# 1996 chevy s-10 conversion (part 2)



## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

19/20 people who start a project here either abandon it, or abandon us.

Thanks for being that special 5%.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Haha, thanks for the vote of confidence Matt, I _am_ going to finish this project - I cant make any promises as to _when_.

I spent a lot of time today just moving pieces around and trying to figure out how everything was going to go together, so I did not make as much progress as I had hoped. Also, a bolt shortage made it hard to start fitting pieces up to the truck's frame.








The steel components will support wooden sides, and I am including brackets at the corners to mount short sides or some sort of lumber rack later on. 








I am building the bed 5' wide, so the wooden side boards will straddle the tires a little bit. My plan had been to make a curved steel fender and make an arched cut-out in the wood to accommodate it. I am thinking I am going to have to do this step at the end, once the modules are loaded and I have and idea of where it will ride. I am wondering, though, how much space should I leave between the tire and fender? Should I load it up with its estimated max capacity first?


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## piotrsko (Dec 9, 2007)

Get the spring rate and use that to calculate the gap. 500# per inch means the spring should move more or less 1" for every 500#, but that includes the empty weight.

Nice build however.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Thanks for the input, piotrsko. I know next to nothing about leaf springs or really suspensions in general, so its helpful just to know where to start looking! I found a chart of leaf spring rates on an s-10 forum, but I am not really sure which ones my truck has. Seems like 400-600lbs/in is a pretty good ballpark, though. Since I am likely going to have a max load of about 600lbs, I will figure it will ride at most 1" to 1-1/2" lower when fully loaded. Any thoughts on how much clearance should remain between the tire and fender when it is fully loaded? I dont really want to take off too much of the wood, but I also dont want to find out what happens if the wheel bottoms out against the fender.

I did get the frame for the battery finished today:








The battery box will attach with 10x 3/8" bolts, and then the sub-frame bolts to the truck in 6 places. I am only using the fore and aft bolting flanges of the battery box, but it seems like overkill to add another 10 bolts on the sides.

Next up: finish the mounting brackets for the wooden framing.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Almost done with the mounting brackets, just have to finish up the back.









Then it will be time to slap some paint on before moving on to more fun stuff. I can get the new tail lights mounted, that will be satisfying.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

The spring rate of truck leaf springs is usually not a constant - they are designed to get stiffer as they are compressed, which is called a "rising spring rate". This is usually done with leaves that don't engage until the spring pack deflects enough.

For fender clearance I would just assume that at some point the suspension will travel enough to compress the bump stops (the rubber blocks that keep that axle from hitting the frame).


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Thanks Brian, I measured 6 inches from the tip of the bump stops (thanks for giving them a name, I really am out of my element) to the part of the axle that they would hit. I decided to leave 7" of clearance to give them some room to compress. 









It leaves enough meat in the wooden frame to carry quite a bit of the eventual load. I am a little concerned that the steel frame is too close to the tire in case one wheel rises really high and it leans inward, but I am hoping it will not be a problem, as this truck is not going off-roading or anything.









I realized when I had finished that the steel uprights in the corners should have been 1 1/2" taller to clear the 2x8 decking that Is going to be on top. In hindsight, it would have looked nicer to have gone with 2x12 sides, and recessed the decking to hide all the endgrain... but oh well. My next flatbed will look really sharp. 









Next up: I am going to extend those uprights, and then the frame will be ready to prep for paint.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I got the frame finished up and slapped some paint on it yesterday. Today I got it mounted to the frame, and bolted on the box. I weighed the steel frame, and it came in at about 70 lbs. I need to get weights on the wooden parts, but I think I am doing pretty well so far. I figure 400 lbs came off the back, and only 170 are back on so far. The modules add 500, so that will eat into the cargo capacity, but I think I might have 600 or 700 pounds left on the rear axle rating.

I am basically ready to start loading the modules into the box.








The guy who I got the pack from had numbered all the modules, and provided me with initial voltages and internal resistances. Does anyone have thoughts about how they should go back in? Should I use the original order? Should I try and sort them? Since I am going to be doing 2 strings, should I strive to have both strings have a similar resistance?

In the bottom left you can see the flat (aluminum?) bar that was the positive terminal. I will probably keep that in place, and then make grooves for the 4/0 cable that will split the pack into 2 strings. Its going to be tight to fit 2 fuses, 2 contactos, and 4 BMS boxes in the little channel at the bottom of the image, but I think It will be doable. I have decided to spend the extra money and just have a BMS monitoring each cell-group in each string instead of trying to join them together somehow. 

I am going to review my plans for the high voltage wiring, and I will probably have some questions to post later on... 

Goal #2: Wire up the main contactors to my main power switch.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Loving your thread. Don't have much to contribute, but keep it up!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I worked a little bit on getting the tail lights mounted today. 








Once I pulled apart the wiring it dawned on me that the truck used a single bulb for brake and turn lights - so there is no way to wire up the amber turn signals. I am going to look over the wiring diagrams and see if I cant maybe splice in a new wire to make them work right. I am daunted by trying to trace the wires behind the dash, but I am going to have to dig into it a little bit anyway to redirect the ignition switch through my dash panel.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> Once I pulled apart the wiring it dawned on me that the truck used a single bulb for brake and turn lights - so there is no way to wire up the amber turn signals. I am going to look over the wiring diagrams and see if I cant maybe splice in a new wire to make them work right. I am daunted by trying to trace the wires behind the dash, but I am going to have to dig into it a little bit anyway to redirect the ignition switch through my dash panel.


It shouldn't be necessary to dig around the dash. Even in vehicles with combined stop and turn functions at the rear, the front turn signals are separate, so you can tap into those for the rear. With regular bulbs that can be a load problem, but the LEDs should use so little current that it isn't an issue for whatever the S-10 has for lighting circuit capacity.

Unfortunately the wires for the left and right stop/turn lamps will still have the combined signal behaviour, but there's a solution for that, too: connect the centre high-mounted stop lamp (CHMSL, or "third brake light") wire to the bright (stop) input of both tail lamps. The original combined stop/turn circuits won't be needed for anything, so you could even re-use those wires for the turn signals from the front, depending on where those wires come from (presumably somewhere under the hood).


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Thanks Brian, I had not thought about the front turn signals! I know exactly where the wiring to the rear lights goes, because I pulled apart that whole loom to remove the fuel system wiring. It would be a piece of cake to tie those wires to the front blinkers. I have no idea where the wiring for the CHMSL goes - and since the whole cab is gutted, I am surprised I have not seen them. 

I did find the diagram in the chilton's, and I was thinking it would be easy to just cut the white wire coming off the back of the brake switch (which I can get to pretty easily) and routing it back to the rear brake lights. The hazard and flasher circuits would keep powering the turn signal bulbs through the existing wiring, if I am reading the diagram correctly.








Now that I look at it, though, I am realizing that I do not know where that junction that feeds the CHMSL is. If I cut ahead of that junction, it will knock out the center light. I guess I could tie it back in if I can find where it goes when it leaves the dash... I think I need to find some more wires...


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Spent some time tracing wires today, and I thought I had a pretty good idea of what was going on... I have pulled off the brake switch, and jumping the orange to the white does indeed light up the brake lights, but it is also closing a relay somewhere in the engine compartment. I tried unplugging all the relays I could find one by one, but it still clicks. I might make a longer jumper so I can activate it from closer to where the noise is coming from. Could there be something in the ECM, maybe related to the ABS system? 

I also located the wiring harness to the CHMSL, so I think I will be able to split all the brake lights onto their own circuit, which will eliminate the need to splice into the front signals.

I also worked on the brake booster a bit more. I added a new relay, and removed a big casting defect on the vacuum switch that I think was letting air back into the system. It now mostly works. Once the booster drum is vacated there is an annoying hysteresis that sets in, where it clicks the relay on for a pump stroke or two, then shuts off, and repeats. If I force the pump to run for an extra second, it develops enough vacuum to stay off. Anyone have a thought on how to make the relay stay on for a bit after the switch initially closes?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I found the mystery relay in the engine compartment- and it seems to be doing absolutely nothing. Two wires (hot when the pedal is pressed) go in, one ground and a wire that feeds the lamps comes out... Anyway, I have now removed that needless failure point, and one of the hot wires is now routed back to the rear signals. I tested all the lights, and everything checks out perfectly! I have ordered a license plate light, and some surface mount amber and red indicators to put on the outside corners of the flat bed, which I think will be all that I need to get it back to being street-legal.

I also found an unused fuse that is always hot that I will route to my main switch to turn on main contactors and some of the other systems that I want to always be on. I am excited about the prospect of getting the HV system installed.

I think I am going to try plumbing a reservoir into my vacuum line, and see if that helps hold the switch open and cuts down on that chatter.

I have been thinking a little bit about how to connect the two strings in my battery box








I only have 2 contactors for the box, and I like that arrangement 2 gives a level of redundancy - both contacts would have to weld shut simultaneously to cause a failure. I feel like I have read a lot of opinions though that each string in a parallel arrangement should have its own contactor - presumably as a fail-safe so that eddy currents from one pack cannot drive current into the other pack when things are shut down. Since there are cell level fuses in these Tesla packs, I am trying to imagine a scenario where something bad would happen if they were left connected while the vehicle is powered down. All I am coming up with would involve puncturing the 1/2" thick box with a steel pry-bar or something, and even a catastrophic short would blow the main fuse. Am I overlooking something?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Cut the last lumber for the flatbed today, and have started staining it. The 2x8 decking adds a lot of weight, I think I figured it came in at about 125 lbs. It might lose some as it dries, but if I had it to do over again I would think about using cedar, or perhaps thinner decking with more joists. Also, I kept the width to 5 feet to reduce lumber waste, but it maybe would have looked better if it was a few inches wider. Maybe on the next one I will really "nail it."

















Once the stain dries I can get the sides bolted in place, and then start routing the conduit for my power cables. It might be overkill, but I am going to try and keep all the HV wiring inside liquid-tite electrical conduit (painted orange). I have done a lot of DC wiring, but never over about 60 volts, so I am still a little nervous about running 144.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

The width looks fine to me, especially with the metal fenders that I understand are coming. If the deck is wider than the cab you have either awkward protruding square corners or more work to make nice rounded corners.

So is there just empty space under the deck at the rear, behind the battery pack?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Yep, The battery box takes up just about half of the space under the flatbed. I will probably make the front half lift up on hinges to get access to the battery box. There are a LOT of screws that hold the steel lid onto the aluminum battery box, so I am hoping that once I seal it up, I wont be back in there much at all. 

There would be room and weight capacity for another complete pack of this style, but that would max out the stock rear springs. This flatbed design does seem like a pretty easy way to load up on these big bulky Tesla modules and still have some functionality as a truck. As it stands, I will only have about 550lbs of capacity in the back, but if I upgraded the rear springs, I could get closer to 900lbs. That would get me up to the max gross weight, though, and upgrading the brakes might be needed at that point. 

I am definitely going to try and put together a lumber rack at some point, as the 6' flatbed is going to be pretty limiting for moving lumber.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I ran into a snag on splitting the pack up, as I did not have as much clearance as I thought I did to run new cables. The red arrows show where the main positive and negative bars cross the aluminum support at the front of the pack. To add my thicker cables, I had to bump up the sheet metal lid to make a slot for them in the middle. I should probably do more practice with welding thin sheet...








Anyway, now there should be room to get my two cables through. Its going to be very tight to get everything in there, but I think it will work. The fuses are mounted to little plastic feet, which will need an attachment point. I think I am going to end up fabricating a weird little shelf to hold everything. The BMSes should fit on the other side, but I have not figured out how I am going to secure them. 








