shows the motor amps as detected by the Hall Effect sensor between the Zilla and the motor. The amperage can get really high if you are a) going up hill, b) going really fast, c) starting in the wrong gear, or d) trying to race a Ferrari. It's okay to pull really high amperage for a little while, but if you keep it high for too long the brushes in the motor will overheat. Not only that, your range will be greatly reduced. Racing a really fast Ferrari uphill in the wrong gear is to be avoided.

The Aux Battery Volts display lets you keep an eye on the low voltage system battery. It should be at a decent level all the time while the car is running, since the DC-DC converter keeps it charged. If this ever starts to drop below 12 volts, that means your DC-DC converter has stopped working for some reason. Hairballs hate low voltage and will shut down the traction motor if this falls too low. Not good if you are driving on a cold rainy night with the wipers going and the headlights on and the defrosters running.

The Motor RPM display shows the RPM of the motor (doih!). Big DC motors have an RPM limit of about 6000 RPM. If you go over that, the commutators tend to explode from centrifugal force. In the EV community, they call it "splode". As in, "yesterday I hit 8000 RPM and sploded my motor". My motor will have an RPM sensor from the motor to the Hairball, so the Zilla will never make the motor go over the configured maximum RPM. However, if you go downhill in first gear on the freeway, you can over-rev the motor and the poor Hairball won't be able to do anything about it, so you need to see the RPMs. Knowing the RPMs will also help you to figure out your most economical driving habits. Or least.

Page 3

The Zilla is water-cooled. There is a radiator with two 12v fans on it, and a pump for the coolant.

The motor brushes are force-cooled by a Dayton 176 CFM blower, so you can burn rubber and kill your range showing off your tremendous torque like a testosterone-drunk teenager without burning up your motor brushes. There is a block of low-ohm power resistors that are in series with the blower, to provide a slow speed, for when you tone down your childish urges to drag race because your wife is in the car with you. There is a relay to bypass the resistors for high speed, but it does get kind of loud.

Page 4

These are the system status LEDs. The contactors have auxillary contacts that are used to show that the contactors are closed. Good basic system status info. The Hairball drives the Battery LED to let you know if you are running out of juice. It also drives the Check Engine LED to let you know there is some trouble like charger door open or controller getting too hot. The high beam, rear defroster, and turn signal LEDs are just like in a normal car.

The Super Beetle speedometer has six light bulb indicators that I can use for these. Wait, there's seven LEDs - I think I'll put the defroster LED by the defroster switch. I found SuperBright LED holders that fit *perfectly* in the speedometer indicator holes.

The Valet Mode switch is there to tell the Hairball to use a secondary set of configuration parameters (called "Valet mode"). You can set up normal mode to allow high performance driving and Valet mode to make the car nice and slow, for example when you take your wife out for sushi and hand the keys over to some sneaky looking valet. Or when you let your 16 year old daughter take the car to a friend's house. You're supposed to hide this switch.

There's also a switch to put the motor blower in high speed mode, and switches to turn on the defrosters.

Page 5

This is a page to remind me what wires I need to run between the front and the back of the car.

Page 6

Car lights. Normal stuff. All of the filament bulbs have been replaced with LED bulbs, except the headlights.

Page 7

More lights. More normal stuff. The charger door (which used to be the gas cap door) is going to have a switch to tell the Hairball whether it's closed or open. If it's open, the Hairball will prevent the positive contactor from closing and will flash the Check Engine LED. This is so you don't drive away with the extension cord still plugged in.

Page 8

This is the Hairball. This is the computer that monitors important system parameters to make sure it is safe to power up the positive contactor, and translates the position of the hall-effect "go" pedal into Zilla-regulated power to the motor. It also has a serial port that spews out serial data that you can route to a laptop or carputer for performance analysis or parameter display. Why is it called "Hairball"? Well, Zillas and Hairballs were first used by the electric drag race community, who gave nicknames to the components, and the nicknames stuck. The Hairball is a little box that has a dozen or two wires coming out of it, so it looks like a hairball. That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it.

Page 9

This is the Xantrex Link 10. This computerized panel meter watches the 500A shunt at the traction pack negative side over there on Page 1. It keeps track of how much electrical energy goes in and out of the traction pack. It's on all the time, so it can watch electrical usage while driving, and electrical restoration while charging. It acts as a "fuel gauge". It was originally intended for the electrical systems on boats, but it found a use in electric cars too.

