Greetings to all!
Wow, my last post was almost two months ago. It's definitely time to check in and write an update.
No, I haven't given up on the Duster. After about 9 or 10 months of focusing on nothing but this project, life has sort of caught up with me. I have been pretty busy the past couple of months taking care of MANY other household and career necessities that I had been neglecting. There is never enough time or energy to do everything I want/need to.
Also, I finally had to halt everything car-related and clean out my shop from top to bottom. I have collected so many projects and parts over the past few years that it was becoming nearly impossible to accomplish anything. I was getting seriously frustrated whenever I worked on something because I could never find what I needed - tools, parts, room to work. So, I have sold off a lot of unnecessary stuff and re-organized my workspace so now I can THINK clearly again and actually FIND things.
The Duster is "streetable" but has not left the driveway in quite some time. I am about ready to resume where I left off, especially now that gas prices are creeping up again. My next step is to finish installing the various meters I need to monitor the performance. At that time, I can complete the "fix" on the battery terminals. Then I will be ready for some serious street testing.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
We're Number 1
I'm picking up my replacement battery on the way to work today, so the Duster will be back on the road again tomorrow. In the mean time...
I have a "Ride Page" over at CarDomain.com. Rob Einaudi, Editor-In Chief of CarDomain, likes my car and has written about it several times on his site. The latest article is HERE.
A while back I was looking at the CarDomain categories that my Duster might fit into. Just for the fun of it, I put it into the "Green Machine" category. Today I noticed that we are the "TOP RIDE" in that category. Hey, that's pretty cool!
I have a "Ride Page" over at CarDomain.com. Rob Einaudi, Editor-In Chief of CarDomain, likes my car and has written about it several times on his site. The latest article is HERE.
A while back I was looking at the CarDomain categories that my Duster might fit into. Just for the fun of it, I put it into the "Green Machine" category. Today I noticed that we are the "TOP RIDE" in that category. Hey, that's pretty cool!
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Another Setback
Well, I certainly hate reporting the failures, but they are a part of the whole story of this conversion. Maybe the information will help someone else avoid some trouble. The first several mishaps were due to defective parts. The last two failures were totally my fault.
Yesterday during the test driving I smelled a slight burning smell. When I finished driving, I took a quick look around and checked the controller and contactor connections with my infrared thermometer. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary so I attributed the smell to just new parts "burning in". Today I was installing the new Link 10 meter and turned on the main contactor. I immediately heard a "snapping" noise in the trunk. I could also see the unmistakable blue flash of arcing, since there is no back seat in the car.
Upon opening the trunk, I found that one of the battery terminals had gotten so hot that it had melted the lead around the post. I assume this happened yesterday during my two miles of test driving. I am taking the blame for this because I have neglected to check the rear battery terminals for tightness in quite a while. After discovering this, I checked the other terminals on the rear battery pack and found a couple others that were somewhat loose. I believe this one just got too lose to handle all of the current. So I guess this means I'll have to replace the battery since the threads on the post got messed up as well. This is another lesson learned.
Yesterday during the test driving I smelled a slight burning smell. When I finished driving, I took a quick look around and checked the controller and contactor connections with my infrared thermometer. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary so I attributed the smell to just new parts "burning in". Today I was installing the new Link 10 meter and turned on the main contactor. I immediately heard a "snapping" noise in the trunk. I could also see the unmistakable blue flash of arcing, since there is no back seat in the car.
Upon opening the trunk, I found that one of the battery terminals had gotten so hot that it had melted the lead around the post. I assume this happened yesterday during my two miles of test driving. I am taking the blame for this because I have neglected to check the rear battery terminals for tightness in quite a while. After discovering this, I checked the other terminals on the rear battery pack and found a couple others that were somewhat loose. I believe this one just got too lose to handle all of the current. So I guess this means I'll have to replace the battery since the threads on the post got messed up as well. This is another lesson learned.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
On The Road Again
I welded and installed the motor coupling adapter today. Then I put the car all back together and did some more successful test driving. I'm still unwilling to stray too far from home until I am certain of its reliability, but I easily got her up to 40 mph in second gear.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Back From The Machine Shop
After the motor coupling failure, I designed an adaptor plate and had a local machine shop make it out of steel. Now I can weld the steel hub to the adaptor plate and bolt the whole assembly to the coupling using grade 8 bolts.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Update On Mechanical Failure
I was able to remove the back half of the motor coupling by removing the transmission. It was not too bad of a job and only took about an hour. I confirmed that the weld was indeed the culprit. I have come up with a couple of options which I will look into tomorrow.
