# Converting a Japanese Mini Truck in Edmonton



## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Hello,

I've been on here close to a year now researching and dreaming but now it looks like something is actually happening. A friend and I are planning a conversion on a 4x4 japanese mini truck, something like the one in the picture. Reasons for this vehicle, easy!
- 1500 lbs starting weight, but can haul 1000 lbs
- low final gearing and a low top speed expectation means direct drive is the way to go, these trucks normally top out at ~7500 rpm at 110 km/hr
- street legal in Canada
- manual steering and brakes
- it has a certain geek appeal by itself, now make it electric! 
- enough room to put way more batteries than we can presently afford but is small enough that components should be fairly low cost.
- its been done before http://www.evalbum.com/3046

The plan is ~72v lithium pack probably 100 Ah, and idealy one of the newer small AC motors like these 
http://www.thunderstruck-ev.com/AC_drive_performance.htm 
It will be direct drive to the transfer case if possible. This way we have selectable 4wd, high, low and neutral. If the 4wd turns out to be tricky we could start with 2wd, motor attached to the rear driveshaft. If not an AC motor then a 7 or 8" DC and lower voltage ~500 amp controller would probably do. 

If something like this gave us 100 km top speed and 50km range we would be happy for a start and could increase range and performance by upping the voltage. 

We hope to have the truck soon and will update as we go. 

Now, here's my main question;

Who here has done an electric conversion in Alberta and which shop did you take it to for the inspection? Our problem is, we're most likely getting a vehicle from out of province that will be missing an engine and most shops want a functional vehicle in order to do an out of province inspection, but once we convert it getting it to pass the regular out of province could be difficult, unless say the shop has allready been through the process. Any recomendations from fellow Canadians, specifically Albertans? The truck has already had the required light and reflector modifications to be legal here in Canada. 

I know there is a Michael Hoskinson who has an EV here in Edmonton but i'm not sure how to get a hold of him to ask. Anyone know him or have an email? 

Thanks very much for your help!

Jesse


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Well we found a truck, I'm going to look at it next weekend and all being well we should have it here within a week or so after that. No takers on the inspection question but I'm not too surprised, not many ev's here in the land of big oil! 

Regardless, in doing a bit more research its looking like our truck will have a ~7:1 rear axle ratio which with the 155-80 R12 tires and direct drive gives 6700rpm at 100 km/hr. 
There is no overdrive gear in the tranny to use, 
Changing the rear end ratio would be very difficult due to parts availablility,
We can possibly go up a couple sizes in tires which gets us ~6300 rpm.

This is pretty fast for a DC motor is it not? Is there a lower voltage DC setup that can get this kind of rpm? Or even at higher voltage is it ok to run a DC motor at max rpm for any period of time? 

Our truck will weigh ~1500 lbs finished and even say an 8" DC and a 500 amp controller at 72V should accelerate well but we would like to be able to hit 100km/hr in order to safely hit the hi-ways here. Something like the AC 20 from thunderstruck says 8000 rpm max, anyone have experience with this or maybe a 72 volt curve for this motor showing torque/ power at the kind of speeds we're talking? 

All else fails we can potentially lower our top speed expectation or increase our voltage but any advice or suggestions would be great,

Thanks very much for the help,

Jesse


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## aktill (Jun 18, 2008)

Howdy from Calgary!

Working on a conversion myself when the weather is good, but I'm stalled out until spring since my garage isn't heated.

I'll let you know any details I find about inspection. Meloche Monnex didn't seem to think insurance would be too much on an issue.

Cheers,
Adam


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Great! Thanks for the reply, good to hear of another Albertan doing a conversion. I also have an unheated garage so work may go a little slow until it warms up. I also talked to Meloch Monex, sounded like they would want to inspect it, talk to their underwriters and have an appraisal done to establish the value of the modifications. They would accept the out of province inspection as good enough for them so that helps but I suppose we'll just have to work through the rest. 

Cheers,

Jesse


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

It has begun....
Well for an official introduction the "we" I'll be using here is not in the royal sense, I'm Jesse and my partner in this operation is John, a good friend of mine. Somehow our various conversations and scheming sessions have grown, gained our wives support and here we are. We're both mechanical engineers and obviously interested enough in electric vehicles and/or overconfident enough in our abilities to dive into a project such as this. 

