Test drive

Test drive.. in valet mode :)

Just a quick video before I take the temporary batteries out and get ready to make the bodywork.

First run

I was hoping to actually be driving the chassis about now, but the rear pulley is still at the machinist.

But, I wired it up and the motor goes!

Here is a video of the momentous occasion:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VQWDNZ81G8k

Later in the day I managed to stab my finger quite badly on a sharp edge of metal and have stopped working on it for today!

Ages since the last update - I spent way too long thinking about the floor. In the end I used a high-tech composite.. 4mm Birch plywood with 450g glass fibre on both sides. The total floor plate weighs 14kG, and you could probably get away with a bit less material than that, as it's extremely rigid. Should be quieter than a metal floor too.

Also I piped the brakes up, and improved the upper framework a bit. Not quite finished with that yet but should be ready to drive the chassis about very soon :)

Motor!

The motor, a 6.7" ADC arrived in the post, so here's a photo of it in roughly the right place..

Motor repair

Just found some pictures of the motor repair I attempted last week. This is the motor from my own Berlingo which blew up in 2006. I had a spare so didn't do anything with this one until now, when I had to borrow one from another vehicle for Steve.

I knew from the way it had blown up the controller that the field had shorted to the armature at some point. But where? By connecting a sensitive ohm-meter and tapping the windings with a screwdriver handle, I found the point - of course, it was in one of the places where the interpole winding runs next to a field coil. There was clearly not enough insulation between them, and it had flashed through and taken a chunk out of one of the outer conductors of the field winding.

A local armature winder (R&T Barr of Dunfermline) was kind enough to not only tell me how to repair it, but lent me the materials to do so! He didn't have time to do it himself but will be skimming the comm on the same motor.

Here's my very first motor repair then.



This is the damaged wire, dug out of the winding. Beneath it is self adhesive fibreglass tape. I've attached a piece of earth wire from a normal domestic supply cable to bridge the gap, about to solder it in place.








The connection is soldered, wrapped in yellow (Melonex?) plastic tape and then another couple of layers of fibreglass between it and the large interpole winding which is now tied back on top with the magic armature winder's knot.







I hope it works!

Meanwhile.

I almost forgot what this was supposed to be about. Yes, since you ask, I've been doing a little work on the 3 wheeler.

Here is a picture of the current state. Steering and pedals are in, the brake lines are not in place yet.




It's quite solid now and I look forward to putting the motor and belt drive in and getting it to move under its own power. The current weight is around 140kg as it is shown there. The difficult part, the bodywork, is starting to loom!

Nice EVs spotted

In Edinburgh at the weekend, we spotted a shiny new TNT delivery truck, a Smiths Electric model. It pulled up silently beside us on the street while the driver checked an address, and then moved a little further down the street - you could just hear the contactor as it started and a faint whine from the reduction gear. On the side below the box you could see the Zebra battery cases with warning stickers on them. Anyway, a picture is worth more:


Nice truck!

Ideal for city deliveries. It presumably has no problems with the steep hills in Edinburgh.

Long distance EV driving

I had a visit this week, a rather brave chap called Steve drove his Berlingo all the way from Telford to where I live in Fife, about 350 miles. He stopped at campsites and friends houses to charge up.

He's had this van since 2002 and put almost 70,000 miles on it (and almost all of that on the original battery), despite the best efforts of the dealership to kill it off. Anyway, it was cutting out and generally not working properly, must have been a nightmare to drive, and could well have stopped altogether at any moment.

A quick look at the commutator confirmed the problem: there were two scorched segments opposite each other. When revved up, a worrying crackling arc appeared at the back of the brushes! No wonder the controller wasn't happy! I recognised this fault immediately because unfortunately I had another one go just like it a month previously, and got an expert diagnosis from Jim Husted of Hi Torque Electric in the States (very helpful guy!).

We swapped out the motor in record time, got it finished by about 9PM ready for Steve to begin the return journey. He set off early on Friday morning and arrived back home on Saturday night. Not bad going!

On holiday

Two whole weeks off, to work on my project? Not a chance. Two car MOTs to do, a solar heating panel to install, and, you know, holiday stuff..

Still, I got a bit done today. I was a bit stuck for what to use for the rear end. Motorbike? Sierra? Herald? Those seemed to be the choices, and I do not have any dead motorbikes lying around. The Sierra stuff was a bit heavy and the driveshafts don't stick out far enough before turning into a CV joint.

