# Electro-Willys headed to Alaska Highway!



## major (Apr 4, 2008)

m38mike said:


> Next week we leave CO to join up with many other old military vehicles in Dawson Creek, BC, to drive the Alaska Highway as part of the 70th anniversary celebration of the construction of the highway.


Good luck, dude


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## Woodsmith (Jun 5, 2008)

YAY! Road trip!

Any way to auto start the generator when a recharge is needed rather then running all the time?

Good luck with the trip.


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## m38mike (Dec 27, 2008)

Thanks Major!

Woodsmith, I probably could by extending the wiring for the starter into the Jeep. The problem I might have then is all the other things that I turn on after the generator is running. I'd need a bunch of relays to get the other stuff working.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

Really, really cool! I like. Have fun.


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## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

Mike,

Sounds like a wonderful trip. 

I can't do things like this anymore so I will have to be with you in spirit only. 

I'm so glad that you had the stick-to-it-ness needed to complete your project after all of the problems you had in the beginning. 

I know that I, as well as all of the others, that followed your build and offered our opinions and advise will be with you in spirit and wish we could be with you in reality.

Be well;
Be safe;
Lots of photos and videos;
Have a wonderful time.

You have your orders sir,
JIm


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## mhud (Oct 19, 2009)

This is so cool! I can't wait to follow your progress as you make the trip.


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## m38mike (Dec 27, 2008)

Thanks everyone for the good wishes and interest. I've got my orders Jim! I plan to post photos and videos as I go, when I have internet access. My SPOT tracker will post my location every 10 minutes of every day so you all can follow along. This will be my 3rd trip on the Alaska Highway, but probably the most memorable simply for the crowd that I'll travel with. Right now we have 118 vehicles going, 80 of them are old military surplus trucks. And one WW2 Harley WLA motorcycle. That guy's got to have an iron butt to take 4,100 miles on one of those cycles. We have about 220 folks going. I think we'll be the 4th largest community in the Yukon where ever we park at night. 

We've got about 30 "Jeeps" going, including some M151's and one modified CJ2A. But to park our whole convoy in one location takes about 1.5 football fields. So any where we stop for lunch or breaks, has got to be either big, or long, or both. In a few places we'll use abandoned air strips, where we'll drive up one side and down the other until we all get off the highway. 

Our travel permit with the Yukon Gov't says we need to travel in March units of up to 10 vehicles, with 5 minute spacing between march units. So that's 13 march units of like-sized vehicles for our entire convoy. With a 5 minute gap between units, we will be spread out over about 40 miles from front vehicle to back. It'll take up to 70 minutes from the time the first guy leaves until the last one can go. That means it also take about 70 minutes for us all to arrive at any destination. 

Yup, this will be quite the invasion. 

Qer, I hope you wrote good code, so my Soliton Jr will get me there and back again without any problems.  I'm pretty sure that the WarP11 will be able to pull me up and over the Canadian Rockies.  But the big unknown that I'm testing will be the Electric Motor Werks 10kW charger.  Most folks using one use it in a static mode. That is that the car is parked and there is no drain on the pack when the charger is working. I will be using it in a very dynamic mode. It will be charging my pack while I'm travelling, so the loads it sees will be different from minute to minute. I haven't been able to test it as much as I wanted to before the big trip, so I'm working in uncertain conditions. 

One thing I do know, heat has become my big concern. With the generator and charger both inside my trailer, there is a lot of heat created. And the more they both work, the more heat accumulates. To that end I'm adding 4 more louvered vents to the top to let heat out. between the ventilation fan, the engine fan, and the generator head fan all pulling cool outside air into the trailer, I'm pulling about 4-5,000 cfm of air through the trailer.  Hence the need for more vents to let air out.


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## Caps18 (Jun 8, 2008)

m38mike said:


> Thanks Major!
> 
> Woodsmith, I probably could by extending the wiring for the starter into the Jeep. The problem I might have then is all the other things that I turn on after the generator is running. I'd need a bunch of relays to get the other stuff working.


With all the beautiful work you have done, I think that wouldn't be much of a challenge. 

Good luck, and it sounds like a very fun trip. I hope to take one like it someday.

I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't the northern most EV in North America either at some point in your trip.


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## m38mike (Dec 27, 2008)

Well, I've got the heat problem solved. I ran the trailer yesterday for 3 hours on the road and didn't have any overheating problems with anything. I now have 5 fans pulling outside air into the trailer, and 8 vents to let all the hot air out. It seems to be working.

Now my problem is the EMW 10kW charger. It's running on about 50% duty cycle or less. That's a lot lower charge than I need. That right there could kill the trip. I don't know what to change to make it work better. I'm waiting to hear from Electric Motor Werks to see if they have any words of wisdom why I'm getting 3kW from a 10kW charger.

Have any of you ever put two chargers on one pack at the same time? Did it work? I'm thinking I may need to do that to keep the volts up.

One day to go before departure!


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## danh818 (Dec 14, 2011)

m38mike said:


> Have any of you ever put two chargers on one pack at the same time? Did it work? I'm thinking I may need to do that to keep the volts up.
> 
> One day to go before departure!


If you do, at least one of the chargers must me isolated.

Best of Luck!!


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## Jimdear2 (Oct 12, 2008)

Mike,

Maybe a stupid question about your 10 kW charger, but are you trying to stuff 10 pounds into a 5 pound bag. 

Is your battery almost fully charged? did you check the chargers output while driving or with a depleted battery so there was a need for the charger to kick out the higher output.

Jim


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## mhud (Oct 19, 2009)

Jimdear2 said:


> ...Is your battery almost fully charged? did you check the chargers output while driving or with a depleted battery so there was a need for the charger to kick out the higher output.


Another potential problem is that the charger could be shutting itself off when it sees that voltage is not increasing. For a stationary charger, If you put current onto a pack and voltage goes down or is unaffected, something is very wrong! So perhaps there's a failsafe that must be disabled for a mobile charging application.


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## Yukon_Shane (Jul 15, 2010)

Coming from this part of the world I can tell you this is a pretty ambitious trip. The Alaska highway component is impressive enough but the fact that the convoy is headed up the Robert Campbell highway and on through to the Tombstone National Park is awesome.

I live in Whitehorse, Yukon along the route that you'll be taking on the way back so I'll be looking forward to you guys rolling through. 

Let us know if you need a place to charge your batteries or if you need help with any EV parts. I'd be happy to help out in anyway I can.

There are also some really keen EV enthusiasts in Dawson City and Fairbanks that I know would love to see your rig. I'll let them know you're coming!

Good Luck!


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## EV-propulsion.com (Jun 1, 2009)

Mike,
Congrats on a sucessful trip! Been following it on your blog, very well done, great following the SPOT also. Looking forward to hearing about how everything held up and worked out on the trip...especially the EV system!
Mike
www.EV-propulsion.com


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Yes, congratulations are definitely in order for completing a truly grueling journey, especially in an old Willys Jeep EV conversion! I take it the generator/charger(s) series hybrid scheme worked out okay? No motor fires, etc?


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