June 25th 2009: Inertia switch arrived!
Considering adding a second contactor, for Main Enable, so the negative line is also disconnected… seems to be common on actual designs. Cleaned up the secondary circuit. I have built the Charger Interlock circuit. I’ll make a small relay box for under the dash to hold the key relays with room for expansion.
June 18th 2009: More research on adapter plates
Compiled a set of pictures of professional kits, and some home made ones – see Appendix
Open source controller?
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/paul-sabrinas-cheap-144v-motor-controller-6404.html
June 17th 2009: Motor arrived 2 weeks early!!!
Very excited. Ben and Billie, managed to move into the shop and store it for the weekend. Half debating driving up just to see it now…!
June 5th 2009: Getting started
Order placed with http://www.grassrootsev.com for major components
|War P 9″ Motor|
|156AFX Logisystems Controller|
|Emergency disconnect|
|EV 200 Contactor|
|PB 6 Pot Box Accelerator|
|A 30 QS 500 4 Safety Fuse|
May 30th 2009: Testing exiting systems
Headlights, indicators, side lights, ignition circuit, all basic circuits are working.
Removed fuel pump, fuel lines, heater boxes, couple of lbs of excess wiring hanging around in the back…
Couple lamps to replace, rear left indicator… no major issues…
May 19th 2009: Some designs (40,000ft engineer strikes again)
The new year was consumed with various work projects, but the upshot of flying back and forth across the country is – occasionally – I have some free time to design and think about these projects.
January 11, 2009: New year, renewed effort…
Met with David Ratliff, he based in Loganville, GA about 15 miles from my house. He has a very nice conversion which he has been driving for about 3 years and is working on a ground up E-trike – V.cool.
Picked David’s brain about my selection of components, he had the following recommendations and suggestions based on his experience:
Motor – Net Gain Wrap 9 good choice for the bus, nice motor good reviews – plenty of power.
Controller – David mentioned Logisystems (formally golf cart controller maker), started a range of “Curtis replacements” about 2x power, same price, with future support. I had previous thought Curtis over Kelly from a keep it simple thought. The more reviews I see about Kelly and initial good reviews about Logisystems. So I leaning towards the 144-156v 750A spec unit. The price is still reasonable and I have option adding an extra battery or two in the future…
Charger – David has the Zivan NG 3, his only comment was it not field reprogrammable and you are stuck with output voltage and battery technology. He said that the plug and play then forget was a nice feature. He has just brought Manzanita Micro PCF 30. This is a universal charger, both voltage and battery type. Priced above the Zivan and others but for the ability to accept any voltage 60-250 at the input and switch battery technology and packet voltage in the future (without return to supplier for configuration) make it worthwhile investment.
The only problem now is 20, 30 or 50Amp sizing… the price follows the amp with a fairly linear relationship. 20A or 30A is probably best, since most of the time I will on my 220V at home, and when away I could only grab 10-15A from a friends outlet anyway… So for extra fast charging at home is $500 worth it? Don’t have to make that call just yet..
Safety features:
David also had a manual disconnect – much as I had thought about earlier, one nice enhancement was connecting it to pull cord in the car, so you could from the drivers seat pull on the cable and throw the manual disconnect – Nice safety enhancement.
Extra safety feature not considered was an inertia kill switch, so in the event of an impact the contactor circuit is broken – again good safe practice worth following.
One item I hadn’t put on the list yet but definitely worth adding is a charger interlock, so the bus cannot be driven with the charger connected – for the slow brain mornings.. 🙂
August 21st, 1973 Thunderbird is collected by its new owner from Alabama, now the garage is clear for the next big project.
It all began in June 7 2008 with the response to craigslist entry for a 1973 VW microbus.
Previous owner had brought the bus about 6 months, earlier ran it for 2 days before blowing the engine (missing cooling tin = overheat). Along with the purchase of the bus came a copy of the standard hippy reference manual for all aircooled engines – John Muirs’ “How to keep your Volkswagen alive”. The pages around Chapter 10 – “Engine removal” the pages were black from oily finger prints, the oil deposit concentration increased through the next few pages, with final pages almost completely soaked. I can picture the scene vividly… next to the bus was a wooden bench with a semi dismantled engine. Happily for this story that will be last we speak of the formal propulsion device.
We got a straight, solid bus, 4 tires and the framework for a good project. All major components in good order, and host of spares parts and a pink ladies bicycle – it amazing the things that you find in a VW bus.