By the way, I'm going to have the windshield replaced soon. I think the only thing holding the current one together is the old Louisiana State Patrol Supporters club sticker prominently displayed on the lower left (do those things ever really get someone out of a ticket?). Anyway. I was looking at the windshield the other day and noticed this sticker in the top left:

I suspect I might have crossed some sort of line here. I'd guess that the "validity of the BMW Limited Warranty" might have been affected.

450 miles and loving it

I'm up to 450 electric miles now. It's starting to feel like no biggie. There's still plenty of work to be done though:

• Heater Core build and install
• Replace clutch slave cylinder and bleed
• Install PakTrakr on front set of batteries
• Rainshield DC/DC and motor

I did get the power steering pump to work...makes things a lot more pleasant.

I reinstalled the rear seats and trunk upholstery yesterday. Now I can take the kids to school.

The PakTrakr display works great. I'll have to check out the serial link soon and figure out how labor intensive data logging is going to be. I also haven't installed the monitor on batteries 7-12 yet. That means finding two more holes in the firewall. It's also tricky because batteries 7 & 8 are in the rear, so I had to run an extra cable to the back end for those leads.

It's really starting to look like a normal car again. Once I get the heater core finished, I'll be able to reassemble the console and dash. Then it'll be entirely stealthy. I'll have to get some green pinstriping or something to get the attention I crave.

I'm starting to get used to the "slammed" look. I don't know if I'm going to follow through with some sort of spring adjustment.

I did take it on another longish trip last week. There's some factory trained independent BMW mechanics a couple of towns away. They're the ones that bought the 4cyl and other parts. It needed a brake job before I started all this so I took it up to them so they could see the finished product. I figured out that their shop is 15 miles away, so I ought to be able to get up and back without getting too close to my current max of 37miles. I forgot about any sort of post-install test ride as well as any drain from the now-functional PS pump. I wound up limping home after a round trip of 34 miles. The next charge was 13.9kWh (out of a max 14.5).

I'm very pleased with the way things are holding together. I'd half expected something to go snap-fooey by now. I keep looking for stuff. The day after the brake job (new pads & rotors), I drove it from the house to the office and noticed a smell. When I got to the office, I raised the hood and felt some of the cables, the controller etc., and sniffed around a little bit. I finally realized that the smell was not any of my stuff, it was the new pads settling in on the new disks.

I love it when it's the normal things that are issues rather than my conversion work.

The same thing happened with a noise that popped up about 100 miles ago. I listened hard to determine whether the noise might be the impending breakup of the adapter or one of the other things you read about on these forums. It was road-speed related rather than motor speed, so that's good right? Maybe it's a bearing or something on the 207k, 13 year old donor? What about the driveshaft...did we not tighten it right when we put it back? No, while we had it up on the rack for the brake job, we noticed that the noise and heat insulating blanket pieces around the tunnel just behind the transmission had fallen down and were polishing the driveshaft.

So, no conversion drama, just simple age. I love it.

This thing's a lot of fun if you're not worried about range. I'm getting more comfortable with goosing it if I know that I'm only headed 10 miles before landing somewhere to charge. When the combination of location and schedule is right, it's quite enjoyable. I suspect though that living with it will always mean more planning than a regular ICE ride.

Range Test

37 Miles!
So the EMW is back on the road. It spent a couple of months down at the shop getting the fabbed pieces painted and replacing the plywood control board with butcher block (and a brace). I also rewired the MR2 Power Steering pump with official Toyota connectors. I put in VoltBlochers to protect the Odyssey AGMs from overcharging. I also installed the sensor wires for one of the two PakTrakr strings, but haven't run them up to the monitor yet.

However, the PowerSteering still isn't working, and somehow the clutch needs to be bled again. I'll have to keep an eye on the brake fluid reservoir level. It looks like the tap for the clutch is shamefully near the top of the tank-let.

However, in the eternal quest for a bright side, at least it gave me good exposure to clutchless driving. While it would probably workout fine over the long haul, I'll be glad when I have the option of clutching again. There were times when it just didn't want to go into gear.

So the 37 miles: I'd originally hoped for 30-40 miles (see initial posting, 1/12/09). I'm very pleased with the 37. I was running a 3 mile rectangle on the edge of Fayetteville. There were some hills; think of holding two diagonally opposite corners of a piece of paper up about an inch and then running around the edge. So, even though there was coasting, there was also pulling, so I'm calling it roughly similar to daily driving. Two stops per loop; pulled out in 2nd gear. Then a clutchless shift into 3rd for most of the next straight. Two rolling right angle turns; pulled both of those in 3rd. Average speed was probably 35-40mph.

