volt914 - Electric Porsche 914

500 miles at 216V

2010-08-03T21:01:00.001-06:00

This weekend, I passed 500 miles in the Volt914 with its new 216V pack. It is staying very well balanced - the Rudman Regulators are doing their jobs well. And, with quite a few trips in it, I'm able to assess its efficiency at the higher voltage and with the new charger. Take a look at the miles vs. kWh plot:

As you can see, the least-squares fit line shows that a good approximation of wall-to-wheels electricity use is a 910 Wh fixed overhead per charge, and about 280 Wh per mile. This is wall-to-wheels, so it accounts for all the efficiency losses of the AC-DC conversion process as well as the reverse DC-AC conversion for driving. Not too shabby! And, much better than the old 144V floodies with the Zivan NG-3 charger, which were giving me 1,230 Wh fixed overhead per charge and 380 Wh per mile wall-to-weels efficiency (!).

Edit: Forgot to mention, at my current cost of 7.5 cents per kWh, I spent about $14 for the electricity for those 500 miles, at an average cost of 2.8 cents per mile. Which compares to 3.7 cents per mile with the old 144V system - a 25% reduction in cost.

Of course, I will soon be paying essentially *nothing* for the electricity my cars use:

This is a 5 kW array, which will generate about 7,000 kWh per year. Between them, the Volt914 and the Electrojeep use about 2,000 kWh per year, if I drive both of them every work day. Which I don't. But I could :-)

Out with the old, in with the new

2010-04-25T16:49:00.003-06:00

I finally got around to replacing the ammeter that came with the kit. For some reason, it was a -50 to 50 amp meter. The controller generally draws more than that except in economy mode. So, I got a -150 to 150 amp meter, along with a 150A 50mv shunt. Removing the old shunt was a little bit of a pain, but fortunately I had mounted it high enough that I could access it without removing the battery boxes.

Here are the new shunt (on the left) and the old shunt next to each other:

Notice the discoloration and warping on the old shunt? Here is the same area from below:

Definite heat damage. It's not clear to me whether there had been a loose connection at some point (generating extra resistance == heat), or whether the 50A rating of this shunt was just exceeded too often, but it is clearly damaged. I'll monitor the new shunt for damage frequently for a while.

Driving with an operational ammeter is extremely useful. For one thing, I can see that my "normal" and "economy" modes indeed are not different - which I had *felt* but not proven. Both pull 50A max. I'll tweak that at some point. It would be useful to have something in between 50A (economy) and 150A+ (performance)...

Addendum: this is very similar to damage that Randy Pollock suffered (although not as extreme):

We have the same shunt, in the same system, and had the same failure. I don't think this is a coincidence.

Of Mice and Men

2010-02-23T22:11:00.004-07:00

As in, "the best laid plans of." Or, while I'm on film allusions, how about "The Remains of the Day:"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The car has been running very well - except for the nagging fact that the battery warmers have not been drawing any amps except for the first day they were plugged in. And the batteries have not been kept warm - instead, I've been keeping the car in a heated garage ($$$$). So, tonight I decided to start with the middle battery rack - the one with 3 batteries. It's the easiest to access. So, I pulled the batteries out and pulled the warmer out. Another allusion, "What Lies Beneath:"

And what a mess it was that lay beneath. The clear plastic around the thermocouple was discolored and clearly burnt:

Dissecting the clear plastic, it is obvious that the nicrome wire got too hot and simply vaporized:

Seeing this, I decided to pull all the warmers out. Each one had similar damage. And, in fact, some of them had burn-throughs in the middle of the cable:

Even when the cable had not burnt through, it is clear that the cable produces too much heat for the foam insulation. Here is one of the dual-sided pieces, melted all the way through:

Which brings us back to the pile of stuff at the beginning of the post. I'm very fortunate that no other damage occurred. So, it is back to the drawing board for battery warmers. I'm considering some of the battery heating pads, or other options. Stay tuned.

Misc Saturday

2010-02-20T17:34:00.004-07:00

It is snowing today. Grr. I won't drive my car in the snow - too much of a risk of someone crashing into it. So, I decided to get the heater working again. As mentioned here, the Crydom solid state relay was stuck closed. I happened to have a Tyco EV200AAANA contactor lying around. It handles 500A of current, so it is way overkill for the 3A or so max needed by the DC-DC converter. Oh, well. Here is the new contactor in the place of the Crydom relay:

I installed it, hooked up the cables, and turned the heater on - voila! Heat! So now, when it is cold but not snowy, I can drive around. I put a clamp-on ammeter around the HV cable, and measured 10A when the heater starts up, which decreases to around 5A as the heater warms up and the resistance increases (V = IR, after all, and V is constant). The updated PDF of the wiring diagram is in the usual place (nothing major changed, just replacing the Crydom with the contactor).

I also installed a goody I got from Electro Automotive. This was supposed to have been part of the original kit, but got overlooked somehow. They were gracious enough to send it to me gratis. It is a combo regen enable/disable switch along with a 3-position rotary "ECONOMY / NORMAL / POWER" switch. It hooks up directly to the 4 wires that have been dangling in my cabin for 2 years. I attached it where the radio would normally go:

Finally, I got around to attaching the door sills and speaker grills - these are what holds the carpet in place. I'd been frequently pulling the carpet back into position, and got tired of it. It took me about 10 minutes, I don't know why I put it off so long:

Also, earlier this week, I put a new rear-view mirror on. The original Porsche mirror would not stay stuck to the glass, so I went with a traditional after-market metal "button" and rear-view mirror combo. Works very well:

P.S. - this is post #100 to this blog. I never thought it would go on so long when I started...

On the road again!

2010-02-15T20:26:00.006-07:00

The big news of the day is that the Volt914 is an automobile again! I drove it a total of about 12 miles today. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself...

The morning started with a large, immobile lump of steel, lead, glass, and plastic sitting in my garage. Turning the key did not result in the proper effects. So, I went after it with my digital multimeter. I found that I had swapped two wires - the keyed +12V and the "lower interface terminal block" wire. Fixing that resulted in all the right things - the oil pressure light came on, etc. The 12V system was alive!

However, all was not ready for driving. The Crydom relay seems to be stuck closed - it is always transmitting full HV regardless of the control inputs. As a temporary workaround, I used the heater contactor to control the DC-DC converter and voltmeter. I had to extend the wires to reach the contactor lugs:

With that set up properly, I made sure the DC-DC converter was properly wired. That yellow block is a 60A 12V fuse (the DC-DC converter is rated for 55A). Before hooking it up to the fuse, I verified that it is putting out the 13.3V it is supposed to (it is a battery-charging DC-DC converter):

With that taken care of, it was time to seal everything up. Here is the front compartment with all the wiring in place - it will get neatened up a little more some time later, but for now, it is operational:

And here, for the first time in months, is the front hood closed:

I then hooked up a computer to the controller and tweaked the necessary parameters to convert it from 144V nominal to 216V nominal. For the record, here is what was tweaked:

EE2AccelBatRamp - 16 (was 12)
EE2NoAccelBat - 189 (was 126)
EE2RegenBatRamp - 18 (was 34)
EE2NoRegenBat - 240 (was 160)
EE2BatVLoMem - 0.018 (was 0.0122)
EE2BatVHiMem - 0.018 (was 0.0122)
EEXMinAccelPower - 10800 (was 9609)
EEXNormAccelPower - 21600 (was 24000)
EEXMaxAccelPower - 32400 (was 36000)

I had previously tweaked the EEXNormAccelPower and EEXMaxAccelPower variables in an attempt to get more power out of the 144V system. It did not really work. It will be interesting to see how the power selector switch from ElectroAuto works - it should arrive later this week.

I took two drives today. The first was just over 4 miles "around the block" (never more than a mile away from home in case of breakdowns). It feels peppier than it used to - losing 180 pounds of lead probably helps. The regen brakes have the "pulsing" effect again - I will need to tweak the RegenBatRamp variables some more. The very good news is that the combo of the new DC-DC converter (rated at 55A) plus the massive 4-gauge cable I used for a main 12V bus have made it so there is never any voltage drop, no matter how much 12V stuff is happening.

The second drive was to my local AutoZone, where I snagged stick-on letters to put a "VOLT914" sign on the back:

I charged in between the drives, and at the end of the second drive. Mostly to try to get the timer adjusted properly. It was reading 6A when it cut off the first time, so I increased its time by 30 minutes (from 45 to 75 minutes). It was reading 3A the next time - I probably need to tweak it up another 30 minutes to 105 minutes.

After playing with the charger some more, I hooked up the rear fans. This involves a relay box and stringing various wires:

Here is a diagram of the rear fan control. The DPDT relay is there so that when the key is not turned on, the fans are being driven by the AC-DC power supply when plugged in (this keeps the charger cool). When the key is turned on, they are instead driven by the car's +12V:

The PDF may be found here. Regarding range, it is a little early to get a good read, but the second drive was 7.6 miles, and consumed 3.1 kWh, for a net 408 watt-hours per mile (from the wall). This correlates very favorably with the 144V / Zivan system, which consumed about 4.0 kWh for the same distance - so at first blush, the Manzanita charger and new batteries are about 25% more efficient.

I also made a little chart based on Concorde's own data, showing the SOC versus voltage for my "216V" pack:

And that's all for today. I'm exhausted. This week - mostly just test drives, but I may have the opportunity to show the car off for some government big-wigs on Friday - stay tuned.

Pushing toward completion

2010-02-14T23:25:00.006-07:00

I've been very busy the past few days, doing instead of blogging. So, here is a day-by-day summary. Not quite road-enabled yet, but getting close...

Feb 10, 2010 - Regulator Covers

A while ago, I cut plexiglass covers for the regulator boxes. Today, I finally got around to drilling the holes and installing them. Here is an example. The covers will keep rainwater out, as well as curious fingers. They also clamp the 10 gauge input lines in place:

Feb 11, 2010 - Regulator Boxes Attached

Attaching the regulators to the battery box covers was pretty straightforward. First, I found the ideal placement - close enough to attach the wires, spaced well enough to allow access to plug in the RJ11 RegBus. With the regulators attached, simply mark and drill holes. I then put bolts through and clamped them in with nuts, leaving a forest of bolts. This makes it easy to do final attachment of the regulator boxes.

And here they are, all attached. I brought them inside to work on the RegBus RJ11 interconnects.

Here is the front box with RegBux interconnects. If you have the proper crimping tool, building these interconnects is a breeze. The Rudman Regulator manual is very clear on how to build the cables.

Here is the rear box with the RegBus cables attached and the Metric Pak 480 connectors connected:

Feb 13 2010 - Push Toward 216V Completion

Today I focused on getting the 216V system ready to charge. I did some modifications to the original VoltsPorsche instructions. First, I wrapped most of the HV cable with FlexGuard, in red, to highlight that they are high-voltage cables. I also put an Anderson 350A connector in so the controller would not be plugged in while working on the high voltage system:

Here is more FlexGuard. This will not only alert hypothetical emergency responders to the presence of high voltage, but it will also protect the cables from abrasion from whatever might abrade them:

Still more FlexGard. In addition, I moved the CamLok connector from the middle compartment to here. Much easier to reach, and plenty of room. This makes it very easy to disconnect the 216V circuit:

Since I removed the CamLok, I redid the fuse mounting. I cut a notch in a conduit box so the fuse would fit, and bolted cable to it:

Moving back to the rear trunk, I added vent holes so that later fans could bring cooling air in - both the controller and the charger are happier when they are cool:

More vent holes, on the right:

A 12V fan installed on the left. This faces up, so it pulls cool air in from outside:

And the other 12V fan. This faces down, so it blows warm air out:

The fans are not yet hooked up, that will wait for another day.

14 Feb 2010 - Charger Attached, Configured

After getting all the 216V system hooked up, it was time to focus on the charger. I moved my kWh meter to the rear compartment, and attached twist-lok AC connectors to the charger input:

With the charger hooked up, and the RegBus hooked up, I flipped a dip switch on the charger. This lit up the yellow LEDs on the regulators to verify the RegBus was correctly attached. And it is. Here are the yellow LEDs glowing in the front compartment:

I also kept an eye on the voltage levels - the voltmeter is reading the voltage from the Anderson 350 connectors. The voltage I'm aiming for is 14.30 volts per battery, or 257 volts:

And also on the amperage - I got a new clamp-on DC ammeter just for this purpose. Later, after a test drive, I'll use the clamp-on DC ammeter to make sure the constant voltage timer is set correctly:

Finally, I worked on the 12V system in the front compartment. I drilled a new hole to accept the HV input and heater output lines:

Not shown - I crimped WeatherPak connectors on a variety of wires and hooked things up. This is a picture of the middle of the process as I tried to debug what all the wires did on the original AC VoltsPorsche:

Unfortunately, something is wrong with the 12V system. In the summer, when I started this project, the exact same something was wrong - the speedometer does not work, and the green oil pressure light only comes on when the heater is turned on (!?!?!?). The 12V voltmeter reads zero. Back then, I thought all of those problems were from the isolation failure caused by leaking battery acid. Now, it looks like there is something deeper.

Tomorrow, more debugging, and, hopefully, a road test!

Batteries Interconnected

2010-02-10T08:38:00.004-07:00

A few things have come together over the past few days. First, I mounted the DC-DC converter, the relay box, and the AC-DC 12V power supply on the board where the old Zivan charger had previously been mounted:

Next, I reinstalled it in the front compartment:

Next up was attaching the interconnects. But I discovered that my BMS wiring was not quite the right length - so I modified several of them. I made one side longer by about 4", and shortened the other side by a similar amount. Here are a few of them, rebuilt:

And here is the front compartment with interconnects and BMS wiring installed:

Middle compartment:

Rear compartment:

It is getting so close to done I can almost taste it. I predict a late-night final push some time this week...

Revised Front Wiring

2010-02-07T22:38:00.003-07:00

This weekend ended up cold and snowy, so mostly I worked on finishing up the front wiring. Photos will come later, for now, here is the revised circuit diagram. This includes the details of which connectors go to what - this will make it much easier to attach things when in the car:

You can find the PDF here. It is sized to print on legal 8.5 x 14 paper.

Battery Interconnects

2010-01-31T21:27:00.005-07:00

After procrastinating for quite some time (not to mention healing my injured arm...) it was time to figure out battery interconnects. I had originally been planning on using 3/4" wide 1/16" copper bar stock, stacked two high, as the interconnects. But putting the bend in it was a pain. And I hate drilling through thin copper. I got some hole punches, but the 1/16" copper laughed at them.

