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So I'm an idiot who jokingly floated the idea of doing an EV conversion of a car to my undergrads over the summer, and some way through the semester I wrote up a plan to do a (semi-decent) EV conversion using some kind of classic car. Sure it may not have the same drag coefficient that you are 'supposed' to have for a good vehicle, but it's too pretty to pass up, and I like to think that EV conversions is probably the best bet for keeping these guys on the road. Now the original plan was to use a Porsche 914 that was unloved and abandoned by the university from a previous attempt, but eventually that fizzled and I went looking around for another cheap, pretty, classic car. Those three things do NOT go together anymore outside of edge cases, like pretty cars with absolutely garbage power plants, which led me to a dusty car graveyard run by a 78 year old Polish Jew immigrant who was obsessed with classic cars, and is dealing with medical issues that keep him from wrenching on his fleet of jaguars, Rolls Royces (seriously, that's the only time in my life I saw 2 in the same place that wasn't a show) and Alfa Romeos. I picked this one out of his lot of XJ6s and XJSs that he had, for 1800. 1986 Jaguar XJ6 with 90k miles (though who cares, that engine is going away).  Mostly because I liked the colors.  Mine now! I think it's "Tudor White" but we got a lot of dust to clean off. Happily there is little surface rust, and no cancer-rust. and the interior, well:  Not bad. The driver's seat is literally the only issue I see.  I'm looking forward to yeeting this over a fence. Maybe we'll do it like the Highland games, and do throwing for distance or something. Seriously, it's a dusty bitch.  But now it's safely at my university garage, I'm developing an action plan with my students, several who are working mechanics anyway, and I've ordered a motor (dead Nissan Leaf motor, 160kw/200hp) 48 kWh of batteries from unused server farm UPS power supplies that for some reason were made with BEV grade Samsung Li-Ion prismatic cells, and a VCU board that is meant to spoof the Nissan Leaf into thinking that it's still in a leaf. There is going to be a lot of fab work, a whole lot of removal of the engine/transmission/gas tank and so on, but we're saving that for next week as I pick up the batteries and figure out shipping for the motor from Georgia. The plan right now is to remove all the unneeded stuff, use a 3D scanner that one of my colleagues have, and then start playing games in CAD to figure out where we can put the motor, batteries, and other sundry EV stuff while keeping most else of the Jaguar as stock as possible. I got the feeling we'll be able to get it moving fast, and then we're going to have a heck of a time writing up VCU protocols for ticky-tak stuff like making the fuel gauge measure a state of charge and other detail work. We're gonna see if I'm in over my head. In my favor is a half dozen students who are apparently more eager than I am about doing this, a full university machine shop, and the university's maker-space that has welders, water jet cutters, metal 3d printers and laser cutting tools. Going against me is that I'm a huge loving idiot. Like, I cannot emphasis how dumb I am outside of my specific engineering discipline. So sit back, grab some popcorn and watch me screw myself over making a Jaguar XJ6 into a working battery electric vehicle where my only relevant experience is reviving an old Honda EV motorcycle conversion. Joey Steel fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 06:18
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I am excited to see this journey unfold, it's rare to see a conversion that's not Tesla drive units and some modules from a wrecked S.
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Jun 1, 2023 15:42
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I’m in, I have a similar (stalled) project in the works, hopefully you make quicker progress than I have. Which VCU did you get?
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Jun 1, 2023 16:30
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Big Taint posted:I’m in, I have a similar (stalled) project in the works, hopefully you make quicker progress than I have. Which VCU did you get? I'm going to run with open inverter's VCU that Damien and Co made, because I am a sucker for open source poo poo. Hell, I'm hoping to have a trip report where I have instructions written up so somebody else could do this build with most of the kinks worked out and cad drawings of the cleared out interior or as a jumping off point for their own conversion. Hoping to go fast with a bunch of help and fab equipment access. We'll see. Full disclosure, I hope I can do a father-son EV conversion some day when my boy gets old enough. Might as well get some practice in with Joey Steel fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jun 1, 2023 |
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Jun 1, 2023 16:46
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Quote is not edit. Lol
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Jun 1, 2023 16:48
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Qwijib0 posted:I am excited to see this journey unfold, it's rare to see a conversion that's not Tesla drive units and some modules from a wrecked S. Imo too many people do this so all the parts cost more than they should. If I paid what I did for the server batteries what people pay for the Tesla batteries I'd have only 25kWh instead of 50ish. Additionally, the server batteries are far far fresher than the Tesla ones. That and I'm hoping that there is enough bandwidth for doing phase change materials (i.e high tech coconuts) with forced air for cooling over liquid cooling. Mostly to see if it'll work well or not.