The pack voltage started out around 155V (12x12V Odyssey PC2150 105AH). In general, when the drive is on, the pack voltage drops 10-15V. On that last lap, the open circuit voltage (one of the contactors opens when coasting) was around 135. When I stomped on the pedal coming out of one of the corners, the voltage sank rather than current spiking. If I was more gentle, it would hold up. It was definitely time to limp home.

So, now I know what the range can be, and I know how to recognize when its time to head home. I'll avoid getting so deep into the capacity for the most part. I don't have any budget for replacement batteries.


Here's my current punchlist:

• Bleed the Clutch
• Troubleshoot the PSteering some more
• Rain shield for DC/DC Converter and Commutator end of motor
• Connect PakTrakr monitor, 2nd battery string, and Pack current CT
• Finish and install electric heater core
• Reassemble Interior (dash, console, rear seat)
• Settle on some sort of Radio/GPS/MonitorDashboard device

By the way, I'm still trying to find the right nickname for the car. EMW doesn't really ring. e3 is okay. Then there's 'eemer'. If I left it to the kids, it would wind up with an "ey" on the end; something like "Shockey", "Chargey", or "Beemey". Any suggestions?

I stopped by the municipal garbage transfer station last week and weighed the car. The GVWR on the door nameplate is 3740lbs. I'm just sneaking by. Here's the original weights:
Front: 1580
Rear: 1408
Total: 2988
and the converted weights:
Front: 1780
Rear: 1880
Total: 3660
In both cases, that includes 230 lbs of me. The only variable was that I went different places for the weigh-ins. The first was a landscape rock yard and the second was a trash transfer station with a longer scale table. Whatever. I'm still going to drive it.

Here's the measurements on the ride height:

Wheel:	Orig:	Converted:
FrRt	25 7/8	24 7/8
RrRt	24 5/8	23 1/4
FrLt	25 3/4	25
RrLt	25 23 1/4

I do anticipate some stiffer springs in the rear. It's too soft going over railroad tracks.

By the way, that trip down to the scales was also my longest run to date, 16 miles at an average of 35-40mph. That route also included a 1/2 mile 10% grade (up) at mile 12. The car did great, started the hill at 45mph, then watched the ammeter all the way up, trying to keep it between 300 & 400A, and got to the top at 35 mph.

I definitely have a lot to learn about how to drive this thing. I still haven't taken the time to run it all the way down in an endurance test. I need to so that I'll have a little more peace of mind about running it on errands.

I have the Toyota connectors and pigtails to make better connections for the PS pump. The car is headed back to the shop for a couple of things:

• Change out the control mounting board for a plastic butcher-block panel instead of plywood
• Paint the front battery box
• Rewire the PS pump connections
• Move the PakTrakr CT from the control board back to the rear battery string (liberate space on the control board and easier running of CT wiring back to PakTrakr)
• Splash shield for Commutator end of motor It's a journey, not a destination right?

Oh yeah, I also finally got around to pricing a new windshield. I was pleasantly surprised, it was only around $200. That will be money well spent. There's some nifty rorschach style cracks running back and forth across the original windshield. All I see is food. really. I think the only thing holding it together is the Lousisana registration sticker and La.State Patrol Supporter sticker (somebody in this vehicle's past was hedging their bets).

So much fun, let's do it again

As mentioned earlier, the next conversion project is my dad's Ford Ranger. The guys at Vision Steel hopped right on it, and already have all the big parts out and have cleaned up the chassis. This should be considerably easier than the BMW. Lots of access to the frame, more depth under the hood, etc. The other benefit is that all of the core electric components are the same and VS already has 2D files for the mounting brackets for motor, pump, etc. Here's some pix. I'll post the design goals in a separate post.

First Feeding

I stopped by the workshop today to plug in the charger and see what happens. Again, no sparks. The blinky lights on the charger made sense, so I left it going for the day. If he gets time, James is going to bleed the hydraulic clutch today, and I plan to bring it back home.

Remaining ToDos:

• Install Battery monitor leads
• Install Battery overcharging shunts
• Finish Heater element and core
• Reassemble interior
• Drive back to the landscaping rock yard and run it across the scales
• Locate pre-tear-down height measurements and take it to a local spring shop to see what options I have for stiffening the rear suspension
• Assemble Lexan water shield for control board (so that in the future I won't have to wait for sunny days like today to drive)
• Have the Vision Steel guys form some sort of under-motor-splash-guard (see above)
• Replace Windshield

A little further out:

• Take care of the paint job (rust on leading edges of hood)
• Polish or replace headlight units (Angel Eyes anyone?)
• Set up onboard data logger (CarPC or Arduino with WiFi interface, TBD) and touchscreen display
• Rework control board; pull everything off the plywood and replace with HDPE (like a big white butcher block)
• Install Tach sensor and wire to BMW Instrument Cluster Tach
• Figure out Air Conditioning (we mounted the original compressor near the stub-shaft so that we could drive it off a pulley later on if I wanted to). I may go with a bucket of ice instead.