So I decided to go with the Herald rear hub. After dismantling one, I found that it does in fact have two bearings, so it's not as unsuitable as I first thought. As well, it's not too heavy.

It's only supported on one side, so I've used heavier tubing and it will have plenty of triangulation. The motor goes in the gap between the two tubes at the chassis end, and the spring will act on the upper tube. Probably.

Now I need to choose the pulleys. Or should it be chain drive? Decisions...

A little update:
The weekend didn't yield much progress as my back wasn't up to it, but I worked on the brakes and also made brackets for, and attached, the anti-roll bar.
I'm also waiting for various things in order to go much further - more steel mainly, and still pondering what to do for the rear end..

No working today, I've managed to knacker my back. I went into town to get some painkillers, and remembered that we're having a fuel crisis at the moment..

The one refinery in the country is closing due to strike action, but this isn't a problem. What is a problem is that everyone seems to have decided to fill their tanks (and every other available receptacle), for, err, some reason. Not surprisingly, the supply chain can't cope with this and everywhere's run out, or is rationing fuel or applying silly prices.

At the supermarket there was petrol station which still had fuel, with very long queues, and it had a sign telling customers that their vehicles had to be "checked by staff" before buying. This may be because of what I heard earlier, that some people were found filling open plastic storage containers in the back of cars with fuel. Not very clever.

Other places have rationing, £10 maximum sale. To translate that for any Americans reading, fuel costs about £1.20 per litre, $9 per gallon, so that's about 2.2 gallons per customer.

This weekend I...

• Attached brackets for the steering rack
• Built up the box area
• Tested the pedals and steering wheel and seating position

So a lot of tacking things in place has been done. I'm fairly sure I'm happy with where everything will fit, but it will require more thinking about before welding it up fully and adding the triangulation.

Service time

Nothing on the chassis today, but I did need to check the brushes on
my 106 and install a stereo. So, that's done..

Squeeze

I've been trying to dismantle a Herald rear hub to see if it will be suitable for the rear wheel drive.  Smashing it with a really big hammer, blow-torching it and using a big puller haven't helped so far, so I'm seeking expert advice on that one!

Meanwhile, I made up some dummy batteries to check that they would after all fit into the frame.  They do, phew!  

The gap in the middle lines up exactly with the top of the damper, which is nice.

Keep your receipts..

Had a quick look on ebay for bushes to replace the couple I wrecked. £70 later I have a complete set of bushes, trunnions, ball joints, brake caliper and master cylinder seal kits and a pair of steering rack gaiters. All courtesy of a helpful seller called "jumblemaster". Too easy, there must be a catch!

Bending brackets..

This weekend I was able to spend both days working on the chassis.
One whole day was used to make the suspension brackets, really laboriously. Getting the exactly right bit of metal involves a bit of forward planning, a trip to Peddies which is only open when I'm at work, and so on. So sometimes you have to make do - in this case I made the steel strips by cutting them out of a 3mm sheet with a jigsaw, then grinding the edges flat, then drilling, then bending. A colleague suggested a better idea which is to obtain box section of the right dimensions and cut one side off. Never mind, it's done now.

So the Herald suspension is now attached. I managed to wreck two of the rubber bushes in the suspension arms, as they were rusted solid to their pins. Hopefully these are still available..

I needed a big space between the front wheels to use as battery box, and it was a bit tricky to make it wide enough. One row will sit on top of the steering rack so it will be raised up a bit, but the rest should go right on the floor.

The strut going across between the uprights should fit between two rows of batteries (it's in a temporary position just now).

So far it weighs 45kg without wheels, 75 with. The chassis itself only weighs 8kg, but it's a long way from finished - no back wheel yet!

Got to start somewhere.

I have been gathering car bits together for too many years, with the idea of sitting down and designing a really good electric car, and
then building it. Unfortunately, I'm quite bad at planning things.
And then, Doug Fambro [edit: slipped up there, meant to say Steve Fambro!)] got his Aptera rolling, which is just about perfect and uses loads of the same ideas I had.

So, this week I finally bought some steel and decided to just start welding stuff together, and see what happens.

So I've started to make a ladder chassis to which I can attach the Triumph Herald suspension units. I've actually got two sets of these,
such is my hoarding inclination.

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