So, on to Plan B. The local metal supply store had sheet copper 0.020" thick. This turned out to be perfect - I can cut some of the weird shapes right out of the sheet. Cutting straps 3/4" wide, 7 of them would stack up to form the same cross-sectional area as 2/0 cable (0.105 in^2). After much careful measuring (and a first failed prototype - good thing I tried cutting the paper out and fitting it first!) I created a layout that fit on a 8.5" by 14" legal piece of paper:

You can find the PDF here. I printed out 7 of them, and then cut out around the outside edge and used spray adhesive to stick them to the copper sheet:

I cut around each one to make for easier handling:

Next up - the holes. This hydraulic punch did not do much with 0.0625" copper, but it sails through 0.020" copper like butter. I call it Mr. Punchy:

Here are the holes punched in one section. To reach the interior holes, I cut each piece in half. Mr. Punchy can reach pretty far in, though. It is *much* easier to line up the hole punch than it is to drill through thin sheet:

My assistant, Naiche, came by and together we used aircraft shears to cut out all 105 pieces:

Now for the tricky part. To make sure that the straps don't pry the battery posts out of the batteries, I designed a bend in each one - basically, a 3/8" by 3/8" triangle. I tried just using pliers to bend it, but it was very difficult to get a precise bend. So, time to design a tool. This is the bending jig. It is basically just a piece of plywood with holes drilled to align with each different piece. A 1/8" deep inset is routed into the surface, and a welded metal piece is screwed to the base. This piece has a small angle welded to it, on top of which a welded stamp fits:

You can find the sketchup file here. I extracted a PDF of the base and rotated it so the holes would fit on 8.5" by 11" paper (did not want to make another trip to the copy shop):

This PDF can be found here. After a pleasant afternoon of metal cutting and welding, plus wood routing and drilling, I had my bend jig:

You can see the stamp on the upper right. To bend a strap, all you do is put screws through its end holes into the holes on the jig. This keeps it aligned. Then you place the stamp over the ridge in the metal base and pound it down with a hammer:

Remove it all, and you have a nice bent piece of copper strap:

And, finally, after bending all of the pieces and stacking them up, I put heat-shrink tubing over all of them. All done:

Next up, attaching the straps, hooking up the PakTrakr and the regulator harnesses, and then finishing the wiring. So close I can almost taste it...

Warmers Installed

2010-01-02T12:59:00.004-07:00

EDIT - DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS TECHNIQUE - IT DOES NOT WORK. See this post for why.

My assistant Naiche came by yesterday and helped me install the warmers. First step is taking most of the batteries out - the warmers fit pretty tightly and it is very difficult to shove them between the batteries. So, out they come, and in goes a warmer:

Here is the rear box, all complete (you can see the pink foam peeking out between the batteries):

I had to drill a new hole and install a grommet in order to get the cord for the middle box to come out in a useful location:

All three warmers are hooked up to this terminal strip, with the input 120V AC line hooking up as well:

Finally, installed an inlet just like the 240V inlet (except with a 120V 15A plug) and wired it up. Here it is, plugged in and warming:

Using a clamp-on AC ammeter, I determined that it is pulling about 5A, which is about 600W, which is about what I expect from the warmer cable I'm using. Not a lot of heat - but hopefully enough to maintain the batteries at a warm temperature. It's very cold out right now, so I'm warming the whole garage with a 4000W electric heater right now. I'll let the batteries stay at this temperature for about 48H and then see if the warmer can maintain them in the cold.

Battery Warmers

2009-12-23T17:33:00.006-07:00

EDIT - DO NOT USE THIS TECHNIQUE - IT DOES NOT WORK. See this post for why.

Despite a healing arm, I managed to find time over the past month to do some work on the battery warmers. I started with GroQuick heater cable. The instructions say not to allow the cable to self-intersect, so I designed a foam structure to hold the cable in place:

It goes between the batteries, like this. Fortunately, the AGM-1280T batteries are just smaller enough than the US-8VGC that this all fits in the existing box:

I laid out the pieces so I could make a PDF template for cutting:

Since I'm healing, I enlisted the help of a henchman. This is my daughter KatC's friend Naiche:

He helped me cut the foam and aluminum pieces for the warmers:

I used a Dremel with a 1/4 inch bit to rout nice even grooves for the cable in each piece:

Here is the biggest warmer in progress. First, the cable goes in the grooves, up to the point where it must go *through* the warmer to catch the other pieces:

A loop is pulled through to the back:

And one of the other pieces put in place, with the cable inserted in the groove:

Most of the extra pieces have two sides, a mirror image of each other. The cable goes back up and around:

The last piece on the rear warmer ends like this:

As you can see, the warmer cable is just a little too long. So, I cut it off. To make it work again, I need to crimp the two internal heating elements together to make a circuit. First, I stripped off about an inch or so of the exterior insulation. You can see the copper grounding braid peeled back and about ready to cut off - you don't want to accidentally ground your heating elements:

In this blurry picture, you can see the next step - the red central insulator is split to reveal the two finely wound heating elements:

The two elements are twisted around each other and bent over to create a larger footprint for...

...crimping a closed-end connector on.

Finally, heat-shrink tubing (with built-in glue) is applied - the glue lets you pinch the end shut:

Lastly, the aluminum facing pieces are installed. They are held in place with heavy-duty duct taping - actual duct tape, of course, withstands heat (since it is intended to be used with heating ducts):

In the new year, these will all get installed into their racks. I hope everybody has a safe holiday season and a fantastic 2010!

Been on hiatus

2009-12-16T17:43:00.003-07:00

This video shows why:

Arm is getting better, but won't be doing any major work until January at the earliest.

Miscellany

2009-11-01T09:44:00.003-07:00

October was a busy month on non-car activities, so not much got done. I did find some time earlier in the month to add an in-line high voltage 400A fuse (Ferraz-Shawmut A50QS400-4). It is in a link with a Cam-lok connector, and is located between the front battery boxes and the rear battery box:

Yesterday was much better, sunny after a blizzard, generally a good day to work. I spent an hour or two cleaning up tools that had been placed in haste during the month, and then got to work. I started with the battery charger mount. I installed 1/4-20 RivNuts in the rear compartment - the orange-handled tool is a RivNut tool that I got for the ElectroJeep project. Much nicer than the allen wrench tool I used before on the Porsche:

Here is the charger snug and happy in its new location. The only concern I have is that the charger gets quite warm. I will rig up an active air circulation system for the rear compartment, both for charging as well as operating (to help keep the DMOC cool).

I also test-installed the battery warmers. I decided to go with Gro-Quick soil heating cables. Since there is space between the batteries (due to them being smaller than the original batteries) I think that will be a fine place to put the warmer cable. This cannot be the final configuration, though - the documentation has fairly dire warnings about crossing the cable or allowing the cable to touch itself. So I will be routing cable channels into the plywood battery spacers to hold the warming cable.

In the meantime, here are a couple of pictures showing how the cable loops back and forth between the batteries. The rear box:

The front box:

I also cut the clear acrylic tops for the regulator boxes. This shot is a test-fit of the tightest spot. Looks like there will be plenty of clearance, even if the regulator boxes are on top of the hold-down straps (which I think they will have to be):

Relay and Regulator Boxes

2009-10-12T18:01:00.002-06:00

This week, it snowed. And stayed cold all week (cold enough to kill my sprinkler system's backflow vacuum breaker valve because I did not think to drain it). Oh, well. I found some things to keep me occupied inside where it is warm.

First, I worked on the relay box for the front compartment. Previously, the front relays / terminals / fuses / etc. were mounted on an exposed board on the front battery box. I never really liked this, especially because it exposes high voltage close to where fingers might pry. So, I found a box that would enclose all of the front relays and contactors and fuses - an 8x8x4 box from my local hardware store. I drilled holes for wires to emerge, installed grommets, and bolted relays / terminals / contactors / fuse holders in, and then wired it up approximately according to the wiring diagram I previously published:

Here is the same photo with labels. The "Heater" contactor controls the heater via the heater swith. The "Horn" relay is to hook up a new louder horn. The "Key +12" relay is a booster for the +12 keyed signal, to run a front compartment fan plus a couple of lights. The "Charge Intlk" relay sends a signal to the controller that the car is plugged in to the wall. It also activates a light on the dashboard. The Crydom solid-state relay in the lower left controls the HV voltmeter as well as the DC-DC converter (which should never draw more than 3 amps or so!). And, finally, I separated the high voltage from the low voltage fuses. And wired it all up:

I then put connectors on the end of the cables and put plastic spiral wrap around most of them (I'll add it to the 10-gauge high-voltage wires later as well). Note also the blue tape - it labels what each wire is, in case I forget:

With that out of the way, it was still cold and snowy outside. So I tackled another problem - how to protect the Mk2 Rudman Regulators from the elements and from prying / curious fingers. I found 18 PVC outlet boxes at my local hardware store. My vague memory of the size of the regulators made me think they would fit without much modification. I was wrong. I ended up having to cut the four internal screw posts out - making a lovely dusty mess with my Dremel. I also cut a rectangular port for the 6-pin telephone-style RegBus to come in / out. And I cut a rectangular port for the wires which connect the regulator to the battery. Here is my first prototype:

Seemed to work well, so I made 17 more (sitting on top of printouts of the templates I made):

I then took nylon screws and standoffs and inserted them appropriately...

and bolted all of them together. Here are all 18 stacked neatly on the stove. My wife is a very understanding soul:

I still need to cut the tops from 1/4" transparent acrylic. I will *not* seal the holes - I need a place for air to get in / out. Eventually I will add little fans to each one to keep them even cooler. But this was enough for now.

Next up - my daughter has a production of The Witch of Blackbird Pond at the local theater, so I'll be doing only sporadic work on the Volt914.

Rear Batteries In

2009-10-03T22:29:00.004-06:00

Today was a busy day. The goal this weekend is to get the car moving again. Failing that, I at least want to get all the boxes and batteries in place. However, before I can do *that*, I need to do a few mods to the car. First, due to the larger size of the PFC-20 charger, and due to the need to have the Rudman Regulators on top of the front battery box, I need to move the charger to the rear trunk. Also, I've been frustrated with voltage drops in the 12V system - the ElectroAuto kit pushes everything from the front via a 10 gauge cable, which has proven inadequate. Finally, I want to make provision for some sort of heating system for the batteries - a water bed heater is likely for each box, but I have not finished thinking about this. Regardless, I'll need a 120V power line for the front and rear to handle this (I want the battery heaters on a separate circuit from the charger).

So, I need to drag a lot of cable from the front (where the 12V aux battery and power inlets are) to the rear (where the charger and original 12V battery was). I procured 20 feet of 4 gauge cable for the 12V system, and 25 feet of 16 gauge 120V extension cord, as well as 50 feet (overkill) of 10 gauge 240V extension cord. I laid them next to each other and taped the mess together, thus:

The red cable is the 4 gauge power cable; the thick orange cable is the 10 gauge 240VAC cable (longer because it goes all the way to the rear trunk) and the thinner orange cable is the 16 gauge 120VAC cable.

And now the fun begins. I need to route all this through the passenger's side heater tube. The driver's side, if you recall, has the DC cables from front to back as well as a variety of control signals. Up until now, the passenger's side only had the PakTrakr cable from back to front. So, it was natural to use it for this harness. I taped my trusty plumber's snake to the harness and fed the snake through the heater duct:

Here it is fed all the way through, with feeding into the front compartment just starting:

And here it is fed all the way into the front compartment:

I routed it under the middle battery rack and through the hole left where the fuel pump used to be mounted. I then zip-tied it to the middle rack:

The Porsche 914 12V battery was originally in the engine compartment. The original kit just had you tie all the 10- and 12-gauge wires together and tape the whole mess up. After unwrapping the tape, I decided the ring ends of the original battery cables were in poor shape. So I cut them off and crimped them all into a 4 gauge lug. I then crimped another 4 gauge lug on the 4 gauge cable. I also crimped a ring terminal on a 10 gauge cable which was fed through from the trunk - this will power cooling fans in the trunk (for a future project). It all got bolted together:

Not shown - I taped that up and then put red heat-shrink tubing over the entire assembly.

Next, I assembled a Weather Pack 2-way connector on the end of the 120VAC cable. Weather Pack connectors are water-tight and lock, a close relative to the Metri Pack connectors from the previous post. Very handy for preventing short circuits and corrosion. This will eventually plug into the rear battery heating solution:

One more thing needed to be done before putting the rear box in. I needed keyed +12V to switch the relay for the rear fans. So I attached it to the lower terminal block on the rear wiring assembly - it's the yellow wire in the lower right hand of the photo. I also assembled a red and black 10 gauge cord with ring terminals and split loom. This was then attached to the most negative power pole (black) and shunt (red). The other end will plug in to the charger. This is actually nicer than the original - I'll be able to look at the actual amps pushed by the charger:

I drilled a new hole and put a grommet in it to feed this assembly through to the trunk. On the passenger's side, I also drilled an identical hole to feed the 240VAC cord and 10 gauge fan power wire and 16 gauge keyed +12v control signal wire. But you'll have to imagine it from this picture of the driver's side:

Finally - I drilled holes in the battery box where the assemblies from Thursday night feed through. I installed the battery box, put a generous dollop of silicone sealer along the edges, and bolted it together. And, finally, I dropped the batteries in place. Note that the AGM-1280T batteries are 0.55 inches narrower than the US 8VGC, so I cut some 3/4 inch and 1/2 inch plywood shims to put between the batteries to keep them from shifting:

You can see one of the regulator connectors fed through - I was testing to make sure it would fit (it does).

Tomorrow - installing the middle and front racks and batteries. And redoing the front relay assembly. And then building and attaching battery interconnects. And (maybe) taking the car for a spin if I'm lucky.

Rudman Mk2 Disconnects

2009-10-01T23:25:00.007-06:00

For my AGM batteries, I purchased Rudman Mk2 Regulators from Manzanita Micro. The regulators will sit outside the battery boxes in little boxes of their own, with fans to keep them cool and transparent tops so I can see the lights flashing. This means, though, that I need a disconnect system so I can service the batteries when needed. The disconnect will also serve as an easy way to charge individual batteries if needed.