The meter also needs to know what the traction pack voltage is. Since it was designed for 12 or 24 volt systems, a prescaler is needed to scale down the 144 volts of the traction pack. The meter is powered by the 12v low voltage system battery. Unfortunately the negative side of the low voltage system is internally tied to the negative side of the traction pack monitor, so if you just connected up the Link 10 to the low voltage system battery, the traction pack negative would be tied to the metal car body. That would defeat the isolation. So there is an isolated DC-DC converter that is powered by the low voltage system battery, and powers the Link 10. Problem solved.

Page 10

This page shows the defrosters and the charging system fans. The rear defroster is the stock rear window heating element, and the front defroster is going to be a small 12v motor home heater. The charging system fans are fans that are powered by the AC power charging input and only run while the car is charging. This is to keep air moving around the batteries and the charger to prevent hot spots while charging. I thought about using 110VAC muffin fans, but those things are like three times as heavy as 12v DC fans. Hence the small 12v power supply.

New Schematics

2009-09-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've created new schematics. The older schematics were preliminary and didn't include the wiring for the lights and other primary car systems. Besides, the 30-day trial of my schematic capture software expired :)

Paint Shop --> Upholstery Shop

2009-09-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

Took some time off this morning. Drove to the body & paint shop with the towing gear, grabbed the bug, and drove it to the upholstery shop. The guys at the shop got pretty excited when I mentioned that this was going to be an electric car. The owner of the shop said that he really wanted to be involved with such a project, and he would do an especially good job. He's done a bunch of VW's!

About the car: I had been watching car colors for months, and the one I really liked was this blue metallic on Toyota trucks. One of the A/C contractors here at work had one, so I approached him one day as he was unloading stuff, and asked him if I could get the paint code off of his door jamb sticker. That's what I told the body shop to use.

I chose Ron Waters Body & Paint in Chatsworth , and Sammy the paint man there did a great job. All of the chrome trim was removed and filled in, as were the fresh air box louvres and rear quarter window vents. Most importantly, the exhaust pipe cutouts were filled in! Won't be needing those anymore.

There was a motorcycle art shop in the same alley. Ed the artist put ghost lightning bolts down the sides of the car. They fade in and out as the light changes. Cool, huh.

You may notice that the car looks pretty high on the suspension. It weighs almost nothing at the moment. When I backed my truck up to put the tow bar on the hitch ball, I was about a foot off to the side. I picked up the front end of the bug and moved it over. Light weight == good.

p.s. sad day yesterday, we put our doggy to sleep. She was almost 15 years old. RIP Jenny.

Getting Painted

2009-07-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

The bug is getting painted. Wait till you see it.

In the mean time I have built up a "144 volt traction pack training ground", which is a bunch of work-scrap-bin switching power supplies in series. 12 X 12v cascaded to provide 144v. This can give me some practice with working with high DC voltages (rubber gloves, take off wedding ring, etc.). Also I can start to power up some of my electrical components to make sure I understand how to wire them up. It would be a real bummer to build up the whole car and "turn it on", and discover I need to re-wire a bunch of stuff.

The driveway is empty now

2009-04-16T14:36:00.001-07:00

Took the morning off yesterday.

Put the trailer ball on the Sequoia and hooked up the beetle. In its current state it's real easy to push around myself. Put on the safety chain and tried the turn signals - Murphy's Law, left on the truck is right on the bug and right on the truck is left on the bug. Good thing it's all spade lugs, took a couple minutes and swapped them.

I started to drive away and the bug's front wheels were wandering all over the place, anything but straight ahead. Another stumbling block. I wouldn't be able to drive that way. Light bulb over my head - I got a bungee cord, hitched it to one side of the steering wheel, under the front seat mount, and back to the other side of the steering wheel. The car has very light steering and this did the trick - straight ahead but with a little give each way. One of the things I like about this project - it's light bulb over my head over and over. Figuring things out is fun.

Got to the body shop and unhitched the car. Spent some time with the shop owner going over what I want for the car. Fill in the exhaust pipe cutouts with sheet metal welded in. Fill in the louvres in front of the windshield. Fill in all the chrome strip holes. Fill in the antenna hole. He got out a marker and started writing all over the car. We discussed paint color options and he told me we have some time to make a decision.

