The Plan, Civic EV 2.0

I am developing a plan for installing the newly acquired EV parts. For the time being, I am going to continue to use the motor I have and get that blower installed, which I now have all the parts for. I have done some range tests, and will do some more to gather data.

My plan is to install the new motor, but in order to do that I need new adapter plates and motor mounts. I am going to put the motor on the bench and clean it up, adjust the brush timing and get the commutator cleaned up. It has been sitting for 7 years, but spins up just fine. This is the list of things I want to do:

• Remove Transmission and have new plates made for the FB1-4001A
• Upgrade to a stiffer Coilover system
• Rewire EV with the better 2/0 gauge cable and proper lugs
• Mount PakTrakr and AMP meter to dash
• Build metal frame for the battery racks
• Rebuild front control tray
  
• Setup K&W BC-20 Charger
  

This is pretty much Civic EV 2.0 because of all the upgrades/changes.

I am saving up the money required for the new plates, and hope to have the new Coilovers ordered soon. My plan is to get the motor/transmission to the machine shop, and while they work on it I will work on the rest of the EV. My time is limited due to classes, and I spent two weeks on the plates before, probably 40+ hours of cutting work, and just don't have the time. Everything else is small, probably a weekend's woth of work and a few people already have shown an interest in helping out.

A Nice Little Joy Ride

So I got the plates machined on Friday! It was great, I went over there and planned on leaving it for the day, but one of the machinists was free and did it for me right on the spot. Took about 20 minutes and they didn't even charge me! I had each of the bolt each counter-sunk 1/8 inch and now the ticking sound is completely gone. There are excellent people at the R.J. Moran Machine Shop and I will be doing business with them again, I know that.



I also decided to take a pic of my control board before I get to neatening it up. I was going to work on the box this weekend, but I decided to put the motor back in and drive it around.









Now for the goods. I reinstalled the motor and control board back into the EV and I adjusted the low voltage setting on the controller and drove it. I left the controller at 75% maximum output, and man was it sluggish. It drove like an oversized golf cart and i could barely hit 10 MPH up a mild hill and I could get to 15-20 MPH with a slight down hill and a long runway of road. So here is my video of that test:

Then I had a few things to do, came back and decided to set the controller to 100%. What a difference! Not only was is much peppier, I was hitting 15 MPH easily and got up to 25 MPH before slamming on the brakes to avoid the little kiddies playing in the road. Sadly, I didn't get a video of this run. I have clocked about 2+ miles so far in my EV!!!

The performance seems rather low at the moment because of four factors.
1) I am only running at 60 volts, and the torque for my motor is rather low at this voltage. So essentially it is an oversized golf car.
2) I had sticky front brakes that need some attentions and this is definitely created more drag. 3) My PB5 throttle control doesn't go all the way because of the limited throttle cable, and the actual design of the PB5. I haven't measure how far it actually go, but I think I only get 75-85% of total throttle output.
4) the tires are really low on pressure. I mean really LOW, and this is adding unwanted rolling resistance.

So on Monday I plan on pumping up the tires and giving it another go and see if there are any performance increases.

Launch Prep

I have everything installed and I am ready to test this thing out! No, the car's not done, but I have enough strapped down and plugged in to try a 60 volt test again! I have to wait until someone else is home for safety reasons, but I went over the wiring about 20 times, tested the low voltage setup, got the Kelly Controller programmed and I am topping off the batteries before the first run.

This is the Kelly Controls KHD09401 almost installed and on a scrap piece of aluminum. It's not the best solution, but should suffice for a trip down the street. I am going to get a proper heatsink before I attempt any real road rage.

And this picture is of the batteries and their top off charge before the run. I measured all the voltages and they were pretty close except for battery #2, and it was 0.7 volts lower than the rest. The other batteries finished their top off charge in 30 minutes, but this battery is still going and it's almost been an hour and the charger says its 25% complete. So this battery is either my weakest link, or it hasn't been charged, and I actually don't remember actually fully charging this one battery EVER. It's only a month old, and has an August date on it.

Chargers

I bought 8 Schumacher SC-600A chargers on eBay today. They are 6 amp smart chargers, while not the fastest thing in the world, it will get me started. My budget (pocket mulah) is getting low, and I picked these up nice and cheap at $100 for all 8 inlcuding shipping.

Today I also build another controller circuit, this time using a PIC processor and a 16 KHz frequency so it can't be heard. My other controller used a discrete hardware setup, but had an audible 2 KHz frequency. I will keep the old board in the gloved compartment as a backup in case anything goes awry...

Tonight my dad and I drilled a few 1/2 inch holes in the motor adapter plate to see how easy it is, and it was a breeze. Tomorrow I will mark up all the bolt holes on the larger plates and drill those, and also drill the holes in the spacers. It's coming together really fast and I might just have the motor in on Monday since I will be going away this weekend.

Progress Update

Ok, so I have some more progress. I have made the modifications to my controller and added the connection panel so I can connect the throttle and power to the controller. I am in need of a new battery to do anymore testing, but using small motors and power sources everything seemed to work. It also has this safety feature that if the current sensing fails, the controller stops the motor. It will probably always be a work in progress, but this should get the car moving. I also bumped it up from 250 amps to the full 500 amps. So now its a 24 to 156 volt 500 AMP controller.

I have also started my templates and hope to bring them to a shop next week and see what they can do. This is really a concept template because I don't have the tools to properly make them, and the shop will use its own equipment and scan in the measurements to a computer and CNC mill out the plate. I do have the designs for the coupling done and will be bringing those along as well. My 7/8 taper hub piece should help make the coupler real simple since last time I went over there we spent about an hour trying to figure out the coupler because they didn't have the machine to make the key way and all the lovejoy couplers out there didn't have enough strength to survive the torque of the motor.

I will not be working on the car this weekend since I will be spending it in the middle of nowhere fishing on a well earned vacation trip.

Finally Some Free Time...

I finally had some free time today, so I hooked up the controller again to the motor and did some actual testing. Things went great, I got about a good 15 minutes of testing in before my old crappy battery gave out. I did an earlier test on Sunday which went well, but I fixed a few things to improve it. Now it seems to be working great, and it barely was warm. The only thing left to do if finish up the back end to it with proper connectors and it will be done! It does have a primitive current limiting, but it is set to 250 AMPs, and I will be keeping it much less than that to save the batteries. My guess it that it will be drawing around 50 to 75 AMPs from the pack when cruising at 40 MPH.

I am still tweaking the design for the motor coupler, but since school has been busy I haven't had a lot of time this past week to work on this project. I am making a package of sorts that I will be giving to local machine shops so I can get a qoute on the part.

I'm Still Here.....

It's been almost a month since I have posted anything, and I have been busy. Mostly school related, but anyways 98% of the controller is done. I just need a few more transistors, and this thing is ready to go! I also recieve a few of my PIC controllers so in the next few months I will be figuring out how they work, and how to program them. The pictures is what my controller looks like right now. I have a water cooling heat sink since it's the only thing I have right now, but it might be useful and if I connect a pump to it, I should be able to use the Civic's existing radiator to cool it. The radiator will be staying since it's needed for the tranny. Those two large wires just need to be screwed to the IGBT and I need to finish the IGBT driver and it should be set for testing. I have another casing that I might use and make some cleaner cut slots for the copper busses that are the B+, B- and M-. The back section has the connectors for the 24V power of the controller circuitry, Throttle Input and the shunt measurement. My 50o AMP shunt is built into the controller as a key part of the current limiting, but I added the wires so one can hook up a volt meter or 50mv ammeter to see whats happening.