There is still a lot of fiddly work to do, but it feels good to at least have a plan.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

If you really are in Oregon, you're going to want to marine varnish that wood furniture you made.


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## retrEVnoc (Mar 23, 2019)

Good work! where are you in OR?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I got some work done on the hardware for the fuses. It is very slow and fiddly, but I think I am getting there. I am reusing some of the flat bar from the original configuration - I thought it seemed too heavy to be aluminum, and it is indeed copper with some sort of silver plating. Nickel, maybe? Anyway, it was fused for 400amps, so I think it will be sufficient for my needs.








There is not space to put an isolating contactor between the strings, so my plan is charge each string individually and then connect them. The BMS will monitor both parallel strings, so I do not forsee problems with eddy currents as long as the BMS balancing works as advertised. I need to finish up the main leads, which means a trip to the store to get bigger heat-shrink insulation. After that, all that remains to do in the battery box is to make a mounting rack for the BMS modules and run the wiring. 

And thankfully I am about a 2 hours drive from the coast, remy_martian. We do get quite a lot of rain, of course, so I am going to be treating all the lumber with a couple coats of deck stain.


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## remy_martian (Feb 4, 2019)

You're probably 2 doors down from me, lol.

Fingers crossed, after a solid month of this crap (even cardboard boxes in a roofed breezeway are soaked by the damp, then the mold grows on them) it looks like we may get a lull and some sunshine. Tossup whether I liked the wildfire a mile from the house or this.

F.Y. 2020 (not "fiscal year")


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Unseasonably nice weather has kept me busy outside, but the forecast is now looking like some shop time will be forthcoming. I got the new signal lamps mounted, and put all the wiring back in split-loom in the back.









I am bummed about having to redo my frame, but better to fix it now. Its a little hard to see, but i need to trim some of the battery box, and move the support for the box closer to the original frame. Once that is fixed, I can hopefully get my modules permanently mounted, which will be exciting.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, It turns out there is one thing that I hate more than painting: Stripping paint that you just painted, and then repainting it the next day! It was not actually as painful as I had thought it would be to make adjustments to the frame, and I think I have made enough clearance for the tires now that I can rest easy. 








Trimming down the aluminum box was tougher than I thought it would be, as it turned out to be quite thick material. Once the paint is dry, It can all start going back together, and I can get the modules into place.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Those Tesla engineers sure did love screws. Each module has 4 holding it down, 1 holding it from below, and then 3 more connecting it to the various cross-members inside the box. 








Also, the first 4 bolts are deep, so they need to be dangled in with a magnetic holder. Anyway, long story short, putting this thing back together is proving to be a big job. 

The modules are in now (I am really hoping I didnt forget something stupid that makes me have to take them all out again). It dawned on me that I may need to do another modification to the box lid to allow all the BMS wires through; it ends up being quite a thick bundle of wires. The black wires at the bottom left are just the thermistors, there will be another 84 wires for all the cell taps.

Next day I can get into the shop I will put the bus bars back on the modules to build my 2 strings. I can then work on plugging in all those wires and getting the BMS system working. 

Goal #3: Check all the cell voltages with a functioning BMS.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I had a moment of panic as I went to install the plumbing manifolds, and I remembered that they came out after the modules, and should have gone in before them... It took a lot of wiggling, but I managed to get them in without taking out all those damn bolts.








I got a couple sections of hose and some aluminum tubing with the batteries, and that gets my coolant system plumbed to the bottom of the cab. I will maybe run some aluminum tubes along the frame, and then switch to 3/4" radiator hose to connect to the pump and radiator.

I also made the module connections today. I cleaned up the terminals, and put some dielectric grease on them. I dont really have much experience with using it, but the modules had some sore of goop on them when I got them, so I figured that was what it called for.








I was paranoid that I was going to short something out and cause a real mess (you can see my improvised "600v" wrench at the bottom right ). The included insulators for the busbars were quite thorough, though, and put me at ease.








It appears there was at one point a service disconnect or something in the middle, but it must not have made it into my box of extras. 

One of my modules has dropped more than the others - but it stopped falling - possibly after I disconnected the BMS board? Anyway, my two strings are at 158.35 and 158.60. I swapped the position of 2 of the modules to get the original voltages and resistance values to line up as well as possible. I will probably try and charge each string on its own once the charger is online, and try and bring them up to the same voltage before the final hookup. If my math is right, I think the higher string would try and push about 5 amps into the lower string if I connected them right now.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, F#@&. Time to pull out all the modules. I started checking voltages in the harnesses as I was getting ready to start wiring the BMS, and I got really weird readings on some of the pins. Turns out the wires were coming loose from the bus bars. 








It looks to me like the connections were made with some sort of spot-welding process. I am not sure if the storage conditions have made things worse, or if handling the modules was the problem, but it is not an isolated problem. 








All the connections seem to be corroding, and simply scraping at them causes them to separate. I only have a 25w soldering iron, but I was able to tin a corner of one of the aluminum tabs. I am going to try ordering a bigger soldering iron and see if I can get the connections back in shape that way. 

It might be possible to only remove every other module, but it is still a pretty aggravating setback.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Now that I know the drill, taking everything apart was not actually that bad. I checked all the BMS harnesses, and found failures on 11 of the 12 modules. The blue wires were the worst, 8 of 12 were bad. None of the black or yellow wires had failures. I will probably add solder to all of them, and then cover them with dielectric grease to prevent any more corrosion. 

I am still waiting on my new soldering iron, so I got a little work done on the charger today.








I mounted the J1772 plug and got a start on the wiring. I will need to install my HV junction box soon so that I can start routing the wires from the dash.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, turns out more power was not enough. The solder just forms a bead on the surface, and will not wick. I poked at the one connection that I thought I had made, and it just popped off too.

I am loathe to try applying more heat with a torch, so I have decided to try and go the mechanical route. I ordered a set of M2 taps, and 100 tiny bolts and tiny ring terminals. This means I will need to drill and tap 84 holes in 2mm aluminum without bridging any of the plates, breaking any cell-level fuses, or over penetrating the bus bar and damaging a cell or the coolant ribbon... It does not sound fun to me either...

I am going to try and make some some sort of jig for the drill bit that only lets it protrude ~2mm, and hopefully there will be enough space behind the bars to start my threads with a plug tap. At least the aluminum will be easy to work with, I guess.


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## schelle63 (Jan 3, 2018)

Hi Carl,
I recommend to observe that connector:








it happened to me (and a friend) that it produces a lot (!) of heat until failing some day.
By the way, I like your conversion.
Markus


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Thanks for the heads up. The charger should only be pulling about 10 or so amps, right? What size of wire did you use? If you zoom in on the picture you can see that I clearly did not have the right sort of crimping tool... I was going to solder the wires in before assembly. I used 10 gauge wire, which should be good for 30 amps, and will hopefully pull enough heat out of those spade connectors.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> ... Turns out the wires were coming loose from the bus bars.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Presumably ultrasonically welded: the wire is pressed to the bus bar and vibrated rapidly to friction-weld it in place. The cell wires are similarly welded to the cells and to the bus plates; no one solders or electrically welds wires like this in production applications.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

brian_ said:


> Presumably ultrasonically welded: the wire is pressed to the bus bar and vibrated rapidly to friction-weld it in place. The cell wires are similarly welded to the cells and to the bus plates; no one solders or electrically welds wires like this in production applications.


I looked at the wires under 80x magnification and they look like they have been hit with some sort of tiny, futuristic panini press  Any thoughts as to why these connections would fail like this? It seems like the fact that they have been stored outside their sealed, moisture controlled enclosure for 10 months could be the root cause of the corrosion... Do you know what material is used to make the cell level fuses? Those connections do not show any signs of being a problem, but they also look like they could be made of the same material as the bus bars. I wonder if simply getting condensation on the copper-aluminum junction was enough to wreck them, and if that is the case, why they didnt just use aluminum wires...


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I found the time to get a little bit of work done on the batteries today, and while going through all the modules, I did find evidence that the process they were using was not foolproof.








Seeing all the marks inside here makes me wonder how many man-hours go into assembling a module like this, even with all the state of the art machines I am sure they are using. I am glad I am not trying to build my own modules...

I had thought I was going to have to replace all the BMS wires, but some appear to still be very firmly attached. I sand each connection, and if it seems sounds I am just covering it with grease and moving on. The ones that are loose are pretty obvious.








I drill a 1/16 hole, start a couple of threads with a tiny m2 tap, and then solder on a small flattened ring terminal. I am using a little dab of locktight, and the connections feel nice and secure. I have been covering the adjacent plates with cardboard as I work, and have not had any major mishaps. A little shaving from the drilling did bridge two plates momentarily, but the resultant (tiny) explosion broke the circuit very quickly. 

I got 5 of 12 modules repaired today, so hopefully I will be back on track pretty soon.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Okay, I finally got everything back together, and verified that I see each cell voltage on the BMS taps. Now, I can finally start making forward progress again. I reconnected the strings, and started working on the thermistor wiring today.








I do not have whatever sort of crimper is used to make the connection on the little pins, so I am soldering each one... I got 20 wires in today, and have another 104 to do . I have not quite finalized how I am going to route the wiring from the dash and engine bay back to the battery box, so that will have to get sorted out at some point. I want to keep things orderly and workmanlike, and also keep the HV wires as separate as possible from the 12v stuff. I have orange split loom, and will probably also paint any of the gray conduit I use. More to follow


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I got the thermistors wired for the second string today, and also soldered the terminals on the first BMS wiring harness. 








All that remains for the first string is to plug in all the terminals in the right order and it should be good to go. Another morning's work, and it should be possible to fire up the BMS!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I got the first half of the cell taps done today.








I advise anyone using this system: buy a couple of extra plastic harness parts... turns out once you cram the pins in there, they do not want to come out. Anyway, it is moving along. I put in temporary power wires and managed to connect to the BMS, but it did not display any data. The string I am wiring is connected to the tail end of my daisy-chain of BMS boxes, so I think without power at the first box it is simply not sending messages on down the line. 

Hopefully I can wrap up the next string soon and give it a test.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Okay, string 2 is wired.








I hit a few snags, but it went a lot faster than the first one. I applied power to my BMS, and against all odds, the wiring was all correct!








I outlined in red the deviant module. I will have to consider my options for how to charge the strings up independently to get them balanced. It will probably just be a matter of reducing the size of the BMS and swapping around the harnesses...

Anyhow, this feels like a big milestone.
Goal #1 Mount batteries
Goal #3 Check voltages with BMS
Goal #2 wire main contactors to my power switch (which will mean routing some conduit and setting up my HV Box) - is up next


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## wjbitner (Apr 5, 2010)

OR-Carl said:


> Okay, string 2 is wired.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Great progress! Assuming you have checked and the cell voltages and the bms agree. If so, why not turn on the balancing function on all the other cells so as to lower everything but the deviant module? It may take a while, since the balancing current is pretty low, but it should work over time and you can play with the BMS functionality and learn how fast things will change. Just an idea. 
Bill


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Hey wjbitner, thanks for the input! I read the documentation again on the balancing for the BMS, and you are correct that it should be possible to run it whenever the BMS is on - I was thinking it would only do its thing while charging. Anyway, I decided to run some numbers:

The BMS uses 24ohm resistors, so at 3.7v it will shunt about... 0.56watts

It splits the pack into groups of 6, picks the highest one (you can set a lower limit so it ignores the ones that are already low) and starts discharging. (this means discharge time will need to be multiplied by 6)

So, how much power are we talking about? Here the math gets a little fuzzy... Assuming the modules are 3kwh nominal - and that discharging from 4v down to 3v is 90% of the capacity, 1 volt would be (3000*.9) = 2700wh. Assuming a linear discharge curve, 0.035v would be 95.5wh - which is lot. At 0.56w, that would be about 172 hours... per cell. So do that 6 times and you are looking at 1032 hours, or about 43 days. I tried to be generous with my assumptions, so it could be a decent bit less. 

