230: Monday 30th April 2012

After having the new colour touch screen mounted for 1 day it was obvious that I had to move the location. I had to take my eyes right off the road to look at it and there was a bit of glare from looking from the side. I took the display out of the pod and removed the centre console. I took out the right side of the air vent and mounted the display there. It looks more professional and more like it was part of the original car. I had more trouble getting a decent photo. In this one the flash makes everything dark.

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This photo has a nasty reflection of the flash. The display is much sharper than the photos are showing.

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This photo is out of focus, but it shows more of how the brightness looks in reality.

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I am well happy now. I can use the pod space to mount the forward / reverse control like I had it first time, and put the gear lever back when I can find all the bits. I have the gear lever, but it is the gaiter and the panel that goes on the back that I am missing now. I am also missing the panel that I had the switches on before, but I can make another if necessary.

229: Sunday 29th April 2012

I mounted the 2 circuit boards today. Before, they were just hanging on the cables resting on the rubber insulator, but needed fixing properly. I made up a 2 part bracket for the left and right sides of the circuit boards. This was basically 2 pieces of aluminium angle joined together to make a sort of squared U shape. In the photo you can see this going under the rubber insulator on the floor. The USB cable then runs off to the back of centre console.

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At the back of the centre console is a convenient panel that is quite easy to just pull off, so I wound the cable up under there and it is now ready for a laptop to plug in.

228: Friday 27th April 2012

Yesterday I took the battery tester my friend gave me and modified it so the connections were nearer to the handle and that gave me real long tips that I could get close together to test these narrow batteries. This is called a "drop test" as it measures the voltage drop with the battery under a heavy load. I believe the load is about 200A as there is a ribbon heater between the terminals with a voltage gauge across them. I tested all 10 batteries and found 3 were running at 6v, 1 at 7v and 1 at 9v. I had 5 spare batteries, so I swapped them and now they were all reading 12v. I took it for a test drive after charging and got 15 miles straight off. Like an idiot I forget to then put it back on charge so this morning I came out and see my cable hanging up and I used the Fiat for one day (bah petrol!). I am hoping this might cycle up a bit. I was only just getting 9 miles and that is what I need if I stopped for swim on my way home form work any day. It was getting precarious getting home with almost no power left on the last stretch. Hopefully I shall be alright for a while now. I have contacted Frank at the battery salvage yard to ask him for some more swappers, but he has none at the moment. Last week we got ZEN' brother running and my friend is going clear out my Mitsubishi Pajero (ZEN) and get him round to me in the next couple of weeks to start the conversion to electric. I have started a blog, but I haven't published it yet. More details when that is available.

 

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Also yesterday I got my display, the processor board to drive it and the dual CAN ports board for receiving signals from the measuring boards. Ray is still working on the measuring boards and the display software needs more development, but I wanted to get it mounted in the car to move things along. I removed the fascia panel from the centre console and took out the clock module panel. I cut a slot in the top of the pod on the clock module panel and slipped the display into it, marked the bottom where the fixing lugs on the display came to and cut out so that the display could slide all the way down. I made a paper template that fitted the pod closely and marked the boundary of the display on it.

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I took a piece of hardboard, marked and cut the dimensions from the template, painted the edges black and covered it with black felt using spray glue to stick it.

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Very carefully with a very sharp knife I cut round the hardboard to make the new fascia panel for the display to sit behind.

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As the new fascia was a tight fit, I put it in position and put the display behind it. It all lined up nicely, so I pushed the fascia into the position, removed the display and glued the fascia all round the back edges to fix it permanently in position with contact adhesive.

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Once the glue was dry I put the display behind the fascia and squeezed a rubber grommet behind it to hold it in position. In the photo you can see it powered on my bench. The display looks a bit dark, but that is because of the camera flash. It is actually very bright in daylight.

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I refitted the clock and mounted it all back in the centre console. I had rewired the connections from the display to the processor board with about 2 foot of ribbon cable to give me some freedom of movement to mount the boards under the centre console.

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In this photo you can see the whole centre console. Again the display looks dark due to the camera flash. I now need to mount the processor and CAN boards under the console and run a USB cable to just under the ash tray so I can program the display without having to pull the car apart every time I want to connect to it with my laptop. 

Other news is that I am going to re-install the gear lever so I can try to drive more efficiently and sometimes go faster on longer stretches of road. Generally with the poor batteries I am topping out at 50 MPH and that is a struggle. I know that this would be real easy in 5th gear instead of 3rd. Also my 3rd gear will be getting very worn. I can make easier pulling away in 2nd gear too. In general it will be much easier to control how I am loading the batteries in relation to the speed I am travelling and the speed I want to be doing. I have learned a lot about this over the last months.