After some Googling, I found the disconnect I wanted - Metric-Pack 480 sealed interconnects from Delphi. Waytek Wire has everything I need - the male/female housings, the male/female terminals, the silicone seals, and the strain relief clips. You do have to order many of the parts in multiples of 50. Oh, well. I'll have leftovers for some future project. I also got some 10 gauge wire. The crimpers are from previous projects - one is a standard crimper for solderless terminals, the other is designed for Weather Pack / Metric Pack crimping:

The Mk2 manual says that the wires connecting the regulators to the batteries must not show more than 10 millivolt voltage drop at the desired ampacity. I want to be able to bypass up to 8A, so that means 15 inches of 10 gauge wiring. I cut them to 14.5 inches because the interconnects add some length / resistance:

For some reason, I had the urge to consume some licorice at this point. Anyway, the next step was to crimp a faston to one end and a ring terminal to the other end of each wire:

I could theoretically have stopped here - I could have just used the faston as the disconnect. However, all those metal ends are just screaming, "Short me! No, short me!" and I did not feel like blowing up my carefully constructed wires or setting my car on fire. So, I cut all the wires in two parts. The short part is 4 inches long, leaving the long part at roughly 11 inches:

Here is how a Metric Pack 480 disconnect is assembled. The little purple things are silicone seals which go over the wires. The metallic terminals crimp onto the wire and the seal, and then the wire/terminal is inserted into the housing. A strain relief clip then goes on to finish it off. I took this picture before I had decided that the *short* wires would be female - the male connector is a good 2.5 inches long and would have taken all the slack of the short wires - I need a little slack...

First, you slip the seals on, before stripping the wires:

Next, you crimp the terminal over the wire and seal. There should be a little bit of wire showing on both sides of the wire crimp. GM recommends soldering at this point. But I'm lazy.

Here are all the female ends crimped on:

About to insert the female ends into the housing:

Ta-da! All done, with the strain relief clip attached. Kind of pretty, I think:

Here's a close look down the business end of the female disconnect:

And here are 18 complete female disconnects. The stripping / crimping is the time consuming part; snapping the disconnects together goes very quickly:

The male is just about the same. Here you can see the length of wire to strip and how it should fit in the crimp area of the terminal:

Here is the crimper in action. You put the top of the "A" on top of the crimps, and the tang pushes the terminal up into the concavity, folding the little crimps over very neatly. I only had one mis-crimp out of 72 crimps - and that one was because I got over-zealous on crimping the silcone seal and I tore it:

Here are all the male terminals crimped on:

And here is a complete housing (but without the strain relief clamp):

A look down the business end of the male disconnect...

And here is the complete male and female disconnect clipped together:

And here is the whole mess - 18 male and 18 female disconnects:

I did some sketching, and the 11 inch length of the male ends should be plenty to get outside the battery box for all the batteries. I also plan on making a couple of battery charger female disconnects. But my hands are tired, it will wait for another day.

Boxes Drilled

2009-09-29T20:57:00.002-06:00

I found a spare hour today to drill the access / ventilation holes and mount the fans and aux battery tray:

The boxes originally had rivnuts inserted for the 1/4-20 bolts that held this hardware on. I reused the ones I could (the lower fan rivnuts were reasonably positioned to become the new upper locations) and then used T-nuts without the "teeth" for the rest of the bolts. This provides a fairly flush surface inside the box - not quite as nice as the rivnut, but easier to find at the local hardware store.

I'm told the charger is on its way. Also, I've got just about everything I need to wire up the Rudman mk2 regulators.

My goal is to have the car on the road after this weekend. We shall see...

Battery box mods

2009-09-21T10:33:00.002-06:00

On Sunday I got a little time to work on the battery boxes. As you can see from this picture, the boxes are about 2 inches too tall for the batteries:

Although I could have kept the boxes the same size and just used the existing tops (which have plastic cylinders to hold the batteries down), I need those two inches as a place to keep battery regulators and a larger charger. So, off come the top two inches of all the boxes:

The batteries now fit pretty exactly:

And here is the rear box test-fit with a single battery. This fits a lot better than the original taller box:

Still remaining to be done on the boxes is to drill vent holes - although AGM batteries normally don't outgas, it is not impossible if they get overcharged. I'm currently debating hooking up the original battery box fans. Due to the extra safety, I'm leaning toward just installing them similar to how they were installed originally.

Out with the bad batteries...

2009-09-20T08:33:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was a lot of heavy lifting. I pulled out the 18 old batteries and cleaned them up:

And worked on cleaning up the mess they left behind. The baking soda in the front clearly did its job:

I have some more cleanup and painting to do, perhaps this afternoon. And then, I need to adjust the battery box sizes for the new (shorter) batteries and I can start putting things back in.

P.S. Anybody know something useful to do with 18 8V golf cart batteries? Craigslist does not allow posting them for sale / free. I can certainly recycle them, but they only have about 400 or so partial discharges and generally seem in good shape. It seems a waste not to put them to some good use - solar array energy store? 18 golf carts? Something.

Meet the new boss...

2009-09-18T07:40:00.005-06:00

...not quite the same as the old boss. Yesterday, this showed up on my doorstep:

1050 pounds of lead, acid, and packing material. Just like on the ElectroJeep, these are the Concorde AGM-1280T. They are very similar in volume to the US-8VGC:

About an inch shorter, about 10 pounds lighter (56 vs. 67 pounds), and, of course, 12V 80Ah instead of 8V 160Ah. This means my nominal pack size is 17kWh, down from 23kWh, but the convenience of no leaky batteries plus the peppiness from almost 20% lower battery weight and 50% higher voltage will hopefully make up for it.

This weekend will see major operations toward getting back on the road.

Preliminary 216V Front Wiring

2009-08-27T09:31:00.004-06:00

Design is in progress on the 216V upgrade. Here is a preliminary drawing of the front wiring. The grey box highlights the replacement relay board. All of the components are sized so that I could upgrade to 316V in the future if I want.

You can also download a PDF.

Time to upgrade the batteries

2009-08-26T08:43:00.002-06:00

I am finally sick and tired of the mess that flooded batteries make - the latest is a fault in the HV isolation caused by the acid mess, leading to problems with the 12V system among other things. So, I will be upgrading them to sealed AGM over the next month or so. I thought about lithium, but it is still a little too rich for my blood (I think I would have to spend 10-12K on lithium + BMS).

Here is the plan which I've put in motion:

18 Concorde AGM-1280T 80Ah 12V sealed AGM (same as in the ElectroJeep)
System voltage 216V nominal (230V at full charge, 190V at 10% SOC)
Manzanita Micro PFC-20 charger (same as in the ElectroJeep)
Manzanita Micro Mk2 analog regulators (so as not to kill the batteries via inbalance)
Upgraded DC-DC converter (probably the APS-55 220V - the Zivan NG1 was suggested but I have worries about its use at other than full charge)
Various other upgraded components (relays, fuses, heater contactor, battery interconnects, etc.)

This will give me 17kWh nominal pack size (compared with 23kWh for the floodies) - but I'm willing to live with the potentially 25% reduced range for the tradeoff in reliability, convenience, and power (the pack will weigh about 200 lbs less than the original, and the higher voltage will gain perhaps 10% in performance, for a net of nearly 20% perf gain)

Stay tuned, I'll update with more details as they evolve.

Retrospective: design decisions

2009-01-27T21:37:00.002-07:00

Just over a year after getting the Volt914 running, I've spent some time thinking of "if I had to do it all over again...". First - choice of motors (AC vs. DC). I'm occasionally disappointed at the performance of the AC24 motor. So I played a "what-if" game - I found some power output curves of the original 1.8L engine in the 914, and plotted a curve of horsepower vs. speed (assuming that one would always shift to maximize horsepower). I added curves for the AC24 as well as the Advanced DC 9":

You can clearly see that the AC24 is lower performance than the original motor, not even taking the extra weight of the batteries into account. The ADC 9" is generally higher performance until you get to 60 MPH or so - probably even taking battery weight into account.

So, if performance is your desired goal - go with DC. I do believe the range of the AC option is greater - higher efficiency, lower HP in general, the option of regen braking. Given that I mostly commute with the volt914, I think I made the right choice.

The next "what-if" game involves batteries. I'm somewhat discouraged by the acid issues with the Zivan charger and floodies. So much so that I'm saving my pennies for an upgrade this summer. I'll either go with AGMs (and a new charger) or, optimistically, something exotic if the prices have dropped enough. Stay tuned.

Other than those considerations, though, I'm very happy I did this project.

Sigh - more leaky batteries

2009-01-17T21:18:00.002-07:00

I knew in my gut that the front batteries were probably leaking like the rear ones were. Last weekend, I finally got around to removing the front battery box so I could see how bad it was. Pretty bad:

The front box is a pain to remove because of all the relays, batteries, DC-DC converter, etc. that are attached to it. You can see all the little green masking tape labels I put on all the wires to make sure I got things put back together correctly.

Here is the front compartment after attacking it with a wire wheel on my angle grinder:

It was warm enough that day to put a couple of coats of spray paint on it, so I did:

I went to Sam's Club and got 4 12-pound bags of baking soda. I put about 6 pounds below the front rack (looks like snow!):

I put about 1/4" or so inside the front battery box:

For good measure, I put some below the middle battery box (not shown) and inside the middle battery box (that's the ElectroJeep in the background - sealed batteries, no acid leaks there...):

Hopefully the baking soda will neutralize the acid spills as they happen. But this is something I will have to check every several months.

Electric New Year

2009-01-01T18:10:00.002-07:00

Happy New Year! The Volt914 is still running well. Today, I mounted an "ELECTRIC" label on the back just for fun. I hope everyone's conversion projects are successful in 2009. In case you had not noticed, my activity is nearly 100% on the ElectroJeep these days - come on by!

Battery Acid Damage

2008-11-02T21:59:00.003-07:00

I came out of work one day last week, and noticed a small puddle of liquid under the passenger's suspension console. "That's weird", I thought, "there has been nearly zero humidity today". I knelt down, and dipped a finger into it. It was slightly slippery, so I thought at first that it was transmission fluid. But bringing it close to my nose, I detected the distinct smell of... battery acid.

Last weekend, therefore, I disassembled the rear compartment. I took out the batteries and the boxes so I could both find the leak as well as repair any damage. I believe the leak is actually coming from the *tops* of the batteries. The Zivan charger is apparently notorious for "overcooking" batteries during the equalization phase, which can lead to acid boiling out of the caps. The rear box is a two-piece assembly, using only silicone caulk to try to keep it "acid-tight." Obviously not enough.

As far as damage goes, it was all paint and surface rust (if I had let it go all winter, it would likely have destroyed the suspension console, and possibly the whole car):

I scraped all the paint and rust off the area, washed the battery acid residue off of everything it was on (that's the white stuff on the rack), and spray-painted some rust-coat paint on everything. Three coats for good measure. Next summer I'll do a more thorough job.

As far as resolving the leak - I'm stuck with the Zivan charger for now. But I can at least make the box much more acid-tight. I have some heavy plastic sheeting I use for various things. So, I used it here to make a liner for the rear box. I cut a piece big enough to fill the box with plenty left over for good measure:

I then placed the batteries into the liner and box (this took a little care - although the plastic is heavy, the batteries are heavier, and it is not hard to stretch the liner enough to rip it):

I then cut the top of the liner even with the tops of the batteries, taking care to allow the hydrogen exhaust vent to work properly:

One final note. While I had the battery box out, I took the opportunity to find the tach wire. In my car, for some reason, it was *white* and purple rather than *black* and purple. Whatever. I attached a white 16-gauge wire to it, ran it along the DMOC wiring harness loom (attaching it at many places with electric tape) then hooked it to Pin 25 of the DMOC ampseal connector. Here is the wire in the engine compartment:

Just like Tim's, mine seems properly calibrated at an EE1SpeedoDiv of 70. It's nice to have the tach... but it points out that I, like most people, have pretty serious vibration issues from about 4500 to about 5500 RPM. Not sure what to do about it at this point - I don't drive in that RPM range (other than to test the vibration). Tim had no end of fun fixing it on his car...

Measuring Power - III

2008-09-01T21:01:00.003-06:00

Well, it's Labor Day, the traditional Last Day of Summer in the USA. I've kept track of my electricity usage and trip distance all summer. Here is the result in graphical form (the blue bars are the distances of each trip; the red lines are the efficiency of each trip):

Unlike the earlier data, there is very definitely a correlation between trip length and efficiency. I'm measuring the actual electricity used to charge the vehicle. Plotting the data another way, and fitting a least-squares line to it, shows this correlation very well:

Basically, you can model the driving costs as 379 Wh/mi efficiency with a fixed 1.23 kWh cost per charge.

I drove 498 miles this summer, and used 244.3 kWh of electricity to charge it during that period (including the per-charge overhead). At 7.5 cents per kWh (my cost in Fort Collins, CO), that means I spent $18.32 on electricity to drive, at an average cost of 3.7 cents per mile. At $4.00 per gallon gasoline, this is the equivalent to about 109 miles per gallon.

Measuring Power - II

2008-06-17T08:44:00.003-06:00

As the previous post indicates, I am now measuring the kWh used to charge the car. I've been keeping track of per-day costs, and here is the chart for the first couple of weeks. As you can see, the cost per mile does not correlate well with the miles driven - which means that the theory I had about the rebalancing contributing a major portion of the cost for short trips seems to be incorrect (at least, for the length of trip that I've been taking).

The gap in the chart is for when I watered the batteries - no miles on that charge, so no wH / mi.

Over this period, I have driven 111.4 miles, and used 54.9 kWh to recharge. This nets out to an average of 493 Wh / mi (as shown by the green line on the chart). My electricity costs 7.5 cents per kWh, which means my average cost per mile is 3.7 cents, which, at $4.00 per gallon, is the equivalent of 108 MPG.

Measuring Power

2008-06-02T20:30:00.003-06:00

I've had many people ask, "how much does it cost to run your car" . So far, I've been unable to answer very accurately. I have a decent understanding of the Wh/mile performance - but that does not account for charging loss, running the fans, etc. So, I picked up this little device over at ekmmetering.com:

I then made a 24-inch long extension cord with this inline to see how well it works. Seems to be working well so far. If I continue to be happy with it, I'll get it mounted in the wall next to the 240V outlet (this extension cord thing is just a temporary kludge). I'll update this post later with the actual *measured* wall-to-road Wh/mile performance of my car.

