Continued work on the battery racks. Here is the main rack. I modified the outside frame to match the requirements for the thundersky batteries and I raised it 3″ from the main support. I cut out two cross members to allow batteries to be loaded into the lower rack. Now I just need to weld up the bottom rack
Spent today working on designing and fabricating the battery racks. The new design will put 8 batteries on each side of the motor and 22 batteries above the motor. The racks are also now designed to allow for an 11″ motor to be installed. I could use a standard 11 or the interpolled 11. We’ll decide on that when the time comes but for now I wanted to fabricate the racks such that there is room to install the bigger motor. I’m using as much of the old rack as I can. The main frame is going to sit 3″ above the original to allow for the lower cells and the main frame is getting adjusted for the new cell size but the general layout will be similar. The lower racks will hang from the main rack. Below is a picture of the original rack from the engine compartment. I’ll take a picture of the new rack after it gets welded.
Today I removed the hood and the trunk lid in an effort to start modifying and removing the battery racks. The rear battery rack is going to be very easy to modify. It seems I’ll need to remove about a quarter inch all the way around and move one piece of angle iron about half an inch. Ill end up with only two rows batteries in the back battery rack. This makes for a very simple layout to interconnect the batteries and easy to strap them together. The front battery rack is a little more difficult. The front battery track is a single string of batteries; however, the body is a little bit in the way cause these batteries are a little bit wider than the original batteries that were in the gas tank compartment. The original battery box configuration required me to actually hammer back some of the body work in order to clear the battery box and space available. With this new wider battery I have to hammer back some more but I think that the sheet metal was creased a little bit, and will not actually be able to bend it any further. I think I will probably have to cut sheet metal in order to get them to fit and still have room for the steering brackets that are in that same area where the sheet metal work needs to be done. Besides this one sheet metal requirement the front battery rack modification is quite easy and I won’t have to remove anything and reinstalling just have to do somebody work around the area where the battery racks too narrow. I’ll make this clearer in future posts when I show what I’m planning to do.
Because I did not have the batteries in my possession, I never spent too much time trying to figure out the battery layout for the upgrade. I knew that most of the cells would fit into the large enclosure behind the seats where the original engine compartment was. The rest should fit in the front trunk or the gas tank area, or a combination of both. I really hoped that they would all fit into the gas tank area and that would leave the front trunk for the charger and the air conditioning equipment. I was not confident that this would happen and thought I’d have to put the charger and the ac equipment in the gas tank area where it is harder to access and then put the batteries in the front trunk. Worst case, I’d have batteries in both locations. As it turns out I got lucky. The batteries should fit nicely in just the motor compartment and the gas tank compartment. The layout is very easy with two rows in the motor compartment and one row in the gas tank. This should make the cabling very easy. Time to get some exacting measurements and start cutting the angle iron from the old lead acid rack and modify it to fit my new Thundersky’s.
Well, after a 6 month wait, my batteries finally arrived. Richard just ordered another set to be delivered from Winston Batteries’ (Thundersky’s) new Balqon facility in southern California. I bet he never ordered the batteries the first time and just ordered them when I started hassling him in December. I want to put out a big thanks to Dave Kois of Current EV Tech. I contacted him in December when I was not getting anywhere with my phone calls to Richard, and he confirmed that deliveries have been delayed from China, but that I should have received my batteries. Dave has shown why his reputation as a great customer service oriented EV supplier has endured. He is truly a great asset to the EV community. I would highly recommend his company for EV components. CurrentEVTech.com As far a Alliance Renewable Energy, well they did come through with the batteries at a great price, but customer service is lacking in a big way. Not once did they contact me regarding the delivery process of my batteries. Every time a date passed that was supposed to be my delivery date, I had to email and call their office. They never answered the phone, and emails had to be send daily for about a week before they were answered. Needless to say it did not easy my mind when they had several thousand of my dollars. Given the “robbery” of customer money in the battery orders from Washington state, I was a bit concerned I would ever receive my cells. California has much better consumer protections, and I knew that Richard really wants his EV motorcycle company to prosper, so I figured I’d get the batteries or my money back either way, but I was not looking forward to the fight if it came to it. I’m sorry to say that I cannot recommend Alliance Renewable Energy for battery purchase at this time. If they hire a customer support person to track orders and stay in contact with the customers, maybe that could change, but until that time, I’d say use Current EV Tech and pay a few dollars more and get great customer service. That is what I would do. Unfortunately Current EV Tech had not been formed when I started my order process with Alliance Renewable Energy.
Well, I’ve been trying for a week to get in touch with Richard at Alliance, and he finally emailed me this morning. He still does not have the batteries, but is now suggesting that he is trying to trade with someone to get my cells. I’m not sure what that means because if my cells are at the port or near the port, it should be much faster to get the shipment than to trade with somebody. His messages are always very short, and I have to email him every day for about a week before he answers me. At this point I would not suggest anybody use him for the purchase of batteries, and I’d be wary of purchasing a scooter or motorcycle. His company just does not have very good customer support.
Good News, Richard finally responded to my request for information. The message was short, but from the message I can only assume that the batteries are going to be released from customs soon (next week sometime if information from other messages from Richard hold true, and then I should be able to pick them up after delivery from the port in LA to the warehouse in SF, which should be about another week).