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Jun 1, 2023 16:56
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EV conversions are the tits, and I agree, it's probably the only realistic way these cars will stay on the road (or rather, get back on the road at all, instead of silently rotting away).
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Jun 1, 2023 17:44
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Just Winging It posted:EV conversions are the tits, and I agree, it's probably the only realistic way these cars will stay on the road (or rather, get back on the road at all, instead of silently rotting away). Maybe, one day, God willing, they'll start making pretty cars again and allow the Cd to not have to be as low as possible. I'm willing to sacrifice some efficiency for glamor here.
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Jun 1, 2023 18:22
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There's a 3rd gen Thunderbird that sometimes gets parked near where I work, and that's a car that needs an EV version
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Jun 1, 2023 18:52
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Couldn't have happened to a nicer car. Did the guy have any 2 door versions of that car? (XJC from the 70's) because that would be the only one I'd like to see better.
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Jun 1, 2023 21:35
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Is this one of the ones with the inboard brakes inside the rear subframe?
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Jun 1, 2023 21:38
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Heck yeah, I'm in for this ride. Hope to EV convert something some day (probably one of the fleet of dead RX-7s I have...)
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Jun 1, 2023 22:19
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For reference, what is your engineering discipline? Is there any relevance?
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Jun 1, 2023 22:38
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Beffer posted:For reference, what is your engineering discipline? Is there any relevance? Materials science, with a focus on electrochemistry and electronic materials of nanoscale size. Spice it up with radioactive electrochemistry and you have a significant chunk of my non-academic career. So I got the batteries covered, and some electronic controls work, but only because electronics repair is a hobby of mine. The body work experience on my end is very... Practical as I grew up as a redneck kid in the deep rural south where to be 'a man' was to be knowledgeable about cars. It's a very rough and ready skillset, possibly not up to the task alone for the needed fab work to make things fit. We'll see.
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Jun 2, 2023 02:40
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Is this one of the ones with the inboard brakes inside the rear subframe? Yup! I'm hoping we can drop the subframe and just stuff the motor and inverter where the gearbox currently is.
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Jun 2, 2023 02:41
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LloydDobler posted:Couldn't have happened to a nicer car. Worse, he had a 1974 E type, but sold it a few weeks ago. Not a big deal, couldn't afford a fair price on it anyway.
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Jun 2, 2023 02:42
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Speleothing posted:There's a 3rd gen Thunderbird that sometimes gets parked near where I work, and that's a car that needs an EV version Time to leave a sticky note on a windshield...
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Jun 2, 2023 02:42
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Step one of making a Jag more reliable, cant wait to see how this goes. I feel like I'm wasting my time fixing the timing on the engine in mine but have neither the time or budget to swap the engine currently. How did you find your batteries? Seems like its the only really expensive part of doing a conversion.
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Jun 3, 2023 13:36
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SpeedFreek posted:Step one of making a Jag more reliable, cant wait to see how this goes. I feel like I'm wasting my time fixing the timing on the engine in mine but have neither the time or budget to swap the engine currently. Batteryhookup.com 5k for 48kwh of batteries is a pretty good deal, imo. The motor was 3k including tax, and the BMS is another 1k, the rest is welding and fabbing and maybe another 1-2k in bits and bobs I think. Probably could've saved a grand or so on the motor if I was patient, but I am trying to get it all done by end of summer, so having the parts on hand is a godsend. Also, my body seller offered to give me one of his series 2 jags for the motor and rebuilding his Prius battery pack, so I might have another shell handy for another go if I like this one. It's in rough shape, but it seems like a good deal since the rust was minimal. Joey Steel fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jun 3, 2023 |
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Jun 3, 2023 17:35
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This looks like a lot of fun, good luck! Got you bookmarked.
