emini

Performance was good at low speeds, and as expected, dropped off significantly at higher speeds. I can't wait for the full battery to be installed. The Thunder Sky LFP40AHA cells held up well. I have 36 cells for 115v nominal. At 200A the EVision measured 95v for 2.6v per cell, this includes the losses in the interconnects and the mid pack fuse. The EVision doesn't seem to display accumulated amp hours for some reason (it did on the test bench), so I don't know how much I've removed. Hopefully this information is stored somewhere inside it and I can get it out when I connect my laptop.

Many thanks to Ed, Elaine, Phil, Rob, F40 Motorsport, Lee, Monique, Vik, John, Steve, Campbell, Cindy, Ben, Aimee & Vivian for all the help and support. This is a great milestone for me, only 1 month late!

Today I installed the dashboard complete with EVision, connected the various parts of the EVision together, installed the shunt in it's box, connected all the cells together, installed the fuse, made fused wires for the EVision voltage sense, extended the contactor control wiring and attached an auxiliary battery.

I took the car off the road 4 months ago, and this is the first time it's had power of any kind. It's been a year since I took delivery of the motor and this evening I turned the wheels forwards and backwards under electric power. I hope to do a test drive tomorrow. It was quite noisy, at least in part because the brakes are somewhat covered in rust (they were like this when I took it off the road, even after doing standard duty with the ICE) and are binding, and because there is no oil in the gearbox. Hopefully it runs quietly once these issues are taken care of.

I've got a lot to do, I have to connect the throttle pedal, hold the contactor box down, attach some wiring under the car, lift the car off it's flat wheeled sled, put oil in the gearbox, mount the auxiliary battery... Maybe I'll be test driving on Thursday.

The inverter is (a little agriculturally) mounted, the brakes are bleed and possibly working, the driveshafts are installed and the suspension is back together. I'm currently wrestling with the traction cabling, it's as thick as my forefinger and unwilling to bend. The contactor box won't fit at the front of the car, so for this test run I'm installing it at the back which makes the wiring more involved.

In other news, it would appear that 4 small castors isn't enough to hold a car, even a small car.

Yesterday I installed the front subframe. It didn't look like it would fit (indeed I had a lot of trouble getting it out) until I worked out it has go in at an angle with the front lifted up. I need to invest in a load leveler for lifting these things -- fiddling with knots is not fun. Today I assembled the motor & gearbox and installed that in the car, including the greasy job of putting the boots on the right hand driveshaft. I picked up the left hand driveshaft this morning and I'll be repeating the circlip adventure tomorrow and installing that driveshaft.

Major items outstanding are to mount the inverter somewhere, tidy up the brake master cylinder and throttle pedal installations and do all the wiring. If things go well and I continue to ignore important admin tasks, I may have it moving under electric power this weekend.

I made up a temporary gearbox mount to match the temporary motor mount I made a couple of weeks ago. It has several problems, notably it doesn't have any rubber to absorb shocks, the box section bolted to the gearbox doesn't have anything to stop the bolts crushing it, and that box section could be significantly strengthened by capping the ends. Really I should have used a flat plate against the gearbox.

While it's not a great mount, it allows me to install the front subframe and flesh out how I'm going to support the motor controller on top of it all. This is significant because it's likely the final mounts will serve both purposes.

BMW are building an Electric MINI, which is a little like my Mini. They are making 500 leases available in New York, Los Angeles & New Jersey for the trifling sum of A$1200/month. (Why a New Zealand website is quoting an American price in Australian dollars, I do not know, I've seen US$850/month from a less reputable source) Their car is a two seater because the back seat is full of batteries, my goal is 4 seats. BMW claim 240km range, my goal is 100km of normal driving. BMW are apparently using 5000 small cells while I will be using about 100 larger cells. BMW's car will weigh 1465kg, my goal is 800kg.

This isn't news. What is news, to me at least, is the price. $US850/month is an awful lot of money, but even so, I wouldn't be surprised if they lease them all. The original press release states that the lease will be limited to 1 year plus "an extension option" and the the cars returned to BMW for comparative testing afterwards. At least they are being up-front that the cars won't be sold to customers after the lease expires.

A picked up another driveshaft at Pick-A-Part this morning (literally, it was lying on the ground). From the top, the Mitsubishi-Mini shaft (too short), a Mini shaft, the new Mitsubishi shaft. The 6 sided thing on the left is the middle of a Mini CV joint, the new shaft will be cut to fit into this part. The Mini shaft looks particularly short because it's the shorter of the standard Mini shafts and the other two are from the long side.

Also of note is the particularly nasty circlip attached to the too-short Mitsubishi-Mini shaft, I'm not looking forward to transferring that again.

I'm only having one of the too-short driveshafts replaced as lengthening only this one makes mounting the motor easier.