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.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Monday, November 3, 2008
Rear Disk Brakes are on!
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.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Starting on some vehicle upgrades
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Progress so far...
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...
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...
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The EVDL Mail List
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.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
October 15, 2008:
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 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.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Beginning
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.
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.
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