We've got the truck, a 93 Daihatsu Hijet Jumbo Cab. We've been fairly busy tearing stuff apart and planning but I managed to remember to take a couple pictures. We've stripped the interior out, got rid of the shifter and removed the dash to get the heater out. With the seats out there are two large holes in the floor, which makes access underneath much easier. The engine, gas tank rad and exhaust were already removed for us when we got the truck but we've still stripped out a fair pile of unneeded other stuff. We have more than enough room for batteries and will be mounting them underneath the bed ideally in one box to keep everything simple. For batteries the plan is for 72v of 100 Ah TS cells to start, hope to order these shortly. This shows 50 km range at 50 km/hr on our spreadsheet. Motor/controller will be chosen with that as a minimum so we can add from there depending on how fast we want it to go. It’s still between an 8” DC/500amp controller and an HPGC AC31 as far as motors go. 

We split the transfer case and transmission and then reassembled it. The shaft sticking out was originally the main shaft in the tranny, its now our input shaft. We’ll get it shortened and a keyway cut. A plate will be machined to cover the front of the t-case, which will also hold the bearings to support the shaft (normally supported inside the tranny). The plan as of now is to connect the motor with a short double u-joint shaft, probably similar to our current rear drive shaft, which is about 10” long. The motor will sit nicely under the cab. We don’t have a bell housing to hide an adapter in and even if we made a thick plate to give room for an adapter the bolt circle for the motor and t-case are too close in size, bolting it all together would be rather tricky. We’ll see, plans can change. I’ll update as progress is made or new momentous decisions are made!

Cheers!


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## cryostallion (Jul 24, 2010)

Looks like fun!
I am wanting something like this to help me on the farm, but it looks like it is beyond my technical know-how. If there was a kit or something then sure, but I doubt i'd be able to just wing it like you guys. I'll be checking for updates, and I wish you luck!


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## rillip3 (Jun 19, 2009)

Well it's a few months late since this is a bit of an old post, but here are a couple of things to think about:

a) some Japanese (particularly Honda) transmissions turn the "wrong" way. That is, if you connect your motor to the transmission directly, you'll find you have five gears of reverse and one gear of forward. I'm sure this can be overcome in the way it is mounted, but it may make it somewhat tricky. A simple way to do it would be to drive by chain or belt, but these have their own drawbacks. I'll let someone more familiar with the process chime in on that.

b) Most DC motors will not be happy at 6300 RPM. It's either over their range completely or way above their peak efficiency. You'll definitely need to provide some cooling to it, the brushes will wear out faster, and there is the risk of blowing the hole thing. That said, I've seen some sites that say the Netgain 11 and Transwarp have a max recommended of 5000, and a true max of 8000. The transwarp is roughly a 9" DC motor, seems closer to what you were planning to use. I've seen 6000 as a max RPM on ADC 8". Keep in mind these are max numbers - every moment above these numbers is an increased probability that the motor will turn grenade in your engine compartment and spin itself to pieces.

An AC setup may be more complicated, but ideally you'd like to have a motor that's peak RPM is going to be at your peak RPM, so that when you're at your top speed you're at your most efficient. It might be worth the extra complication of AC in this instance if it's going to give you the performance you want.


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

A conventional chain or belt drive will do nothing to change the rotation but with some creative mounting you could turn the motor around and mount it beside the tranny, which would have it spinning the right way in relation to the front of the truck. 

As far as DC motors go there is a guy in Saskatoon who has one of these trucks converted with 96V of lead and an 8" DC. Its got a low top speed of ~85km/hr due to the lack of power at high RPM but otherwise it works just fine. The motor will likely never overspeed as it doesn't have enough power or torque at those speeds to push the truck any faster, short of a big hill of course, I think he's at about 5500rpm at 85km/hr. He has a 2wd truck and its direct drive to the rear axle, no tranny. 

We've got an AC 50 on its way along with our small pack of 24 100ah TS cells. Direction is just a flip of a switch and RPM limits are easy to program as well. The AC isn't really more complicated, just a bit more expensive but every thing I've heard says its worth it. Can't wait to find out! Progress has been a little slow lately but once the motor and batteries get here in a couple weeks things should start moving along. 

I've started a blog which will have a build writeup on it at some point, just a couple pictures on there now but more to come soon.
www.jessetufts.wordpress.com

Cheers,

Jesse


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Well its technically drivable.... but we have a bit of work to do before I get that EV grin. I've been away for a long time and progress has been slow but John and I finally got it almost ready for the safety inspection. It just got a new set of DOT tires on Sat and the interior is all put back together with full insulation and carpeting and a working heater! I've posted a few pictures on my blog and should have some more up shortly. They show some of the progress along the way, I'll get some of our motor set up tomorrow as I see I'm missing those.