June 3 2008 edit: I used 6.70 kWh to charge last night - roughly 50 cents worth of electricity. I drove 13.1 miles, which gives 489 wH/m - twice the cost I calculated from watts used while driving. This is likely because of the "finish" / "balancing" stage of charge, and also likely because I bet my tires need filling and my batteries need watering. I'll chart out this over the summer, and include significant maintenance events on the chart.

Replacing the Transmission Main Seal

2008-04-05T21:54:00.002-06:00

Five months ago, when I first got the Volt914 on the road, I noticed a transmission fluid leak. Here is the kind of mess it would leave:

I spent today fixing it (better late than never!). After dropping the tranny (leaving the motor installed, with a jack supporting it), I popped the transmission main seal out with a slide hammer. Here is what it looks like on the back - no wonder it leaked!

Here is the new seal installed. I added a couple of other pictures at 914world if you're curious about the process.

While I had the tranny out, I also replaced the clutch on the theory that the tranny fluid would have impregnated and ruined the clutch disk. Which it did. The old disk is on the left, the new (not shiny!) disk is on the right:

I also took the opportunity to put new transmission drain plugs in (the old ones were fairly well stripped, you can see my adventures with them on 914world):

I took it for a quick spin around the block - I think the old oil-impregnated disk was slipping occasionally. I did not notice anything this time, but I'll keep my eye on it.

A Parade - Finally!

2008-03-18T21:25:00.002-06:00

Some of you may remember that the original impetus behind me going 72 hours or so without sleep last fall was to have my car in the Colorado State University / Poudre School District Homecoming Parade. That, alas, was not to be. However, this Saturday, my car was in the Fort Collins Downtown Business Association's Saint Patrick's Day parade. I was part of the Debut Theatre Company entry - we won first place in Most Creative - it was a blast. The young lady standing and waving at the audience is named Paulina, and she will be playing Sleeping Beauty in Debut's production this May:

The car is plastered with magnetic signs, and the dragon head (my wife Jill's creation) on the hood is magnetically attached too.

Fixing suspension squeaks

2008-02-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

I've been generally happy with the car - except for one thing: an increasingly annoying "popping" or "grinding" sound coming from the front passenger's suspension. The culprit turned out to be the A-arm bushings. I blogged the whole process on 914 World, but here are a few pictures. First, the A-arm before refurb:

The culprit - the old bearing and rusty bearing surfaces:

And the refurbished A-arm reinstalled:

The pops, squeaks, and grinds are all gone, and I'm going enjoy driving the car that much more...

Video Tour of the Volt914

2008-01-08T00:08:00.001-07:00

A short video showing the main features of the Volt914, and giving a good sense of what it sounds like to drive around in it:

Youtube link

A Five Speed Transmission

2007-12-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

This morning, I had a spare hour, so I decided I was finally tired of only having a 3-speed transmission. Fixing it was simpler than I expected. I lifted the carpet over the center tunnel, made sure the transmission was in neutral, loosened the shifter bolt (shown below) with a 13mm socket, pushed the shifter as far right as I could, then tightened it again. Now, it's a five speed as originally intended!

At first, I tried pushing it to the left as far as it would go, but that did not help. Fortunately, right did it. I took it up to 65 MPH (above 100 KPH) just for fun, and was impressed with how smooth the ride is - a low car with a very low center of gravity makes for a pretty stable ride. And, best of all - this makes it harder to nick "Reverse" accidentally on the way to 2nd.

Also, today I passed 250 miles as an electric. 1/4 of the way to 1000...

A Two Car Garage

2007-12-17T08:36:00.003-07:00

After two and a half years of being patient with my monopoly of the garage, my wife decided she wanted a space in the garage for Christmas. So, I spent yesterday afternoon organizing and cleaning, making space for our 2000 Saturn SL1. It fits pretty well, as you can see. I backed the Volt914 in so that the driver's doors face each other, so both Jill and I can easily get in.The oil spot under the Saturn is actually where the Volt914's transmission had been slowly leaking. At some point, I need to fix that...

Heater Installed

2007-12-05T23:06:00.001-07:00

Although I was originally considering putting the heater in the rear trunk near the controller, after further reflection, I decided to put it in the passenger compartment, below the dash, between the driver and passenger. The main reason was to simplify the wiring. A secondary reason was that the heater did not fit especially well in the rear trunk. First step was attaching the heater mount to the firewall. I used rivets:

I then mounted the heater on the mount. I made sure when placing the mounting point that the heater did not interfere with any of the pedals or the steering linkage (it's hard to tell from this picture, but the steering linkage is not all that close to the heater blower):

I used 10-gauge red and black wires to deliver power from the 144-volt pack to the heater. I routed them through the original (now useless) windshield sprayer hose grommet:

Next up was work in the middle compartment. I mounted a power post so I could attach several negative cables (the original negative cable from the most-negative point, along with negative cables to the charger and to the heater):

Next, I took the contactor I ordered...

...and mounted it on a piece of polyethylene along with the large fuse which protects the 144V heater circuit:

I hung the board from the middle battery box using tie wraps (also visible in this picture are the three wires going to the negative terminal post):

I then ran a yellow wire from the +12V input to the contactor to the switch location on the dashboard. I also ran a brown ground wire from the contactor to the grounding stud in the gas tank compartment. Note the yellow rubber cap on the negative post - I have a story to tell about that down below...

Here is the switch that will go into the dash to control the heater. The red wire goes directly to unswitched +12V (because I want the heater to be able to run without the key in the ignition). The yellow wire is split to drive the contactor and a relay for the heater blower motor in parallel:

This is the relay - a standard 12V 40A automotive relay, normally open. The yellow wire is from the switch above, the red is directly from unswitched +12V (I used 12-gauge wire since the blower pulls a fairly large current). The brown wire ties into grounding wires behind the dash. The black wire is +12V power for the blower, and the orange wire is ground for the blower:

Here's the wiring around the heater - I wrapped the contacts of the relay in electrical tape (to avoid shorts) and tucked it up above the heater:

It all works pretty well. You turn the switch on, and hot air blows out of the heater. Originally, I was going to attach hoses from that to the original heating system. However, I tried that, and the warm airflow was unsatisfactory. Fortunately, the heater is well-positioned to keep my feet toasty. I may install the flappers that came with the heater so the driver and passenger can independently control airflow.

Last, here is a wiring diagram of the heater circuits. Originally, I had the contactor and relay in series with the switch. However, this led to an excessive voltage drop which meant that the contactor did not close. So, I changed and wired them in parallel as shown here:

Remember the yellow rubber cap on the negative post I was telling you about? This is why it is here. I was tightening the bolts on the most-positive post, but my normal electric-tape-wrapped wrenches (that I use on the batteries) were not the right size for that bolt. So I used just a plain wrench. I managed to brush the top of the negative post while the wrench was touching the positive post. It resulted in a most exciting spark, including blast damage around the positive post and a flash burn on my hand that was holding the wrench:

Moral of the story: be very careful when working with high voltage... If you think you are being careful, think again, and find another way you can be even more careful. I was very lucky not to have damaged myself more than that flash burn on my left hand. I really need to get around to purchasing and installing that high current circuit breaker I've been thinking about...

Legal to Drive, Part 2, and 12V hack

2007-12-05T22:55:00.001-07:00

As you may recall, I registered the car so it is street-legal. The State of Colorado followed up with a new title issue, which arrived today - note the FUEL option. Hopefully this will be all I need to claim the Colorado alternative energy vehicle tax credit. I've scribbled VOID over this to make it harder to use this image for nefarious purposes:

I also engaged in a little 12V hackery this week. Like TimK, I was bothered by the voltage drop caused by 20+ feet of wire between the aux battery and any devices. So, I hacked mine. I took a different approach than Tim. Figuring that the two wires were connected in the engine compartment, I just cut them at the front firewall:

And then I put ring terminals on the end of all four wires and put a 1/4-inch bolt through them. This shows two of them bolted together:

This also provides the power takeoff point for my heater. I want to be able to run it without the key inserted (on those cold winter days), so I need unswitched power. I wrapped this securely with electrical tape once I had all the wires installed on the bolt.

This helps because instead of the 20-or-so feet of wire between the aux battery and any devices (because the wire runs to the engine compartment and back before plugging into the 12V system), the "short" introduced by the ring terminals and bolt provide a much shorter current path which results in a much lower voltage drop. Previously, the 12V system was dropping to 10.3-ish volts with the lights, brake lights, and a turn signal on. Now, it stays at 11.5 or better.

Brief Maintenance Note

2007-12-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

I got bit by a Blogger image upload bug with the last few posts. I've patched them; if you're curious what is involved, see this link.

Apologies for any inconvenience... let me know if you run into any broken image links on my blog.

Tweaking Regen Braking

2007-12-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

I tweaked the regen braking this morning. As I mentioned earlier, the default parameters caused an oscillation or "lurching" during regen braking. I exchanged email with the support folk at Azure Dynamics about my theory - that the default 150-volt EE2NoRegenBat caused the controller to turn regen off and on as the voltage hovered near that value. The tech people agreed that setting NoRegenBat higher would be a fine workaround. I don't want to overcharge my batteries, so I decided to go with a higher NoRegenBat but a wider ramp (set by EE2RegenRamp). This chart illustrates what I did:

EE2NoRegenBat is set to 160, instead of 150, and EE2RegenRamp is set to 34, instead of 12. This had a great effect, as the following chart shows. It plots braking as a percentage of max torque (which is 53Nm with my current 100A power max for regen):

Despite the fact that the sampling period (1 second) introduces some aliasing, you can clearly see the oscillations in the old, default parameters (the blue line). The red line shows a much smoother curve, with substantially reduced lurching. I plan on leaving regen enabled from this point on to see what it does to range.

Volt914 - A Summary

2007-12-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

This is a summary of the process of converting a Porsche 914 from gas to electric. There is much more info in the other posts on this blog, as well as in the links to the right, so, feel free to explore. In the meantime, here's the story...

It started in September of 2005 when I purchased this 1975 Porsche 914 in Colorado Springs and drove it home to Fort Collins:

I ordered the kit from Electro Automotive, and once enough parts showed up, I started the disassembly process. The very first thing was removing the internal combustion engine. Here is the engine bay without the engine. Note the rusty area in the lower center of the picture:

Here is a closer look at the rusty spot. This is called the "Hell Hole" in Porsche 914 restoration circles. The discovery of this rust-through prompted a year-long journey into complete restoration:

I stripped the entire car down to bare metal, using a combination of citrus-based chemical strippers, an orbital sander, a wire brush on an angle grinder, and sandblasting:

I repaired the rust holes (several more than just the one shown above) and primed the car with metal-etching primer:

I painted the interior silver to match what the exterior would be. Here is the repaired hell-hole:

I then sent the car out to a professional for final paint. Here it is, back from paint and after I had installed most of the components, trim, and accessories:

The restoration complete (Fourth of July weekend 2007), it was time to complete the conversion. The kit comes in many, many pieces. Here are most of them, including the controller and motor:

The battery boxes are made out of acid-resistant plastic (polypropylene), and fit into custom-built racks and tiedowns:

The motor fits into the spot where the original motor was. It mounts to the original manual transmission. Here is a picture of the motor - it is not normally this visible, since the engine bay gets filled with 9 of the 18 batteries:

There is a fair amount of wiring to do with the kit. Here is the wiring that goes into the engine bay:

And here is the wiring that goes into the front compartment, mounted on the front battery box:

The controller sits in the rear trunk. It takes the 144 volt DC in (the two black cables going from left to right), and converts it to 3-phase AC (the really thick black cable coming from the middle). The AC drives the motor. There are a variety of other signals that go into the controller, including a motor speed sensor, throttle controls, keyswitch signals, etc.

Six of the 8-volt batteries are located in the battery box in the front compartment:

Three of the batteries are in the middle battery box, where the gas tank used to be:

And the other nine batteries are in the engine bay. This picture also shows the copper strap interconnects between the batteries. Straps are much more resistant to failure from flexing than cables:

Here is the front compartment with the boxes all closed up. The black box in the middle is the charger. You can see the charging cable plugged into the bumper at the lower right. Although you can get a 110-volt AC charger, I decided to go with 240-volt - it cuts the charging time in half (down to about 5 hours for a complete recharge). Also visible are the silver vent hoses - while charging, fans run to pull hydrogen gas out of the car so a spark does not start an explosion.

Here is a closeup of the charger plug on the front bumper:

When plugged in, the red light in the upper left of the gauge cluster is lit. And, when the charger is active, the red light on the right side of the gauge cluster lights up:

When the charge is complete, the red light on the right turns off, and the green light on the right comes on. The red light on the left is still lit, since it's still plugged in. There are interlocks that prevent the car from operating when it is plugged in, but it's still handy to have a reminder on the dash:

When you unplug the car and turn the key on, it looks pretty much just like a normal car. The green light on the lower left indicates that the 12-volt system is active. Instead of a gas gauge, there are three electric gauges - an ammeter (lower left), a high-voltage meter (top), and a 12-volt voltmeter (lower). Monitoring these gauges helps to understand the performance of the vehicle:

And that's pretty much it. The restoration took a year - from July 2006 to July 2007. The conversion itself took four months. Driving is very similar to driving a gas-operated vehicle - you still use the clutch to shift gears - but there are also differences. The biggest difference is the noise - it sounds very much like a Jetsons car! Another difference is that you do NOT push the clutch in while decelerating - because you need the wheels to turn the motor for regenerative braking. The 18 8-volt batteries (US Battery 8VGC) provide lots of energy, but they are very heavy (about 1200 pounds). The car weighs about 2900 pounds net now. In a couple of years, when it is time to replace the batteries, I hope there is some new technology available that can provide the 144 volts at substantially lower weight.

There are lots of people to thank - from TimK who was the first to assemble this kit, to the very supportive people at Azure Dynamics (the manufacturers of the motor and controller), to the staff at Pelican Parts and the community at 914world. And, most importantly - my family, who were very very supportive during this entire process.

In the next week or so, I plan on making a video with a lot of this info on it. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to add them to the comment section and I'll respond.

150 miles, and some tuning

2007-12-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

I was out of town for 10 days since my last posting, but this past week I've been commuting exclusively with the Volt914. I hit the 150-mile mark today, and finally decided it was time to do a little tuning. The first thing to tune was the pedal - although I've adjusted the cable as much as I can, the max reading the controller sees is about 50%.