Soooo, I had a thought. Part of the reason I bought these modules is that they are a good match to my off-grid stuff - so I am going to wire a little 300watt inverter through a power meter and then connect it to each high module one at a time. Running a 300watt load should bring the voltage down in about 20 minutes if my numbers are close. If I make sure to draw the same number of watt-hours from each module, the BMS should be able to handle the rest in a couple days.


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## wjbitner (Apr 5, 2010)

OR-Carl said:


> Hey wjbitner, thanks for the input! I read the documentation again on the balancing for the BMS, and you are correct that it should be possible to run it whenever the BMS is on - I was thinking it would only do its thing while charging. Anyway, I decided to run some numbers:
> 
> The BMS uses 24ohm resistors, so at 3.7v it will shunt about... 0.56watts
> 
> ...


Cool. I was thinking since you really need the other batteries to move down .05 volts, this shouldn't take too long ( I was thinking that you'd do it while you were working and could monitor every 1/2 hour or so). I was guessing a 2-3 work session. A complete discharge would take quite some time..  Glad you can have fun and play with it.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

wjbitner said:


> I was thinking since you really need the other batteries to move down .05 volts, this shouldn't take too long


Haha, yeah, it surprised me just how long it would take for the BMS to drop a mere 0.030 volts off the rest of the pack - but it speaks to how balanced these packs should tend to stay. I did some tests today, and my numbers actually came up surprisingly close!

Here is my power dumping rig:

















I connect the ring terminals to each module, and then I have been running a box fan on high- which dumps about 200watts. The first couple modules I did not drain far enough, as the voltage sags while under load, and then recovers when I disconnect everything. The first module (cells 36-42) I drained out 87wh, the second (22-28) 82wh, and finally on (15-21) I pulled 96wh. That was pretty much dead on with my estimate.

pack 1 ----------
c1 - 3.764v >>DIS c13- 3.763v c25- 3.739v - c37- 3.739v -
c2 - 3.764v c14- 3.763v >>DIS c26- 3.739v - c38- 3.741v
c3 - 3.764v * c15- 3.731v *- c27- 3.739v - c39- 3.742v
c4 - 3.764v * c16- 3.731v* -- c28- 3.739v - c40- 3.741v
c5 - 3.764v * c17- 3.731v* - *c29- 3.732v *- c41- 3.740v
c6 - 3.764v *c18- 3.732v *- *c30- 3.730v* -- c42- 3.739v -
c7 - 3.764v *c19- 3.732v *- *c31- 3.731v* -- c43- ------
c8 - 3.764v *c20- 3.732v* - * c32- 3.732v* - c44- ------
c9 - 3.764v *c21- 3.732v* - *c33- 3.729v* -- c45- ------
c10- 3.764v c22- 3.740v * c34- 3.729v* -- c46- ------
c11- 3.764v >>DIS c23- 3.739v - *c35- 3.729v* -- c47- ------
c12- 3.764v c24- 3.737v - c36- 3.743v c48- ------

Here you see the BMS is manfully trying to discharge (>>DIS) the high cells in the rest of the string. Looking at the values from yesterday, It looks like it managed to shave .001v off a few of the cells .

I will need to go back and drain a bit more off, but I am confident that I will be able to get the cells down to a pretty close match. The really good news here is that my capacity seems to be pretty darn close to the nominal rating. It should mean that I have a solid 30kwh or so of useable capacity. I will try and crunch some more numbers when I get a chance.

I am going to try and get my charger hooked up next, and maybe just trick it into charging the string I am balancing up to the voltage of the other string. I have some questions about charging parameters, but I might start another thread for that.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I did some work today on getting my HV wiring in place. I made some coverplates and cut some holes to align with the new position of the contactors. Once I got everything fitted, I tore it down to paint the covers, and will silicone them in place for the final install.








Part of me feels like there ought to be a service disconnect on the HV + at this spot, but I am not really sure what to use. As long as the contactors do not both weld shut, unplugging the 12v battery should completely isolate the voltage within the box.


I also have 2 conduits going between the cab and the box, one carries power to the contactors, power to the BMS, and CAN wiring plus the serial cable to interface with a computer. The other conduit will be for the power from the charger. How touchy is CAN about being next to power conductors? Should I move the power for the contactors (2-5watts of 12v) into the other conduit just to be on the safe side?









I had some problems with the connector that schelle63 warned me about - the plastic had become super brittle, so trying to plug in the spade terminals just snapped off the internal retainer. The outside retaining clip also snapped off. Anyway, I will keep a close eye on that, and will replace the whole thing at the first sign of trouble. I will say though, I contacted Thunderstruck Motors about the clip - and they sent me out a free replacement right away. They have been a great company to work with - and their products have been really well documented and easy to use. 

I have also now run a conduit from the charger area up to the dash, so I can start pulling that wiring, and getting my switch panel online. Oh yeah, and I wanted to ask about CAN wiring - there are going to be 4 nodes on this network, BMS, Charger, Charge Controller, and Dash Display. The two blue butt-splices in the picture just combines all of the like colors in parallel, and then I am going to run another pair up to the dash. I am pretty sure my BMS has a terminal resistor, and the charge controller does as well. Does that wiring scheme sound about right?

Another day of wiring and I might be able to get those main contactors opening and closing, and the charger up and running.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I got my main power leads all hooked back up today:








I was curious if anyone had any opinion on charging and contactor polarity. I have my contactors oriented to match the polarity of the pack, but while charging, the current will flow in the opposite direction, right? Since the charge controller and contactors share a power lead, a loss of power to one will also shut off the other - so I dont think it should be a problem. I moved the fuse for the charger into the battery box, which made it possible to move my HV junction box forward into the engine bay.









I also finalized the wiring for the charge controller and charger, and pulled the wiring through to the dash. The charger says something about making sure the earth ground from the J1772 is connected to the vehicle chassis, so I need to figure out if that means I should splice into the ground wire between the charger and plug, or if it is enough to make a good connection between the charger case and the chassis.









I got the 12v signal brought in to the dash panel, and there are a bunch of wires now that I can start getting squared away for that. I want my main power switch to turn on a relay that feeds the keyed ignition, so I need to figure out how all that is wired. I had the thought today that I might add a rotary selector and some sort of simple temperature display so I could check a variety of temperatures just by selecting different thermocouples. I might fiddle with that while I am waiting on drive train parts...


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I did a little more work today on wiring up my dash. I looked up a diagram of the ignition switch wiring, and spliced relays into the 12v inputs. I am not sure why there are 2 of them, or why they are so beefy. It seems like just using relays would have made more sense instead of routing big power leads through a switch, but what do I know... At any rate, now the key will not work until the main switch is flipped. That will allow the system to be brought online for charging with the main switch, but to turn on the motor controller and drive away one will need the key. 

Ive got a couple more holes to drill in the dash panel, but then I can start getting all the switches and monitoring stuff installed. Most of the wiring is in place, so I am hoping it will come together pretty quickly

I cleaned up the frame brackets for the motor mounts today, but it seems I have discarded the rubber mounts. I am going to start working on the motor/transmission layout so I can build a shelf for the controller and HV junction box.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I hooked up enough wires to hear the satisfying clunk of my main contactors closing today!

Goal #1 Mount batteries
Goal #2 wire main contactors to my power switch
Goal #3 Check voltages with BMS

I also finished making the cutouts for my dash panel:









Once the paint dries I will start populating it and get the wiring finalized. It will feel good to wrap up the work in the cab, and move on to the engine bay.

Goal #4 Finish wiring up dash panel.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Goal 4 is not entirely complete, but almost. There are a few loose ends to wrap up, but the main circuit is working. The warning buzzer is indeed working, and it is very irritating. This should make the car pretty intuitive for others to drive - nobody would want to drive very far with it beeping and flashing red lights! The default settings in the charger did not like my battery voltage, so it it beeped untill I could reset them. The can network seems to be working. At first the SOC display would not show any info, but I had forgotten to enable it in the BMS. 

I made a resistor array for the rotary switch, so I can select one of four charging modes. I will probably set up one for 220v, one for J1772, and then a couple of 120v modes for charging off my off-grid shop. The charger lets me set up a time-out limit, so I could run a quick charge while the sun is shining and not draw down my bank too much if I forget about it.

The amp meter is apparently not extremely accurate, but hopefully will be close enough to give me an idea of what I am pulling when driving. I have not gotten the thermocouples hooked up for the coolant heater or the temperature display, but I will work on that at some point here. 

Goal #5 Mock up the motor position, and build a mounting rack for the controller.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I am sitting in the cab of my truck with a little AC heater going, and the cheery buzz of the charger going behind the seats. I have my first string plugged in, and I am playing with the settings to try and get the charger dialed in. The voltage sag/rise is going to be an annoyance for trying to get the strings to line up perfectly. I am probably going to have to charge very slowly, and try to figure out where to set my end point so that when it settles, it will be lined up with the other string. At least I got pretty close on equalizing the cells in the string - they are all within 7milivolts, and most are within 2 or 3. I am currently only pushing 1.5amps in, which is maybe just as well, as the cells are pretty cold. I will make a note of what the final voltage of the cells is, and then see how much they drop back tomorrow. Baby steps.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Another hour and 15 of low current charging today, and the cells are now very close. Once they sit overnight, I think the charged string will settle down to within my target range.

While I was waiting on the charging, I decided to mock up an electric motor, and wrestle the transmission back into the vehicle. 








I was wondering how critical it is going to be for the transmission to sit in the exact same spot/orientation as in the original vehicle. If I understand correctly, the driveshaft can slip forward and back on the output splines to account for travel in the rear axle - will that play mean that I have a little leeway for where it winds up? Should I put the driveshaft back on to help get the alignment correct? Right now it is just sitting on its little rubber stub at the back, and the front end is free to swing around any which way.

Anyway, I made a little mock-up of an electric motor:








I am going to have plenty of space for all the other parts. I might try and fab up some mounting points for the controller shelf next.


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## mayes8229 (Dec 8, 2020)

If you get the transmission too far forward or backward you can either have the driveshaft coming too far off the splines on the tailshaft (falling off completely even) or cramming into the tailshaft. Neither is good. There is a little bit of margin, but you have to measure it to know. You can of course put the transmission where you want it then have the driveshaft modified or get a new one made.

A little bit of change in the angle up or down is ok provided it's still appropriately matched with the pinion angle.


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## schelle63 (Jan 3, 2018)

OR-Carl said:


> I was curious if anyone had any opinion on charging and contactor polarity. I have my contactors oriented to match the polarity of the pack, but while charging, the current will flow in the opposite direction, right?


To my understanding the polarity is important when the contactor opens under full load: there is an arc-supressing construction inside, which works in one direction preferrably.
Driving does draw much higher Amperes than charging. In addition, interrupting under load (= emergency-stop) may happen while driving rather than charging.
Two good reasons to install the contactors right the way you did.
Looking forward to your progress.
Markus


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

mayes8229 said:


> If you get the transmission too far forward or backward you can either have the driveshaft coming too far off the splines on the tailshaft (falling off completely even) or cramming into the tailshaft. Neither is good. There is a little bit of margin, but you have to measure it to know. You can of course put the transmission where you want it then have the driveshaft modified or get a new one made.
> 
> A little bit of change in the angle up or down is ok provided it's still appropriately matched with the pinion angle.