In the mean time, I decided to deal with some minor vibration issue with the flywheel on the motor. I have a dial indicator that I borrowed and there's a little runout. I took out the allen bolts and used a chisel to wedge between the tapered split ring and the hub, but it was on so tight that I cracked the tapered split ring. Well, live and learn. When I installed the hub a while back I assumed that it would just all come out straght, but apparently you need to keep an eye on alignment while tightening, cuz once it's on, it ain't easy to get off. Ordered another tapered split ring from Ryan this morning.

Figuring out where things should go

2009-04-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

I plan to use thin plywood sheets covered with fiberglass cloth and resin as the main structural additions for battery boxes and mounting the main components. Here are my thoughts for placement of the Zilla, hairball, main contacor, relays, and fuse boxes for the engine compartment, and the PFC-20, breaker, AC meter, Link 10 shunt, and negative side contactor where the gas tank used to be.

Schematics and stuff...

2009-04-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

The car is almost ready for the paint shop - I installed a tow bar the other day and I'm going to reinstall the tail lights and wire them up to the trailer hitch connector. I just need to dig through the pile of harnesses to find the right connectors.

Also I downloaded a schematic capture package and drew up some schematics.

Oh, what the heck...

2009-03-06T16:16:00.001-08:00

Removed tail lights, head lights, wiper motor, blower, everything that wasn't part of the body. Got a hammer and chisel and removed the heater controls. Pulled out the heater cables. Then, I started to work on the wire harness in the engine compartment. Don't need any of that, right? Look, another wire *snip* . And another one *snip* . Here, grab this whole harness and pull *yank*. Pretty soon, all the harnesses were out. Nothing left - looks like I'm going to re-wire the whole car. It just doesn't look that complicated, and it will be all new. *My* way. Besides, I hate those dumb little open ceramic fuses. Bought a portable metal saw, and removed what was left of the heater ducts. Lots of sparks, lots of fun. I'm getting a little crazy here.

I want to put the batteries in sealed boxes with plexiglass covers. Same for the big electronics parts - the controller, the DC-DC converter, the charger, the contacters, the relays, etc. I'm wondering how best to do that - one idea is to use thin plywood and then fiberglass it, resin and glass cloth, then paint.

I did some weight distribution calcuations and I think that eight batteries behind the rear seat (stacked sideways, they're going to be AGM's) and four in the front under the hood would be a good plan.

GO!

2009-02-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

We had an engine-pulling party last weekend. I invited Mark and Harold to come over at 11am. Before they got there I decided to drain the gas tank. I got underneath with a drain pan and pulled the rubber hose off of the steel tubing and pointed it at the drain pan. I had to sit there and hold it to keep it from flopping around shooting gas all over the place. It was about a foot down to the drain pan so there was this constant splash cloud all over me. Oh and sometimes the hose would pop out of my grip and spray something (usually me). &^%*%#($^(^%%^ job. Like milking a hydrocarbon cow. I put the gas into my Sequoia, which always seems to need some.

The boys showed up and we got to work. About an hour later we had the engine out. Mark and Harold said "hey, we were planning to spend the whole day here!" so I said "OK, now take out the gas tank." We got around to removing that, as well as the seats. Next, beer and hamburgers.

The next day (President's Day, we had the day off) the guy who bought the engine came over and took everything that came out - engine, gas tank, starter, brakes, etc. Over the next few days I attacked the carpets, the headlliner, and the upholstery. Saturday I went to Sears to look at batteries. Hold on, you may think, how can you be so dumb, car batteries are not suitable for electric cars. Well a post on EVDL a while back revealed that the Sears PM-2 marine battery is a re-label of the EVer-popular Enersys Odyssey PC1500MST Absorbed Glass Mat battery, so there. I also took the steering wheel off, and then the dashboard. I decided to re-wire the whole thing - ambitious I know, but what the heck. Once you cut a harness, there's no going back.

Yesterday I removed the remaining wire harnesses,, the headlights, and the turn signals. Once I have the whole thing stripped down, I plan to design and build the battery boxes and lay out the rest of the components.

Ready.... Set....

2009-02-10T16:18:00.000-08:00

Sold the engine on Sunday. The fellow paid me cash and asked me if I'd throw in all the old parts - wheels, tires, gas tank, starter, drum brakes, etc. so I said "Sure" and I'll call him when it's all out of the car. That was easy.