Way Way Out:

• Scheme up some sort of removable forced-air motor cooling system for parade duty
• Scheme up some sort of custom 144VDC-120VAC inverter so that I can use the car as a backup power supply in case an ice storm or tailgate party breaks out
  

It's ALIVE

Not much time this evening to document everything, but I did want to at least post that we had the first test drive(s) this afternoon. I've definitely got the "EV Grin" that I've read so much about on the web forums.

It was a beautiful day, and I just couldn't think of any reason not to go ahead with the drive. Last night I hooked up the all the batteries and re-did the original BMW battery connectors to fit my smaller 12V house battery. I applied the heat sink goo to the controller and tightened all the electrical connections. There wasn't much else to use as an excuse for putting off the first tests. So, this afternoon after work, I went down to the workshop and we rolled it out.



There's a few issues to be cleared up. The power steering pump never came on. I'd guess that one or more of the flimsy pins in my fancy radio-shack connector pushed out instead of making contact. I'll check that out over the next couple of days. Additionally, we've got to do a better job of bleeding the hydraulic clutch; today it didn't really ever seem to release.



The driving was great though. Great pick-up, very smooth, no mechanical noises indicating misalignment of the motor shaft with the transmission. The brakes worked fine. I could hear the vacuum pump coming on and shutting off periodically as expected.


We drew quite a crowd at the shop this afternoon. The registration on the car has expired and the insurance suspended (on purpose....) so we couldn't head out on the roads. However, the parking lot between warehouses allowed for plenty of zipping back and forth. Several of the guys who've been watching were very surprised by the pickup. Several of them took turns getting behind the wheel, and everyone came out grinning. It's definitely an odd feeling.



On my first drive I noticed that the ride was very rough, almost wobbly. On my second pass, someone posed the question "Did anyone tigthen the lug nuts since we had the wheels off?" Sure enough, two wheels were very loose. See, some problems do have simple solutions.

Here's a link to the vide of the very first drive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ35INlX_Os
and another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfum0k7xur8

Signs of Life

By the way, Here's a video of my first test of the control wiring.

Here's what's going on:

• Turn the Key (~11sec): This powers on the control board, drive cooling fan, and vacuum pump for brake vacuum. The click you hear is the first contactor closing. In fact, if you look hard at the contactor (small black box just above the hanging power connector on the right) you can see the contacts closing.
• Turn the Heater On (19-22sec): I have a ceramic heater element inserted where the heater core was. I can turn on the heat only if the fan is on 4, and a separate heater switch is on. In the video, you hear the blower come on, and the click on and off of the smaller heater contactor. This is switching the 144VDC to the heater element.
• Give it the Gas (~32sec): The accelerator cable is not connected yet, so I get out of the car and come around to the PotBox that will trigger acceleration. You hear and see the second contactor close (black box at the front of the board to the left) and in theory, now the power is flowing to and through the drive and you're on your way.

One more thought this evening. This whole thing has taken longer than I'd hoped it would. I guess that's okay; at least I am moving forward. But now I REALLY need to get this thing done:

• We closed on a new house last week and will spend the spring working on an addition and rehab projects.
• My Dad bought a mid 90's Ranger for me to convert when I'm finished with the EMW.
• Too many people have a vague fuzzy recollection that I was doing this project and are asking me "whatever happened to that car project?" And when I say that I'm still working on it, they assume that's code for "I gave up".

The good news on the new place is that it's got a nice 40x40 workshop where I can work on the Ranger and a three car garage so the EMW can stay inside where it's warm.

Closer, but still not there

I've made a lot of progress over the last week or so. I got two or three good days of work in during the holidays. Last week I was able to take care of both power cables and control wiring on the control board.

I also placed all the batteries and finished the battery cables.

I fired up the vacuum pump today to see whether or not the switch was wired correctly. Apparently I've got some leaks; it wouldn't pull more than 5-Inches, and when shut off, didn't even hold that much. So I'll have to chase that down. I'm pretty sure I heard some hissing coming from my vacuum tank. Not surprising given that it's three pieces of PVC all glued together plus the fitting.