“I should have eta on your shipment tomorrow.”
If everything goes well, I should have the batteries in my hands by the end of the month. I can’t wait, because I need them to start fabricating the battery racks, and other interconnects.
Here is what I plan to change about the car:
First of all I’m upgrading the batteries from the 20 US125 lead acid batteries to a battery pack of 42 Thundersky 160Ah cells. That will take me from 120vdc to about 144vdc. Just the increase in voltage alone should help the car perform better. The controller is remaining and is capable of 550 amps. 550×120=66kw of power, and 550×144 is 79.2kw. That is a 20% increase in power, but it’s better than that because the Thundersky cells (TS) will hold their voltage better than the lead acid (LA) cells. It is also a change from 242 Ah of which really we can only pull about 100Ah from at the current draws we use in an EV to 160Ah from the TS battery pack. That makes for at least a 50-60% increase in range for the car. But it should be better than that because I did not even include the fact that I will have less current draw from the pack due to the higher pack voltage, and I’ll also have less current draw from the pack due to the fact that the car is going to lose somewhere between 800 and 1000 lbs during this conversion. (There will be about 823 lbs lost just in battery weight). (67lbsx20 = 1340 lbs – 12.3×42 = 516.6 lbs) I’ll be able to completely remove one of the battery racks, and possibly the two saddle racks, if I don’t want to keep them as storage bins. I’ll be modifying or replacing all the battery racks in an effort to get them to work better with the new batteries and to remove any unnecessary weight.
Second, I’m putting the car on a diet. I’m removing the steel hood and trunk and the steel bumpers and valences and I’ll be replacing them all with fiberglass parts. This should save about 70 lbs.
FRNT BUMPER STK 17.5 —> F/G FRNT BUMPER 3 = 14.5lbs
REAR BUMPER STK 17.5 —> F/G REAR BUMPER 4.5 = 13lbs
Front Stck Deck Lid 30.5 —> F/G Front Deck Lid 10 = 20.5lbs
Rear Stock Deck Lid 31 —> F/G Rear Deck Lid 10 = 21.bs
Total = 69 lbs. This does not even include any of the valences or rocker panels that are being replaced with fiberglass. I’m going to take detailed notes and document all the weight removal from the car. The other item I might do is to lighten the flywheel. I understand that for every pound you remove you remove a virtual 50-100 pounds of car weight in first gear. See this link. http://www.uucmotorwerks.com/flywheel/how_a_lightweight_flywheel_work…
Third, I’m installing a new radio. The old one was just awful and if I’m going to be spending any time in the car, I needed a better radio. The radio I bought can stream audio from my iPhone and has handsfree telephone capability. I also will be adding a small 8″ subwoofer to fill in the missing sound that the 4×6 speakers cannot possibly do.
Fourth, I’m installing air conditioning. The car is great in the spring and fall, but the summer heat is not fun. Its well over 100 during the summer and A/C is a must.
Fifth, I’m installing heated seats. Just like the A/C for summer, the car could feel better in the winter if my butt was warmer. Heating the seat is more energy efficient than trying to heat the cabin air. Right now the car has two 1500 watt heaters, and it does do a decent job of heating the air, but thats 3000 watts getting used to heat the air, and not making the car go forward. Heated seats are much less power for greater effect.
Sixth, I’m installing new headlights and driving lights. I had non functional driving lights in the original bumpers, and I am replacing them with real lights. I am also removing the rotating headlights and all the associated hardware and installing fixed lights into the pods on the fenders of the car. The new lights are much more modern looking and will provide more light with less vehicle weight.
Seventh, I’m installing a new fuse-panel. The original fuse-panel in the Porsche is not very good and uses old style fuses. The new panel uses modern fuses and will be much more reliable. I had problems with a couple of the old fuses not making good contact. I had to clean the fuse and reinstall to make the electrons flow.
Eighth, I’m going to go over the entire braking system to insure it is working properly. The parking brake has never worked very well. The handle is hard to pull and the cable seems to bind in the tubes. The parking brake does not always hold very tight. I think it is all in the adjustments, so I’m going to go through the adjustment of the parking brake very carefully. The right front wheel seems to drag more than the others. When the car is on jacks, the other three wheels spin fairly freely, but the right front seems to drag and only gets a short spin. I’m not sure if it is the springs that spread the pads, or if it is the piston that is hanging, but I’m going to go though the setup of the brakes for all wheels very closely to be sure that they can all spin freely. this will greatly reduce the power consumed to drive the car.
So there is the project in a nutshell. I have many of the parts already here, and I’m just waiting on some others to get started. Most of all I am waiting for the batteries to arrive. I ordered them in August, and I am still waiting. Last word I got from Richard at Alliance Renewable Energy was that they should be arriving to the port in the last week of December and will take a week or two to clear customs. I emailed him this morning to get an update, but I have not received a reply just yet. What started as a simple battery upgrade has evolved into a pretty big project.
Hello again. This is a test with a video post. I made this video a few months ago when I first ordered the new batteries from Thundersky. It shows the car after it was sitting in my garage for about 2 years waiting for a lithium battery upgrade. When the second set of lead acid batteries died, I said I was not going to put in another set of batteries unless it was lithium.