I also bought new tires and had them mounted on the wheels, and put them on the car. Next, a trip to the body shop for a paint job quote. Should I ask him if he can paint the word "Electric" on each door? Will that cause me all kinds of attention hassle? Will I ever be able to go to the grocery store or the kid's school in peace? Maybe I can use removeable stickers - hmmm....

The day of conversion looms. This Saturday, maybe?

Almost ready to take the plunge

2009-01-29T10:49:00.001-08:00

The controller has arrived. It's a Zilla 1K HV with Hairball 2 -P option. It's the holy grail of EV controllers. It's brand new, drop shipped direct from Cafe Electric in Oregon. This is a really big deal. It cost more than the car did!

Got the pink slip from the DMV. Got the application for registration.

Got 4 custom wheels, which fit fine on the disk brake conversions. I'll stick some tires on them this weekend hopefully.

Got the rest of the cable parts from evsource. Ordered more stuff like fuseholders and cable crimpers.

I put the engine up for sale on thesamba.com and I have two people interested already. I need to schedule the day that I pull it and get rid of it, along with the gas tank and starter and emission control junk and old wheels.

I need to take more pictures...

Stuff still trickling in...

2009-01-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Most DIY EV conversions go through a stage of "waiting for parts", apparently. Well, that's where I am at the moment.

But that's OK! Gives me more time to think about how I'm going to do this conversion. My plans have morphed many times as I read the stories of other DIY builders on the EVDL list. By now I have a pretty good idea of how I'm going to do this, and it's not quite the same as when I first started. Of course once I start drilling and cutting and ripping and tearing I'm sure my plans will morph some more...

Hey I know, I'll spell it out now so that I can compare it later to what I actually end up doing:

Right now the car is parked in an out-of-the-way part of our driveway, with disk brakes on all four wheels, under a car cover, running fine. Title and registration are in process with the DMV.

I plan to drive it to a tire place and get new wheels and tires. Something cool.

Then I plan to drive it to a local body shop and get a quote on a new paint job. Something cool again. Sparkle finish green? Ha, get it? Green?

I need to put the engine and gas tank up for sale. I'll do that while it's still running in case the potential buyer wants to hear it running or see it in person.

When all the parts are here, the teardown will start. I plan to strip out everything except the wiring harnesses. Some of it may go back in, but it all has to come out first. The engine will be removed, along with the gas tank. Goodby, you oil-dripping stinky hunk of controlled explosions whapping flapping metal parts back and forth!

The empty shell will allow me to examine the best way to route high power cables from the front to the rear, since I'm planning to put six batteries behind the rear seat and six in the front. There will also be a bunch of other low-voltage cables for all kinds of functions going front to back. Some kind of conduits or channel or whatever. Has to be metal for protection.

The batteries need to be mounted in racks of some kind for restraint. They are heavy and will roll around in high-G situations better than any groceries could ever do.

Then the motor is connected to the controller which is connected to the battery pack which is connected to the charger and connected to the DC/DC converter which is connected to the auxiliary battery which is connected to everything in the dashboard which is connected to all the previous stuff. Guess I better make a schematic, eh.

After I cut and drill and fit and figure out everything, it will all come out again and go into a big pile. I'll rent a car trailer and drive the bug over to the body shop for a full re-paint. I'll ask if they can cover up the exhaust pipe cutouts while I'm at it.

When the paint job is finished, back to our house and the real fun will start.

Stuff I have already:

DC motor
Tranny adapter
New flywheel, gland nut, pressure plate, clutch disk, and throwout bearing
Charger
DC/DC converter
Link 10
PakTrakr
Contactors
Main fuses
Hall effect 600A current sensors
LM34 temperature sending units
Digital panel tachometer (kit)
Digital panel voltmeter (kit)
Fuse blocks
Terminal strips
Controller liquid cooling system
Motor cooling blower & shroud
LED running, brake, tail, sidemarker lights (installed already)
Big battery cables & most of the lugs and clamps
Assorted 12v goodies like spade lugs, relays and fans
Shock tower brace
Running boards

Stuff on backorder:

Controller
The rest of the battery clamps & heatshrink
Steering wheel
Seats and door panels
Dashboard cover
Rear view mirror

Stuff to get:

Low voltage wire of various colors
More fuses and fuse blocks
AC power hookup stuff for charger
High power cable hardware (nuts, bolts, washers, etc.)
2/0 and 4/0 lug crimping tool
Big cable wire cutters
Batteries
Beer

More activities...