Hey, thanks for the input, I am not the least big knowledgeable about car stuff. There is a bolt on the back of the transmission with a big rubber damper on it, and I think that should locate the back end of the trans pretty close to the original position. The motor mounts do not seem to be symmetrical, but I might just try and center the motor relative to the frame. Do you think putting the driveshaft back in place would help me eyeball the proper position up and down? What I am trying to achieve is a straight line from the output shaft to the universal joint on the differential?


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## mayes8229 (Dec 8, 2020)

OR-Carl said:


> Hey, thanks for the input, I am not the least big knowledgeable about car stuff. There is a bolt on the back of the transmission with a big rubber damper on it, and I think that should locate the back end of the trans pretty close to the original position. The motor mounts do not seem to be symmetrical, but I might just try and center the motor relative to the frame. Do you think putting the driveshaft back in place would help me eyeball the proper position up and down? What I am trying to achieve is a straight line from the output shaft to the universal joint on the differential?


If you're using the original crossmember you'll be fine front to back. If you want your tailshaft angle to be the same as what it was before you can measure the pinion and use that as a reference. The goal is essentially to have the pinion and tailshaft at equal and opposite angles.





Setting Pinion Angle | Hotrod Hotline







www.hotrodhotline.com




Tremec has a smartphone app that you can use to measure and make sure the total driveline angle isn't too large.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I checked the batteries again today, and they had settled down just as expected. I had been hoping to get the strings within 0.1v, they now stand at a 158.06 and 158.03! Hooking them together now should be rather uneventful. I have to say I am quite pleased with the charger and BMS from Thunderstruck Motors, and they have been hands down been the best parts supplier I have worked with during my project so far. 

It was still cold in the shop and I was short on time, so I wrapped up a few loose ends, but didnt really make any progress. The thought of getting down on the slab floor and working on getting the driveline angles figured out did not sound appealing . Hopefully I will have some progress to report soon.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I am still stuck in parts purgatory - but a shiny new item did show up today. I will be able to post some pictures soon, I hope. The power has been out at the shop since last Thursday on account of the ice storm we got here, so there has been a lot on my plate. This is the second major disruption in 6 months, first the fires, now a massive blackout due to down power lines. Welcome to life in the Anthropocene, I guess. I am starting to think that getting a high voltage inverter to turn my truck into a 36kwh UPS might be worth a look!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Parts have finally arrived, so I am ready to get back to work. I decided to go the Hyper 9 route for the sake of simplicity, and actually finishing this project some day








I also got a CAN-EV adapter plate and hub to make things hopefully simply a matter of bolting pieces together.









My plan is to have 2 torque bars that run back from the motor mounts and bolt to the adapter plate (where the 2 bolts are inserted in the image). The motor will then rest in a cradle that spans between the torque bars.

I got a digital angle meter, and I have jacked up the front of the transmission to where the angle on the output shaft of the trans now matches the angle on the input shaft on the differential. What I am currently wondering about is how important the side-to-side alignment of the front end of the trans is going to be. Since there will not be any movement in that plane, can I assume that a small degree of misalignment is not too big a deal? Basically, moving the front end of the transmission to the right shifts the tail end to the left, resulting in some (very small) angle to the driveshaft (red line). Is it even safe to assume that the goal is for the driveline to be running down the very center of the frame? There are not even really any flat or square surfaces to measure off of, so I am not even sure how to tell if the position is correct. I would love to hear some input from someone with some (or lots of) car knowledge (brian_, I am looking at you!). Is there an approach that would be better than just eyeballing that the motor seems more or less parallel to the truck frame?










I think once I know for sure where to put things, actually mounting everything together is going to be fairly painless. Still a lot to do, but once this piece is in place, I think the rest is going to move right along.


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## mayes8229 (Dec 8, 2020)

The side to side alignment is also important. It's all about keeping both U-joints spinning at the same speed together (they speed up and slow down as they spin when angled). A degree or two might be okay, but I would try to get it dead-on if possible. You'll get driveshaft vibration if they're out of phase.

I would target getting the input shaft centered between the frame rails and the output shaft centered between the frame rails. That's probably your best bet and fairly easy to measure.

You can have some side to side shift as long as the output shaft of the trans is parallel to the diff (within a degree or two). Some cars have the diff slightly to one side or the other for packaging, but the same rules you use to set the vertical driveshaft angle apply.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I got a digital angle meter, and I have jacked up the front of the transmission to where the angle on the output shaft of the trans now matches the angle on the input shaft on the differential. What I am currently wondering about is how important the side-to-side alignment of the front end of the trans is going to be. Since there will not be any movement in that plane, can I assume that a small degree of misalignment is not too big a deal? Basically, moving the front end of the transmission to the right shifts the tail end to the left, resulting in some (very small) angle to the driveshaft (red line). Is it even safe to assume that the goal is for the driveline to be running down the very center of the frame?
> ...


I'm sure that lots of shafts are significantly off of being centred in the frame... even the ones which intended to be basically on-centre. Then there are the ones which are deliberately way off of centre, such as the shaft to the front axle in any conventional 4WD and the shaft to the rear axle which lines up with it in a Land Rover and other 4WDs using the same transfer case design.

I agree with this:


mayes8229 said:


> You can have some side to side shift as long as the output shaft of the trans is parallel to the diff (within a degree or two). Some cars have the diff slightly to one side or the other for packaging, but the same rules you use to set the vertical driveshaft angle apply.


Side-to-side is the same as up-and-down - with U-joints, the transmission can be shifted from the axle, but the transmission output shaft and the axle's pinion shaft need to be very close to parallel.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I got a digital angle meter, and I have jacked up the front of the transmission to where the angle on the output shaft of the trans now matches the angle on the input shaft on the differential.


Excellent. The meter measures the angle from horizontal.



OR-Carl said:


> Is there an approach that would be better than just eyeballing that the motor seems more or less parallel to the truck frame?


Unfortunately the angle meter won't help in this direction, because you don't have gravity as a reference.

The transmission input shaft is concentric with the output shaft, so you can measure horizontally from each shaft centreline to a reference line parallel to the centreline of the vehicle to make sure that the transmission shaft is parallel to the vehicle, and thus parallel to the axle's pinion shaft. I think you should try to do much better than eyeballing it.



mayes8229 said:


> I would target getting the input shaft centered between the frame rails and the output shaft centered between the frame rails. That's probably your best bet and fairly easy to measure.


Frame rails are often not parallel - they get closer together and further apart to accommodate various parts of the chassis. That means it's not safe to just check that the shaft is parallel with one frame rail, but frames are usually symmetric so going down the centre as suggested here works.  You can even be off centre a bit, as long as each end of the transmission is off centre by the same amount.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

OR-Carl said:


> My plan is to have 2 torque bars that run back from the motor mounts and bolt to the adapter plate (where the 2 bolts are inserted in the image). The motor will then rest in a cradle that spans between the torque bars.


It looks like you have some aftermarket universal ICE motor mounts. Rather than use these, maybe a simpler way to mount the front of the transmission to the frame, is to use the existing angled frame mounts either side of the bell housing. You could make a simple, one piece flat plate cross member that picks up at least 2 of the transmission face bolts. Or, a 2 piece, flat plate mount (one on each side of the bell housing) that picks up at least 2 bolts each side. These mount(s) could be attached to forward extending flat bar pieces bolted to the existing angled frame mounts. You should include some gusseting where the plate(s) and bars meet, for additional strength.

Even if you wanted to include some anti-vibration rubber elements in this alternative design, it probably would be less work and a cleaner build than trying to use the ICE motor mounts.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by resting the motor in a cradle. The motor has a very stout face mount that is designed to support the weight and torque of the motor. I'm assuming the CANEV adapter plate is likewise stout enough.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

I agree that the motor doesn't likely need a cradle - it can just be supported from the drive face - but the motor and the front of the transmission need to be supported by something, so some sort of framework extending on each side to the stock engine mount locations makes sense to me. The stock engine mounts appear to be at the crossmember (where the new brackets are shown), but there are visible mounting points further back on the frame - what are those for, and could they be used instead?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I made a little progress today, but I am afraid I am going to have to try again (although not from the beginning I hope). This should hopefully make things a little more clear:








The 1"x1/8" flat bars that span the two torque arms are just there temporarily to hold the two halves in alignment. I decided to try and base my alignment off the tires, so I put a string between the front and back tires and used that as a reference point. It seems that the driveline is centered. The frame is really irregular at the end of the trans due to the way the crossmember supporting it is mounted. I tried to use a plumb bob to get things aligned to the tire line, but... It was not ideal. 

Looking at the hole in the "center" of the front cross member in the photo, it appears I am pretty far out of whack. Measuring from the center top of the tires also shows that the forward end of the transmission is indeed too far to the left. The tires are pretty easy to measure off of- would they be an acceptable reference point?



brian_ said:


> The stock engine mounts appear to be at the crossmember (where the new brackets are shown), but there are visible mounting points further back on the frame


Yeah, the new brackets use the same bolt holes from the original engine mounts. Getting the aftermarket kit just seemed like it would be easier to fabricate (also I threw away the engine-side of the mounts during the de-ICEing, oops). The holes you see in about the plane of the bellhousing are just holes drilled in the little strut that holds one end of the lower control arm for the front suspension. There was nothing bolted on there in the original configuration, and the clearance to the bellhousing is pretty tight.

It would probably be fine to do a solid mount from back there, but I kinda want to try and keep the whole motor and trans floating on rubber dampers. As for the motor cradle, Its main function is going to be keeping the torque arms in position, but also to support the weight of the motor a little bit. If the motor was cantilevered, every bump in the road would put strain on the mounting bolts. I am sure they would be able to handle it, but it seems like cheap insurance to include it.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> ... I decided to try and base my alignment off the tires, so I put a string between the front and back tires and used that as a reference point. It seems that the driveline is centered. The frame is really irregular at the end of the trans due to the way the crossmember supporting it is mounted. I tried to use a plumb bob to get things aligned to the tire line, but... It was not ideal.
> 
> Looking at the hole in the "center" of the front cross member in the photo, it appears I am pretty far out of whack. Measuring from the center top of the tires also shows that the forward end of the transmission is indeed too far to the left. The tires are pretty easy to measure off of- would they be an acceptable reference point?


That does look way off of centre, judging by anything... like the "engine" mounts, or any of the frame features where the mounts are installed.

Hub faces (with the tires and wheels removed) are easier to use precisely than the tires. Suspension mounting points t the frame might be better than anything at the hub end of the suspension, just because moving parts might not be in exactly the same position (ride height) on the left and right sides.

Houses are built now using laser levels which can be set to project a vertical plane - it might be easier to measure horizontally (using a level) from the laser plane to vehicle features, rather than using string lines and a plumb bob. I haven't tried it - just a suggestion.



OR-Carl said:


> The holes you see in about the plane of the bellhousing are just holes drilled in the little strut that holds one end of the lower control arm for the front suspension. There was nothing bolted on there in the original configuration, and the clearance to the bellhousing is pretty tight.
> 
> It would probably be fine to do a solid mount from back there, but I kinda want to try and keep the whole motor and trans floating on rubber dampers. As for the motor cradle, Its main function is going to be keeping the torque arms in position, but also to support the weight of the motor a little bit. If the motor was cantilevered, every bump in the road would put strain on the mounting bolts. I am sure they would be able to handle it, but it seems like cheap insurance to include it.


Thanks - that makes sense.  Although there was nothing supported on top of those brackets, they would work structurally... but that doesn't matter if they're too far back.

I'm sure that the motor and transmission should be supported on compliant mounts. Of course those mounts need to take the entire transmission output torque, so they need to be widely separated and stiff enough, as those mounts are.

