As you can see, there is plenty to fix on this vehicle. However, the price was right. In retrospect, now that I know the conversion is on its way to be successful, I wish I had picked a car in better condition. Because once I am done with the EV part of it, I'm probably going to spend anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000 fixing the car up so it looks and works better. If I ever do another EV conversion, I will definately start off with a better vehicle as I think it would save money in the long run, and time.
It is quite obvious that this car was abused by its previous owner(s). It was obvious by looking at the tires, especially the front passenger side tire, that it did a lot of peeling-out. It had also had a lot of aftermarket stereo equipment installed, including some kind of boom-box in the cargo area. It also had some kind of satellite radio and an aftermarket alarm system. I have spent countless hours pulling this "cancer" out of the car and trying to put things back right. The only thing I haven't finished removing is some of the wires for the alarm system which are still hanging under the dashboard by the clutch pedal. I haven't figured out what they go to yet. Whoever installed all of this stuff was also an amateur and they did a very poor job of it, often damaging the car in the process.
The Electric Motor
Obviously, with an electric car, the motor is one of the most important factors. I had a hard time selecting a motor because I wanted to keep costs down. I knew that I only needed a top speed of 45 mph and be able to reliably reach that speed when I needed to. I noticed that most of the motors people were using were costing several thousand dollars.
I also learned there are 3 different types of DC motors, as well as AC motors. I knew I was going with a DC system. I foudn there were different pros and cons to each kind. This made it hard to decide. Here are the factors I considered:
| type | Pros | Cons |
| Permanent Magnet | Can do regenerative braking | Magnets degrade over time with heat. |
| Seperately Excited (sepex) | Can do regenerative braking | Requries two seperate power sources |
| Series Wound | very common, easier to setup | No regenerative braking |
To be honest, the thing looked so small compared to other people's motors I wasn't even sure if it would be able to move the car. You can imagine that I was very pleased when I first tried to drive the car and it moved! However, as of Feb 2, 2008, I am still having performance issues when climbing hills. If I am on flat ground, or a very minor incline, accellerating up to 30 mph is not a problem. I have even managed 45 mph. But there are some nasty hills in my area and I've been having a hard time climbing them any faster than around 20 mph. If I get a running start on the hill, I can keep it over 30 mph, barely.
The Adapter Plate
My Aikido instructor is very good with building metal things. I am capable of doing a lot of metal work at home, but this was a bit too thick for me to work with. So he built it for me for free, as a favor. The way we started was by placing the transmission down on a piece of 1/4" steel plate and tracing it with soap-stone. Then he used a torch and cut it out to the right shape. We marked the holes for the bolts and made a 5 inch hole in the approximate middle. Then we took an 8 inch piece of pipe and cut a small piece off to make a spacer. I had to use my dremel to get the lip of the motor to fit into this plate just perfectly. Once the coupler was done, we Put the motor, adapter plate, spacer, and electric motor all together. This allowed us to see where the exact center was and make a weld to join the spacer and the plate.
In retrospect, there are some things we could have done better. I'm not entirely happy with the final product, mostly because there is some slop in some of the holes that hold it together. I'm afraid that over time the plate may shift and require readjusting. Time will tell.
The Motor Coupler
The coupler is another one of the few components I would not be able to construct myself. Essentially, this is the device which connects the shaft of the motor to the shaft of the transmission. I took my clutchplate and the dimensions of the motor shaft to a machinest. He made a very nice and strong coupler for me. However, the coupler is just a tad bit wobbly, but I think it is so little that it will not make a difference. So far it has held up fine in initial tests.