Here's the requisite shot of the charger cord in the fuel door. Nice work by the Vision Steel guys

on the tread-plate backer. You can see the Elcon charger on the rack in the rear-battery box pic above.

...and here's the first picture of the fully loaded car. Well, all the batteries and major components. The seats are still out, and I'm not sitting in there with my 200+ libbies. According to my original calculations, it should still come in under the GVWR. Just pushing on the four corners, it's not down on the stops yet, but it's pretty soft. I had originally budgeted for sport springs for this and it looks like I'll need them. The good news is that I shouldn't have to look too far to find someone with stiffer springs for a BMW right?

Flurries in August?

Big flurry of activity over the last week. The guys at VisionSteel have been busy with their day jobs, but put together the rest of the "bracketry" and the front battery box.

The picture on the left is the big picture. There are four batteries up front. My contribution to manufacturing so far has been to cut the plywood for the control board. It will reside over the motor. Clearance for contactors, fuses, and the controller should be a lot easier in this rear position. For the first pass, I'm using plywood. once the layout is proven out, I'll probably go with a plastic board, similar to a chopping block.

It's tricky to get the batteries in here, but we came up with a combo layout:

• two upright on the bottom, tall & narrow


• two sideways on top, flat and wide.

This picture shows how the front box fits in, just behind the AC evaporator. There's still good clearance between the batteries and the ODE shaft where the belt driving the AC Compressor will spin.

Here's where we put the aux pumps. The 12V vacuum pump (replacing manifold vacuum) for the brakes is on the left toward the rear. The Power Steering pump, also 12V, on the right, just over the steering box. It was salvaged off a 2002ish Toyota MR2 and has the reservoir built right onto the pump unit. Additionally, this unit has a speed input so that the boost varies inversely to the speed.

I've finally ordered the cabling/lugs & connectors. I did pick up some 3/4" flex conduit to run from the rear battery box to the front. That was interesting. I stopped by the electrical section of the local Lowe's, priced the fancy purpose built UL conduit, and went on thinking that I'd wind up with normal clear vinyl tubing. On to the plumbing section to price the normal household tubing, and it was twice as much! So, I'll have the robust, UL listed stuff like I wanted. Schweet.

It's been great working with James, Dave, (and now William) at VisionSteel. They've really tried to make sure that the structural parts are robust, but haven't lost sight of the craftsmanship. Go back to the May 10th post, and check out the picture of the rear battery box. Even though these batteries aren't wet, I still wanted to minimize the chance of battery stuff coming forward in the event of a rear-ender. After all, that's where the cuties ride. We'd discussed putting a plate across the front of the box, just behind the rear seatbacks. Check out the picture below of the flashy cover they came up with to address the issue:

So, Progress Continues, if slowly.

PCrip

Reunited

Big progress today. The driveline is back in the car. James whipped up the "beam" to attach the motor clamp to the motor mounts. Badda bing badda boom and it's back in.

Now we can find homes for all the other pumps (vacuum, power steering), get the AC compressor back on a belt off the ODE and locate a couple more batteries. There's a lot of room left over up here since we crammed 8 batteries in the back, and will put two more under the rear seat. We only need to squeeze two under the "bonnet". Since they're AGMs, I can mount them sideways or on end. I suspect that the control board will now wind up above the motor. This will make for a layout curiously similar to EVAmerica's S10 examples. It will also make "Show and Tell" easier. We'll put the control board on a hinge so that it can swing up to show the motor while the batteries stay put between the AC Condenser and the motor.

Here you can see the two arches bridging between the clamp around the motor and sleeves around the existing motor mount bolts. The next shot shows the mount...mounting.

Now I'll have to remember how the Google SketchUp works so that I can adjust my 3D model.
Before too long, I'll have to get serious about my wiring diagrams. I'll also have to clean out the third bay of the garage again so that I can set up my electric shop.



Very exciting!

Fab Fab Work

Making headway on the fabrication of adapter, mounts etc. I spent some time down at the shop yesterday and took some pics of the progress. James has finished the adapter and has the motor & trans hooked up. We'll get it back into the car in the next few days and figure out what the motor mounts need to look like.

James has also fixed up the rear battery box. Here's a picture of it, loaded with four of the odysseys and a dummy Trojan AGM we were using before the odysseys arrived. My battery supplier loaned that Trojan case to us. The guys at the shop have had tons of fun tossing it back and forth in front of visitors...pretty impressive to be playing catch with something that looks like it ought to weigh 80lbs.

The real laugh comes when they toss it to the guest. Anyway, the battery box looks great. He got four down low, then four more right on top of the axle at trunk level. We were poking around yesterday, and there will be enough room under the rear seat, where the gas tank lobes were, for two more, so we'll have two in the front, with lots of leftover room for pumps and switchgear.