Supporting anything from multiple points can be tricky, as you might add bending stress that you are trying to avoid. The cradle is rigidly mounted to the assembly at the adapter - which is fine - so perhaps any support by the cradle near the front of the motor should be compliant. What does the motor manufacturer say about support?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Alright, nice weather has been keeping me busy outside, but I managed to get a bit of time in the shop to straighten out the mess that was my first attempt at the motor mounts....








This time I centered the shaft off the frame rails just ahead of those struts for the control arms. The measurements off the tires agreed within an eight of and inch, so I am hoping it is close enough to not cause problems. With the angle meter I at least got the transmission sitting level, and the angle on the trans output is within a tenth of a degree of the diff input end. The overall working angle of the driveshaft joints appears to be about 2.5 degree. 

I am having to do some fiddling to get the mounting tabs to line up right, as the engine mounts are out of alignment both front-to-back and side-to-side (this was also the case with the original ICE mounts). I got the first half tacked in place, and I just need to check that I have clearance to my motor before continuing. Redoing work is a hassle, but when you start out knowing nothing about how to proceed, mistakes are bound to be made .



brian_ said:


> Supporting anything from multiple points can be tricky, as you might add bending stress that you are trying to avoid. The cradle is rigidly mounted to the assembly at the adapter - which is fine - so perhaps any support by the cradle near the front of the motor should be compliant. What does the motor manufacturer say about support?


I have not really asked the guys at netgain about motor support, but if I ask them to check my work, I will post their response. My thinking is that I want the finished unit to behave as closely as possible to the ICE equivalent. Basically, that means I want to have motor and trans bolted and secured as a single assembly, and resting on 3 compliant points. I think cradling the encoder end of the motor near the mounting feet will make this whole assembly into a very rigid unit. There is also going to be a shelf above the motor to hold the controller and such, and I will probably overbuild that to give the whole unit more resistance to twisting forces. I am also planning on gusseting the point where the square tube meets the flat stock at the adapter plate.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> My thinking is that I want the finished unit to behave as closely as possible to the ICE equivalent. Basically, that means I want to have motor and trans bolted and secured as a single assembly, and resting on 3 compliant points. I think cradling the encoder end of the motor near the mounting feet will make this whole assembly into a very rigid unit.


All that is great - it makes a lot of sense. It's just the idea of attaching the motor to the rest of that assembly at both the mounting face and another location that concerns me.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

O-C, your concerns may have some justification, the more I think about this set-up. A cantilevered structure, such as the face mounted motor, has a greater chance of generating undesirable harmonic vibration by itself and perhaps amplifying vibrations from other componants-like the drive line. Some kind of adjusable resilient mount supporting the outer end of the motor, that doesn't put bad side loads on the motor and adapter plate(to address brian's concerns), might reduce this problem. Keep going, you're on the right track.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

brian_ said:


> It's just the idea of attaching the motor to the rest of that assembly at both the mounting face and another location that concerns me.


I think I get what you are driving at, as connecting the motor at both ends will make it behave like a beam, and put compressive and tensile stress on the motor casing? I am starting to wonder though if I am maybe overthinking how much force will actually act on the motor.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I think I get what you are driving at, as connecting the motor at both ends will make it behave like a beam, and put compressive and tensile stress on the motor casing?


Right... and while the motor case is intended to support the motor, who knows what will happen when bolted to a transmission and a long structure tying the parts together. It's probably not big deal, but it would be unfortunate to create a problem while trying to solve another one which might not even exist.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Ok, got a little more done on my engine mount today.









Its hard to see from this angle, but I gusseted the front connection point and built a sturdy frame that holds the two torque arms together. The 1-1/2" angle iron on top is drilled and tapped for the mounting shelf/shelves. I might make the shelf for the controller out of aluminum, and put some fins on the bottom or something for heat transfer. I had an old 12v radiator fan in my junk pile, so I made mounting brackets so it will sit on the front and blow air over the motor and under the controller.

I do not have the right tools, so the curved motor cradle is going to take a lot of fiddly work. I basically cut a band of 16ga sheet to follow the shape of the motor, and then tacked on a bent 1"x1/8" flat bar. I had at first thought I would weld this directly to the torque arms, but I like your thought of having it be at least somewhat adjustable, electro wrks. 









I am thinking it could bolt through tabs on the arms, and have a little play top and bottom for some washers or shims or something. I could even add rubber blocks instead if I decide not to go with a rigid mount.

With as overbuilt as this unit has become, I am not too worried about putting stress on the motor. The trans itself is not that heavy, and I am confident that my torque arms will be up to the task of supporting it. I sent a request to netgain for some input, but didnt hear anything back yet.


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## RustedB&B (Feb 15, 2021)

this is a pretty sweet build - I love the hyper 9 but it's out of my budget right now


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

This design would work. 3/16"-1/4" X 1 1/2" flat bar would be enough. Above 3/16" thickness, FB this size is pretty tough to bend without a stout vice and hammer, and usually a torch. A shop with a roller could form it for you. Or, in a scrap yard, you may find a short piece of pipe with a diameter close to the motor. Cut the band to width with cut-off grinding wheels. Adjust the diameter for a proper fit. Weld on pre-drilled tabs.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

electro wrks said:


> A shop with a roller could form it for you.


If I was going to do this again, that is the route I would have gone. My attempt at using what was on hand was a real shit-show. I ended up doing a lot of grinding and hammering to get the stupid bottom band to fit. The heat from welding it was enough to warp it just slightly, but I think I managed to get it sorted out well enough. I was feeling pretty done with it, and just slapped on a thin band over the top. It should be enough to keep it in place. Since the band is not part of the structure, it could be replaced down the road without having to pull the engine.










I got it all cleaned up and ready to paint:










Next up is sort of a big step - its time to mount the hub and flywheel and get the motor and trans hooked together. I am a little nervous about seating the hub as it is shrink-fit to the shaft. The instructions say to heat it to 400F in the oven for an hour, then tap it onto the shaft with a wooden block and a hammer. Also, should I remove the pilot shaft bushing before heating it up?


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

Pictures of the hub, the transmission input shaft, the motor shaft, and the bearing?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

electro wrks said:


> Pictures of the hub, the transmission input shaft, the motor shaft, and the bearing?


I will take some pictures when I am at the shop next. I am also going to look around and see if anyone documented a similar install on an old thread. I am not sure how I would screw it up, but I dont want to have to try and get the hub back off if something is not right on the first try...


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well $%#@ me. What should have been a breeze is turning into a nightmare. Here is the setup.








I popped the pilot shaft bushing out to be on the safe side, and then I heated up the hub as instructed. I rushed out to the shop with it wrapped in towels, put the key in place and it simply dropped right into place. Only one problem - the key was too $%&*ing long! The instructions did not mention that it might need to be trimmed, and it did not even occur to me that the parts I got would not simply work the way they were. So the hub is now locked in place, but riding about a quarter of an inch too high. I have tried a 3 jaw puller, and applying heat to the hub, but it is stuck on there as though welded in place. 

I did check the runout, as I needed to do something to keep from taking a hammer and smashing half the stuff in my shop - and at least that is spot on. About 1.5 thousandths. The motor shaft was within a quarter of one thousandth. 

Anyway, I am going to try calling around tomorrow and see if I can find a shop that might have the tools and know-how to get this thing back off again. Any thoughts on where I would even start looking? 

I did manage to wrestle the trans out, and the paint job on my cradle turned out okay, so once this bullshit is straightened out, things will go together pretty quick.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

Did you try carefully tapping the key down into the key ways? Or, do you know for sure it is too long? If it is, you probably could reach in with a squared end carbide burr in a die grinder and carve away the key to make room for the bushing or bearing.

Ok. I reread your post. You're in trouble! Probably more heat and a bigger puller are what's needed. CanEV switched to this type of hub because customers had trouble working with the much more convenient (in my opinion) tapered bushing type hubs.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I am quite sure it is too long. When placed in the groove on the shaft it protruded beyond the end. If I had been thinking critically, this should have raised red flags. I assumed the keyway was cut the whole way through on the hub, which it is not. Looking down the hole for the pilot shaft bearing I can see the protruding tip of the key, and the gap between the end of the shaft and bottom of the pilot shaft bearing hole. I did try tapping it down while it was still hot, and it didnt go anywhere.

There is no way I am going to be able to grind it out from the top. I could maybe drill it out from the side, but that would leave a big hole in the side of the hub. I think it has to come off.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

A repair shop with a medium to large H frame press should be able to press the shaft and motor out of the hub. Don't forget to have a pile or box of rags and drop clothes to catch the motor as it falls away!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I took the motor in to an electric motor shop, and they popped the hub off as easy as opening a pickle jar! They didnt even need to heat it up. They would have been willing to do it for free, so I was back on track for just a morning spent driving around and some beer money for the very helpful guys down at Advance Electric Motors. 

So here was the problem: the key fit fine in the hub, but the keyway on the shaft does not extend all the way down. 








So the hub couldnt bottom out on the little spacer ring sitting on the bearing.








So take two went much smoother. The hub slips right on once warmed to 400F. My run-out has crept up a little bit, but it was still under 0.002, so well within tolerance.

I had measured the critical distance as 21.2mm when I took the motor apart - now I am getting 22.3mm. How precise should I strive to be here? It seems like it is generally recommended to have the flywheel resurfaced anytime you have it out of the vehicle, anyway, so should I have it shaved down by about a mm to get closer to my original value? Also, is there any value in having them mill off extra weight, like the gear teeth, for example? I might also put in a new clutch disc, as the one in there is getting pretty close to needing replacement (I think).


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I took the motor in to an electric motor shop, and they popped the hub off as easy as opening a pickle jar! They didnt even need to heat it up. They would have been willing to do it for free, so I was back on track for just a morning spent driving around and some beer money for the very helpful guys down at Advance Electric Motors.






OR-Carl said:


> I had measured the critical distance as 21.2mm when I took the motor apart - now I am getting 22.3mm. How precise should I strive to be here?


I would only be concerned if this causes the transmission input shaft to bottom out in the adapter.



OR-Carl said:


> It seems like it is generally recommended to have the flywheel resurfaced anytime you have it out of the vehicle, anyway, so should I have it shaved down by about a mm to get closer to my original value? Also, is there any value in having them mill off extra weight, like the gear teeth, for example? I might also put in a new clutch disc, as the one in there is getting pretty close to needing replacement (I think).


Since a clutch lasts at least half the life of a car, I've never replaced a clutch disk more than once... and not resurfaced the flywheel except in the one case that we were also lightening the flywheel.



OR-Carl said:


> Also, is there any value in having them mill off extra weight, like the gear teeth, for example?


Yes, although it's certainly not necessary when you have a clutch. Flywheels exist primarily to add rotational inertia; mounting the clutch is secondary. Flywheel inertia smooths out the pulses of an engine, and makes it easier to start off from a standstill without stalling; neither of these applies to an electric motor. Flywheel inertia just stores kinetic energy, making the car behave as if it were a bit more massive when changing speed. 

Even with an engine the flywheel is routinely far heavier than it needs to be: I had half the weight taken out of our Honda's flywheel when preparing it for competition, and it still wasn't rough or hard to drive after that.

The ring gear is commonly a shrink-fit on the flywheel - in that case, it can be removed without machining work, and makes a significant contribution to interia.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

brian_ said:


> I would only be concerned if this causes the transmission input shaft to bottom out in the adapter.