The Batteries
This is one of the most important parts of an electric vehicle, and also one of the most expensive. I had a very hard time deciding what kind of battery to use. I literally looked for months. I shopped around at various stores and compared prices. But I also learned an incredible amount about different kinds of batteries. First thing I learned is that Ni-Mh and Li-Ion were too expensive for me. So I had to use lead-acid. But not all lead-acids are equal. You have Gel, Flooded, AGM, and some others. Originally I wanted to go with AGM because they do not have liquid electrolyte (acid) that can spill and they don't ever release hydrogen gas into the car. However, I had a hard time finding any AGMs that I could afford that would put out the kind of power I needed. I also learned that most deep-cycle batteries don't have thick enough lead-plates in them to handle the stresses of running an EV. The trouble was, I was trying to conserve space in the car. The golf-car batteries that everyone else uses won't fit in many of the places I wanted to use. So that limited the choices down to just a few select areas. Another problem was, I would need at least 12 of the 6V batteries to achieve 72 volts. After exhausting efforts to find smaller batteries, I eventually went with Trojan 8V golf-car batteries. I would only need 9 of those, and I was sure I could fit them in the car. So that is what I went with. I suspect that when these need replacing in a few years I'll probably go with a newer type of battery since I will have had plenty of time to research them and there are some new types comming to market.
The Power Conduit
In order to be able to place the hood back on the car, roll up the windows, and allow for a passenger to be able to get into the car, it was obviously neccessary to build a conduit for the main power cables to go from the cargo area of the car to the engine bay. Originally, I bought some 2" PVC pipe and various fittings. Unfortunatly, I was unable to get the pipe to conform to the shapes I needed. One big problem was the rear axle. The conduit goes above the axle and I knew that in the case of a nasty bump, it would hit the PVC and probably crack it. There was enough space to move the conduit higher, but the pipe wasn't flexible enough and the correct fittings don't exist to make it the shape I needed. I tried using a heat gun on the pipe, and was able to bend it, but couldn't bend it into the shape I needed. So In the end, I went back tot he store and boght some flexible 1.5" pipe. I used plastic epoxy to attach it to the inside of a threaded pipe-end so it could be threaded into the the hole of the spare-tire well. I used a hole-saw to cut that hole. For mounting under the car, I built some custom metal brackets that attached to the existing bolt-holes that used to hold up the exhaust shield That holds up a large piece of 2" PCV conduit, and the flexible conduit runs inside of that. Update - I've just recently had to pull some more cable through this conduit. I used an existing wire that wasn't being used at the time to pull through the new cable. I pulled 3 new cables through, a multi-conductor cable for the battery monitoring system, an A/C extension cord for the front battery chargers, and another 4-conductor cable for whatever I decide I need later. In order to make this work more smoothly, I bought some wire lubricant, and it was well worth the money.
The Battery Racks
Obviously, with a bunch of batteries in the car you need something to hold them in place. This has actually turned out to be one of the easiest things to do, but very time-consuming. I bought some steel angle and flat-bar at a local metal shop and did all of the welding, cutting, and painting myself. THe front rack requried building supports that mounted to the car's frame. I designed those mounts so that they will bolt and unbolt as neccessary so the racks can be removed from the car. The rear rack actually makes use of 4 existing threaded bolt-holes, 2 of which go into the frame. The top of the racks will bolt to the strut towers. When I design these, I not only have to accomodate the weight of these monster batteries, but also have to be able to hold them in place in case of heavy braking or an accident. Hopefully I'll never have to test the latter. I also coated the rear cargo area with pickup truck bed-liner material made by 3M. The battery racks rest on top of this.
The Instrument Cluster
I've been very disappointed with the instrument cluster on most EV conversions I've seen. It seems as if nobody really puts much effort into this. Well, my instrument cluster is essentially dead since only the speedometer works. And that only works because the car is just old enough to be using a mechanical speedometer. but I have all these other guages and indicaters which either don't work, or don't even serve any purpose anymore. So I went down to a junk-yard and pulled out an instrument cluster. I did this so that my EV can still have a dash while I'm in the process of building this thing. When I'm done, I'll just swap it in to the car. I installed a larger screen for the paktrakr. I needed two seperate 5V power supplies. One to supply 5V to the temp guages and voltage meteres. The other for running the backlights when the vehicle's lights are turned on. I eneded up buying some 3rd party Ipod chargers off of ebay for $1 a piece which had 5V DC-DC converters inside.