227: Tuesday 17th April 2012

I have not had much to post recently as not much has been happening with the Probatron. I am waiting for a number of things to happen at the moment. When I get my bonus and back pay from work, I can fit the body kit and get it in for paint. I have been doing some more consulting with my friend and colleague Ray who is constructing the circuits for my battery monitoring system. Since I last blogged the design has changed and I shall be getting a colour touch screen instead of a basic single colour screen. 4D systems do a great little 3 inch touch screen that is real cheap. It also has a graphics processor on board, so you can send drawing commands direct via serial link. I shall post some photos soon.

Very importantly though, I have secured my next project car and am nearly ready to get it home. There is a story behind this....

My daughter has a friend who she met through her sister at her football team. Her friend lives some 10 miles away, so to see each other they have to get lifts. My wife Mary had a Cherokee Jeep and loved it, but it was expensive to run and was in need of some expensive repairs so we sold it. She still pines for her 4x4, so I suggested converting a Jeep to electric, both problems solved. My daughter friend's dad had 2 Mitsubishi Pajeros sitting on his front drive looking sorry for themselves, so when he dropped my daughter off one time I asked him what he was planning to do with them and at first he said he would probably scrap them, but had not really thought about it. I saw him again at football and he had spoken to the wife and she wanted to keep one and have him get it working. I then offered to do that for him. I knew it would involve an engine swap and I would get the other car as payment for my time and labour.

He had 2 as one was working , but he got it mainly for the engine and other spare parts as the gearbox was fubar. It would be no good for me anyway as it was an automatic. I did enquire about locking an automatic in 2nd and running it direct just as a single ratio box, but the problem is keeping a high pressure flow of oil through the gears as they are very small for the amount of work they do and would get damaged after a short time if there wasn't sufficient oil flow to keep it all lubed and cool. Even if I could rig up a high pressure electric oil pump, routing the oil through "the brain" network of oil channels is an enigma in itself. In the long run it is easier and cheaper to get a manual replacement gearbox with a 4WD transfer case.

One of the objectives with this conversion is a cheap price. I have set a target of £1000 total. I have already got some batteries to get it going initially and test it. I have a friend lined up to get me an old forklift motor and I am looking at the 1000A re-volt controller for the drive. I shall make my own couplings for the gearbox, but no clutch or flywheel this time. This weekend should hopefully see the other Pajero up and running, so I can then take mine and get it home to start work. I shall have another blog for this. The new car shall be called ZEN. The number plate has CEV in it (Cheap Electric Vehicle!).

226: Tuesday 31st January 2012

Yesterday my body kit arrived. I had a couple of things to do when I got home, so it was late before I got to even see it in the packaging. I started unwrapping and got as far as the side skirts, then gave up. It was too dark and I need to get everything on the driveway to unpack it easily. So I left the front and rear skirts wrapped and unpacked them when I came home today. There was a slight bit of damage with a couple of chips where the pointy bits are by the ends of the wheel arches. I shall need to repair these before they go on, so I need a small fibre glass kit to rebuild these corners. The damage is only a few millimetres, but I cannot overlook it as it would notice for sure. The kit itself in general is good quality and has a good finish to it. I am very pleased with the quality of the parts. It was a shame it had some slight damage.

225: Wednesday 25th January 2012

I went and got new wheels at lunch time today. They are 18 inch diameter x 8 inch width with 225x40x18 tyres. They are from a VW Scirocco, but I got them with Ford badges in the centres. The photos don't do it justice.

 

 

224: Sunday 22nd January 2012

Tuesday my new sunroof panel arrived. Saturday I set about changing it over. Firstly I had to remove the old panel and take the rubber strip off the edge. In the photo below you can see the amount of rust on the underneath and this had bubbled through on the outside, right across the back edge. To remove the sunroof I had to open the sunroof a few inches, pull the trim front edge downwards to release it from the clips, then fully open the roof and put a long thin bar or piece of wood between the trim and the roof panel to release the other clips around the sides and back edge. There are seven clips all together. Take the trim away by sliding forward and out of the top of the sunroof opening, then shut the roof, undo the four nuts and the roof panel is free.

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In the pictures below I have drawn a green circle to highlight the position of the hole for the trim clips. These needed to be drilled, very carefully. I used a 3mm drill to drill a pilot hole in the centre of each position for the clip holes. Fortunately these were very easy to find as they had been taped over when the fibreglass mould was made and the circle was clear to see. I found the centre of each mark and drilled through very carefully. The fibreglass is very thin and a drill goes through very easily. The risk is going right through and out the other side leaving a hole in the roof. That would be tragic. 