I am measuring the gap on the engine/adapter plate side, so since the distance has gotten larger I am assuming the tip of the transmission input shaft will have less engagement if anything, right? I am starting to think I might just plan on assembling everything as-is. I am not really going to be using the clutch very much anyway, so it should be fine at least to get this project rolling.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I am measuring the gap on the engine/adapter plate side, so since the distance has gotten larger I am assuming the tip of the transmission input shaft will have less engagement if anything, right? I am starting to think I might just plan on assembling everything as-is. I am not really going to be using the clutch very much anyway, so it should be fine at least to get this project rolling.


I apparently misunderstood what you were measuring, but if the flywheel and transmission are further apart than intended then I wouldn't worry about one millimetre. The engagement of the input shaft into the pilot bearing, input shaft spline space available for the clutch hub to slide on, and clutch fork travel required disengage the clutch will all be affected... and none should care about that one millimetre.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

A picture is worth a thousand words. Two thousand words if, like me, you dont really know what you are talking about 










I measured distance A, from the front face of the flywheel. That gap got bigger, so the whole flywheel is now about 1mm closer to the trans. I see now that my last response probably didnt make any sense, as I was thinking that moving the flywheel would somehow hold the input shaft back, which it wont. 

So your original point is valid, the shaft will insert an extra mm, but there is quite a bit of clearance from the back end of the pilot bushing to the shaft of the electric motor. I will measure that depth and compare it to the length of the pilot shaft on the trans - but I think it will be fine.

I borrowed an alignment tool, and started getting the flywheel put back together. I inspected the ring gear more closely, which did reveal that it was press fit on. There is a lip on the top surface - the ring presses on the from the rear, so from above it looks like the teeth are machined into the actual flywheel. I used a torch to gently heat it, and it tapped right off. It will save me a little weight out at the very edge of the flywheel, and get rid of all the sharp edges, so seemed like a good idea. 

I am just about ready to mate the two halves together to be hoisted in. I will probably have to wait until next week for the install when I have an extra set of hands (and feet) to get it in place and bleed the clutch. Thanks for all the help with the "car stuff," I am looking forward to being back in my element with the last of the wiring!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

The flywheel is all assembled now








I was able to simply pick the transmission up, and just set it down on the motor, so it was really pretty easy to get them together. Its now ready for installation!








I forgot to check the shaft clearance, but since it went on there, I am guessing it did not cause a problem . Oh yeah, and I did eventually hear back from the motor supplier. They said that the motor can be supported only from the face, as long as the transmission is mounted in such a way that it can resist rotation. They also said that it was not a problem to mount the back end, and even sell a clamping band that looks like a much less crude version of what I built.

As the guy building the custom mini with a hyper 9 system pointed out, the CAN EV adapter plates seems to turn the motor to a weird orientation - I would have preferred it have had the wiring at the 12 o-clock position. Also, If you mount the controller above the motor, the 3 phase wiring studs are reversed from the motor, so the cables need to cross over each other. Seems almost like the intended position for the controller was behind the motor.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> Oh yeah, and I did eventually hear back from the motor supplier. They said that the motor can be supported only from the face, as long as the transmission is mounted in such a way that it can resist rotation.


A clamped-on support won't help with torque - all of that must be done by whatever is bolted to the motor's mounting face. In this case, the rotational constraint (torque reaction) is provided by the cradle and the engine mounts, which is fine, although I'll note that the torque is the motor torque multiplied by the gear ratio of whatever gear the transmission is in - it's substantial.

The cradle isn't really designed for torque - ideally it would be better with diagonal braces on each side of the cradle, to lower on the adapter plate. Sorry, I should have mentioned that before it was painted...


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

brian_ said:


> The cradle isn't really designed


Haha, its sure not 

I had not realized that the gear ratio would multiply the torque, but I guess that makes sense. The motor is rated for 173 ft-lbs, and if I plan on driving it in third gear, the ratio is 1.67 (I think). So thats about 290 ft lbs, which is acting around an approx 7" radius, So there should be 168lbs of force acting on the cradle, or 84lbs per side. First gear would obviously be a lot more, putting almost 300lbs per side - but doesnt this assume full throttle?

As far as fortifying the structure goes, there isnt a bolt hole farther down the adapter plate, that is the lowest one. Since I am not really capable of designing it to resist some given force anyway, I am pretty much limited to trial and error. If I see broken welds, I will simply have to redo it, I suppose.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I had not realized that the gear ratio would multiply the torque, but I guess that makes sense. The motor is rated for 173 ft-lbs, and if I plan on driving it in third gear, the ratio is 1.67 (I think). So thats about 290 ft lbs, which is acting around an approx 7" radius, So there should be 168lbs of force acting on the cradle, or 84lbs per side. First gear would obviously be a lot more, putting almost 300lbs per side - but doesnt this assume full throttle?


Close... if you're driving a shaft (or turning a wrench) you use the radius and get 290 lb-ft of torque divided by (7/12) ft of lever length or 498 lb of force; if the motor and transmission were mounted by bearings around the input and output shafts and all that kept the case from spinning around was an anchor 7 inches from the shaft centreline this would apply and there would be almost 500 pounds of force on that anchor, tangentially.

In this case you are supporting from two points so if they are 14" apart that's 290 lb-ft of torque divided by (14/12) ft lever length, or 249 lb of vertical force on each side (one side in addition to that mount's share of the weight, on the other side pushing up against the weight). Yes, first gear would be about double the torque (depending on your gearing). 

Yes, that's all at maximum motor torque, which you will only see at low motor speed and full accelerator setting. You should be able to set a lower current limit in the controller if this is too much for your structure; ideally there would be a current limit for each gear but of course the controller won't have this and doesn't know your gear selection anyway.

Motor mounts are no joke. 😮 Have you ever seen a drag racer (with live beam rear axle and suspension, not a rail dragster or funny car or anything with independent suspension on the driven wheels) twist as it lifts the front end at the start? That's all reaction to transmission output shaft torque, transmitted through the engine mounts, then the vehicle structure, then the rear suspension. They routinely lift one front wheel off the ground and unweight the opposite corner rear tire enough that without a locked differential that tire spins.



OR-Carl said:


> As far as fortifying the structure goes, there isnt a bolt hole farther down the adapter plate, that is the lowest one. Since I am not really capable of designing it to resist some given force anyway, I am pretty much limited to trial and error. If I see broken welds, I will simply have to redo it, I suppose.


That's not surprising, since there is only engine block to bolt into from roughly the crank height and up. The alternative is to brace upward - it doesn't matter which way you go. Basically, those small triangular gussets on each side should just be larger, spanning the whole height between the two bolts used on each side, and extending horizontally as far as practical.

The cast aluminum adapter plate is pretty substantial, so even though there is no bolt to the transmission near the bottom a brace could still go to the plate.

Of course most people build their transmission and motor mounts with little understanding of the forces involved, and seem to generally get away with it.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Yeah, I suspect it works just because of how incredibly strong steel is. I started looking up some numbers, not so much to prove anything, as to satisfy my own curiosity. So starting at the bolts on the motor mount:

5/8" Grade 5 bolt: 23,000lbs of shear strength (times 4, because there are 2 planes on each side.

One mounting tab welded to the square tube: 1.25" of weld on each side(x2), 0.125" wide and 60,000 psi tensile strength: 18,750 lbs

The square tube I am not so sure about, but it is 5" in circumfrence, and .095" thick, so it has a cross section of .475 inches. If its yield strength is 36000psi, that would take 17,000lbs for it to start deforming?

Obviously, there are going to be some big forces acting on this frame, but I am starting to suspect that the transmission would give out before the frame did. This motor is actually about 25% (?) stronger in terms of torque, is that going to be an issue I should think about?


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> The square tube I am not so sure about, but it is 5" in circumfrence, and .095" thick, so it has a cross section of .475 inches. If its yield strength is 36000psi, that would take 17,000lbs for it to start deforming?


In straight tension, yes, but this is a bending problem. You can easily break a small stick of wood by bending it, even though you can't pull it apart.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> Obviously, there are going to be some big forces acting on this frame, but I am starting to suspect that the transmission would give out before the frame did. This motor is actually about 25% (?) stronger in terms of torque, is that going to be an issue I should think about?


Yes, transmissions are normally rated in terms of input torque... but it's probably not a problem at this level, and you're not going to sustain maximum torque for very long.


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## electro wrks (Mar 5, 2012)

Yeah, you're confusing the tensile strength with the bending strength. Which is what we're looking for here. Simple flanged mounting points are usually are made of much thicker material than the wall thickness of the tubes they are attached to. There are typically more bending forces on and movement of the flanges than on the walls of the attached tubing. The walls of the tubing are typically further away from the neutral axis of the tension and compression forces -so less bending forces on and movement of the tubing. The gussets, as you have added, can help. As brian wrote, yours look a bit weak.

As one alternative design, what about using lengths of angle iron that pick up all three transmission plate attachment bolts, on the passenger and driver sides of the adapter plate. It looks they line up well enough so the angle iron doesn't have to be too wide. Are you using 1 1/4" square tubing? Use 2" X 2" angle iron. Maybe 2 1/2" X 2 1/2", if needed. Face the angle iron out so there is easier access to the plate attachment bolts. Use angle iron with a flange thickness 2-3 times the square tube wall thickness. Say, 1/4" minimum thickness. Some gussets between the tubing and the flange of the angle iron, similar to what you have done, would also be a good idea.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Yeah, actually designing something like this is likely way out reach of your average do-it-yourselfer. I realize that beam deflection is going to be a whole other beast (I did use a much lower value than the tensile strength, which is likely closer to 80,000psi?) Another quick search did turn up a deflection calculator:


Deflection Calculator for Square Tubing


I plugged in 1.25" steel tube of .095" with a beam length of 20" (its maybe about 10" from the plate to the motor mount) and a load of 1000lbs (full torque in 1st gear, and then some for good measure) with the ends fixed. The deflection would be about 0.0143 inches. All of this is very speculative, and does not take into account the fact that the angle iron will also be resisting the bending force, or that there is a beam going between the two arms at the front.

The gussets and the plates are made of 3/16, so they are fairly sturdy, if somewhat undersized

I will say that I am feeling pretty confident in the design. Its probably not very optimized, but it contains an awful lot of steel . I dont think it could fail catastrophically, and it should be fairly easy to keep an eye on it for any signs of fatigue.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Okay, the guy who was going to give me a hand got delayed at an appointment at the DMV (shocking, right?) but I did manage to hoist the motor and trans in myself. The stupid gear-shift lever is annoying, and the motor mount bolts needed a little persuading to line up.








I ran out of time, so I have a few loose ends to wrap up. I am going to double check that my drive-shaft angles are passable, top off the oil, and fish out the nut that I dropped inside the frame somewhere. I plugged the clutch back in, but I am not sure how to test and see if it is working without someone else there. I need to bleed it too. 

Anyhow, there will be a bunch of wiring to do now, which will be a nice change of pace. I am tempering my expectations of "I could be driving this thing in X more work days!" Partly because it always seems to take 2X days longer than I thought, and also because I guess with Covid, the delay in getting registration and plates from the DMV is something like 18 WEEKS. I have tried to call and talk to someone about what I will need to do to get it street legal, but the hour hold time has put me off. I might just get a trip permit and drive it like that for a while, I guess they are not enforcing expired trip permits. Might not help if I dont have plates, though? I dont know. Hopefully by summer things will be settling down.


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## Rusted B&B (Nov 6, 2020)

I love that motor - it's so small compared to an ICE engine. Looks great


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

Rusted B&B said:


> I love that motor - it's so small compared to an ICE engine.


