Today we had a group effort with 2 other members of Brisbane AEVA helping out with the build. Thanks very much to Greg and Jim for your assistance.

Today we worked out where to mount the charger. As it is a fully sealed unit we decided to mount it under the rear of the car beside the spare wheel well. There is a large recess there where the muffler was previously and it means that the charger will not take up any of the luggage room in the car. A couple of steel brackets and it's now mounted solidly under the car.

We also fitted a number of units to an aluminium plate in front of the batteries. The controller, main contactor and precharge resistor were mounted on top of the plate and a sealed aluminium case was mounted under the plate for mounting terminal strips for connecting to the controller and contactor.

The BMS slave boards were mounted in 2 sealed ABS cases one on the rear battery box for 25 cells and one on the front box for 20 cells. The slave boards are 16 cellls per board and the wiring to the cells will be done in 1 sq mm double insulated cable with a 1 amp 3AG waterproof fuse in each wire. The 4 slave boards are then connected by 2 buses (master and slave) back to the BMS master system which will be mounted under the dash.

Battery Boxes Completed

The battery boxes and motor mount are complete. It took 3 solid days welding and grinding then 2 days painting. Another few hours putting them into the car and I am ready to start wiring. The rear box just fits under the rear seat with about 5mm clearance and the batteries can be maintained by removing the seat (4 bolts) from above. The front box holds 20 batteries and is mounted across the engine bay. The controller contactor and fuse is mounted in front of the batteries on an aluminium plate.

I've mounted some sealed ABS cases for the contactors, fuses and BMS slave boards and run the battery cabling from the rear battery box to the engine compartment in "flexible" orange underground conduit. That stuff is not very flexible and it was a painful experience.

Replaced the bonnet and closed it to see if the battery box fitted. There is only about 2 mm clearance in one spot so I will be doing a small amount of panel beating under the bonnet to give a bit more clearance.

Next weekend more wiring.

Charger Arrives

I received the charger. It's an Elcon 2KW charger with profile for 45 off Sky Energy cells.

The vacuum pump also arrived along with fuses, contactors, cable etc.

Tomorrow I am getting a steel fabricator in to measure up for battery boxes and motor mount.

I just got confirmation form the certification engineer that I don't need to use a big red switch. The new version of NCOP14 allows for isolation of the battery via 2 contactors operated from the ignition switch.

Parts have also arrived for my battery management system. It is a processor based system using a PIC chip for each cell, mounted externally from the cells, 16 per board. The master does coulomb counting and shows SOC for the pack and remaining distance to travel.

Batteries

The batteries arrived just before Christmas. 45 off Sky Energy 100AH cells. I spent a few hours bolting them into groups of 5 using the mounting plates provided.

Its pretty scary wielding pieces of uninsulated metal around the terminals of these cells as they can put out over 1000 amps each.

I have now finished my open source DC controller and it is all set to be tested at high voltage.

I am waiting on fuses and contactors before wiring up the whole battery pack.

For a BMS I am going to use another open source project from http://www.batteryvehiclesociety.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1245

Motor Installation

After 3 long months of waiting the gearbox, couplers and adaptor plates arrived. At first try the coupler did not fit so back to Geoff for some fine tuning. When it came back everything fit ok so I fitted the adaptor plate to the motor then the coupler and after a lot of time sorting out the right bolts and lining up the motor on the hoist I fit the motor to the gearbox and tightened all of the bolts.

Next I lifted the motor gearbox into the car and bolted it to the front and rear transmission mounts. I the refitted the drive shafts to the transaxle and remounted the wheel hubs and steering arms. I then connected the output of the oil pump to the input to bypass the oil cooler in the radiator, as it will no longer be needed. The majority of the heat generated in an auto transmission is from the torque converter and this is now gone. I filled the transmission with atf and I was ready for a test run.

I put the transmission in D and connected the motor to the old starter battery and hey presto the wheels started turning. There was a very short delay between when the motor started turning to when the wheels turned, maybe 1/4 second. I don't know what this will feel like when driving yet but I have some ideas on fixing the problem.

I installed the ceramic heater core in the heater unit and put the dash back in. About another 4 hours work all up. I am still waiting on the coupler and adaptor plate for the motor / gearbox. This was bad timing as I gave it to Geoff to convert just before he went on leave. I should get it back next week if all goes well.

I have been working flat out on a design for the motor controller over the last few weeks. It's an open source design and I am just doing a bit of fine tuning and the final board layouts. Beta testing of the unit is almost complete with no major issues. http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/paul-sabrinas-cheap-144v-motor-controller-6404-224.html

Its a long read at 224 pages and growing. Paul has done a fantastic job with the design. We are arranging a bulk buy of parts for Aussies, see http://www.aeva.asn.au/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=1160&PN=1

Dashboard gone
Dashboard removed

Removed heater core

Being a glutton for punishment, I decided that the next thing to do would be to replace the heater core with an electric element, as there will be a severe lack of hot water in the car after the conversion. I sourced a 120 VAC ceramic heating element from a guy in the USA who sells them to EVers in Australia.

The removal of the dashboard took about 4 hours and is possibly the worst part of the whole job. Without the manual I think it would have taken 8 hours. The most dangerous part of the operation was removing the air bag. Apparently they can go off with very little provocation, hmmm very similar to a woman. Next is removal of the steering wheel using a steering wheel puller, $20 from Supercheap Auto. The instrument panel was removed and I noticed that the front panel was cracked. It looks like a trip to the wreckers for a replacement.

While I was disconnecting some of the wiring connectors I noticed a non standard unit wired into the ignition wiring. It turns out it was an aftermarket engine immobiliser and remote keyless entry. The wiring was very poorly done with wires cut and twisted, no connectors and no solder. As I didn't get the remote control when I bought the car I removed the unit and restored the wiring to original. Finally after removing the dash & the aircon unit I got to remove the heater unit. The heater core will have to be modified to allow the mounting of the electric element into the old core frame.

I sold the old engine on Ebay this week. I listed it last week and it sold for $1.50. It turned out the guy who bought it didn't check where the engine was. He was in Adelaide and I am in Brisbane - go figure. Anyway he defaulted, I relisted and sold it for $100 to a local. He also took a lot of the other bits I didn't need, so I won't have to dump them.