2008-11-21T10:00:00.001-08:00

The front disk brake kit was received and installed. It was easier than the rear kit - it took only a couple of hours to install. It came with all new wheel bearings and seals, so I bought a grease gun and a bearing packer. That saved me a lot of time. Grease is messy, by the way.

I also bought a Xantrex Link 10 (formerly called an "Emeter") which is a battery bank energy in/out monitoring meter. This will act as a "fuel gauge" for the battery pack. I also plan to use a PakTrakr battery bank monitor, which is a little LCD display that shows the battery voltage and status of the individual batteries. The combination of these two devices should give me a pretty good idea of how the batteries are doing while driving, and how much distance I have left at any given time.

The new electric motor arrived! I got a NetGain ImPulse9 from Ryan at evsource.com (my cherished EV parts supplier - they have everything I need). It's heavy. I mean Heavy. Well, OK, it weighs less than the VW engine, but it's hard to move. It's only 9 inches in diameter and 13 inches long, but it weighs 130+ lbs, so it's kind of like my own little personal neutron star.

I also got a new flywheel (lightened balanced Chrome Vanadium), new throwout bearing, clutch disk, clutch cable, gland nut, and racing pressure plate (that one is still on back order). With all this new stuff I'll be able to mount it up on the motor and make sure everything is balanced by running it from a single 12v battery.

Rear Disk Brakes are on!

2008-11-03T16:32:00.000-08:00

It took a few days to finish the rear disk brakes (a little bit every night, plus some good long sessions on the weekend). I had to figure out where all the parts went. The calipers need to be mounted on the brackets with spacers between the bracket and the caliper, to center the caliper around the rotor. The kit provided three different thickness spacer pairs, so through a process of trial and error I was able to figure out which spacers centered the best (the thick ones were two thin, the medium and thinnest were too thin, but the thinnest plus the mediums were perfect).

Next, the emergency brake cables were a couple of inches too long. They stuck out into the passenger compartment at the e-brake handle such that even if the nuts were tightened all the way down to the bottom of the threads, the cables would still be loose and would not activate the levers on the calipers. I decided to extend the cable sheath under the car where it meets the cable entrance to the body. The sheath has a nose at the caliper side that fits into a mounting ring there, and at the body side has another nose that fits into a short tube that sticks out of the body.

I went over to Lowe's and looked around in the iron pipe aisle. It looked like a piece of 3" 3/8 pipe would work, so I bought a couple. Got home, and sure enough, it fit snugly right over the tube on the body, and the nose on the cable sheath fit too. I slipped the pipe over the cable and heat-shrinked it to the nose, then mounted the cable in place. Perfect!

I got the new steel brake lines, bent them into shape, and finished the plumbing. Time to bleed the brakes. I conned Shelley into sitting in the driver's seat and pumping the brakes. Since the reservoir had dripped dry, it was kind of a lengthy process. In with the new, out with the old. Clear going in, dark brown coming out. It would be good to get all new fluid in there anyway. I ran out of brake fluid. Note - those one-way valve "one person" bleeder thingeys are great for flushing the system out of old fluid, but the final bleeding still has to be the old "loosen-push-tighten-release-repeat" method.

Sunday morning took a trip over to Pep Boys and bought a bunch more fluid. Debby helped me with the final bleeding. At last, the pedal was firm and the rotors were locked up tight. The e-brake was working too - time for a test drive. Up and down the street a couple of times, and the brakes were working great.

I also built up a bunch of foam-board fake batteries to start thinking about where the batteries are going to be mounted.

Starting on some vehicle upgrades

2008-10-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

It will be some time before the EV parts start rolling in (except for the motor adapter - got that already). In the mean time, as the car upgrade parts start arriving, I'm going to work on that. My plan is to keep the car running as is until the new brakes are installed and tested and I have the big EV parts. This isn't really a blog about working on beetles, but what the heck, nothing else to write about yet. I'm going to describe the mechanical activities for a few reasons:

1. To give a flavor of how much work an EV conversion can be
2. To potentially help others who want to go down the same path
3. In case I need to reverse some action, I can remind myself how I got there