Mechanical Failure - I'm Still Learning
In yet another plot twist, the EV Duster has suffered a mechanical failure. I was working on testing a throttle limitation circuit to keep the car from lurching so much in reverse. I was trying different resistor values and test driving the car forward then reverse in the driveway when something in the driveline snapped. Upon inspection I discovered that the weld holding the machined clutch disk center to the Lovejoy motor coupling broke.
Well it didn't actually break. It just separated from the Lovejoy coupling. I was quick to blame my amateur welding skills for this failure. However, I have discovered that the failure is much more than that.
Doing some investigation, I have learned that the coupling is made of "sintered' iron. After reading up on sintered iron and calling the Lovejoy factory, I have learned that sintered iron cannot be welded. I guess I was lucky that my weld held as long as it did - perhaps a tribute to my superior welding skills :).
So this is a "design" problem which I am going to have to re-think. The Lovejoy factory told me that a steel version of the coupling "may" be available but at about 5 times the cost. That is prohibitive at this point. Apparently the sintered coupling can be drilled and tapped, so maybe I can fabricate a splined clutch disk center that I can bolt to the coupling. I'll have to think about this a while.
Well it didn't actually break. It just separated from the Lovejoy coupling. I was quick to blame my amateur welding skills for this failure. However, I have discovered that the failure is much more than that.Doing some investigation, I have learned that the coupling is made of "sintered' iron. After reading up on sintered iron and calling the Lovejoy factory, I have learned that sintered iron cannot be welded. I guess I was lucky that my weld held as long as it did - perhaps a tribute to my superior welding skills :).
So this is a "design" problem which I am going to have to re-think. The Lovejoy factory told me that a steel version of the coupling "may" be available but at about 5 times the cost. That is prohibitive at this point. Apparently the sintered coupling can be drilled and tapped, so maybe I can fabricate a splined clutch disk center that I can bolt to the coupling. I'll have to think about this a while.
Monday, March 16, 2009
One small step back
I decided to take a step backward today. When I originally installed the motor controller, I forgot to take into account the cooling fans that mount on top of it. I realized some months ago that the fans sat up too high for the hood to close, so I left them off. With all of the other issues I had to deal with, I put off deciding how to remedy this until today.
Today I moved the circuit breaker and controller over toward the middle of the car. In fact, I ended up repositioning just about everything on the control board. The end result is that I now have plenty of clearance for the fans and room for the control relays that I will be installing.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Dash To The Finish
The last step in completing the tachometer project was hooking the signal wire into my dash tach. I needed to remove the dash to accomplish this. I also needed to make a few other repairs and modifications to my dash. This actually turned out to be a pretty big project.
First, I removed the old fuel and oil pressure gauges. In addition, I relabeled the water temperature guage to read "CNTRLR". I ran a sensor wire to the controller and was hoping to use the old water temperature sender to pick up the controller temperature. (So far, it is reading way too high so I will need to play with the sensor a bit more.)
I then added indicator LEDs in the dash for the main contactor status, the controller cooling fans, and the throttle control circuit that I will be adding to allow slower throttle response. I also added switches under the dash for the controller fans and throttle control circuit.
In addition to adding indicators to the dash, I picked up a few circuits at the dash that will be needed for the various controls and brought them out to the control board under the hood.
Before I knew it, I had run quite a few new wires. I finally hooked everything back up to the dash and reinstalled it. I then tested everything including the tach. Finally, I tucked all of the loose wires under the hood and test drove the car to make sure everything still works as it should. Now I can work on completing the necessary control circuits.