While I was at the shop, we...well, James, whipped up the clamp for the motor. I actually got to try my hand at MIG welding. Of course, I could only do a couple of lines on the bottom of the clamp; he didn't want my dribbly bead left visible after the whole thing's assembled.

Adaptation

I was down at the shop today, and they mentioned that the coupling was cut and ready for a test fit on the motor shaft. Later, I received these pictures of the coupling and flywheel mounted. Every day, in every way, I'm getting closer and closer.

Battery Selection

I finally made a decision on batteries. I'm going to go with 12 Enersys Odyssey AGM 12V, 100Ah batteries for a pack voltage of 144VDC.

Most people recommend Flooded Lead Acid as the best balance of initial cost, capacity, and cycle life (charge/discharge). However, I didn't want to get involved in the water maintenance and ventilation issues. I guess the biggest thing was that I didn't want buckets of acid in the trunk, just behind my kids' seats.

Absorbed Glass Mat (or Valve Regulated Lead Acid) are maintenance free, sealed, more or less dry, don't give off hydrogen during charging, and don't have to be mounted upright. They also have good characteristics around current draw, so acceleration is reportedly pretty snappy with AGMs. The downside is that charging a series pack of AGMs requires a more intelligent charger ($) to avoid damaging the batteries, and they tend to wear out more rapidly than FLAs if you draw them down too much too often. These are guaranteed for 400 cycles if typically drawn down to 80%Depth-of-Discharge and 800 cycles if only drawn to 40%DoD.

If you figure that a charge/drive cycle is going to happen 4 times a week, that's about two years if I drive it until it gets slow each time. However, I don't expect to drive it until it creeps each time, so hopefully this set will last for three or four years. By the time they're done, the price for LithiumIon batteries should be more palatable.

For more info on battery type selection considerations, look here . Or here. Or here.

Yabba Dabba Do

As if ripping the engine out of a functioning vehicle and selling off pieces wasn't committment enough, now I've really gone past the point of no return. Up until now, it still would've been plausible to salvage a V6 from some other bimmer, and pretend like the whole goal of the project had been to upgrade from the stock 4cyl to a hot-rod V6.

Not anymore. Now we're into ripping sheetmetal! At this point, we're ready to head off to the drive-in for a rack of dinosaur ribs Flintstone style!

We cut the floor out of the trunk so we can lower the rear batteries. This is the beginning of planning the structure of the battery box. We'll start on the front layout and battery box(es) once we have the motor installed.

Ungunking the seats

With the car out of the garage, I was able to spread out the seats and other upholstry pieces for some steam cleaning. Check out the color of the water that came back out through the vacuum.

Off to the Car-Spa for some rehab

I've got to be one of very few people in the world that is actually excited to see his car get hauled away on a flatbed. One night in early March, we hauled the prime-mover-less 318ti down to a buddy's machine/fab shop for the mechanical work.

They're going to design & build the motor/transmssion adapter plate and coupling, motor mounts, and battery boxes.

It felt pretty silly moving it out of the garage into the driveway. I had to crouch inside the car and steer while James pushed. With electric windows stuck up (no battery, no wiring harness, therefore no rolling up or down), and a narrow garage door to navigate, we couldn't have the door open to walk & steer. Additionally, all the seats are out, so there's nothing to sit on. The good news was that with no engine, trans and a whole bunch of other stuff, the car moves pretty easily with just a nudge.

Update

Things are moving forward slowly. I sold the engine and a few other parts to a local independent BMW service shop. We had a 60 degree day this week, so I took the transmission and clutch parts to the carwash to clean the gunk off.
I heard this morning that my electric motor has arrived at my buddy's fab shop, so I'll take the transmission over tomorrow so they can start scheming on the coupling and adapter plates.

I've been noodling with a 3D modeling environment, Google's SketchUp. It's pretty easy to pick up for simple shapes and designs. There's also a big library of models that other people have put together. I found a 3D model of a mid-90s BMW 325 sedan. The rear is not the same as my hatchback, but the front is the same. I was able to delete the ICE components from the model and add simple blocks that show the layout of major components in the converted car. The batteries, motor, and controller blocks are all dimensionally correct, although I don't really know if the original model of the 3 series is truly the correct size, so i don't put much stock in the appearance of lots of extra room. Anyway, it's fun to go spinning around in space, looking at the pieces.

The Fleet

Someone asked me if I was going to sell the Yukon once I had the EMW finished. I pointed out that I still needed something to tow the EMW home when it runs out of juice in town!