This last week the rear disk brake kit arrived. Over the weekend I started on that. On Saturday I popped off the hubcaps on the rear wheels, took the cotter pins out, and sprayed the castellated hub nuts with penetrating oil. I know that these nuts are on there pretty tight (200+ ft/lbs.) so I prepared for the worst. I have a 2-foot 1/2" drive breaker bar and a 12-point 36mm socket, so I gave it a shot. No way. Also, the factory service manual says that you need a hub puller to pull the brake drums off of the splined axle shafts. I took off on a trek to find a bigger breaker bar (3/4" maybe?), a 6-point socket, and a puller. No luck on the breaker bar, but I found a nice 6-point impact socket, 1/2" drive, and figured I'd find a cheater bar and have at it again. Found a parts store that rents out pullers, but I realized I needed to take some dimensions to get the right one.

Went back home, stuck the new socket on the breaker bar, and tried again. Nope. How about a cheater bar? I looked around - no, PVC will not work. Rats. Hey, how about if I stand on it? I tried that, and *click* the nut budged. OK, only good if it works twice, I thought. Went to the other wheel, and *click* again. Nice.

Got the car up on jackstands, removed the nuts, and decided to see if the drums would come off. They did! No puller needed. I decided that the car wasn't going anywhere for a while, so I started on the drum brake disassembly. A dirty job, to be sure. It was just like auto shop in high school - springs, retainers, slave cylinders, e-brake cable, backing plates. All into a box.

The disk brake conversion kit consists of a bracket that replaces the drum backing plate and holds the caliper. The hub end plate with the grease seal is on the outside of the backing plate and has to come off, and then go back on to the new bracket. Here's the order of things:

Old way:

hub nut --> drum --> hub end plate --> drum backing plate --> spacer --> hub with wheel bearings

New way:

hub nut --> disk rotor --> hub end plate --> disk caliper bracket --> spacer --> hub with wheel bearings

Since the disk caliper bracket is thicker than the old drum backing plate, there is a shim ring for the hub wheel bearing (supplied with kit) to go into the hub end plate to make up for the gap. A new, slightly longer spacer is provided. Also, a new grease seal for the hub end plate is provided. Seals are easy - pry them out, and pound the new one in with a block of wood and a hammer. The new spacers however - uh oh, trouble. They were tight on the splined shaft. I would have to press them on somehow. The old ones slipped easily on and off. I thought about it and realized that if these got pressed on, I would never get them off again if I needed to for some reason. This spacer sits between the rotor and the inner race of the outer wheel bearing (and rides in the grease seal), and takes the brunt of the 200+ ft/lbs. torque of the hub nut, so it's not like it's going anywhere. I decided to shave a little off of the inside diameter. How to do that? First thought, use a wheel cylinder hone in the drill press. Went out and bought one of those. But alas, that did not work - a hone is to polish, not remove metal, apparently. The stones on the hone wore down, not the spacer! Not only that, it kept popping out of the spacer and whapping me in the hand. Some blood must be released when working on cars, it's a rule. Next try - a cylindrical grinding stone in the drill press. Now we're talking - within a few minutes I had a couple of snug but easily-sliding spacers.

Progress so far...

2008-10-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

Sent the wrong tail light back, got the right one, installed it over the weekend. It fits, and it matches the other one.

Bought some jackstands, a creeper, and a floor jack, all on sale at Harbor Freight. I'll probably become a regular at that store. Jacked up the car and poked around underneath, and took some measurements. I've also got the rear seat out, and I'm doing a lot of poking around figuring out how all the electrical is hooked up. There's some kind of relay by the regulator - what could it be? Rear window defroster is my guess...

The EVDL Mail List

2008-10-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update to say how useful the EVDL mail list has been for this project. When I first subbed back in September, I saw that I had some learning to do to understand the new vocabulary. That's part of the fun. For example, what the heck does this mean - "I needed to convert my nev conversion to a commuter bev so I landed a zilla and I'm trying to figure out how to set up the hairball to work with the new warp9 in valet mode and oh yeah, for some reason my manzanita isn't talking to the rudmans on my yellow tops"? Well, now I know. I understand that sentence perfectly.

October 15, 2008:

2008-10-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

Got two boxes yesterday. One was the new tail light from eBay, and the other was the DC motor-to-transaxle adapter plate.