First, I removed the old fuel and oil pressure gauges. In addition, I relabeled the water temperature guage to read "CNTRLR". I ran a sensor wire to the controller and was hoping to use the old water temperature sender to pick up the controller temperature. (So far, it is reading way too high so I will need to play with the sensor a bit more.)I then added indicator LEDs in the dash for the main contactor status, the controller cooling fans, and the throttle control circuit that I will be adding to allow slower throttle response. I also added switches under the dash for the controller fans and throttle control circuit.
In addition to adding indicators to the dash, I picked up a few circuits at the dash that will be needed for the various controls and brought them out to the control board under the hood.
Before I knew it, I had run quite a few new wires. I finally hooked everything back up to the dash and reinstalled it. I then tested everything including the tach. Finally, I tucked all of the loose wires under the hood and test drove the car to make sure everything still works as it should. Now I can work on completing the necessary control circuits.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Tach Attack (The Final Chapter)
I originally figured out the basics of how I was going to get a signal from the motor to my in-dash digital tachometer back in October. That post is here. I promised a "final chapter" so here it is.
I have now implemented that plan and have a working tach. I first decided to make life easy and pulled 9 batteries out of the front of the car. This gave me good access to the front of the motor.
The pieces I used to generate the tach signal were all removed from a 70's era Mopar distributor that I had in my stash of Muscle Car parts. This was the easiest and cheapest solution to the problem, since a distributor similar to this one was successfully generating the tach signal while the internal combustion engine was in the car. Figuring out how it did that was actually pretty simple.
I just replicated the sensor configuration from inside the distributor onto the front motor shaft. Proper alignment was pretty critical here so I am glad I took the time and effort to remove some batteries. One modification I had to make was to grind off four of the teeth from the sensor gear.
This was necessary because the gear originally generated 8 pulses per revolution of the distributor. An internal combustion engine has two revolutions per one revolution of the distributor. Therefore, four pulses equates to one revolution of the engine (or electric motor). The gear also needed to be bored out slightly to fit on the motor shaft.
Once the sensor unit was satisfactorily mounted, I connected it to the original ECU (electronic control unit). This unit was necessary to properly process the pulses generated by the sensor into something able to be read by the tachometer.
Of course I wanted to test it before lifting 600 pounds of batteries back into the car. I disconnected the motor from the controller and hooked up a 12 volt car battery to it - the same way I originally tested the motor. I connected a spare tachometer to my accessory 12v battery.
The test was a success. All I have to do now is run the sensor wire to the in-dash tach.
I have now implemented that plan and have a working tach. I first decided to make life easy and pulled 9 batteries out of the front of the car. This gave me good access to the front of the motor.
The pieces I used to generate the tach signal were all removed from a 70's era Mopar distributor that I had in my stash of Muscle Car parts. This was the easiest and cheapest solution to the problem, since a distributor similar to this one was successfully generating the tach signal while the internal combustion engine was in the car. Figuring out how it did that was actually pretty simple.
I just replicated the sensor configuration from inside the distributor onto the front motor shaft. Proper alignment was pretty critical here so I am glad I took the time and effort to remove some batteries. One modification I had to make was to grind off four of the teeth from the sensor gear.
This was necessary because the gear originally generated 8 pulses per revolution of the distributor. An internal combustion engine has two revolutions per one revolution of the distributor. Therefore, four pulses equates to one revolution of the engine (or electric motor). The gear also needed to be bored out slightly to fit on the motor shaft.
Once the sensor unit was satisfactorily mounted, I connected it to the original ECU (electronic control unit). This unit was necessary to properly process the pulses generated by the sensor into something able to be read by the tachometer.
Of course I wanted to test it before lifting 600 pounds of batteries back into the car. I disconnected the motor from the controller and hooked up a 12 volt car battery to it - the same way I originally tested the motor. I connected a spare tachometer to my accessory 12v battery.
The test was a success. All I have to do now is run the sensor wire to the in-dash tach.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