Sure. But the battery (which does the real work of converting stored energy to something useful) is so large and heavy compared to a fuel tank. It really doesn't make sense to think of an electric motor as a direct replacement for an engine; the combination of battery and motor is almost comparable to the combination of fuel tank and engine.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

brian_ said:


> the combination of battery and motor is almost comparable to the combination of fuel tank and engine.


Man, you are really going after the concept of equivalence of late, did you just finish reading everything ever written about logic, or something? 

But yeah, the engine bay feels cavernous with the ICE (and all its hangers on) gone. It will get a little more cluttered as I finish up the last components, but it will leave lots of room to turn a wrench. One project I am going to try and tackle is removing the entire front suspension for an overhaul. The rubber on the control arm bushings looks pretty cracked, and all of it could probably stand to benefit from being sandblasted and repainted.

When I got the truck, there were some tattered remains of some sort of splash-guards that covered the gaps under the fenders. I have been trying to find replacements, but without much luck. Are they called Gap Guards, maybe? And can I make my own? The guy at the motor shop mentioned something about the bearings not being sealed, so I am thinking I am going to try and make some sort of shroud to keep the back end of the motor from getting splashed.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I got a little work done on my high voltage stuff today, and it is starting to come together.








I cut the conduits to length for my main power leads, and have spray painted them orange. Once they are dry I can get the 2/0 cable run back to my main contactors. Up front the big contactor is for the controller, and then 4 smaller ones will run the cabin heat, DC-DC, precharge circuit, and coolant heater. All the high voltage negative wiring is split off into the smaller box on the side. I was hoping to be able to keep all the wiring nice and neat, but I suspect its going to turn into kind of a rats nest when all is said and done. 

Got the clutch bled today too - the fluid was very dark, so I wound up cleaning out the reservoir and flushing quite a bit through to try and clean it up some. 

Anyway, lots of fiddly wiring to do now, but I will keep chipping away at it... I need to sit down and read over the manual for the X144 controller and figure out which of the wires I will need, and which ones I can ignore for now. Its a rather daunting looking wiring harness!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Main leads are in place, so I am wired up as far as the controller now. I still need to make the engine leads, and then I can start in on the big controller wiring harness. There will be a bunch of detail work to do, so I suspect this next part is going to take longer than I think. Still, It feels like the end may be in sight. I am excited to get my controller fired up so that I can finally see these tires move under their own power!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Made my motor leads today - I am annoyed by the way the controller is laid out. I wish they had swapped the layout so that the leads were not all twisted up. Maybe there is a technical reason to do it this way? It seems like it makes the logical configuration of having the controller above the motor harder to wire up neatly.

I pulled my high voltage wiring for the DC-DC converter, and the coolant heater (which is not installed yet). I realized today that I have the wrong size of fuses for my fuse-blocks, so I will need to get the right ones ordered before I can test anything. 

I also checked and labeled all the wires coming out of the main harness - someone had mentioned they got one with a few mixed up colors. Everything checked out, though, and it is looking a bit more manageable with all the wires I am not going to use set aside. I have probably at least another mornings worth of wiring to do, but then I will be ready to bring the controller online.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I have been busy on outdoor projects the last week or so, and the thought of having to wait for months for the DMV paperwork to go through is making work on the truck feel a lot less urgent.










I got the controller wiring all wrapped up today - and ran the wires for all the contactors. Tomorrow I should be ready to connect the main power leads, and get the controller programmed. With a little luck, I might be able to drive it down the driveway.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I wired my batteries together today, which I was sort of worried was going to be dramatic - but they were close enough in voltage that there was not even a spark when I went to connect them. 








All my wiring for the controller checked out okay, so I went ahead and fired it up and got it programmed. My brake booster is still not operating, but I did manage to get the truck up to 10mph, and that did feel like something. The problems started cropping up pretty quickly, though, which put an end to my enthusiasm. It appears that the clutch does not fully disengage, which is annoying. I need to remap the throttle, as it only gives me about enough juice to get up to ... 10mph. I backed it into the garage to go ahead and get started charging it up, only to find that the charger now no longer works. I also checked the 12v system, and also found that the DC-DC converter is not charging the battery. So anyway, I still have a lot of work to do, it seems. 

Once I get the charger sorted out, I think I will feel a little more enthusiastic to try and take on the other stuff that needs to be done. The clutch is frustrating, but I dont really need it, so I can just kick that problem down the road.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I took a little time off to work on other stuff, and the guys at Thunderstruck pointed me in the right direction to get my charger figured out. It was actually just a really stupid mix-up - I inadvertently put the male part of the J1772 plug on backwards after opening it to fix the wiring. Here is the correct way - the little latch slides up the ramp and then clicks down into the groove, letting the charger know it is firmly latched








With the plug end reversed, everything still works, the plug slides into place, but there is no groove for the latch, so the charger wont turn on. Anyway, there were a lot of little hints that I somehow managed to ignore, but now its working again. It can only push 1500w on 120v, so it is going to take a while to get a full charge. I ran it for a couple of hours today while tracking down a problem with one of the bulb holders for the turn signals. 

Next I am going to try and get the brake booster fully online, and then I can reprogram the throttle and do some more driveway tests.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I got my brake booster squared away today. The sensor that came with the kit was causing relay chatter, so I ended up making a time delay relay controller with a resistor/capacitor pair driving a transistor. Now the pump runs for about 5 seconds after the pressure drops to the right value; which makes sure there is enough vacuum for it to stay off. I plumbed in a small reservoir made of PVC pipe, and everything seems to be working. There is a slow leak somewhere, so the pump does come on occasionally for no reason, but I can live with that.










I remapped the throttle profile, as the default mapping only gave me about 50% with the pedal to the floor. It now has considerably more oompf. I did play around with feeding it 200amps in second gear, and it takes off pretty well. Here is a quick video of it going down the driveway.






I wish I did not have like 3 other major projects going on right now, or I think I would feel a lot more excited about being so close to being finished. Also, the mess at the DMV is a real buzz-kill. I still have to work out the coolant system, and get my flatbed wrapped up, but basically it is ready for the open road!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

I am down to 3 major projects now, and since it has finally started raining again (it has been unseasonably dry here) I made some time to tinker in the shop for a bit. I have gotten the back half of my flatbed on, and will be able to wrap that up once the battery box is sealed (which in turn will have to wait for the coolant system to check out okay). 

To that end, I pulled the remaining coolant lines into the engine bay, and started setting up my coolant heater and pump. I got started on the mounting brackets, and drilled and tapped my frame to bolt it all down. I need a pipe fitting for the reservoir, and then I should be able to fill it up and test it. I will need to add the temperature probe for the coolant-heater relay-controller, and while I am at I think I am going to try and clean up the wiring behind the dash. I need to make a little fuse-block with screw terminals for the wires.

Anyway, I should really try and find the energy to get this all wrapped up. Maybe if the world has returned to some semblance of normalcy by this summer, I will be able to get out and take it for a spin.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Okay, I got some more work done on the coolant system. The pump is at the left. It will pump coolant from a tank on the firewall up through the clear pipe to my 1" iron pipe heating unit. I am using a 220v 2500w water heater element which some quick math suggests would be 19 ohms. That is about 1500watts at full pack voltage, dropping to around 900w at empty. I have put my thermistor on the outside of the iron pipe that makes up the body of the heater. I am still not really sure how fast it is going to heat up with the pump running coolant through there, but I figure if the coolant pump dies, I want the relay controller to shut it down before it overheats and starts to boil!










The relay controller is in the dash panel. It shows the temperature, as well as the programmable setpoint for when to start heating. I am going to do a little reading, but right now I set it to 15C. Anytime the coolant reads less than that, it will close the contactor, and apply pack voltage to the heating element. It has an adjustable hysteresis temperature, so it will overshoot by 2C before shutting off. There is also an audible alarm if the temperature exceeds a setpoint, so that is sort of a nice redundant battery temperature indicator. I wired the contactor up incorrectly, so I need to fix that, but it should be pretty straightforward. I tried to lay it out so that I could easily plumb in a small radiator later on. I suspect that with the way I plan on driving it, and the fact that my pack is paralleled, cell heating during driving should be pretty minimal. Ambient temperatures can exceed 40C here, but it is pretty rare (for now). It cools off at night, though, so I can likely avoid ever needing active cooling. 

I am going to run a bunch of thermocouples into the engine bay to keep tabs on the temperatures of various things in there. Eventually I will need to wire up the cooling fan using some sort of temperature controller, too; right now it is basically just an ornament


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

It dawned on me the other day that I was running a bunch of wires without really putting correctly sized fuses on them for all the crap in my dash panel, so i put together a little fuse block for my main switch. The screw terminals will make it easy to add more stuff, although I sort of hope I am nearing the end... I was also hoping this would "clean up" my wiring, but I am not sure why I believed that.










I wrapped up a few loose ends today. I fixed the wiring on the DC-DC converter, so I have 12v charging squared away. I also put coolant in the system, and got my pump wiring finished up. There was one leak I had to fix under the cab, but the battery box seems to be leak-free. I will get it sealed up, and put the flatbed on soon.










The pump is dead quiet, but there is a bit of gurgling sound that comes from my reservoir. I have not tested the coolant heater yet, but a few drag-races up and down the driveway showed a modest increase in battery temp. I was able to pull at least 350A before my battery voltage sagged down to 3.3, and set off my alarms. I have a lot of settings to fine tune in the controller, but I have medium confidence I could drive it at least a few miles and not get stranded.

I also spent about an hour on hold with the DMV, and it sort of sounds like I might not need any sort of inspection at all. There is a check-box on their form that says Electric, and... thats it. The DEQ says that if it doesnt burn fuel, it is beyond their purview, and they dont need to look at it or anything. I will try and get insurance for it this week, and then get a trip permit that should cover me for the 3 or 4 months it will take the DMV to process my application. I am getting pretty sick of this pandemic.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Sealed up the battery pack today; I really hope I dont blow my fuses, because opening this thing back up to change them is going to be a real pain.

I put the last boards on the flatbed, and ... well, I guess its basically done? 









I got most of the trim pieces back in the cab, but there are some that I dont recognize, and will probably just throw away. With all the musty carpeting ripped out, there is only so much I can do to make this thing look good inside. I suspect it is also going to be very noisy, and the manual steering is going to take some getting used to. Anyway, I soldered up my rotary temperature switch, but I do still need to tape on the thermocouples to whatever I want to keep tabs on. Also, the cab heater needs to be sorted out.

I think on monday I will give the insurance company a call and get it put on my policy. I can get a trip permit that will be good for about 4months, and hopefully by that time the registration paperwork will have made its way through the DMV's giant backlog. I am a little nervous to drive this thing farther than I can push it home


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I put the last boards on the flatbed, and ... well, I guess its basically done?


Looking good! 



OR-Carl said:


> I am a little nervous to drive this thing farther than I can push it home


That's what tow trucks and an auto club membership are for.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Slick, I love it. Can't wait to see it roll!


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Got the truck insured today, which was not a problem at all. They are going to base the value on kelley blue book, but that is just fine. The agent sounded genuinely interested in the project, although as usual, thought that all electric motors will turn your car into a drag racer.

I also put in the paperwork for a trip permit, so that should get me on the road until the end of August with the grace period. It will be ready next week. I also filled out the forms for plates and registration, which I worry may confuse the pencil pushers at the DMV, but I will just take it one step at a time.

Anyway, I drove it up and down the driveway today, trying to get the regen settings figured out. I am still a little lost in the software for the motor controller. A lot of functions are disabled, and there is very little information provided by Netgain on the programming side of things. Anyway, I did get my dash switch to engage a higher regen setting, but I cant seem to change the default value. 15% felt like it was a little heavier than engine braking, and 20% slowed me down pretty good. I am not sure if it is something I will want to mess with when I am driving around.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> The agent sounded genuinely interested in the project, although as usual, thought that all electric motors will turn your car into a drag racer.