The tail light lens didn't match the picture in the auction, and has holes for three bulbs (the one on the car has four bulbs). Not good. Fortunately the packaging included a return ticket. Oh well. After all my purchases on eBay you'd think I'd learn not to trust catalog photos.

Bought another one on eBay today, and this one had a picture of the actual piece (duh).

The DC motor adapter plate looks good. It comes with a taper-fit keyed shaft adapter for the original flywheel and clutch. Yes, I'm going to keep the 4-speed, so I can shift gears. Probably spend most of the time in second. The motor I'm going to use is a NetGain ImPulse 9. Should have plenty of ooomph.

The Beginning

2008-10-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

I like to build electronic stuff as a hobby. I’ve been doing it since High School, mainly Analog music synthesizers so far. I’m an engineer in data communications so I get a lot of exposure to big networking machines. I watch them chug away blasting huge amounts of electricity into hot air that big power-hungry air conditioners suck away so that we all can watch YouTube and surf eBay (and write blogs!). I’m also interested in Alternative Energy, since there’s a lot of waste going on energy-wise and we as a society should start doing something about it.

Me and two other guys built an electric Honda 600 in High School electric shop (and welding shop, and wood shop, and plastics shop…) which worked pretty good but was not practical for street use. Got a good grade however…

Which brings me to the present. My wife is also an engineer and she told me one day "you should build an electric car, me and the kids can help". So I said "sure". Like a good husband, I didn’t do anything about it and some time later, like a good wife, she said "so when are you going to start building that electric car?". At that point I realized that she *wanted* me to build an electric car. I realized that it’s a rare guy who has a wife that is 100% behind his expensive and time-consuming screwball hobby projects, and got to work. My first thought was "hey, join an email list" so I found the EVDL (electric vehicle discussion list) and started to lurk. I posted my intentions and the reply was "welcome, please read the archives" which makes total sense and heck, I should have known that. With the help of the list and google, I was able to zero in to some semblance of knowing how to go about this. And I bought the book "Convert It" by Michael Brown - good book. First step – buy a car. Which one? I picked a VW Beetle for several reasons:

Easy to find cheap
Easy to work on
I have experience with them (what guy doesn’t?)
Light weight
Manual Steering
Manual Brakes
Replacement parts are everywhere
Four seats (we have kids, remember)
Lots of EV project parts sources for them
No pesky computers or black boxes to figure out

Here we go...

September 25, 2008

Saw a nice ’74 Super Beetle for cheap on thesamba.com. Called the owner and asked if I could come by on the weekend to take a look at it.

September 27, 2008

10:00am:

Went to see the bug. Not bad! Very little rust, rubber body seals in good shape, interior in good shape, no dents, no accidents. and it runs fine. I wrote a check and told the seller I would be going on a business trip for a week, so I would come back the next weekend to let the check clear and pick it up.

1:00pm:

Packed up the wife and kids and drove down to the Alternative Energy Vehicle Expo in Santa Monica. My enthusiasm is getting serious. We looked at conversions, the Volt, original design EVs, even a compressed air car, and talked to a bunch of people. We drove the AC Propulsion eBox around the streets of Santa Monica. That's one serious EV, pretty expensive though. We left inspired. The kids didn't really want to go to the show in the first place, but I think they really enjoyed it. Good, they might actually want to help with the project! Went out and bought a Haynes manual to read on the plane.

October 5, 2008

Got a friend to drive me to the bug, and I picked it up and started down the hill. Spongey brakes, just like a bug should have. That old familiar rattling engine. The faint stink of internal combustion. Perfect! My friend following me, I got on the freeway and drove the 30 miles home, no problem. When I got home, the kids were crawling all over it. I told them I would give them a ride as soon as it was registered to me. Me and my wife inspected the bug inside and out to get a feel of what kind on work we would have to do on it.

October 6, 2008

Went online and bought disk brake conversion kits for front and rear. An EV conversion is heavier than the original car, so the spongey drum brakes aren't going to cut it. I remember how drum brakes work in the rain (when you press the brake pedal, you speed up!) and I didn't want to worry about stopping with all that battery weight. Also bought a shaped dashboard cover veneer to cover the cracks in the dashboard, and a factory service manual to fill in the gaps in the Haynes manual.

October 7, 2008

One of the tail light lenses is new and the other one is old and faded. Found a new replacement lens on eBay and bought it.

Here is the car

2008-10-07T14:51:00.001-07:00

Meet our super beetle!