From the manual, here are the programmable parameters for the pedal:

The default settings were these:


EEXPedZero=0.1
EEXPedBrake=0.2
EEXPedAccel=0.25
EEXPedMax=0.6

This means that my pedal never hit the max acceleration. Additionally, that "0.5" reading was with the pedal completely floored - I had to screw the throttle stop almost all the way in to get that - and that was incredibly annoying (and somewhat dangerous - the pedal would sometimes stick all the way down). So, I decided to divide everything in half, so that a reading of 0.3 (30%) would hit max accel:


EEXPedZero=0.05
EEXPedBrake=0.10
EEXPedAccel=0.125
EEXPedMax=0.30

This made a huge difference - I backed the throttle stop back out to a reasonable level, and the car is definitely more responsive.

Next, I did some research on max amperage limits for my cables (2/0 welding cable) and came to the conclusion that I could raise the limit from 200 to 250 amps. These are the parameters I tweaked for that, from:


EEXNormAccelPower=19200
EEXMaxAccelPower=28800

to:


EEXNormAccelPower=24000
EEXMaxAccelPower=36000

This also made a fair difference - but it also lead to occasional controller cut-outs - where the controller stops applying power. Browsing TimK's blog, I decided to tweak down the max torque to one that matches the AC24 motor specs:


EEXAccelMaxTorque=85
EE2IsMax=375

This seems to eliminate the cut-outs. Finally, I enabled regen braking and played with it much of the day today. Unfortunately, there seems to be something weird going on. The regen cuts in, the car decelerates nicely, and then it cuts out and the car, of course, lurches. This happens at about a 1-2 second frequency. It is very annoying, and probably not good for the mechanical parts. I have a theory what's going on - see this diagram:

The main parameter is "EE2NoRegenBat", which is set to 150 volts. Above this point, the regen is not enabled. Below this point, the regen is limited until it gets below the area delimited by the "EE2RegenRamp." The theory is that the pack is below the threshold, and the regen kicks in, but that puts the net voltage abovethe threshold, and the regen cuts off. One way to test this would be to set "EE2NoRegenBat" high enough that it never cuts off, but to adjust the "EE2RegenRamp" such that not too much power is put into the battery when it is well charged.

I've posed this theory to the kind folks at Azure, and I'll wait to hear back from them before I attempt it. In the meantime, I've disabled the regen again (by setting EE2NoRegenBat way low - 100 volts - such that it never engages).

Legal to drive, and 100KM

2007-11-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

I registered the volt914 yesterday. In Colorado, all that is required is:

A VIN verification form (get one filled out at any car dealer)
The original title
Proof of insurance
Driver's license
Normal registration fee

This presumes that you had the car legally registered when it was a gas vehicle. They retain the title, and the state will issue a new one for the new electric-only vehicle it has become.

Some day I'm going to get custom plates, but for now, I just wanted to be legal to drive. One caution - Colorado VIN verification forms have boxes for the type of vehicle - make sure to tell the car dealer that your car is all-electric *before* they fill out the form or the will habitually check the "gas" box.

Also, yesterday, I hit 63 miles on the odometer, which means the car has 100 kilometers on it as an electric. W00T! It still needs tuning (plus some other work - heaters, cosmetics, etc.), but that will have to wait a couple of weeks as my work schedule precludes me from doing much else with it for a while.

Watering Batteries and Transmission Leak

2007-11-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

I took the opportunity today to water the batteries. You want to do this about once a month - certainly you do not want the water level to drop down to the level of the lead plates or it can cause erosion and shorten the battery life. You make sure the batteries are fully charged, then take your jug of distilled water and fill each cell up to just below the filler cap neck. Here's one in progress in the rear compartment:

I discovered that the rearmost cells in the 5 rear batteries are nearly impossible to fill from the middle compartment, so I opened the rear trunk to access those cells:

The frontmost batteries in the rear battery box are also hard to reach, but if you push the decklid open far enough you can get the water in there:

I dropped one of my wingnuts and stuck my head under the car to retrieve it. While down there, I noticed that transmission fluid is dripping down from the motor / transmission mounting point. This is almost certainly a bad transmission mainseal. I did not replace it when I redid the clutch. It looks like I am going to regret that shortcut:

The worst thing about a leak is having to remove the motor & transmission to diagnose and fix it. The second worst thing is that, if it *is* the transmission mainseal, it has almost certainly impregnated the (brand new!) clutch disk with fluid, ruining it. I don't have time to mess with this now - I'll put a drip pan underneath to catch it until I can repair it.

In happier news, I drove to and from work on a test drive today. No problems at all - commuting will be very straightforward with the Volt914.

A Good Day to Drive

2007-11-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

I drove the car quite a lot today since the last post. I probably drove a total of about 15 miles, with the longest drive about 6 miles (I say "about" because I have not yet calibrated the electronic speedo. Tomorrow...). As a first step in deciding how to attack the acceleration parameters, I took a fairly long data dump - here is a chart showing some of the data from 2 minutes of that drive. First thing that jumps out is that the pedal is only pulling the throttle about halfway down. But it's not yet clear whether fixing that (or tweaking a multiplier variable in the controller) will help.

Car is road-worthy

2007-11-10T13:48:00.000-07:00

I did a few miscellaneous things to make the car road-worthy. I adjusted the ride height, tweaked the clutch so I could shift well, and made sure the tires were well-inflated. I then took it for a 5-mile drive, at speeds up to 40MPH. Ran like a charm (acceleration is a little on the sluggish side, but nothing extraordinarily bad - I may be able to tune it up via the computer interface).

For those who were concerned about the noise the motor makes (in the previous video) I made the following video which shows what it *really* sounds like. Enjoy!

It's a car!

2007-11-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

A quick update - Azure Dynamics was kind enough to point out some errors in my procedures, and I updated the controller with the parameters they gave me. And it's a car! Reasonably snappy acceleration and the "grinding / whining" is much lower (it sounds like a Jetson car now :-). I took my wife for a ride around the block. Well, 75% of the way around the block. I took a bump too fast and the controller turned itself off and would not turn on until things cooled down. I'll debug that tomorrow (and will adjust the ride height too).

Here's the very diplomatic message pointing out that I'm an idiot. Did I mention how fantastic Azure tech support has been?

It's Alive!

2007-11-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

Well, almost alive. Very, very slow. See this movie:

I spent the day yesterday disassembling the clutch & flywheel. Nothing was obviously wrong - I tweaked the tightness of the hub adapter set screws - and the hideous sound the motor makes was there even without the flywheel mounted. So, I reassembled it all, making sure all the bolts were torqued according to specs, and got back to tweaking DMOC parameters

The following are what I have tweaked so far


EEXMaxAccelPower = 43000 (was ~73000)
EE2NoRegenBat 100 (was 300)
EE2NoAccelBat 127 (was 360)
EEXNoIgnSwitch = 1 (was 0)

I set EE2NoRegenBat down so low because the regen was coming on all the time (as evidenced by the brake lights coming on). EEXMaxAccelPower had no perceptible affect. And nothing happened until I set EEXNoIgnSwitch to 1 (tells the DMOC it does not need an external "ignition switch" signal) and EE2NoAccelBat to 127 (it thought my batteries were way too low to run).

I suspect there is much tuning ahead of me. As usual, Azure Dynamics has been very helpful. I sent off a complete dump of parameters along with 30 seconds of data capture; we'll see what recommendations they have for tuning.

DMOC returns...

2007-10-24T22:40:00.000-06:00

No pictures, sorry. My DMOC445 returned from its two-week journey to Azure, filled with new firmware. I dropped it in, wired it up, and turned it on. This time, the ccShell 3.0 program talked to it just fine. I set the "EEXNoIgnSwitch" variable to 1, and pressed the throttle. Success! Noise from the controller and noise from the motor. Hmm. And noise from the clutch. A grinding kind of noise. And the wheels don't turn. Something in there needs an adjustment, and I may have to drop the engine/tranny to do it... Stay tuned.

Charger Dash Lights

2007-10-22T23:26:00.001-06:00

I'm working my way through my list while the controller is getting its firmware updated (scroll to the bottom of this post for the list). Tonight, I attached the rear valence and hung the rocker panels (with the screws - I need to get new rivets to finish the job). I also wired up lights from my charger to my dashboard. Remember the Zivan NG3 built-in relay:

Those "Aux2" relays are perfect for driving two panel lights, one that lights when the charger is active, and another that lights when the charge is complete. First, I attached wires to the charger "aux2" outputs:

These wires go to a screw-in terminal block that I installed next to the charger mount, on the driver's side. Also going to this terminal block are the input +12V (to the second-from-bottom left terminal) and the fan +12V control (from the bottom right terminal) - this lets the fans be driven when the charger is going (although TimK points out that hydrogen is still outgassing for several minutes after the charger turns itself off; I'm considering moving the fans to always be on when the system is plugged in):

I then took these wires into the passenger compartment, and used them to drive some lights. The top-left red light now comes on whenever the car is plugged into AC. The red light on the right comes on when the NG3 is charging:

...and when the charge is complete, the green light on the right comes on (the red light on the top left is still on, because the car is still plugged in - exactly as I want it):

I have not yet screwed the gauge surround into the dash, since I still need to wire the heater control.

Fan Power Mod

2007-10-16T19:52:00.000-06:00

Another item off my checklist. I was annoyed that the kit wiring had the battery supporting the fans while charging, and that the fans always ran when the AC outlet was plugged in, even if the charger was not doing anything. So, I fixed it. On Zivan's website, the NG3 documentation shows what the 6 aux contacts do:

Of particular interest for this project are the AUX2 contacts, "C" and "NC" ("normally closed"). I verified with my multimeter that NC stays closed while the charger is actually charging, and then opens when complete (just like the documentation!). It supports 1A output - the fans are 0.13A each - so no fancy relays necessary. I drew up a wiring diagram (TimK was helpful with an early review):

...and then went at it with wire cutters, strippers, and crimpers. I found a small 240V AC -> 12V DC power supply at Fry's which supported 2A out at +12V (more than enough):
I mounted it next to my charger mount. I then cut the charger power cord and inserted a terminal block, where I tapped the AC lines to feed the power supply (and tie-wrapped everything to keep it neat):

Here's a view from the bottom, where you can see the labels on the power supply inputs and outputs:

The ground wire runs to the empty grounding tab on the passenger's headlight bucket:

The +12V out from the transformer runs to the AUX2 "C" connection. And then, you run another red line from the AUX2 "NC" connection...

...to the relay mount, where I previously had removed the wire from the relay to the second-from-right terminal of the fuse block (this terminal feeds the fans through a fuse):

And here is the whole project, all wrapped up, plugged in, and humming:

I verified that this powers the fans while the charger is plugged in and running, and then turns the fans off when the charger reaches 100% complete and idles itself. This means that I can leave the car plugged in pretty much all the time and it will take care of itself (other than watering the batteries :-).

Future uses of the NG3 aux outputs include two panel lights to indicate "charging" and "charge complete".

Tomorrow my controller is scheduled to arrive at Azure for servicing. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Decklid Pins

2007-10-15T22:13:00.001-06:00

As I wait for my prodigal motor controller to return, I'm doing a variety of miscellaneous things. Tonight it was the pins to hold the decklid closed (because of the rear battery box you have to remove the decklid latch). My kit did not come with the promised pins, so I just went down to my local auto parts store and looked in the "bling" section (OK, the "performance" section) and found these pins that looked very much like the pictures in the book:

Here is the driver's side pin installed. Note the angle it sticks out. I could not correct this much without deforming the side "wings" of the decklid:

Because of that angle, I had to enlarge the holes, both in the decklid, as well as in the hood pin kit, so that the pin would pass through unhindered. I used a circular file to enlarge the soft metal at both sides of the hole:

Here is a back view of the same pin, with the pop rivets circled and the hole for the pin to pass through (oval-shaped, for the same reason as above). I used the same rat-tail file to enlarge this hole appropriately:

Here is the passenger's-side decklid pin installed and complete. The pop-rivet at the top of the picture was a real pain - the face of my tool did not fit flush with the head of the rivet. On the other side, this resulted in the rivet bulging out about 3/16 of an inch. So, on this side, I piled some tiny washers against the rivet to keep it in place while the tool expanded the rivet. Turned out well:

And here is the whole thing. Complete for the first time since I dropped the engine!

Bye-bye, controller :-(

2007-10-13T19:49:00.000-06:00

After some back and forth with Azure support, they recommended I send the controller back for a firmware upgrade. So, out it comes, leaving an empty hole in the back of the car:

Although it's not immediately visible, I disconnected the most-negative cable from the battery pack before removing the controller - avoids the possible short circuit of a high-voltage high-amperage power source.

Note the black box on the right of the first picture above - that's the Canev electric heater in my current favored placement of it. I'll run the ducting through the passenger's side heat duct and then into the heating system in the front. It will hopefully pick up warmish air from the controller and heat it further, blowing it into the passenger compartment. Here's a better picture of the proposed heater placement (comments welcome):

The options for mounting the heater are not very good:

In the front - it interferes with the hood closing
In the passenger compartment - probably noisy and easy to kick
In the engine compartment - exposed to the elements, prone to short-circuiting
In the rear trunk with the controller, as shown

Finally, here is the controller, all boxed up and ready for the top to go on. I constructed my own shipping crate out of 3/4 inch plywood and 2x2 wood stringers. I did not trust my very expensive controller to the mercies of a cardboard box. I surrounded it tightly with foam, and squirted spray foam in the corners to further bolster the shock absorption. And the controller itself is enclosed in a very thick black plastic bag to avoid moisture from getting in. Hopefully it arrives safely.

While I wait for it to come home, I've got a few miscellaneous things I'll work on:

Install the heating system
Install a 3-way switch for the regen braking (off, auto, brake pedal controlled)
Hook up a couple of lights in my dash to the Zivan charger outputs, so I can get some idea of its status without opening the hood
Install a very small 12v power supply to run the fans while the charger is going
Upgrade my high-voltage meter from 130V max to a digital voltmeter with 160V max
Install the hold-down bars on the battery boxes
Finish the interior trim (door panels and kneepad)
Install the front and rear valences, and the rocker panel

We'll see how much of this I get done in the two or so weeks the controller is expected to be gone.