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Jun 4, 2023 06:55
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Day 1 of skinning the Jaguar. So the plan is to get everything in the front out so that Sunday we can have my student and his father in law (who is a professional mechanic) pull out the engine and the transmission this Sunday to make space for the EV conversion. so we started with yoinking the hood off.  Not pictured: reminding my students that you need to take out the inner headlights before removing the hood. I wonder if Jag just made their engines without hoods it wouldn't have such horrid overheating issues. Lol, what lovely engines. Anyway, in preparation of our Sunday operation to transition our Jag (Ha, happy pride month, be  , do crimes) we started on removing the rest of the stuff in the way of yanking the engine.  Such as this fucker, the exhaust system. it was rusted to hell and back, and after 5 minutes with a hammer trying to loosen the parts up, I reminded my students that we don't need an exhaust system where we're going.  Which led to the natural conclusion:  Angle grinder time! gently caress you exhaust system!  My dear student project lead being reduced to a sawhorse for this part. Seriously, the exhaust goes over and through the independent rear suspension, and gently caress that all to hell. We had to cut the back half into a bunch of little pieces to get it all out. Happily, we're not going to need to worry about that fucker again. Also, a couple of students embarked on a side quest:  Reviving a Gen 1 Prius battery pack! If we can get it fixed up and installed in the prius of the guy who sold us the first jaguar chassis, he'll give us a second (far shittier series 2) Jaguar XJ6 in exchange for that and the motor we don't want anyway. We jumpstarted all the battery cells with a big honking LiFePo4 cell, wired them up all in parallel and are essentially trickle charging them to full cell voltage. Once that happens, we'll do a quick drain on the batteries, to cycle them a couple more times. This method sometimes works on reviving the NiMH cells to a decent energy capacity, and will let Jaguar Teddy have a working car among his stable of cars. Currently he rides a motor scooter to do errands. We're going to try to get him back on four wheels, because Teddy is a bro. Side quest Prize:    1979 Jaguar XJ6 series 2, with a fair amount of surface rust. Would need a lot of surface rust work and an interior transplant, but I found a dead series 2 in a boneyard already, so I think that should work for cheap fix up for another rolling chassis if we wanna do another one for the summer/fall. Tomorrow I will hopefully take delivery of my Server UPSes to then start stripping down to get our 48kWh battery pack, and hopefully continue prepping the Jag for getting it's engine and shaft pulled on Sunday. Sorry I was light on pictures, I was trying to get everyone organized and all pointed in the same direction with tasks. Also, Bonus images:   Two Rolls Royce cars just... chilling. Shadow something? Joey Steel fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 06:24
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I've always wondered with an EV conversion, where the hell do you fit in all the batteries? I mean on a purpose built EV they take up a lot of space under the car, but that space isn't there on a normal car yeah? So do they like... get put in the trunk, engine compartment, under the seats?
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Jun 6, 2023 23:15
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Tom Guycot posted:I've always wondered with an EV conversion, where the hell do you fit in all the batteries? I mean on a purpose built EV they take up a lot of space under the car, but that space isn't there on a normal car yeah? So do they like... get put in the trunk, engine compartment, under the seats? Essentially, all of the above with priority going to A) fitting everything and B) Getting the weight balance as close to stock as possible (if sometimes going over the original weight by a hundred pounds or so). I'm hoping to fit the batteries in the space where the engine and transmission will be vacating, and if necessary for volume and weight limitations, to use the space where the gas tank will also vacate above the independent rear suspension. If necessary, we can toss a few more in the trunk as well. Happily, this is an old full sized car, so it's got a fair amount of room in it all. We received our batteries and reduced the server battery packs down to modules, but I'll post those photos and the trip report tonight.