With our low system voltage and cold weather our power is very limited, we tried a test drive at -30C with the batteries at ~-15 C and we could only draw about 50A without the voltage sagging down to 2.6v/cell at which point the controller was cutting them off! After a few minutes of resting they crept back up to 3.3v/cell again so they aren't dead, we confirmed the huge voltage sag with a voltmeter right on our low cell. Not too promising but a battery heater is in the works. Just so you know 50A with jello like gear oil in the diffs and transfer case gets us a max of 11km/hr! Not quite usable, but the heater kept the windows clear! 

An earlier test drive in late summer at about +20 C had us going about 60km/hr and drawing up to 400A (during accel). A closer look at the thundersky 100Ah spec sheet shows that the "normal temp" 0.5C discharge curve looks even better than the 55 degrees Celsius 0.5C draw curve... somewhat suspicious. Even our 3C draws at 20 degrees Celsius had us sagging down to under 2.8v/cell. So, some reprogramming of the curtis controller to allow for a bit more voltage sag under load along with a battery heater should help us out. We will need a bit higher top speed than 11km/hr to pass the safety...

Any similar experiences with thunder sky voltage sag?

Cheers,

Jesse


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## Yabert (Feb 7, 2010)

Hi

In my case, heating the battery from -15°C to 0°C was an awesome difference.
I currently use pipe heater cable routed in my battery box. These cables are easely availiable in most hardware store.


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Our current plan is to use a ceramic hair dryer running with an adjustable thermostat and an over temperature switch to blow warm air through the air passages we have under the pack and through the passages between the batteries. The thermostat and overtemp switch are from the plug in ceramic heater that we robbed the element from for our cab heater and should be just as happy controlling the same wattage element in the hair dryer, although this will probably just stay on low to keep the air temps low. This should allow us to set the battery temp to whatever we want and also use the fan can circulate air in the summer to keep them cool if needed. I thought about battery heater pads but they gives us no real temp control and they heat the pack from the outside in. Blowing air through the pack should give a nice even temp distribution, and we already have all the parts we need for next to free!

I guess pipe heater cables are thermostatically controlled and should be very safe, glad to hear that even going up to 0 makes a big difference!

Anyone else have battery heating experience? Anyone tried higher temps to see if it gives better performance?


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Well its on the road, fully legal! Drove it to work for the second time today, no problems so far! Seems to use about 2Ah/kmn from our cycle analyst gauge which gives us 50km range max, right on what we were expecting but I am getting better driving it and the temperatures are just above zero celcius at the moment so with a bit of practice and some warmer temps I'm expecting the range will improve. With our minimal pack 72V nominal the performance off the line is perfectly acceptable, easy to keep up with traffic up to about 60km/hr if the batteries aren't too cold. Had it up to 80km/hr which seemed to be the top end, the rpms are close to 6000 at that speed! These trucks are a lot of fun to drive, the right hand drive takes some getting used to but the truck is so narrow anyways it doesn't seem to make much difference. Showing it off to friends, coworkers and family has been a blast, seems to be a hit so far!

I'll be displaying the truck at the Edmonton Earth Day Festival this Sunday,
http://edmontonearthday.ca/

and the Solar Energy Society of Alberta Future of Transportation seminar next Wednesday.
http://solaralberta.ca/news/12-04-04/future-transportation-meet-designers-and-see-cars

If anyone happens to be from Alberta both these events should be great and hey, John and I will be there showing off the truck as well! They are both free events as well.

Spread the word!

Cheers,

Jesse


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Where did you get the Daihatsu HiJet from and how did you get it "street legal"? I realize you are in Canada and so your experience may not totally apply to me in the US, but I figure if you were able to get a license plate for it then you could drive it over here, too.


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## TigerNut (Dec 18, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> Where did you get the Daihatsu HiJet from and how did you get it "street legal"? I realize you are in Canada and so your experience may not totally apply to me in the US, but I figure if you were able to get a license plate for it then you could drive it over here, too.


Western Canada seems to have a pretty vibrant JDM scene. Alberta is maybe more accommodating than BC because we don't have annual safety/smog inspections, so once your car gets 'in', it's basically up to your own recognizance (and insurance requirements) for keeping it legal. In Calgary there are a lot of RHD vehicles... mostly performance cars but there are also quite a few Mitsubishi, Toyota and Daihatsu minivans. The coffee shop in the next block has a HiJet.


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## clonezero (Oct 16, 2009)

Tesseract said:


> Where did you get the Daihatsu HiJet from and how did you get it "street legal"? I realize you are in Canada and so your experience may not totally apply to me in the US, but I figure if you were able to get a license plate for it then you could drive it over here, too.


