Chevy Volt and Electric 3 series BMW (Ev-36/46)

Seems that every time a journalist drives an EV they think "Let's go on a road trip".   That makes about as much sense as getting a super car and thinking "Let's go to Home Depot and get some lumber". :-) Both might be able to do those things but that's really not what they are for.  They are not reviewing what the car will really be used for.  But I digress. The Volt can do long trips using the backup generator.  In the Volt the main electric motor can put out 149 hp where the generator can only put out 80 hp.  In other words when operating on gas only there is only half as much horsepower available.  Around town and at low speeds this is no biggie.  But at freeway speeds, especially climbing mountains at freeway speeds, 80hp simply doesn't cut it.  This is where "mountain mode" comes it.  That mode holds some electric energy in reserve for when more than 80 HP is needed.  We live in the Appalachian mountains so mountain mode is...

Today has been about month since we brought home the 2011 Volt.  We have put over 400 miles on it.  Only using the range extender once for about 7 miles.  The one time we used the range extender we were finally able to see how far the car would actually go on a charge.  Not just the predicted mileage. Keep in mind we live in the Appalachian mountains.  The roads are very up and down and never straight.  And on this run there were many sections of 55 MPH and we drove in sport mode (We always drive in sport mode).   And well it included a foot to the floor acceleration run from a stop light to 55 mph.  I'm sure that hurt the range.  We weren't seeing how far we could stretch the range.  We were just driving it like we would drive a car.  Anyway we got 42.3 miles on battery power alone.  Which seems right in the neighborhood of what was predicted for the car when it was new.  For a 7 year old car with a 125K miles I'...

Blower module aka Blower resistor replacement for a 2011 Volt (Gen1)  22745409   First step is to remove the trim on the passenger door sill.  This is required as the right outboard screw holding the lower trim panel on is not accessible with the trim on.  Removal is simply prying it up and then back.  It just has tabs that click into the slots you can see here. The next step is to remove the lower trim panel. There are three screws.  (9/32 socket fits the head) One to the right of this picture.  One to the left.  Then one to the back center (toward the front of the car).  I'll try to circle these in yellow later.  The one in the middle was missing on my car.  Makes me think someone has been here before.   Once the lower trim panel is removed there is an air duct that needs to be removed.  This was missing on my car.  Apparently the person that was in here last...

The first week of EV driving has been great.  Put on 220 miles this week.  So far we haven't had to use the gas motor backup (as a generator) at all.    One day we drove the car to a local charging station to try it out.  Drove there just to try it.   So it wasn't useful other than our education.  It was only a 4 mile drive to the charge station from our house and it took about 30min to charge the car to full.  While interesting it showed me that our plan of charging exclusively at the house is the way to go.    When we purchased the car the guessometer said it could go 25miles.  Which was fine for what we needed.  This morning it is up to 36 miles of expected battery range.  And after driving 14 miles to work it guesses I have 29 miles left.  That'd be 43 total miles.  Good deal.   When we bought the car the blower fan didn't work.  The owner stated that it probably needed a b...

The Warp 9 and all my miscellaneous left over bits are now sold.  Well except for some AGM batteries and Yacht battery chargers.  They are handy for other projects.  Like my electric mower.  Oh did I mention that I bought a 1970's electric tractor and use it to mow the lawn.  That is in addition to my converted electric riding mower.  A bunch of the AGM batteries and some chargers are living on in the mowers.  But for a road going EV this weekend the quest, for me, has finally come to an end.  Now that there are quite a few premade EV's on the market I decided to make life simple and just buy one. Originally I didn't want a EV with a range extender.  But Virginia is not encouraging EV ownership.  In Virginia the price for Vehicle registrations for a pure EV are significantly higher than a EV with a Range extender aka "Hybrid".  Once the range extender door was opened I started also factoring in plug in Hybrids.  I began ...

Plans change again. My son crashed his E46 (gas powered).  He bent the frame beyond repair.    Due to scheduling and things we really needed an extra car.  My plan was to buy a inexpensive overheated E46 and drop his engine in.  We shopped for a couple days but then I looked at my EV in the driveway.  It looked almost identical to the car he crashed.  So.... Yes you guessed it.  We pulled out the EV stuff and tossed in his motor and trans.  Had him up and running pretty quickly.  Long story short my EV parts are forsale . Sold http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176130 If someone wanted to come to the house and pick it up  I'd toss in some other EV bits I have.

Not much to show. Saturday removed the fuel tank. My son refined the zilla to e46 interface some more. Has the status messages appearing on the radio now.

