Old engine out, just waiting for the new motor

Well today I pulled engine because I finally got a buyer for the engine from my CL ad.   He bought it for $650 and the best part was he brought a engine hoist to pull the motor.  It went pretty easy once I got the starter pulled.

I would love to install the motor but I am STILL waiting for my adapter from Electric Car Company International.   I was told it would be delivered within 10 days of payment.  It has now been about a month and a half!!!!  I knew I should have just built my own, buying it was supposed to be faster and easier.  Yeah right.  It is supposed to be delivered on Monday, we'll see....

Until the motor adapter and hub finally arrives I have to sit in as the powerplant.  Unfortunately my power to weight ratio is much worse then the 9" motor.

Fuel tank removal

Well this morning my wife and son were out doing the weekly shopping so I decide to tackle the removal of the fuel tank since the fuel vapor and torch are not 3 year old friendly. :)

The first step was draining the fuel tank and line from the lowest point  I just bent down one of the lines from the engine bay and into a 5 gal can. 

I then pulled the fuel pump assembly out which gave me great access to the tank.  I used a hand pump to siphon out the last bit of fuel from the tank. 

Then I filled the tank with soapy water.   Make sure you leave the filler neck on so you can fill the entire tank.  Luckily today was nice a windy so with the garage door open I had great ventilation.

The next step was removing the tank.  It's held in with 4 bolts that are easily removed but the problem is to drop the tank you need to pull out the rear sub frame. So instead I decided to cut out the sheetmetal above using a oxyacetylene torch.  I need the sheetmetal out anyway because I need the space for batteries.  This is not for the faint of heart.   I doused the area with water to minimize the chance of igniting the insulation but did have a few minor flare ups due to all the oil suck underneath.  The pass rear diff seal was leaking and slinging oil everywhere.  If you do this make sure you fill the fuel lines with water too.   Again don't try this at home unless you know what you are doing.

I am draining the tank of water and will get around to start the fun part of yanking and cutting.

But that will wait for another day.

The conversion begins.

Well today the conversion started in earnest.  I was waiting for my adapter and hub to come but I got the answer of "it'll be done next week" for the third time.  I saw someone post that Electric Car Company could not get a delivery date right to save their lives and I am having to agree.  :-(

Anyway I got tired of waiting and so I started tearing the car down.  I wanted to have everything but the pack kitted before I started, but what the heck...  I pulled the exhaust first along with the convertible top, emptied out the truck.  

This was 131lbs removed from the car!  I then turned my attention to the front where I pulled the radiator, A/C PS, headers, etc.  I was surprised how relatively easy everything came out.  It's nice not having every nut and bolt rusted solid. :) 

So after 3 hours of work I now have the engine all disconnected and as soon as I locate a engine hoist I will pull the long block.

It helped having my 3 year old son "working" with me.  :)

Another 75lbs of parts plus a couple gallons of fluid means I have easily dropped 200lbs that is not going back into the car.

One part I will be saving and reusing is the AC accumulator.  It will make a good reservoir for the electric vacuum pump I am using for the brakes.  It's a little small but it's light, has fittings and a mount already, and it was free.

Interesting thing I found was the AC compressor was MISSING.  Something the previous owner blatantly lied about when he said the AC worked. :-/ There were quite a few things about this car that would have been a real pain had I not been converting it.  You would think a Pre-Law grad would have had better ethics...  never mind...

On the bright side a guy bought the stock catback for $50 (got to love CL) and I found a place that will buy the catalytic converter for $90 (scrap platinum).

Rev0 pack prototyping

Since I am still waiting for my motor adapter I have been doing some work on the battery pack.  I have tested the 8 cells I received and found the capacity ranged from 17.2ah to over 19.2ah. :(  Not very good for building a balanced pack.  I contacted the seller but have yet to hear back.  We'll see what happens but this is exactly why I ordered 8 first instead of jumping in to the full 220.  There are other suppliers of these cells that I am looking into so I have certainly not given up on them. 

I did some prototyping of a pack by making up some end plates so I could band the pack and get good compression on the cells.  Does anyone know how much pressure you need to need on the cells? 

My design uses a .120 aluminum sheet cut and bent to serve as endplates.  To make fabrication easier I made a plywood template for the flat pattern of the plates.  I should have used MDF but I happened to have a correct sized piece of ply laying around

I then used a .25" carbide router bit in a normal router and now I can make a blank in less then a minute.

I made one up using some scrap aluminium I had laying around and the first tab I bent promptly broke off.  I guess it's T6.  :)  So 30 seconds with the torch and I annealed it so I was able to bend it with hand tools.  Not ideal but works for proving out the design.

Here is how the end plate looks on 7 of the cells I have.

I am going to do a bit of tweaking  of the design and see if I get get some 6061-T0 otherwise I'll just aneall the stuff I have and make a prototype 1p8s pack.

19ah for a 19.6ah spec

Well so far so good. The 2V Roumuls anode cell actually showed the highest capacity at just over 19ah which is much better then expected. Most people have been reporting capacities in the 17.5-18.5 range.




I still need to check the remaining cells since I only have a sample set of 3 so far. Right now I have cell #4 doing infinite cycles and I will check tonight and see how it is doing.

I still haven't spent anytime trying to get the software to go to 40 amps. Anyone have any suggestions? Doing it at 10 amps obviously takes 4 times as long.

One other thought I had is that there are several people on DIY forum that are testing these batteries from different vendors using the CellPro Powerlab6. If we all use the same test settings and post our data we can make a community pool of cell data that people can reference.

My current plan is a stacked pack.  Turns out very similar to A123's set-up but without laser welding. :)

Originally I was planning on 3 packs with just 66 cells in series but a BMS makes that less then ideal so I think I will be doing 3 packs of 3P12S.  I am still working on the electical connection but am leaning toward a simple clamp and spacer system.

Battery Testing

Last night I received a batch of A123 cells and I am starting testing. For those that don't know these are very good batteries that can put out over 20C and have shown very good life cycle in the labs at more reasonable discharge rates.

http://www.a123systems.com/products-cells-prismatic-pouch-cell.htm

The problem is they don't sell to individuals, only OEMs. So the only way to buy them is on the gray market. There is a lot of speculation about how they get on the gray market; some are rejects that don't meet specs (usually slight low capacities) and many have had the tabs cut to make them difficult to use. The other theory is they are not selling as may as they planned so there South Korean factory is selling them out the back door without corporate knowing about it. Finally some are just outright fakes. But all of them have to be bought from China (since people will sell ANYTHING in china without fear of lawsuits). I bought 8 of them from my supplier to make sure they were good before going off and blowing $5k on the ~220 cells for a full pack. If these check out then I will use them to make up my 12V battery.

I am pretty confident these are real A123s that came out the back door given the serial numbers were sharpied out and some of the other markings.

Romulus Anode?

The first check with a DMM and not a good sign on three. The 3 cells with an extra sticker that says "Romulus Anode" have just over 2V. :( I am doing a 2 cycle charge/discharge on one of the cells right now so we will see how it comes out.

FYI, Romulus doesn't refer to StarTrek rather it's Romulus, MI where A123 makes they anodes as opposed to the Chinese supplier they used before. I have been doing more research on the fabrication of these cells and it seems a bit odd. They are all labelled made in the USA but common knowledge holds that they are actually made in South Korea. I find it odd that A123 would fabricate components in the USA then ship to Korea for assembly and them ship them back to USA to assemble into packs. I would think they would manage their supply change better then that.