There is another electric Daihatsu HiJet in Saskatoon, SK.
http://www.evalbum.com/3046

There are 5 or 6 for sale right now in Regina, SK.


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## rmay635703 (Oct 23, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Where did you get the Daihatsu HiJet from and how did you get it "street legal"? I realize you are in Canada and so your experience may not totally apply to me in the US, but I figure if you were able to get a license plate for it then you could drive it over here, too.


Nope a Canadian 15 year old jap mini truck is NOT legal here due to the FED not liking them, even if your state OK's them.

The only street legal mini truck in the US is the 1965-1972 Subaru 360 Sambars which were sold here by Malcom Bricklin.

They weigh under 1200lbs and make EXCELLENT EV's. Even a tiny lithium battery pack will drive you 40 miles.

Also Generally any Japanese vehicle over 25 years old can be titled and licensed for road use in the US but require EFFORT, MONEY and irritation.

Also there are new street legal electric mini trucks being sold Called Miles ZX40's and their respective trucklet version. These vehicles are very cheap on the used market and already electric which makes them easy to upgrade.

Cheers
Ryan


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## Tatsushige (Mar 24, 2011)

Great Job, like it ...

A TV program in Japan called DASH coverted the same Mini Truck no wait it was the van type, but drove around all of Japan in it. Normally covered about 70ks a day, they also had a solar panel on the roof.

http://www.ntv.co.jp/dash/














Mitusbishi is now selling EV Mini Trucks, they went on sale at the start of the year.


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Ha! I like the roof solar panel, although I expect it would make the already terrible aerodynamics of the truck even worse! 

Yes, in Canada you can import a 15 year old or older vehicle from any country as far as I know, the Japanese ones are popular because of the very stringent inspection criteria over there which means these vehicles are actually in pretty good shape! It was a bit tricky finding a shop that wanted to do the out of province on it but a bit of calling around netted us a shop that had done a few JDM vehicles and they were willing. 

Just did some reprogramming on the Curtis controller for the AC 50, increased the regen a bit to 20%, matched the throttle settings to our pot a bit closer and reduced the cutback voltage to allow a bit more voltage sag. Also set our current limit to 80% which is 440A. We have the cutback voltage set at 60V or 2.5V/cell which they will easily sag down to if they are below about 10 degrees C, my understanding is that this is not terribly detrimental to the cells as long as the state of charge is sufficient. Performance was much improved, feels downright quick now! Able to draw up to the 440A now, max before was about 300 due to the cutback being too high, throttle feels great now and the regen seems just right. Its an awesome controller to be able to play with all these settings! Can't wait to drive it tomorrow with warm fully charged batteries!

Cheers,

Jesse


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## Tatsushige (Mar 24, 2011)

As far as I know the EV on DASH was only charged by the solar panel on the roof.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

rmay635703 said:


> Nope a Canadian 15 year old jap mini truck is NOT legal here due to the FED not liking them, even if your state OK's them.
> 
> The only street legal mini truck in the US is the 1965-1972 Subaru 360 Sambars which were sold here by Malcom Bricklin.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the useful information. It sounds like it isn't totally hopeless as long as I get one that is at least 25 years old. On a related note, know anyone that has used Japan Partner - they seem to be able to get their hands on all sorts of Kei vans so I've been keeping my eye on their stock listings for awhile now. Don't know anyone that has used them, though...


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## rmay635703 (Oct 23, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Thanks for the useful information. It sounds like it isn't totally hopeless as long as I get one that is at least 25 years old. On a related note, know anyone that has used Japan Partner..


 I would strongly recommend talking to the folks
http://www.minitrucktalk.com/forum.php

there before you do anything, importing cars, even those that are 25 years old can be challenging now that the gray market laws (thank you reagan) don't really allow them.

Also expect to pay much more than what it looks like at first, customs and other entities are hard to pass now. Modifications may well be required depending on your state and who notices you get the vehicle.

I would strongly recommend you consider the domestic alternatives the 1970 Subaru 360 sambars are relatively common and relatively cheap and also fully legal. The Miles 05-08 ZX40 varients are also legal and can be titled as full vehicles in OH.

Good Luck
Ryan


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

Thanks for the tips. The minitruck forum looks like a goldmine and I totally forgot about Miles.


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## ChristianSoldier (May 5, 2013)

hi there, I posted on your blog, but just in case you don't see that I am curious if 80 km/h is still your top speed?


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## Jesse67 (May 12, 2009)

Hello,

Yes, saw your post and replied, sent you an email too. I've had it up to 85km/hr. The top speed is limited by the gearing being so low on these trucks, I'm already locked in top gear!


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