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In the next photo the hole has been drilled very carefully again with an 8mm drill. I measured this at 7.6mm on the original roof panel, but 8mm was the nearest I could get. Once again there was a high risk of going right through. 

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In the next photo you can see the clips fitted.

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Finally, the roof panel is lower into position and bolted down. In this photo it is sitting high as I did not realise the four nuts that were on the panel when it was deliver needed to be removed. I had to go for a drive and the increase in wind noise was incredible. This was exaggerated because electric drive is so quiet and you can hear every noise. When I got back I took the nuts off and refitted the roof panel and then it was sitting up a touch on 2 corners that were diagonally opposite. I took off the rubber shims from the sliding bracket and tried again. It was still a little bit proud of the main roof on the same 2 corners. I shaved the brackets with a grinder as they were aluminium and this brought each them down a couple of millimetres. It is still very slightly proud, but it looks right now. I took it for a drive and there was a bit of wind noise, but this was due to 2 factors; I had not fitted the inside trim and it was a very windy day. I fitted the inside trim back on and went for another drive and it was back to normal, except I had a rust free roof.

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I also cleaned all the rust from around the sunroof opening and cleaned all the sliding mechanism. I got everything working perfectly so the roof opens freely now just like new. Idecided to wait a little longer to order some wheels asI have another couple of options  am exploring now. I hope to get the body kit on Wednesday, so hopefully I can get this fitted next weekend.

223: Sunday 15th January 2012

Yesterday I fitted an earth wire from the bolt on the back of my radio linked to a screw on the body under the centre console. The problem was that sometimes the earth through the connector was not so good and I would get a horrible whine from the electric power steering pump. All o.k. now. still waiting for body kit and sunroof. Been holding back on the wheels until paint done, but prices will go up soon, so will order now. I have decided to go for the original red with gold metal flake and heavy lacquer, on the body kit this should look cool. I have emailed the two companies to get my parts moving. Now I'm off to order my wheels.... :o)

222: Thursday 5th January 2012

I had an email back from the people I have ordered my glass fibre sunroof from and they said that the guy who makes them was on vacation for 2 weeks over Christmas, so I should get this soon. I have now ordered a body kit and tomorrow I am getting some new wheels. The photo below (free advertising) shows the body kit in silver, but I am having mine painted bright metallic red with a gold flip. The batteries are holding up well and easily doing my journey to work now. I shall try and do another couple of test runs at the weekend now the batteries are "cycled up". I contacted the battery salvage yard to let them know I had 8 batteries to swap when they have some more come in. I still have 5 spares and 2 more that I know are low capacity, but do work and 2 more that may be recoverable slightly. Hopefully he will get some more soon and we can come to an arrangement for swapping them over for some fresher ones.

221: Sunday 1st January 2012

Happy new year! The people  that were supposed to be fitting the new windscreen didn't come. They were expected by 4pm, so I called them at that time and the call centre guy had no information, so he said he needed to make some calls and call me back. 15 minutes later he called back and the guy who was supposed to fit my screen had gone home sick, but before he went he phoned his Manager who neglected to tell the call centre. Since they schedule the work they could not know it was not getting done. I told them I did not want to pay anything for the next appointment, so they noted that. The new appointment was for 27th December and they came (a little late), and I got the charge for windscreen excess of £60 reduced to £45, so that was not bad for a new screen. They brought the correct trim for a Ford Probe, but it was very difficult to fit and kept popping off. The fitter told me it was a bad design and asked if I wanted them to try a universal trim. They did and the finish is better than the original. Also the edge of the universal trim is easier to lift when the paint person wants to mask the windscreen, cool. Still waiting for the sunroof panel to come so I can fit it and get the car into paint. Today I fitted Aeroquip one piece wiper blades. They look neater and wipe a whole load better. Friday I borrowed my friends volt drop tester. This applies a 275A  load for 12v. I tested the batteries I had on the garage floor. The two remaining red ones I had were reading very low, but all the yellow ones were showing a good charge, and this is after standing for several weeks. Today I swapped the 2 batteries that were lower than the others for 2 of the yellow ones and then went for a drive. Directly my range went from around 9 miles to 11.2 miles. I gave it a full charge and ran it again for 13.6 miles. This gives me confidence for my work commute as this was 7 miles each way, but my passenger has moved and that adds another 2 miles each way. I shall charge up at work, so 13.6 miles is easily more than I need to complete the trip. This will save me over £120 per month in petrol using my Fiat Punto. Also I shall have enough range to take my daughter to football training and loads of other little trips. 1st of January and I am back up and fully running, great start to 2012.