Finished hooking up the zilla last night. Connected the rpm sensor at lunch and took it for a little drive. https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=em-upload_owner&v=8MJMahwJySA  

Turns out my daughter claimed the red bmw as her ride. But later when it needed a new engine I bought another E46 that had a bad clutch.  Got it for only a little more than what a used engine cost.  So project car for me :-) After doing some other projects, I finally took some time to work on the ev. The look is so familiar. Same parts, different car. Still need to mount the controller and do some wiring before it can drive. Used steel for the battery racks this time.  Took too much work to weld Aluminum with my equipment.  Much quicker and easier for me with steel. 

Been very bad about updating this blog.  The car has been driving around some as you can see in a few of the videos.  It is kind of a beat up chassis that have seen some hard times.  The dingy worn interior is getting to me.  I saw this forsale: So I bought it.  A 2000 323i.  Might make a good EV.  I haven't seen it in person yet as I'm out of town at the moment.  Will be interesting to see if it is a good EV candidate.

I like this clip as in the grass the car is really quiet. Not sure why everyone worries about EV's being too quiet. A lot of car noise comes from the tires on the road or gravel.

Finished the High voltage wiring and wired up the "hair ball" for the controller. All looks to be working perfect.

I'm hoping by end of christmas break at the latest to have the EV moving on it's own power even if on ony 7 batts. Progress so far. Most of the high voltage lines are done. I need to make 3 more. Still haven't finished the return lines on the PS so that's left and then wire up the Hair ball. See how much longer that takes. Here are a few more part#'s and stores I bought from. Contactor: Kilovac EV200 Contactor. Purchased from E-bay Crimping tool: Lengo Swedg-on Tool Model 840 From E-bay Fuses and Heat shrink: purchased from EV Source LLC www.evsource.com 1ft Length, 1in Normal Adhesive Lined Heat Shrink Tubing, Red Item# 600-HSA-001-RE-N 3ft 1ft Length, 1in Normal Adhesive Lined Heat Shrink Tubing, Black Item# 600-HSA-001-BL-N 3ft 500A 300VDC fuse, Up to 1000A Controller up to 276V Nominal System Voltage Item# 201-A30QS500-4 qty 2

I added the supports for the batteries on the tray that goes above the motor. That finished of my Argon gas for welding and had to get a refil. I think I'll use less now that I know what i'm doing. Started making battery cables. I played with soldering them on. I had thought of soldering AND crimping. However the fit of the lug to the wire was snug so inserting the wire with a heated lug didn't work well. So I'm just crimping. Using the hammer crimper in the press works very easy. Seems to be working well but I have no other experience with this type of work to compare it with. I also cleaned up or rather filed off some of the ugly welds. I need to re weld some of the bad ones. I'll also add some gussetts and some minor touchups. A real nice part is I won't have to paint it

More progress on the front battery tray. Added most of the upper tray above the motor. Spent most of saturday on it. Seems like I should have made more progress but it takes time. Also learning a new skill of welding aluminum does slow me down some. Some welds are great and some are horrid. I'm having a hard time telling what makes the difference. More practice is needed. Took a picture of my helper standing on the battery rack. Thought it would make a funny picture. Of course he reminded me that he only weighs what one battery weighs. So I stood on them. Seemed plenty strudy and so far the rack weighs less than 15 LBS. The mail man dropped off the fuses and heat shrink tubing. The wire lugs arrived earlier this week so I now have enough parts I should be able to make the car drive around the yard. Just some assembly required. Thaniel

Since I wanted to build battery trays out of alumiunm I purchased the materials needed to convert my MIG welder over to weld aluminum. After an evening of frustrating attempts at welding I did some more reading and found I had the heat setting all wrong. Today I managed to actually join some metal. Made a little progress on the front battery tray. There will be 4 batteries on the lower level. 2 on the passenger side of the motor one on the driverside and one inbetween. I need to add a tray to hold three batteries above the motor and more car to tray supporting structure. The lugs I ordered are suppose to be here monday. The fuses I ordered I have no clue. Maybe in a few weeks it can move under it's own power.

Got the clutch working today. Apparently to bleed this clutch system the slave cylinder has to be removed from the trans and tilted to have the bleed valve up. Weird. Did that and the clutch now works. Am behind on ordering things. Lugs and welding equiptment for welding aluminum are finally now on order. Looking at what guages I needed and found that the zilla will Display motor current on the tach. Interesting. Do I even need a battery current Ammeter? I think for now I'll go sparse on guages and add later but before it hits the road. My Goal right now is to put it together enough it'll drive in and out of the garage. So a lot of the guages and such can wait. Next steps will be: 1. Make front battery trays 2. Mount Controller and wire up hairball 3. Wire up front batteries Ok you tube is done. Video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiOYDu8Rk3M

