The car's back in the driveway...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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!

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....

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

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...

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...

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!

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

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...

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

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:

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

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.