That's hilarious. Until recently most people associated "electric car" with boring and goofy little low-speed vehicles, and many still do. Most recent production EVs are pretty quick off the line, but by highway speeds they're slower than common gas-engine alternatives; Tesla has apparently done a good job of promoting silly acceleration statistics.


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## ElectriCar (Jun 15, 2008)

Man I wish I had the newer body style. Mine is a 91 square body, aerodynamically modeled after a concrete block! 

Curious why you ditched the factory bed in favor of a wood bed? To each his own but I just cut a hole in the bed right behind the cab and built an aluminum frame battery box in mine. I have 50 Calb SE200AH in an insulated box with thermostatically controlled cooling fans and heating. There's a heat blanket under the batteries. For the added weight (when I ran a lead pack) I used the rear axle from a Jimmy.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

ElectriCar said:


> Curious why you ditched the factory bed in favor of a wood bed?


I wanted to keep the sealed battery box, and it would not have fit unless I maybe did extensive surgery to the bed. I feel like my flatbed should maybe have been a little wider for aesthetic reasons, but since the truck has a pretty paltry cargo rating left anyway, it will certainly serve.

Building a lumber rack is one of my first priorities once it is road worthy. I want to design it so that I can secure 4x8 sheets on top without them catching too much wind. I probably wont be able to carry very much, but it would be pretty satisfying to go pick up the occasional load of lumber.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> I feel like my flatbed should maybe have been a little wider for aesthetic reasons, but since the truck has a pretty paltry cargo rating left anyway, it will certainly serve.


Every step-side box is narrower than the cab; just put some minimal fender flares (generic flares such as these from Amazon, or sections of continuous flexible moulding) around the wheel arches, and it will look fine (but you'll still need a fender liner). Or fit in the steel (or plastic) fenders that you originally planned.

It's 5 feet wide, right? It doesn't need any more width for anything it's likely to be used for. Tow a light but larger (in width and length) trailer for really bulky (but not too heavy) stuff.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I finally did a little more work on the truck today, and took it for its first trip out on the roads! I am hoping to be able to get away with air-cooling my controller, but I am not sure if it will end up being a viable option. I set up a relay controller to power on my fan, and it seems to be working as it should. It does chill the controller, but since it is sitting on a sheet of steel without any fins, its probably not very efficient.










I drove about 5 miles, down to the local grocery store and back. I was going to buy a beer to celebrate, but forgot my mask at home. I forgot to secure the extra wires from the controller, and they got all tangled around the steering column. I thought the steering seemed a little weird, so hopefully that was the cause. It did manage to pull one of the wires off, so it must have been pretty well tangled. Driving this thing still gives me a certain feeling of foreboding; I cant help but imagine that it is about to careen out of control at every moment. 

I also set up a 3 way switch for regen, and rolling down the big hills around here did dump about 60amps back into my battery. I was trying to watch the amp meter a little bit, and seemed like I was pulling a lot more power than I had originally thought. It seems like it was using 140A to keep 40mph on relatively flat ground. I would like to drive it to a weigh station at some point, because I dont really have a sense of how much it weighs.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well I had sort of put this project on the back burner as summer kicks into high gear around here, and then out of the blue I get my plates in the mail and a registration card that is marked ELECTRIC. So, if anyone is curious about how the legal aspects of an electric car conversion goes in Oregon, it is like this:

Call your insurance company, tell them you swapped engines in your pickup, and now it runs on electrons. They will tell you that everything you added to the vehicle wont be covered, and that they will base their payout on whatever the blue book value is for the donors make model and year.

Put your new policy number on a registration renewal for the DMV along with the VIN, and all the donor cars info. There is a section marked Fuel Type: check Electric. Look up how much the registration fees are (they are higher for electric, so I suspect this would deter anyone from trying to dodge the mandatory (but seemingly prefunctory) DEQ emissions testing in this area). I also put a little note at the bottom that I had swapped the engine on the truck, and that when I called the DEQ, they had told me they did not want anything to do with it. So yeah, put that in the mail, and wait for your plates.

There were zero inspections. Nobody asked me anything about the extent of the modifications. I guess its the police's problem if something about my car is not up to par. 

Anyway, now I guess I should actually do the final things that need to happen to get some actual use out of all my hard work! I can ignore all the heating stuff that isnt finished, but I really need to figure out proper cooling for the controller. Also, I need to work out how to shift without a clutch. Some of the hills around here are going to require me to downshift.


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## brian_ (Feb 7, 2017)

OR-Carl said:


> Also, I need to work out how to shift without a clutch. Some of the hills around here are going to require me to downshift.


With an engine, a clutch is needed to allow the engine to stay above its minimum operating speed when the vehicle is moving too slowly - an electric motor (as used in an EV) doesn't have a minimum speed, so no problem there.

When a conventional manual transmission is shifted, synchronizers force the input shaft to turn in synch with the output at the ratio needed for the selected gear. These are tiny little metal cone clutches, so they can't reasonably force the engine to turn faster or slower, but they don't need to because the clutch is disengaged. Although an electric motor is easier to force to change speed than an engine, it still has a lot of inertia so a clutch is still needed for reasonably easy shifting... especially downshifts.

A solution for shifting without a clutch is essentially the same as the way transmissions were shifted before synchronizers: with the clutch engaged to connect the engine and input shaft (which what you always have without a clutch), use the motor to change the input speed to the transmission to what it needs to be.

For upshifts the motor needs to slow down; since it has a lot of inertia and little friction, it slows down gradually, so regeneration could help, but too much would mean the shift would need to be too quick (and if you miss the moment there's no hope).
For downshifts the motor needs to speed up; since it has a lot of inertia it takes significant torque to speed it up, but if power is applied it can speed up very quickly... perhaps too quickly to manage.
If you're good at this and can tell when the speed is right, you can shift smoothly and quickly... but I don't know if anyone successfully does that with an electric motor for both upshifts and downshifts. A computerized controller could do this easily, and some cars now have this feature for their gas engines (just so clutch engagement after shifting is smoother), but production EVs don't have traditional transmissions and DIY conversions usually use clutches so there isn't much demand for this feature and it is not common (and probably not available at all except by custom programming).

Motorcycles and racing cars are routinely shifted without using the clutch, but their transmissions have dog rings rather than synchos, and I assume that changing the S-10 to a race transmission is out...


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well it sounds like the best approach is going to be to fix the clutch. I will maybe call around next week and see where I can take the flywheel to have it milled down. I can borrow a transmission jack to save me having to pull the whole motor/trans assembly like I did when I installed it. 

Learning to drive it clutchless sounds possible, but it would probably mean nobody else would probably ever want to drive it, or they would abuse my transmission if they did.


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## Russco (Dec 23, 2008)

OR-Carl said:


> Well it sounds like the best approach is going to be to fix the clutch. I will maybe call around next week and see where I can take the flywheel to have it milled down. I can borrow a transmission jack to save me having to pull the whole motor/trans assembly like I did when I installed it.
> 
> Learning to drive it clutchless sounds possible, but it would probably mean nobody else would probably ever want to drive it, or they would abuse my transmission if they did.


Sounds like you've been testing it out. It all depends how patient you are. I have no trouble at all shifting my 1938 Chevy truck with a 4 speed sliding spur gear transmission up or down. Ever try shifting a gas car without the clutch? Not too hard. Wait a second in neutral when upshifting. When downshifting, push to neutral, rev up the engine for a second, then continue to the lower gear. Old timers did it all the time and did it well. 

Double clutching is the name and crashbox is the game.


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## Kato659 (Aug 5, 2019)

My 1998 Dodge Dakota (5 speed, 2.5L) was easy to shift without the clutch after a little practice. If you timed it right and put on slight pressure the shifter just "fell" into place. I have driven manual vehicles that are harder to get right. With my '51 Dodge 1 Tonne, the choices are double clutch between gears or figure it out and skip the clutch pedal.


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, sometimes it seems my clutch problem has fixed itself. I borrowed a transmission jack, and was all ready to tear into it, when I decided it would be a good idea to drive it around a bit and get reminded how it was behaving. Now it works just fine. After talking to a friend with some mechanics experience about the changes I made, I was sort of leaning towards the idea that cleaning my transmission and leaving it disassembled for a year had possibly introduced corrosion on the splines - so the clutch plate was not able to float freely and therefore not disengage completely. Maybe it just need to be cycled a few times to get back into its groove? I also think that part of it might have been that I was not familiar yet with the sound the motor makes. The Hyper-9 has a very distinct hum to it, which is made more noticeable when the clutch is in and you just spin it up. I think I might have been hearing that, and imagining it was coming from the clutch. 

Anyhow, I drove it another 5 miles today, and decided that it is going to need cooling for the controller to handle the hills we have here. Climbing the big hill on the way back to the shop I saw the temperature in the controller go up to I think over 70C. I ordered a cooling plate, and will plumb that into my coolant loop when it gets here. 

I also fiddled with the steering a bit today, as the manual steering gearbox had lots of slop. It was rocking several inches side to side, and the steering wheel was on crooked to boot. I made a stab at aligning the tires, but I am not so sure that was the best idea. Has anyone tried getting lower rolling resistance tires, and does one see an improvement in mileage?


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I think I basically completed my truck today! I had put in a new chill plate for the motor controller, and today I made some time to fill the system with coolant, and resolve a final leak (more hose clamps to the rescue!). With just forced air cooling, the controller temperature was getting too high as I climbed the big hills around here, now after 5 miles of driving, it had gotten up to about 7C over ambient, and was quickly cooling down with the water pump going. 










There are still some little odd jobs that I should probably do, but I think I can basically start taking it out on the road for some longer testing trips now. I do not have great instrumentation for how much power I have used from the pack, so it will likely take some time to figure out what my functional range is. I will need to get started on my off-grid charging routine.

I feel like I may have underestimated just how much power hill climbing was going to take, and I am still a little leery of really giving it full throttle. The most power I pulled was about 45kw, and I have seen regen get up to about 7.5kw when set at 30%, and I am rolling down a big hill. 

Anyway, this has been quite a project. I think I will probably sign off this thread, and start a new on about the road testing phase. More to follow.


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## MattsAwesomeStuff (Aug 10, 2017)

Congrats on taking her to the finish line. We need a walkthrough video and some exterior footage of it driving


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## OR-Carl (Oct 6, 2018)

Well, I thought my truck was done, but once again I was wrong. The leaking coolant was not coming from the barb, but the bulkhead connection on the tank. I looked into getting a custom tank made, but that process dragged on and on. Finally I gave up, and decided to modify an aluminum tank and braze on the fittings I needed. Turns out brazing aluminum is kinda hard. Anyway, there is still a tiny leak somewhere, but I am going to live with it for now. I hate coolant systems. 

Anyway, I drove it home and plugged it into my small shop system. I am off-grid, so charging is going to be ... interesting. At least I dont have a day job. Also, I can get just about anywhere I would normally drive to in about 5 miles of back country roads. 










My charging is limited to a whopping 720 watts - I could probably squeeze a little more out, but the instrumentation in my shop is pretty crude so I dont really know how much my panels are producing. I think they are rated for about 900W. I did manage to put 4200Wh in today, so even with pretty pessimistic numbers, that would get me to town and back! I think 5000 should be possible. I am going to start trying to get a feel for my pack capacity and likely range. The datalogger on the motor controller seems pretty cool, so I need to get that set up and record some hard numbers while I drive around.


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## gregski (Sep 6, 2011)

it's a Truck Build, what's not to like? ha ha 

nice progress


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