Attempted debugging

2007-10-06T19:52:00.001-06:00

In a last-ditch attempt to get the car going for the Homecoming Parade, I stayed up late one more night. I hacked apart a spare RS232 cable, and soldered insulated quick-connects on the end in preparation for hooking it up to the controller:

Here is the cabling, plugged in. This is a real royal pain - you cannot easily see the top three pins due to the position of the controller in the rear trunk. I had to use a flashlight and a mirror to get the pins plugged in correctly:

After much fiddling and cursing, I finally got HyperTerminal to listen to the controller:

Azure has been extremely helpful during this - responding quickly to emails, and sending me files to try. Apparently, my controller is older and has pretty ancient firmware. They recommended using the older ccShell 2.0 with the controller - but it does not seem to work. I wonder if my firmware is even older than they realized. They have offered to upgrade the firmware, but I'll have to send the unit to them to have that done. I'll do it if I have to, but only as a last resort. I did order the official serial cable that plugs into the data port. I anticipate many future debugging sessions...

Since the car was not running, I walked the parade. Not a terrible conclusion - but a little disappointing. However, it was useful to have a deadline so that I would actually get the car basically done (I'm going to change the subheading on my blog to delete the "So far, just destruction, but will chronicle the build in coming weeks" tagline).

I took the rest of the day today to do a variety of miscellaneous things, including installing the hoods, putting the side windows and outside door handles back in, and installing some exhaust fan ducting - I found the smallest flexible heater ducting that I could and compressed it down with the cable clamps. Here it is in place, with the car plugged in and charging:

So, next steps - get the official serial cable from Azure, try one more debugging session, and, if that fails, send the controller back to Azure for a firmware upgrade.

Nearly done - sleep is strictly optional

2007-10-05T07:49:00.001-06:00

Wednesday morning, Oct 3, 2007

Did a couple of miscellaneous things before going to work this morning. I cut a hole in the side of the charger mount to provide a place for the cabling to enter. I later installed a computer cable grommet here to prevent the cables from fraying on the sharp edges:

I also installed the feet on the bottom of the tray. Just like TimK, I found that the feet were not quite tall enough to prevent the charger mounting bolts from protuding. So, I did two things - I ground the bolts down to the smallest possible size, and I added washers to the feet to make them taller. As you can see, no interference issue any more:

Here is the assembly going in. I supported the mounting board with 2x4s so that I could drill & bolt the tray to the mounting board more easily. And that was it for this morning:

Wednesday Night, October 3, 2007

Back at it, I wired up the inlet plug. I did not feel like cutting a hole in my shiny new exterior paint, and I don't plan on installing fog lights ever, so my solution was to use the fog light mount as an access point for the plug. Here is how the wiring goes from the front relay box to the plug (the rubber bumper molding is temporarily pulled back during this process). The cord goes through one of the pre-cut holes in the front of the trunk, and out to a newly drilled hole in the foglight cutout plug:

Here is the plug installed:

Next, I installed the gauges and tested them. As you can see, the green "power on" light is lit, and the gauge lights work. Harder to see is that I have also hooked the speedo up (although I cannot calibrate it accurately until the car is on the road):

I also installed the rear box (drilling holes and bolting it together per the instructions):

And here is a shot of the middle boxes installed. You will note that the charger is installed with the AC cord facing the passenger's side of the car, contrary to the instructions, since I have only so much 10-gauge charger wiring to deal with (you can see it sticking up right in front of the charger - you can also see the wiring grommet and excess silicone adhesive - the tube burst as I was squeezing it so I just put it all on :-)

Next, I "hauled lead" as TimK put it. Here are the batteries in the front box, installed as Tim did:

Here are the batteries in the middle. I originally installed them as TimK did (as shown here) - but had to rotate them 180 degrees - see lower down:

Here are the rear batteries installed. These were by far the most difficult, since it is very difficult to lift a 70-pound battery up high enough (unless you are a bodybuilder). So I used a stepladder to assist the process.

At this point, I was tempted to go to bed (I took the previous picture at 12:51 AM). But my obsession was in full bloom, so I pushed on. Next up - installing the copper interconnects. Like TimK, I had to bend just about every interconnect. I have a different solution to the straight bar, though - I twisted the ends so that the flat bar could then pass under the speed cap:

This was originally a "["-shaped piece - TimK cut his down and drilled it out to make a flat, apparently - but I did not feel like running my Sawzall at 2:30 AM - so I just bent it in this pretty "V" shape:

And here is everything installed in the rear box, except for the fusible link. Note the cable in the lower right - it is attached, but I detached it before installing the links, since the instruction call for that cable to be the last thing installed. Probably because it is the most easily accessible point, and you can install it without touching anything metal - this is high-voltage and high-current, after all - it can kill:

Here are the front & middle battery boxes. Remember the picture of the middle box from before? I was blithely following the instructions (it was 3:00 AM, remember) and cut the cable to go from the middle battery box, when I realized - the post the DC instructions wanted me to connect to was negative, but the post close to that side was positive due to the different batteries. TimK apparently solved that by cutting longer cables. But I had already cut my cable. Evaluating my remaining uncut cable, I realized I did not have enough to cut longer cables for the middle box. So I rotated the batteries 180 degrees so I could use approximately the same instructions as the DC kit (I did cut the cable to the positive middle post 5 inches longer to give room to attach since the 8 volt batteries have a different post layout than the 6 volt batteries from the DC kit):

So, with all the wiring and interconnects in place, I double checked the voltages. 144-volt pack at most-positive and most-negative posts: check (150 volts). +12V input at motor controller when key was turned on: check. I jacked up the back (much harder with 1200 pounds of batteries installed), put the car in neutral, triple-checked the connections, and turned the key on. And...

Nothing. Next up: attempted debugging with a computer.

Front wiring, complete, and a problem

2007-10-03T00:22:00.001-06:00

Tuesday night, October 2, 2007

A very productive evening. I finished up the wiring and installed the front battery box:

Here is a closer look at the wiring:

Problem 1: the bolt for the "L" terminal of my auxilliary battery touches one of the bolts that holds the battery mount onto the battery box. The solution? Screw the mounting bolt in tighter and cover it with electric tape (not shown):

And here is the real problem: there is not enough slack in the cable with the Anderson connector on it to plug into the charger:

It was finding this problem that made me decide it was time for bed. So, off I go, to dream of cutting holes in charger mounts and other such hackery.

Controller Wiring

2007-10-03T00:16:00.001-06:00

Dawn, Tuesday, October 2, 2007

One more day of too little sleep. Hopefully this is almost done... I installed the controller cables. Here is how the cable routing looks in the rear trunk - not the prettiest, but the best I could do with that monster snake of a 3-phase AC cable. To do any better would require cutting the lugs off the AC cables and reinstalling. I'm too lazy to do that today:

Here is how the controller cables hook up inside the control box. If you look carefully, you can see that I have indeed put my blood, sweat, and tears into this project. Well, at least blood. I must have snagged my finger on something sharp:

Finally, here is what the wiring looks like from beneath. Much neater - I used some insulated cable clamps to route things neatly:

Some Front Wiring

2007-10-03T00:11:00.000-06:00

Monday Evening, October 1, 2007

Continuing with the "burning the candle at both ends" theme, I was back at it after work. I completed the wiring in the middle compartment:

Here is the "spaghetti explosion" of wires coming into the front compartment (this will get cleaned up later):

I also assembled all three fan boxes - these prevent hydrogen from building up while the batteries charge:

Drilling New Holes

2007-10-03T00:05:00.000-06:00

Monday Morning, October 1, 2007

After burning the midnight oil, I got up at the crack of dawn and did a little auto work before real work. First, my paint was dry on my rear trunk patch plate:

...so I installed it, with black silicone adhesive/sealant around the perimeter, and 1/4" 20 bolts holding it in:

I also drilled the holes between the gas tank compartment and the front luggage compartment, and installed grommets:

I drilled the hole for the air intake, and installed the vent cover:

I installed the gas tank exhaust outlet (not shown) and the front exhaust outlet (shown here):

And then I showered and went to work.

Gauge Wiring

2007-10-03T00:03:00.001-06:00

Sunday, September 30, 2007

I've been a little remiss in blogging the past few days since I have been staying up all hours to work on the car (I want to drive it in the homecoming parade on Saturday...). On Sunday, I stayed up late and wired my gauges - here is a collage:

The lower right image is what it will look like under normal circumstances (well, not including the tach light).

Miscellaneous Sunday

2007-09-30T23:10:00.000-06:00

Today was a day of miscellaneous things. First, though, a picture of my seats installed (as promised):

I finished up the wiring of the engine compartment relay board and started on the attachment of the high-voltage cabling:

I wired up the fuse panel with the three new wires and neatened up everything with tie-wraps. Also visible in this picture is the 3-in-1 wiring harness I will use to hook up my electronic speedometer:

And, finally, I prepared for installing the main high-current wires to the controller. I was never happy with the holes I had drilled in the trunk floor - the pilot bit of the hole saw ovaled out the pilot hole in the thin sheet metal, resulting in a very crappy hole - so I cut the whole mess out:

And fabricated a plate to cover the hole, with new holes cut using a 2x4 backing to prevent the pilot hole from ovaling out - makes for a much more precise cut. Here is the plate, dry-mounted in place:

I painted the plate, and it will dry overnight. Tomorrow - install it, finish high-current wires, and (hopefully) drill the last 4 holes (front air intake / exhaust outlet and 2 1" holes for cabling).

More Battery Racks

2007-09-29T22:37:00.001-06:00

It may not look like much, but I got my fresh air blower installed. I'm going to add a Canev Electric Heater to the whole system eventually - but I'm going to get this beast on the road first. This represents probably 3-4 hours of work - possibly the hardest single item to finish on the whole darn car:

I also installed the front battery box rack:

And the middle battery box rack:

Not shown here (maybe I'll get some photos up later) but I got the seat surround, seats, emergency brake, and heater controls installed too. It's getting so close I can almost taste it. Next up, finishing the wiring (hopefully all in one day tomorrow...)

Working on the Seats

2007-09-24T10:45:00.001-06:00

The joy of refurbishing the car at the same time as doing the conversion is discovering new issues that need fixing. The seats are one of those. One of the things I accomplished this weekend was to refurbish the seat mounting hardware (involved scraping old rusty paint off and repainting with POR-15):

and attaching my Camp 914 seat handles that I ordered a year ago:

Next up: finishing the backpad area - e-brake, dome light, seatbelts - and then installing the seats.

Stringing Cable

2007-09-23T20:10:00.001-06:00

Another kind of "miscellaneous" weekend. I got the pedal cluster all hooked up (brake switch, clutch & throttle cables, floorboards, etc.). I tweaked a few other things. But the most photogenic thing was installing the main cable bundle. I started by following the instructions and trying to feed a heavy gauge wire through the heater tube. This did not work very well, so I pulled out my handy "plumber's friend" to do the initial stringing. Worked like a dream. Here's what my "friend" looks like:

Once that was through, I attached my pilot wire to the other end and pulled it out into the engine compartment:

I then hooked the pilot wire to the cable bundle and started pulling that through. Although the instructions recommend two people, I did not have much trouble doing it all by myself. The basic idea is to put a loop up above the feeding end so that the bundle is under compression (which makes it easier to pull from the other end):

You pull through from the other end, pulling about 6-8 inches at a time (and remembering to cut the masking tape off as appropriate as you pull it through). Here's the end of the cable bundle peeking through (the blue masking tape at the end covers the pilot wire which goes through the cable lug on the longest 2/0 cable):

And here is all the cable looped around in the engine compartment:

I also refurbished the seat mounts, but I'll wait until tomorrow morning to post pix of that (the paint needs to dry first :-)

Front Relays + Cables

2007-09-16T19:50:00.000-06:00

This weekend, I was at a hotel in Denver supervising my youngest daughter, who was at an anime convention (Nan Desu Kan, for the curious). Although I was away from my car, I brought tools and materials to get a couple of things done.

First, I wired up the front relay board:

Second, I assembled the main car kit wiring harness. This involves measuring 2/0 cable:

Stripping the ends to prepare for the cable lugs:

Crimping the lug ends on and heatshrink-wrapping them (I used the hotel bathroom blow drier for this, first time I've ever found a use for them :-)

And then, properly positioning and wrapping the whole bundle - main positive and negative 2/0 cables, 8-in-1 wiring harness, and 10-gauge recharger wires:

On the lower left, you can see the side that goes into the engine compartment. This is taped up to the extreme to allow for easier pulling through the heater tube.

Silver 9-14

2007-09-14T14:56:00.001-06:00

In honor of 9-14 day 2007, here is a picture of what it currently looks like - very, very close to being finished (although there is still some major wiring work to do for the electrics, and the hoods are just sitting there, not really attached):

Just as a reminder - here is what it looked like before all this work - 2 years ago this month:

Cables & Speedo Hookup

2007-09-08T20:43:00.000-06:00

I did a fair amount of little things today, but not much picture- or blog-worthy. I did thread my clutch and throttle cables, as well as my speedo sensor wires. Here are the cables coming out of the rear firewall (before I permanently attached the speedo sender and wiring):

And here is a very bad, blurry picture of the final speedo sender hookup - approximately the same location as above, but screwed into the firewall. The black, red, and white wires from the speedo sender hook up to the brown, green, and yellow wires, respectively, in the 3-in-1 wiring harness I found at some auto parts store. There is a terminal block in between to keep everything nice and neat:

Shifter Rod

2007-09-07T22:29:00.001-06:00

I also installed the shifter rod today. I got a variety of bits-n-pieces from Pelican Parts to refurbish it, while I was at it:

Due to extreme laziness on my part, I did not end up using the Shift Coupler Bushings (replacing the old ones involves driving a pin out of the rear shifter rod). Here are the original parts from the car:

First order of business was to remove the old firewall shifter bushing and install the new one. It was not as hard as I expected - popped right in given the proper leverage with a screwdriver. Next is to install the front shifter rod. I found, to my dismay, that you absolutely cannot install the front shifter rod with the engine mounting bar in place. The hole in the bar is offset enough so that pushing the front rod through it causes it to hang up on various things inside the tunnel, and you certainly cannot insert it from the front, or above or below the bar. So, I lowered the engine an inch or two and inserted the bar, then put the engine back in.

