Monday 18 May 2015

Gifted three electric mopeds

My partner (who is a freecycle-a-holic) said to me the other day “Would you be interested in 3 electric mopeds” obviously my response was a distinctly positive “YES!” and after a little toing and frowing (mainly due to me only having an estate to shift them in) I am now the proud owner of said 3 electric mopeds. 

However I have yet to receive the keys or VC5's the guy that gave them to me is a good frioend of Steve from Jozztek and I understand that this is where they came from originally (Confirmed after speaking with Steve) One is an "Electricycle Retro" I have not had the time to investigate the other 2 due to lack of time, watch this space.

Back on the road

Got my Honda “ElectroBeat” back Wednesday 15th April 2015 picked it up from SMD’d garage after work, I have been driving it to and from work (with a few extra journeys here and their) without a hitch so it looks like the gearbox replacement was a complete success (nice one Brent) and I was amazed that it cost me less than £300 to fit, considering the fact that they had to remove the motor and old knackered gearbox and replace the whole lot along with modifying the (newly acquired second hand) clutch plate and modifying the old coupling plate (basically removing the old modified/cut down clutch plate center and welding in the newly acquired and cut down center part to the old coupling plate) and refitting the whole shebang back into the car, I would call this damn good value.

TBH If anyone who is reading this needs a good mechanic in the Brighton area of Sussex England I would not hesitate to recommend SMD as simply the best mechanics I have ever encountered, Bravo SMD

Still so much to do on the RX8!

To be honest the Rx8 build has not even started properly yet, The Donor car has been stripped out and is ready for the motor fitting, However the coupling of motor to diff has proved more of an issue that I had thought and we will still need to get something made by a machinist, I was going to try and sort this out myself to keep costs down but unfortunately due to other projects (Houses and other boring stuff) I am having to leave this to the mechanics, I hope that they will be able to sort something out soon and get the motor fitted ASAP.

Here is a basic list of what I need to do.

1) Get Motor coupling made and Motor fitted
2) Get Battery boxes made, Get lid fixings fitted, Give to Brent for fitting into RX8 (Angle iron welding required to hold boxes)
3) Give Soliton to Brent for sizing and fitting. 
4) Buy copper buss bar plate and drill on KX3 mill (4 holes per cell x 5 cells per plate = 20 holes per plate)
5) Get the Power steering Canbus widget (needed to enable power steering on RX8) 
6) Line battery boxes with plastic packer and fill with cells.
7) Clean every single battery connection back to dry bright copper, and fit bussbars
8) Source and fit BMS or LVC/HVC boards! (can’t get the Methods boards any more so it might have to be a homebrew BMS)
9) Finish building EMW (V12 control board) charger (need to purchase LCD screen’s ASAP)
10) Source components for reverse, Kilovac relays? (ask Steve)

Easter Holiday Battery testing Completed

I took a few extra days annual leave to pad my Easter break into a good couple of weeks to give me time to finish a few ongoing projects.
One of which was finishing the EIG cell tests for the RX8, So I now have all 351 cells tested and ready for the traction pack construction to begin in earnest.
I stacked a block of 30 cells with the silicone sheets as separators to see how the overall size was affected by my changing the cassette construction, looks good. I now just need to figure out how I am going to mount the cells in the boxes (yet to be made)
I am currently thinking that if I get the boxes (3 of them) made so that I can tightly pack the cells in with a 3mm plastic insulating insert between the Ali box and the cells around the outsides and at the bottom of the boxes this should allow me to secure the cells from moving by packing the cassette tops with some sort of plastic packer bars that will prevent the cells moving inside the boxes, with the addition of the tight fitting and silicone sealed lid that should stop and sort of potential for movement, Steve (Jozztek) suggested using an inflatable bag made from a reclaimed inner-tube at the ends to allow a reasonable pressure to be put on the end cells and hold them all together, but I am not happy with the potential for a simple puncture going unnoticed and causing a battery to come loose inside the pack under high torque (hard cornering for example) So I am going to stick to the tried and tested “Pack em in snug” method.
I am going for 3 separate boxes to allow a couple of strong guys to lift a single box in place, if I put the whole lot in one box I would have to disassemble the whole pack to get at any of the cells, although this is unconventional it is a consequence of building my TP from individual cells rather than cell blocks that most people use (Thundersky for example)
I will get some very accurate measurements in the next couple of days and get the boxes commissioned ASAP, No time to loose now as my September deadline is approaching very rapidly :-}