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Jun 7, 2023 00:36
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Day 2 and 3 of skinning the Jaguar, plus getting batteries. A moment to say: gently caress you.  Good riddance you rusty piece of poo poo. Alright, back to business. The battery fairy came to visit us and blessed us with many server batteries for we have been good boys who wish with all our might to save the Jaguars by turning them into actual cars that move when you want them to.  Not pictured, humping them from the semi to the truck, to then taking it to the garage, to then unloading them onto tables for disassembly. Sorry, had to help carry those fuckers, each one was ballpark 150 lbs or so. But we managed to start breaking them down, as they were apparently just held together with many T25 torx screws (the superior screw head)  And our harvest yielded 24 modules of 8 Batteries all wired in series (8S by naming convention) with 68AH cells. The harvest was indeed good.  But now we have hit a snag, our plan was to use the modules to then further reassemble them to a new configuration 4 in series, with 2 in parallel (4S2P, by the same naming convention) to ultimately build a 96S2P battery pack to give us a 48kwh battery with the right voltage to run the motor. We cannot just leave it be.  But yeah, all the busbars were welded in with a spot or laser welder or whatever, and uhhh, that's a problem. So now we have to figure out how to remove and attach new busbars to all these guys. Ah the price of getting surplused batteries is that you have to play some great gently caress-gently caress games to figure out how to use them for your goal. So far we're going to test out this procedure: Step 1. Airplane shears to cut the aluminum busbars to the edge of the battery cap and cut off the plastic stuff. Step 2. flip batteries around to make a 4S2P module (we'll have to figure out if the batteries are glued together or not the hard way, sadly.) Step 3. take some wide hicago screws (see if we can find 3/8ths or larger) with wide, thin, flat heads (or sand them flat and thin), do the mineral oil trick surface prep to arrest the oxide layer formation and then use a spot welder to resistance weld on top of the busbar on the cap to make terminal posts, then cut new busbars to our desired configuration and profit to make a 4S2P module. This way is the best I can think of to get connections how we want without having to drill or commit to some more heinous cutting violence right at the caps of the cells. It'll increase our overall height, but I think we have enough interior volume to not care. We're going to test this out on some blank aluminum before we commit ourselves to chopping up our actual batteries. Wish us luck. Also, bonus: Got one of these guys for $125 bucks at a salvage yard:  It's the control computer used in a BMW i3 to do DC fast charging, so now with a little finagling, we can do DC fast charging on an EV conversion, making it into a 'real' EV conversion to take on road trips. Yeah buddy! Of course we won't go as fast as commercial guys, probably no faster than 50-75 kW up until 80% charged batteries, but hey!  Now our waste parts from the server batteries have joined the pile of exhaust parts that will eventually to the scrapyard nearby to become "Free Pizza" for my students. But we'll keep on ripping out more poo poo until then. Now back to the chassis work:  Somebody doesn't want to come off the engine block.  Guess, we have a new opponent of the day. First the exhaust system, and now the intake manifold that is rusted so thoroughly onto the engine that we tried for a long loving while to get off. Up to and including:  Using our 1 ton chain and our heaviest member to yank it out. We eventually got it out, with lot of penetration oil, deadblow hammering, and of course, cursing.  And now we are 1 more step to getting this all ready for the Sunday Transition Operation (tm) Had one of my students ask if we could cut up the axle going from front to back, and I was all about breaking out the angle grinder again.  Getting us closer to that Dana 44 differential. I think we should actually try to sell it, rather than also yeet it to a junkyard. Opinions? Is that worth doing, or is it also a thing to add to the free pizza pile? And that's where we are with day 2 and 3 of Jaguar EV conversion time. See y'all next time.
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Jun 8, 2023 13:00
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Everyone is taking the day off today, I'm in shipping jail returning a Leaf motor assembly I bought that was missing it's power distribution unit (!?) and the student project lead is taking a nap after working from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m., so no pictures today. Tomorrow we're all going back in, and hopefully Sunday will be a fun day of taking out an engine block and transmission.
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Jun 8, 2023 23:26
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Are you reusing the motor mounts with adapters or planning on torching the old ones out and welding on new motor mount locations?
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Jun 8, 2023 23:41
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FlapYoJacks posted:Are you reusing the motor mounts with adapters or planning on torching the old ones out and welding on new motor mount locations? The plan is to use the motor mount to anchor our battery box, with probably some more support struts tossed in there. We plan to stuff the motor and inverter where the differential is currently located and shove the power distribution module where the gas tank is at. Or maybe we have just the motor where the diff is currently located. Sold your rivian yet? Joey Steel fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jun 9, 2023 |
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Jun 9, 2023 01:29
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Joey Steel posted:The plan is to use the motor mount to anchor our battery box, with probably some more support struts tossed in there. We plan to stuff the motor and inverter where the differential is currently located and shove the power distribution module where the gas tank is at. Or maybe we have just the motor where the diff is currently located. A very good plan! Not yet! Soon! Getting closer to a Visa every day. There was a long delay due to a fuckup on my part that was finally fixed earlier today.