Once you get the rod in, make sure it is properly oriented. There is a dimple on the rod that the cone set screw will match up with -this dimple has to be pointing directly down for the rear shift rod to mate properly with it:

Once you have this in place, and the rear rod nicely attached with the cone set screw, you can insert the front rod into the shift lever. Tighten down the set screw, or it will just fall out again:

Finally, put the transmission in neutral - this is what that looks like. You will know if it is actually in neutral if, when you spin one rear wheel, the other wheel stays still. If instead the other wheel spins the opposite direction, you know it's not really in neutral:

I popped on the new ball cup shift bushing and the new rear shift rod bushing, and inserted the rear rod and tightened the cone set screw. Note the rear cover dangling from the rear rod - don't forget this, or you will have to disassemble it all again to get the cover on:

Last step was to attach the boot to the firewall. I found it was easiest to attach it at the bottom first (near where the emergency brake cable is), and then tug it on over the rest of the ring:

Just for fun, here are the old bushings I removed:

Next up: the clutch and throttle cables, and wiring for the new electronic speedometer - and then I'm done with the engine compartment!

Rear Battery Box

2007-09-07T22:25:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned before, the torsion bars interfere with the rear battery box, as shown here (note how the bars cut across the corner of the battery mount, as seen from below):

So, I removed them. The rear shock kit from Camp 914 is on order. With the torsion bars removed, everything fits pretty nicely (after a little bit of sheet metal bending on the engine compartment / rear trunk wall) - note how well the decklid fits:

Axles Attached

2007-09-03T19:38:00.001-06:00

Today was a day for yard work (I've been very obsessed with the car, as you might imagine, so for her birthday, my wife wanted a family "rock party" involving real rocks). But yesterday, I managed a little work. I attached my axles / CV joints:

I like that picture because it sums up the weekend's work pretty nicely: you can see the rear battery rack, a corner of the potbox, the new neoprene rubber engine mounts, and the CV joint (they will never again drop on my head unexpectedly!). As part of the CV joint process, I cleaned all the grease out of both of them and repacked them. When I got the grease out of the passenger's side, to my horror, I found that it had no retaining ring (circlip):

I drove at least 500 miles like that, and the previous owner possibly more. I attempted to remove the CV joint to replace the boot and put a new retaining ring in, but it's clear that the whole axle will have to come out. Which I did not feel like doing. So, as soon as the car is roadworthy, I will take it to my local Porsche repair shop and have them replace both boots, and repack both CV joints.

Rear Rack Installed

2007-09-01T21:16:00.001-06:00

Today was a busy day for the engine compartment. In addition to the pot box, I mounted the rear racks. This was much more involved than one might think. If you remember, when I test fit the rack, there was interference between the rack and the rear suspension console:

I debated for days about what to do - hammer in the console? That would weaken it, introduce stress fractures, and possibly leave me with a non-functional car. Ignore it? A non-level rack would lead to non-level boxes, which might lead to battery acid spills. I ultimately decided to grind away a sliver from each side of the rack. The metal is thick enough that I would not need to fully penetrate it, just "thin" it a bit, and it should not reduce its strength too much.

Based on the test fit, I marked my first guess at how much to grind. I went conservative, because it's easy to grind more, but hard to ungrind:

And here is my first test grind (the other side looks substantially the same):

As I suspected, I did not grind off enough the first time - it still interferes:

So I ground more off based on my observation of the remaining interference (that dark spot in the middle is not penetration, it's just oxidation from the heat of grinding):

This time, it fit like a charm. Snugged right in against the console, and did not fully penetrate the rack. Everybody should have an angle grinder, it's possibly the most fun tool in the world. Until you grind into your leg, that is...

I painted it black to match (and to prevent rust):

As you can see, it is now level left-to-right:

And level front-to-back:

Finally, there are 11 15/16 inches of depth now (compared to 11 5/16 before - a gain of 5/8 inch, which is substantial):

There is one more problem to solve. All this fitting and grinding etc. has been done with the motor mounts removed. In its "final" position, there is about 3/4 inch clearance between the motor and the rack:

However, the standard motor mounts add about twice that, nearly 1 1/2 inch:

I dissected one of the mounts (in hopes that I could just grind out the excess 3/4 inch of rubber) but found that the bolt does not go all the way through. So, it's off to the hardware store, where I got 6 neoprene washers (3 for each side) and 2 steel fender washers, along with 2 M8 100mm threaded rods, to build a new motor mount - probably not nearly as good at vibration damping as the old ones, but a whole lot better than nothing:

Solve one problem, create a new one, I always say. With the new washers in, the bolts on the motor-to-transmission housing interfere ever so slightly. So, back to the grinders. Here is the area that needs to be ground down (not as big as the suspension console interference):

And here is the final grind, all painted pretty (and, of course, more immune to rust):

As you can see, there is now adequate clearance between the bolt heads and the battery rack:

After much drilling, ratcheting, banging my head on things, hammering, cursing, etc., I got the rear posts installed as well as the front mounting points. Here is everything connected and tightened down:

Here is the final position of the rack above the motor (it's hard to see, but the lip of the transmission adaptor/bell housing is actually higher than the rack):

And here is the view from inside the cabin:

I can put the seats back in now, I think.

I also test-fit the rear battery box, and I now find that the torsion bar for the trunk hinge interferes with the battery box. I really wanted to go with Camp 914 hydraulic lifters, now I have a good excuse (I hate those torsion bars...). But that is work for another day.

Pot Box

2007-09-01T21:12:00.001-06:00

'Nuff said. Well, maybe - one note for other converters - make sure to put the top two holes as high as you can or you will have the same problem I did with interference from the lower bulkhead in the cabin (I had to drill holes in *that* to make room for the bolt heads...)

Testing Rear Rack Placement

2007-08-26T09:58:00.001-06:00

Some email exchanges with Tim at 914ev revealed a concern with motor placement and mounting the rear racks. Specifically, I have installed my motor with the standard rubber mounting equipment (see this image). Tim said that there is a possibility that this will interfere with the rack installation, so I decided to try it out. First, I dropped the rack in:

It interferes with the suspension console, so it will not go any lower at this point:

More significantly, it interferes with the motor / transmission mounting interface - this means it cannot move any farther back (and, in fact, the rack will rub against the motor if it is this far back). I am unable to make the rack level because of this interference (because I can't move it any farther back - the slope of the rear firewall prevents me from raising the front of the rack without moving it back):

As additional evidence, I used a square to measure the depth of the rack from the highest point of the divider between the trunk and engine compartment - 11 5/16 inches:

Unfortunately, this is *exactly* the height of the box. This means, when the box top is added and the hold-down brackets are attached, the engine compartment cover will not close completely:

So, between the potential for friction / rubbing / etc. and the engine compartment cover not closing, I need to rethink the rubber mounting. I am reluctant to remove them. I'm considering instead dropping the engine mounting bar about an inch with steel or brass spacers. This would require a longer bolt, of course - not a big deal.

Rear Wiring, II

2007-08-18T22:00:00.000-06:00

Today was a day for rear wiring. First, I prepared my rear relay board - I placed it in the engine compartment and decided where the best place to put mounting holes and cable ties. The mounting holes are circled in red, and the cable ties are circled in green.

I started with the upper mounting hole. I center-punched its location, inserted a RivNut (shown below), and then attached it. Once I had it moderately secure, I center-punched the other three holes and inserted RivNuts and inserted the other three screws.

Like Tim (at 914ev) I don't have a brake light wire in my relay board wiring harness, so I spliced a wire in. I peeled back the rubber coating, inserted a male and female connector, and then put a piggyback connector on, leaving a "Y" that gives me an extension (I used yellow wire and added black lines to give a conceptual "black+yellow" wire):

I also mounted the shunt (close but not exactly where specified), attached the former relay board (just like Tim, I used one of the red wires from that harness rather than extend a new one from the battery cables), and I cut the last corner from the relay board, as it is not needed and just in the way.

Here is the final product - all done except for:

Pot box wiring
Primary-to-secondary ignition interlock connection
8-in-1 wiring harness (need to thread it thru the heater hose first)

One final note, after attaching the brake light wire, I taped the whole harness up again and taped the wire against it to prevent it from snagging on anything.

Rear Wiring, I

2007-08-17T22:53:00.001-06:00

Past couple of days have been more brain-work than finger-work, but I did do some real work today. I did a test wiring of my rear wiring board. First, I diagrammed where all the wires should go (see this PDF). Next, I inserted the DMOC wiring harness into its flexguard, crimped terminals on the ends of its wires (as well as the 8-in-1 wiring harness), and test-fit it all together (the 8-in-1 at least will have to come off again before it gets attached permanently):

Still need to wire the potbox on as well as the wires from the original Porsche harness.

Home for Wayward Relays, II

2007-08-14T08:28:00.001-06:00

After reading over the instructions again, I came to really like the idea of a relay mounting board for my rear relays and terminal blocks. So, I procured a piece of 1/4 inch polyethylene (basically, cutting board material) from a local supplier and cut it into this shape:

The exact dimensions are not terribly important, but cutting the corners off is, since various bumps, protrusions, etc. in the rear compartment make it difficult to fit a 10 by 10 square piece of anything.

Here it is with the terminal blocks and relay box installed:

And here is the whole assembly placed (but not yet mounted) in the engine compartment:

Although it looks like almost no components on this board connect to each other, it is still worthwhile for ease of mounting and visibility.

Windshield Trim

2007-08-13T20:55:00.000-06:00

I documented the whole gory process over at 914world.com. Here's what the final product looks like.

Ross's Home for Wayward Relays

2007-08-11T21:03:00.001-06:00

The AC kit instructions say, "Install all Relay with the terminals pointing DOWN to prevent condensation from seeping into the Relays at the terminals." This, I thought, was a good idea. Even better would be to put the engine compartment relays (the only ones likely to be exposed to substantial moisture) inside a waterproof container.

This is the container I found at Home Depot. I cut out the four internal supports that I did not need, to give me more room to work. Also, I cut a slot on the internal support at top left, because one of the relays needs to have its tab put there to give me enough room to work when I wire it.

Here's the box with the relays in place. The neutral start relay is the big relay at top left. The secondary charger interlock relay is the smaller one at the bottom. The regen relay is the one at the top-right (this relay turns the brake lights on when the regen function is active. Tim has changed the wiring here somewhat to instead activate regen when the brake is pressed. I'm starting with the original and will adjust as needed).

And here is the box in its approximate final location, the driver's side of the engine compartment (note the wires coming from the harness where the engine relay board used to be). Also, note that all the relay terminals do, in fact, point roughly down, just in case any condensation makes its way inside the box.

Miscellany

2007-08-11T20:53:00.000-06:00

Today was a day for miscellaneous things. First, I got the gauge cluster all put together (but not yet wired). The ammeter and voltmeter from EA are at the leftmost and left-top; I have my own 10-18 voltmeter that I had lying around that I put at left-bottom. That's the original tach; the speedo is a new all-electronic VDO that matches nicely. I also actually screwed the dashboard in place (previously it was using gravity to keep it there).

I did some more work in the rear trunk. First, I verified that I have the speed controller integrated in the cabling, unlike the rather bulky box Tim has (the wide part of the cable heatshrunk in the middle contains the speed controller). Second, I drilled the holes for the DC battery wiring to enter. And finally, I fabricated a speedo converter cable from the blade-style that the transmission supplies to the square end that the digital speedo sender accepts. That's the end of the cable peeking in at lower right.

Finally, I got the windshield wiper motor and main blower ductwork installed. This was much tricker than expected - it probably took 2 hours to get everything lined up and tightened down. What a pain...

For future reference, here is the correct wiring on my 1975 windshield wiper motor. Black/blue at the top, green/black to the left, red to the right, purple to the bottom, and the brown ground at the far top right.

A Visit to EA

2007-08-08T21:29:00.000-06:00

My job takes me to Santa Clara, California on a regular basis, so I have the luxury of being able to set up appointments to go up to Bonny Doon and visit Shari and Mike at Electro Automotive, and pick up a few more parts that were not included in my shipments. I did so this week and got what I think are about the last parts I need:

Left-to-right, top-to-bottom they are: the charger mount, the charger tray, the 8-in-1 wiring harness, one of 3 fans, 3 fan boxes, the last 2 DMOC controller feet, and the relay mount.

This will go a long way to helping me get this beast done this month. Mike and Shari were friendly as usual, but I did not stay and talk too long, since all of us are plenty busy. But it's a win-win to do this, since they save the postage, and I get the parts sooner.

Windshield and head/parking/marker lights

2007-08-05T23:12:00.000-06:00

Life and work have conspired to give me less time than I need to make good progress on the reassembly. However, I managed to find about 8 hours this weekend to install the windshield and to (finally!) complete the headlight install - all the electrical and mechanical bits-n-pieces are complete. Here it is with the lights down...

...and now, with them up:

Some notes and clues. First, buy lots of extra fuses - you are likely to touch a hot lead to ground at least once while your playing with things. Nothing quite like the "snap" of a fuse going... Second, installing the little booties on the marker/parking light wires is a royal pain. However, it is much easier if you lubricate the inside of the booty first. Dish soap is recommended. Finally, getting the position of the headlight raising mechanism right is very finicky. There is a fair amount of play possible in the 3 hex cap screws on the inside and the 2 inside the wheel well - you can move either side of the assembly something like 1/2 an inch between its farthest forward and farthest back positions. It is possible to be too far forward (the light will catch on the "eyebrow") or too far back (the metal tab on the mounting mechanism will hit the light bucket and prevent proper operation).

Oh, and be very careful - these motors pack a lot of torque. If you try to raise them manually (with the hand screw) without removing the relay, the motor will automagically engage, raise, and lower. If you finger is in the wrong place, it will get crushed. Luckily, I avoided this fate.

One more note: I posted the details of my windshield install over at 914world:

1975 Color Wiring Diagram

2007-07-25T15:34:00.001-06:00

Since I'm on vacation, 750 miles away from my car, I spent today colorizing my scans of the Haynes 1975 current flow diagram. I'm glad I did -it turns out it is different than the 1974 (especially the headlight wiring). I could never find color 1975 diagrams on the web anywhere, so these are presented under copyright "fair use" terms - the originals are still copyright by Haynes, of course. The images are somewhat useless without the original manual, since I did not upload the page with the key.

