Wiring... and lots of it!

Today's project (and probably the rest of the week, for that matter!) was straightening up some of the dash wiring and removing all of the unnecessary engine wiring. Well I'm at it I'm going to run the gauge wiring through the original harness. Tedious at best, but it will definitely look nice and make the car easier to service. Not to mention, it can be kind of fun once you get the hang of it.

EVing in Plymouth

This weekend I took my truck to the Plymouth Green Street Fair with the Michigan EAA. We all had a lot of fun and the crowd definitely enjoyed it. The kind of interest we saw was really awesome. Darin also brought out his awesome electric drag bike. Having never seen one before, I thought it was pretty slick, with its twin Eteks and 96v system... Power!!!!!

Why you ask?

The point of all this was to get to the wiring harness, which, as luck would have it, comes through the firewall right in the middle of everything. I had to pull the dash, steering wheel, gauge cluster, heater core, and about a million other items to get to it.

Needless to say, my car isn't very happy with me right now...

My nemesis the dashboard

I told myself I wouldn't do this. I begged and pleaded with the heater core to spare me the trouble. But as time passed, it became evident: I had to pull the dashboard. So there it sits, on my garage floor, looking smug after putting up such a struggle.

Plugged in!

Well, not quite, but the plug is now installed on my Tercel. I think I'm having problems with my GFI because I can't seem to get power through it. Other than that, things are moving along pretty quickly. My gauges are on their way from Nanjing, China, and I'm working on the wiring harness now.

And for those who have been wondering- my truck is running great. I just haven't had the time to post pics. More later!

Ready to go...

The completed component board install, minus the throttle cable. Time for the smoke test!

You see a wiring harness... I see a work of art

Here's the completed wiring harness for my component board. If all goes well I should have this all installed by the end of the day.

Hey all, it occurred to me (and I guess to a few other readers as well!) that it can be kinda hard to figure out exactly what's going on here without reading the blog from the very beginning. So for those of you who want some quick and dirty info, here's a couple links on my cars:

Mazda: http://www.evalbum.com/861

Toyota: http://www.evalbum.com/1445

They'll also be in my links section. I don't update them as often as my blog, but they should provide some good info.

I spent an hour or so this morning building a mount for the charger board up front. This is the test fit. I think it looks pretty good. I've also been spending some time on the front-to-rear wiring, mainly for the chargers. It's coming along pretty quickly, and the recent warm weather is really making things easier!

I got most of the high-voltage wiring on the component board done today. The pic shows the layout I ended up with. The most positive and most negative of the pack will be attached to the shunt and the fuse, and the motor wiring comes out the bottom of the board. Eventually, I'll put those big Anderson connectors on here to make it really easy to remove.

This is the finished throttle sensor setup. To disconnect it, I'll just loosen a wing nut on the cable and remove it. It should also be a lot easier to adjust than when it was mounted to the firewall.

This is for anybody that wants to see what's really inside a Raptor. I had mine apart today for a little while. I'm mounting throttle sensor to the case of the controller. It should be a lot more portable and reliable this way.

The beginnings of a removable component board. I should be able to transfer this between my truck and my Tercel, eliminating the need for a new controller, contactors, etc., at least initially.

I'm spending the afternoon today cleaning up in preparation for the Discovery Channel. They're coming over for an interview on Monday. My truck is getting a bit of a workout moving my dad's cars around.

Charger boards all wired up, and ready for a test fit.

One board, all wired up. Now I just have to add a connector and mount it in the car.

One down, two to go...

One of the charger boards. I'll have two of these in the trunk, and another with four chargers under the hood.

I'm spending a few hours today working on mounting the 14 chargers for my Tercel. I'll make sure to post more pics when I'm done.

Well, if I do say so myself, the Tercel is looking pretty good. Can you tell I like orange? Since the last post I've finished the component board mount and I have the battery racks mostly done. It's not perfect, but it'll get the job done. Since I'm going to be mounting batteries underneath the front crossmember, I had to remove the brace underneath it. I had to add a whole bunch of extra bracing to make up for it. You can see that in the pic below.
Below you can see the front battery rack. This is going to hold three batteries. I would have liked to have had four up here, but there isn't quite enough room on the left side. I can always modify it later on. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to cram one or two more in there to take some weight out of the back. There's actually quite a bit of room here- you just have to spend the time to figure out how to use it all. I'll also have to find room up here for the 12v accessory battery.
Here's a look at what I'm working on for the rear battery rack. It's really just temporary. I'm going to be stuffing 10 batteries back here. Once I get the car dialed in, and get the batteries all where I want them, I'll sink them into the floor. This should let me have almost all of the original trunk space.

I have a lot of work to do yet. I still have to run all of the wiring (something that I'm going to think through a little more with this car than I did with my truck), assemble the component board, set up the gauges, work out the vacuum system, and of course, purchase and install batteries, along with a bunch of other little stuff.

This is going a lot faster than my truck, though. It really helps to know the basics of how everything is going to go together. I'm hoping to have this car on the road by the end of the month- we'll see what happens. Now that I've gotten this far, I'm getting really anxious to get it rolling. It looks like it's going to be a really fun car. Stay tuned!

Well, it's been a little while since I last updated. And yes, I have cut my hair since the pic was taken! I've gotten quite a bit of work done. I now have the motor installed in my Tercel, and I'm working on battery racks and component layout. So far it's looking like I'll have 3 or 4 batteries up front (plus one for the 12v system) and then 9 or 10 more in the back. Although this is far from optimal as far as weight distribution goes, it'll get me on the road. I'll always be able to modify it later on.

In the spirit of doing things on the cheap, I'm working on a component shelf that will allow me to transfer all of the major components and wiring from my truck to my Tercel by simply unplugging a couple connectors and loosening a few wing nuts. This way, I won't have to buy new contactors and stuff while the Tercel is still in the test stages. It will contain the controller, both contactors, fuse, circuit breaker (maybe), current shunt, and a few other minor items. It will have one connector for 12v power and signal wires (power on, amp meter, volt meter, controller status lights, and a few other things), another connector (one of the big Anderson ones) for the motor, and another Anderson for main battery power.

It will also have a plug for the charger, which is only going to be used on my truck. I've purchased 14 6A 12v smart chargers to use in my Tercel. By using individual chargers, I'll get an automatic equalize charge, not to mention saving a bundle of dough. They will be mounted on-board (they're very small, maybe 8" long), and they will all be tied to one main charge plug. Since they're smart chargers, they'll automatically switch to a trickle charge when the batteries are topped off, taking better care of the batteries than any group charger ever could.

I've been working on my own homemade controller design, but I don't think it will be done in time (hence the reason why I'm working on the removable component board). My controller will be an IGBT controller, driven by a flash-programmed PIC, which will allow me to edit the firmware at any time just by plugging it into a computer serial port. I have a Powerex 600A 1200V IGBT that I purchased surplus off of ebay. This should provide more than enough current-handling capability. If I size the filter caps right, it should be able to handle at least 200V or more. I'm also working on an LCD interface using a 16x2 44780-controlled blue LCD, which is easily interfaced with the PIC.

Initially, it will probably be a pretty bare-bones setup, but later on I hope to add features like built in cruise control, current limiting, RPM limiting, throttle endpoint adjustment, and more. That's the great thing about building these things yourself- once you have the basic power stages and driver complete, you can add all kinds of crazy features for very little cost, often by just adding a few lines of code.

Anyway, I've got some more to report, but I think this post is long enough... I'll try to add some more updates ASAP.