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Jun 9, 2023 01:42
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FlapYoJacks posted:A very good plan! Not yet! Soon! Getting closer to a Visa every day. There was a long delay due to a fuckup on my part that was finally fixed earlier today. poo poo, if you're still in Pomona, you should swing by and take a look. We're only about 45 minutes away from you, less in clear traffic. I'll take any advice on it I can take and if you still have some friends working in the us automotive industry, I bet several of my students would love an introduction to help any chance of future paid internships, rather than working with me, since I can't pay them in anything but learning and a resume booster.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:36
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Joey Steel posted:poo poo, if you're still in Pomona, you should swing by and take a look. We're only about 45 minutes away from you, less in clear traffic. Up in Tacoma but have to go down there in a month for logistics. I’ll defiantly hit you up!
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Jun 9, 2023 02:36
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FlapYoJacks posted:Up in Tacoma but have to go down there in a month for logistics. I’ll defiantly hit you up! Yeah buddy! We might be close to done with it in a month.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:38
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Joey Steel posted:Yeah buddy! We might be close to done with it in a month. You will have to race the R1T 
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Jun 9, 2023 02:43
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FlapYoJacks posted:You will have to race the R1T Poor Jag. Gonna get smoked his first race by a truck twice his weight.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:47
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Joey Steel posted:Poor Jag. Gonna get smoked his first race by a truck twice his weight. We could race with the R1T in conserve mode.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:48
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FlapYoJacks posted:We could race with the R1T in conserve mode. Sure, as long as we are starting at the Morris Reservoir and race to Lancaster or something.
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Jun 9, 2023 02:54
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so is there any reason you keep chopping everything up instead of removing parts properly? destroying good parts feels real bad. the exhaust makes some kind of sense if there's no way for it to come apart at the flanges, but the driveshaft? that should just come off. unless there's something special about the jag that makes that weirder than usual?
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Jun 9, 2023 05:34
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Raluek posted:so is there any reason you keep chopping everything up instead of removing parts properly? destroying good parts feels real bad. I defer to my students working on the body with what to do with things we have no need of if I don't have a strong reason to tell them 'no'. We want that area for our cabling, so we are clearing it out. I'm hoping we can conserve the rest, but there is a lot of stuff there that is very heavily rusted on. That, and all the moving parts of a 1980s Jag doesn't really qualify as a "good part" IMO, with the possible exception of the differential. Fear not, the motor and the transmission are going back to the gentleman who sold us the Jag, so we're trying to save as many good parts as practical. If you're in the SoCal area and want something off of it that we aren't using and isn't already promised away, feel free to come on by and pick it up.
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Jun 9, 2023 05:43
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Really cool project! I really can't wait until EV parts are a bit cheaper still to be able to do silly projects. Here is each of the 8 a single giant cell or is there a bunch of them with their own BMS?
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Jun 9, 2023 09:07
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That looks like prismatic cells. And they're not that big, glove for size right next to the case.
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Jun 9, 2023 09:16
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mobby_6kl posted:Really cool project! I really can't wait until EV parts are a bit cheaper still to be able to do silly projects. It's a BMS reader address to each cell. Essentially a BMS is a giant voltmeter that has a huge series of probes that does a bunch of voltage readouts and just subtracts the voltage from the previous x number of cells to get individual voltages across individual battery cells. It helps balance the voltages across the whole pack by sending a potential though thatead that prevents/reduces any more current from flowing into the cell when individual cells fill faster than the whole pack, iirc. Every cell (in series) gets a BMS read. If you have 2 or more cells in parallel, you can treat it as one cell for the purpose of battery management. Does this make sense? I do need to make sure all my students learn this stuff as well. There is also a small probe on half of those battery cells called a thermistor, basically a little bit of semiconductor material that changes resistance from a temperature change, so that we can have a good idea what is the temperature of a battery to make sure that we are not overstressing the batteries as well.
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Jun 9, 2023 13:47
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