I may replace these with further cleaned-up PDFs some day. But I'm not in a hurry :-)

Edit: After McMark at 914world.com kindly stitched these together, I found a bug in pages 3 and 4. So, these are the new pages 3 and 4.

Interior trim, phase I

2007-07-21T12:19:00.000-06:00

Before I can do final gauge/interior wiring, I want to get the interior put somewhat back together. So, here is the dash, dry-fitted (not bolted in yet):The AC kit has 3 new gauges to install: a 144V voltmeter, a 12V voltmeter, and an ammeter. The instructions want you to kludge them on to a 3-gauge accessory gauge panel. However, Auto Atlanta has a prefab aluminum gauge surround that will work perfectly. Here are all but the speedo dry-fitted:
I'm going to install an electronic speedo (3 3/8 inch) in the hole in the right (I had an electronic speedo planned from the beginning - I hate the idea of cables spinning inside my cabin). There are plenty of holes in the surround for various indicator lights that are no longer present since the gas gauge and original speedo are gone (generator, battery, high beams, etc.)

I also did some more work on the rollbar. I installed the rear window, and the pad (the original pad is in pretty bad shape. I'm debating if I care enough to pay $345 to have it recovered).
After I got this picture on the computer, I said, "Huh! What's that yellow blotch in the lower left corner? It's not on the car..." Zooming in reveals:
...a hornet! During this whole car saga, there has been a parallel saga of my battle with the hornets (for one thing, they seem to be attracted to the whine of electric power tools, as well as the various chemical smells of stripper and paint). A "fun" momento of that battle...

Rollbar Trim Repair

2007-07-21T12:14:00.001-06:00

Taking a break from electrical work, I attacked the rollbar trim. The PO had done a fairly poor rattle-can black paintjob on it (he did not even remove the original chrome!) Here is halfway through the sanding process:After sanding some more, I discovered more bondo - the PO really loved bondo - on the right trim piece:
After attacking it with a heat gun and more sanding, this is what was revealed. Structural bondo, gotta love it:

I debated painting it in chrome or redoing the black. Ultimately, I chose black. I redid the main rollbar trim piece as well. Here it is, all put together:

Only You Can Prevent Porsche Fires

2007-07-21T12:07:00.001-06:00

I've been remiss in blogging, but have done some more work. If you recall, when I was last discussing the wiring harness, I mentioned that I had a smoker. Turns out that the green/black headlight motor wire had contacted the body, resulting in a direct (unfused!) 12V connection which, left a few minutes, started a minor fire. I stripped the wire in question from the harness (inspecting the remaining wires to make sure they were not damaged). Here is what I found:Further evidence that smoking (wires) can be hazardous to your health:
In related news, I briefly had my turn signals working. However, after plugging in my gauges, the turn signal fuse started blowing when I turned the key. After debugging through it, and with the use of my handy-dandy multimeter, I was able to isolate it to this wire to the tach (which I thought had been attached here - obviously incorrect):

Unplugging this wire removed the turn signal fuse short. The reason it shorted is that the turn signal light is grounded to the tach, and the wire in my hand is 12V hot-when-ignition-is-on. And therefore 12V went directly through the turn signals, causing the fuse to pop.

144V pack is charging

2007-07-16T21:42:00.000-06:00

Following TimK's lead (here) I hooked my batteries up to the charger. This involved:

Installing a NEMA 6-20P plug on the end of the charger cord to match my 240V extension cord I had previously built
Building custom 12-gauge interconnects with a crimper and round lug ends
Hanging the charger in the preferred vertical orientation
Wiring it all up and plugging it in.

And here is the completed contraption. The 1/4 inch plywood at the left is ready to be placed on top of the batteries to prevent things from falling onto the terminals and shorting them out (look at all those paint cans just waiting to fall :-)

Wiring Harness

2007-07-16T21:34:00.001-06:00

I got a few things done this weekend. First, I rebuilt the main wiring harness. This involved:

Stripping the old electrical tape off (not too hard - it fell apart)
Cutting out the seat belt detection circuitry (a pain in the rear to thread thru the tunnel) and rewiring it to be unnecessary
Putting Flexguard and new electrical tape on
Installing a JWest fuse panel upgrade

Here it is all shiny and new again - and a whole lot less than $2500 or so for a real new one.

Next, I installed the harness from the dash back, then forward. This requires some careful fiddling to make sure you don't tie a knot in the harness as you thread. But I got it installed.View of the harness in the engine compartment

And here's the rat's nest where the dash will be. The blue tape has labels for just about everything.

Today, I even hooked up a 12V battery to the mess and started testing connections. The hazard/turn signals were pretty easy. The lights are harder - I even smoked a wire! Be careful of those high-amp circuits... why the breaker did not go is a topic for another investigation. I think the wire smoked because the bare end short-circuited against the chassis. The wire in question is one of the headlight motor wires - fortunately, easily accessible (I stripped the shrink-wrap off that portion of the cable and will replace the entire wire in question).

Motor Installed!

2007-07-08T22:10:00.001-06:00

View from inside the cabin, through the rear window
View from under the car, driver's rear.

I took the opportunity to replace the transmission mounts with new mounts from Pelican Parts. I also installed new engine mounts (the rubber things on top of the engine bar) and engine bar bolts.

I did have a little trouble getting the engine bar aligned. What I finally figured out was to support the motor with a 2x4 so no weight is on the bar. With the motor supported, you can loosen the bolts mounting the plate to the motor, and adjust its position.

And, I used the Pelican Parts "lower the car onto the engine" technique again, just as I did for the original engine drop. Seems much safer to me than raising the whole powertrain up on a transmission jack.

Controller Mount

2007-07-08T22:08:00.000-06:00

I got the controller mount installed today, so my rear trunk no longer has a giant hole in it (it has smaller holes, still, but that's another story). It definitely takes two people to torque down the bolts; thanks to my wife, Jill, for her assistance!

Back From Paint!

2007-07-06T21:12:00.001-06:00

And a nice paint job it is, too. Now, to reassemble it...

Batteries!

2007-07-05T15:53:00.000-06:00

The batteries showed up today. I'll store them in the battery boxes to reduce the risk of acid leakage while I work on the car (also, so I can put the tops on to prevent people from accidentally dropping metal objects in and shorting them out!). The little black battery is my 12V accessory battery, that I purchased locally.

Following the recommendation of Electro Automotive, I ordered from Jim Ramos at American Battery. Their service was excellent, and the batteries are exactly as requested. Their address:

Jim Ramos
American Battery
3488 Arden Road
Hayward, CA 94545
Phone 510-259-1150
Fax 510-259-1160
Email americanbatterycompany@msn.com

Motor + Transmission

2007-07-03T23:01:00.001-06:00

The second task I undertook today was to mate the motor to the transmission. First, I securely clamped the motor to my workbench (makes torquing the clutch bolts to 80 ft-lbs much easier!)
After much trial and error, I got the flywheel securely mounted at the proper distance from the mounting plate (first try was too far out; second try was too far in; third try was just right). You can see the felt washer peeking out from inside the crush ring - it gets really crushed...
Clutch pilot tool inserted and clutch mounted
Pressure plate mounted and secured. After this, you remove the pilot tool.
I also rebuilt the throwout bearing assembly. Not pictured, I replaced the throwout clips, the ball socket, cleaned everything thoroughly, and then reassembled (appropriately greased, of course!)
I then put both transmission and motor on rolling dollys. First try: engine was way too low:

So, I shimmed the motor up. It *almost* matched, but you could tell something was not aligned internally. I peeked in through the little "windows" (and shined a flashlight in through th starter motor hole) and this is what I saw: the pilot bearing was just a little low, but low enough that it did not mesh. So, more shimming ahead:After getting it all aligned, here it is (no bolts attached yet):And the final bolts in place (the three bolts that don't go thru the starter blockoff are about 16mm too long - they are 100mm and standard parts are 84mm. 100mm is all I could find at the local HW store - I lost my originals somewhere... I may cut off the excess length of these before I mount it in the car. I also transferred it to a single dolly, in anticipation of getting the car back and mounting the assembly inside the car.
So, summary:

Make sure you have the motor firmly clamped
If you're rebuilding your throwout bearing, use a Dremel-type device to carefully shave away the ball joint bearing surface.
Have two furniture dollys and lots of spare scrap lumber (for shims) for the final assembly
You can look in through the little trapezoidal "windows" as you assemble to check for alignment of the main transmission shaft and the bearing
Don't lose your original bolts. Ahem.

Motor Washer Upgrade

2007-07-03T22:50:00.000-06:00

Today was a busy day. First, I decided to upgrade the washers on my motor with the new ones that Solectria kindly supplied. Here is a picture of the old washer (the teflon-looking deformed thing surrounding the bolt).
Here is the washer, removed. Solectria says that these can fail, leading to bolt loosening and motor failure.
These are the new washers - tradtional flat and split ring washers. Nothing special.
Torquing it down. Note that there is an error in Solectria's documentation. It says to tighten the bolds to 6.xxx N-m or 50 foot-pounds. One or the other is off by a factor of 10, since there are roughly 1.36 N-m per ft-lb. I am certain they meant 5 foot-pounds since the bolts did not seem to want to go about about 25 foot-pounds. I set mine for 5, like this:

Out for paint!

2007-06-25T23:26:00.000-06:00

This morning, I put the car on a flatbed tow truck and sent it away for final painting. Should be done in about a week! In the meantime, my batteries should be delivered, and the garage cleaned and ready for reassembly...

Pedal Cluster Rebuild

2007-06-25T23:16:00.000-06:00

This weekend, in a spare moment :-) (well, a spare 3 hours or so) I decided it was time to attack the pedal cluster. When last seen, it was quietly rusting, as can (kind of) be seen here:

Following the instructions at Pelican Parts - and equipped with the rebuild kit - I disassembled the cluster (note: removing the pin that holds the whole thing together was every bit as hard as the article implied - I ended up using my air hammer with a round chisel attachment to drive it out). When I got the old bearings out, here is what I found:
I then cleaned the cluster of old paint and rust (soap and water, along with elbow grease and a wire brush on my angle grinder). A liberal application of black POR-15 on the non-bearing surfaces followed, resulting in:
The new bronze bushings went in very easily - again, the hardest part was installing the new brake pedal retention pin (I used a hammer against a sledgehammer backing ultimately...). The final result: a pedal cluster that should last another 30 years.

Priming

2007-06-24T22:05:00.001-06:00

May/June 2006

I had visions of doing the complete paint job myself, so I experimented with a temporary "paint booth" - a pop-up canvas shelter to keep bugs, leaves, etc. off the paint. I primed in this booth to see how it goes. I found out two things:

1. Painting is harder than you would imagine
2. I'm not very good at it

Here's the paint booth, with the car inside:

Here I am, fully garbed, spraying primer on the interior (in this case, over the POR-15, but the rest of the metal-etching primer was sprayed on bare metal):

And, finally, the result: ready for painting. I have an appointment for June 25 to take it in. While it's in, I'm going to build cables, get the garage wiring in shape, finish mounting the motor to the transmission (including a clutch rebuild), and other miscellaneous things. I hope to bedoing the major parts of EV assembly the week of Fourth of July.

Interior Painting

2007-06-24T21:56:00.001-06:00

March/April, 2006

A long winter (blizzards, extended freezing temperatures, and no car progress). But finally spring showed up with extended periouds of 60-degree-plus weather.

After some research, I decided I wanted to POR-15 the whole interior. I never want to mess with rust again... so I did the full prep / rust inhibit / paint cycle. Turned out pretty nice, IMO.
Also, remember the "hell-hole"? Here it is, welded, seam-sealed, POR-15 primed, and sprayed silver (not quite the same silver that the exterior will be, but, oh, well):

Welding

2007-06-24T21:48:00.001-06:00

October, 2006

Just an example of my (pitiful) welding skills. After stripping, I found a massive bondo plug in the right rear tail light area. After much grinding and prepping, I was left with this clean hole (see the tire!)

I cut and fit a patch, and used various sizes of Vice-Grips to hold it in place for welding
After welding, I ground the welds down flush to make it easier for final Bondo when the time comes:

Sand Blasting

2007-06-24T21:40:00.000-06:00

October 2006.

One-year anniversary of ordering the AC kit. But I'm still playing with body work. The gross stripping is complete, but there are nooks and crannies that I can't reach well with my scraper, sander, or angle grinder. So, I hooked a home sand blaster up to my compressor and went to town:

volt914 - Electric Porsche 914

500 miles at 216V

Out with the old, in with the new

Of Mice and Men

Misc Saturday

On the road again!

Pushing toward completion

Batteries Interconnected

Revised Front Wiring

Battery Interconnects

Warmers Installed

Battery Warmers

Been on hiatus

Miscellany

Relay and Regulator Boxes

Rear Batteries In

Rudman Mk2 Disconnects

Boxes Drilled

Battery box mods

Out with the bad batteries...

Meet the new boss...

Preliminary 216V Front Wiring

Time to upgrade the batteries

Retrospective: design decisions

Sigh - more leaky batteries

Electric New Year

Battery Acid Damage

Measuring Power - III

Measuring Power - II

Measuring Power

Replacing the Transmission Main Seal

A Parade - Finally!

Fixing suspension squeaks

Video Tour of the Volt914

A *Five* Speed Transmission

A *Two* Car Garage

Heater Installed

Legal to Drive, Part 2, and 12V hack

Brief Maintenance Note

Tweaking Regen Braking

Volt914 - A Summary

150 miles, and some tuning

Legal to drive, and 100KM

Watering Batteries and Transmission Leak

A Good Day to Drive

Car is road-worthy

It's a car!

It's Alive!

DMOC returns...

Charger Dash Lights

Fan Power Mod

Decklid Pins

Bye-bye, controller :-(

Attempted debugging

Nearly done - sleep is strictly optional

Front wiring, complete, and a problem

Controller Wiring

Some Front Wiring

Drilling New Holes

Gauge Wiring

Miscellaneous Sunday

More Battery Racks

Working on the Seats

Stringing Cable

Front Relays + Cables

Silver 9-14

Cables & Speedo Hookup

Shifter Rod

Rear Battery Box

Axles Attached

Rear Rack Installed

Pot Box

Testing Rear Rack Placement

Rear Wiring, II

Rear Wiring, I

Home for Wayward Relays, II

Windshield Trim

Ross's Home for Wayward Relays

Miscellany

A Visit to EA

A Five Speed Transmission

A Two Car Garage