Work commences

 body, General  No Responses »
Jan 182015
 

I got started on the Porsche this weekend. Noting major, but I installed the tow bar bracket on the front of the vehicle. This is for when I get things closer, I can tow it to a shop for any additional repairs I want done by a professional. I also got the fiberglass rear truck lid installed with the new hinge pivot points, and I removed the torsion bar system. I still need to install the gas struts to lift it, so the project is not complete, but its close. I also did some more rust removal in the engine compartment. After I do the gas strut installation I’ll probably be able to put a first coat of paint on all the rust repair and things will start looking good again. It already looks a lot better with the trunk lid installed again even though its not yet painted.

Besides those few items, I did get a lot of work done preparing the new batteries. I removed all the junk accessories that were on the Renault pack, and I also started preparing the controller for a water cooling kit that I’m going to install. Water cooling kit will probably be my next project after I finish the gas struts.

Frunk rust repair

 body, Mechanical  No Responses »
Jan 102014
 

Started to wire wheel away the rust in the front trunk. Gonna take a while to get it all cleaned up and I’ll probably have to hit it with the sand blaster in some of the tight corners. Definitely need to do some sheet metal repair. The car was in several front end collisions before I bought it and repairs were not very good. I’ll add to the amateur repairs.

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Ride height

 Mechanical, suspension  No Responses »
Dec 262013
 

In order to be sure I set the gearbox in the correct location, I decided to check the ride height of the car. Without anything in the car, it sits at about 14 inches from the center of the wheel to the fender edge. With the suspension extended when the car is jacked up, it is about 15 inches, and after loading all the batteries into the car it sits at about 12 inches. So it compressed about 2 inches from all the battery weight. I’ll assume another 0.5 inches after the motor gearbox and cradle are installed. I’ll compare this against the original transmission drive-shaft location and see if I need to make an adjustment to allow the car to run better at this new ride height. I’d like to put it exactly where the original transaxle was, but since I have shorter drive shafts, I may need to make an adjustment to insure correct drive line angles.

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Rack cutting and welding complete

 Battery Rack, Mechanical  No Responses »
Apr 282012
 

I finally finished all the cutting and welding on the battery rack. Now you can see the double deck layout around the motor. I just need to clean up some of the sharp edges and a couple bolt holes need to be hogged out a bit. After that I’ll give it a test fit in the car before breaking it down for paint.

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More rack work

 Batteries, Battery Rack, Mechanical  No Responses »
Apr 242012
 

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

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Battery Racks

 Batteries, Battery Rack, Mechanical  No Responses »
Apr 222012
 

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.

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Battery racks

 Batteries, Mechanical  No Responses »
Mar 072011
 

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.

The Plan

 Batteries, Brakes, Clutch, Electrical, fuse, General, Mechanical, Radio  No Responses »
Jan 042011
 

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.