Well here is the motor mount. It attaches to the 2 side bolts on the motor and 2 of the front bolts. I'm attaching it to the crossmember using using 2 existing holes. I used 2 rubber transmission mounts instead of motor mounts as they are smaller and this motor is lighter than the gas engine. I also didn't go with the ICE engine motor mounts and locations as I wanted to leave room on the side of the motor for another battery. I think it turned out well. Location is good being Dead center and level. Oh wire arrived today. Looks nice and beefy (4/0) and is quite flexible. I need to select and find a place to buy the fuse, circuit breaker and shunt. The motor mount I think will work out great. I am a mechanical engineer and use to design weldments as a job years ago. Did not do any analysis on this structure, other than rough numbers for the force that'll be applied at the mount points, but it should be plenty strong. And small is light and more room for the batteries. Oh...

I was looking around and found some tinned lugs with the right bolt hole in them for a reasonable price. Think I'll just order them. I have my motor mount bracket just about done. Painted it last night. will have to get some pictures and post it. Went a little different way than what I have seen most do.

I ordered the main wiring. After some reading I realized that 4/0 wiring is probably overkill and should buy 2/0. Cost difference would probably be about $100. Then I thought to myself.....if this were a gas car and I could get a few HP for an extra couple of bucks would I do it? Sure I would. Ordered 4/0 wire. I also ordered a hammer crimper. I have a hydrolic press so I'm thinking I can just put it in the press instead of whacking at it with a hammer. I haven't ordered any lugs. I'm wondering if I can make some out of some copper tube. Prices seem to be a ripoff and I didn't see any with the through hole I needed. I'll give it a go after the wire arrives. Manged to get a battery in my fuel tank location battery rack. I was able to test the clearances in the front and rear location. Looks like it'll work out great. Getting it up there with the batteries in it is going to be a trick but I'll worry about that when I get that far. I'm sure it can be done.

Finally had a saturday where I wasn't travelling, there wasn't another car repair I had to do, the kids didn't have a scoccer game etc. so I got some work done on the EV. I'd really like to get it so it'll move under it's own power so I can move it out of the garage during the week. Started on the gas tank location battery rack. Made some good progress so far. Here's a pict in the middle of construction.

Installed the Hall effect sensor Pedal. I keep wanting to call it a GAS pedal but obviously that's not right. My boy keeps correcting me with "Accelerator" pedal. Pic attached of the pedal installed. Have also connected the wire. I reused the firewall fitting/gromet that the cable had used. Just drilled it out a bit larger for a nice snug fit on the wire. Makes for a nice clean installation. I also finished the high pressure and low pressure brake fluid lines. The 92-95 BMW's had low pressure brake fluid lines going from the fluid reservior to the ABS unit (see the picture). So I did a remote mount of the BMW fluid tank to the Mustang master cyl and ran new lines to the ABS. Doing some research I found that EPDM style rubber hoses are recommended for use with brake fluid. Looking around locally I found that hose made for farm fertilizer etc sprayers are made of the same thing. So I got some at tractor supply. So far it looks like it will work good. The metal for mak...

Forgot to mention that on the MR2 pump I realized that the reservior could be rotated so that the return fitting could point another direction. However the bump on the inside of the reservior hits on some of the parts of the pump. I took off the plastic reservior and took a picture. See attached. So you get a better idea of what I'm talking about. So to orient the outlet at a very different angle it may require removing the reservior turning to the direction and refitting. sadly there are a few angles where it just can not be placed but that's not to big of a deal. Also shown is the braided steel hose and fittings I used to make the custom AN style High pressure lines. Like what is common on race cars. It is easy enough to do. In my set up I have one line going from the PS pump to the hydro boost and one from the hydro boost to the P/S Rack. I need to finish the return lines then I could give the hydrolics a try. Adapter fittings purchased from pegusus parts www.pegasusautorac...

Ok things are busy and I'm not in a big hurry to finish as I enjoy having a project. So after some family vacations and more repairs on my ICE cars I did get back to the electric car. Update: The Batteries I decided I wanted to use were Deka 9A31. Nearest dealer for them was 90 miles from my house in NC (I live in the middle of nowhere). I called them to see if I could come by and pick some up and they referred me to the dealer that "covered" my area. Well the dealer that "covered my area" was in TN and I'm in VA. So I don't see how that worked. But after some discussion they decided to let me pick them up at the closer site in NC. Thursday I took my SUV and trailer down. I had to pick up the wife and kids at the Charlotte airport that direction anyway. Well on the way down my trusty trailer, that I've had for years and towed thousands of miles, decided to start shedding parts. After being signaled by another motorist I found I'd lost ...