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EV Spitfire 345v


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I've had this Spitty since 1989 when living in the UK up North. Currently in Melbourne Australia.

Decided many years ago to do a re-build and started investigating EV conversion.

This has been a long time in the making .. not so much making. Mostly designing and buying pretty well everything ... The hard part has been getting started!

 

A pic from awhile ago of my boy helping in getting started.

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The build Spec's

GT6 rotoflex conversion, uprights machined out to MGF bearing (thanks Nick for help there) Bought some Fiesta / Rover 100 Drive shafts off Ebay in UK.

WRX Subaru 4.44 VLSD Diff.

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The Motor. UQM 100PP, 300Nm Torque, Max RPM 8000, Eventually i decided to go Direct drive. the 4.44:1 Subby Diff on paper will give me 0-60mph in about 6.7 Sec 

The size of the Motor has allowed me to shoe horn it into the Tranny tunnel. Again took me way to long to decide on Motor mount design. But all tacked in as of last week! yeah!!!

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The batteries.

I'm using CALB CAM  3.2v 72Ah x qty-108 batteries. Again have finally worked out where. and made frames to hold all the batteries.

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In the process of getting the battery boxes welded in now the Motor is locked in place. 

 

 

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Very interesting!!

How do you find the weight compares with the electric conversion parts? Do you end up lighter or heavier than original engine/gbox/fuel tank? 

And are you mounting the batteries in one place (assuming under the bonnet here?) or are you planning to spread the weight out more?

Cheers,

Phil

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Excellent. I am sure you are going to get lots of questions....

Where did you get the motor, batteries and controller, are they from a scrap electric car and what sort of range do you think it will have, probably not very far if you keep testing the 0-60 time :)

Mike

Edited by mpbarrett
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Wow very interesting. That motor fits neatly, seems like a really good solution and power output. 

Interested in how you're going to control it. Bloke near me did a Morris Minor conversion but retained the clutch and gearbox which is a bit of compromise.

Just googled the battery specs and seems like you'll have about 200kg plus motor and whatever other ancillaries. Probably comes out similar to standard 6-cylinder motor + gearbox? 

Will you have to do anything special for cooling battery or motor? 

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Ordered my Drive shaft today! .

The conversion weight is a challenge, especially for a 4 cylinder replacement. it is the batteries not the motor that presents the challenge. 

Before i started ...Using some cheap postal scales rated to 300kg, i weighed in each wheel lowered onto the scales. Totaled 841 kg with about  53% front, 47% rear, taking into account full tank etc.

Then weighed each major component as i removed them. I think i will end up with 50/50 split and a bit over weight. will do re-check once complete!

here is original front Left.

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to help with the visualization of what I'm doing... here are my battery boxes resting in their respective places

24 in fuel tank space, 24 in boot.

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2 rows of 12 in engine position

2 rows of 18 in Radiator pos'

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Batteries i bought direct from China brand new, most builders now use wrecked Tesla, leaf or other batteries, but not easy to find in Australia at the time of buying. the cam72 suited with  good weight and volume rating. especially as i was needing such high Voltage. The range (everyone is most interested in) is around 150klm at 100klm/h apparently. 

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CAM72FI Final.pdf

 

MOTOR...

I purchased the motor from Jack Rickard at EVTV.me  in USA, Jack was very passionate about EV conversions, and still supplies a lot of equipment, but seems of late he has moved to Tesla batteries for Solar home systems more than vehicles. The Motor is from a bankruptcy of CODA (a car company), Jack  bought a lot of them and reverse engineered to build his own controller he calls GEVCU 6.0

FYI... There is an inverter some 400mm x 420mmx150mm which i will need to place above the Engine-bay battery pack.

see motor spec in below attachment for info..

UQM PP 100 .pdf

This motor has a splined end-shaft. I purchased a Blank Coupling from EVwest.com this can be heated and shrunk fit to the spline. I had it machined to take a drive shaft end flange and fitted to the motor, you can see it in earlier photos. Will also have a park brake disc as well, but will get into that latter on.. 

You can also get the UQM motor from thunderstruck-ev.com but if it is out of a coda, you need Jacks Gevcu. but as far as motors go the current Fav from most installers is the Netgain Hyper-9 avial from EVwest.

I also have ready to install;

  • Battery management system,  from ZEVA BMS-EVMS3 here in West-Australia, this will also turn the RPM into a Amp meter, and fuel gauge into Battery gauge. plus other clever stuff.
  • Vehicle charger is from Chevy Volt car, got from EVTV ,  3.3kw  which i suspect will be 4 hours charging if memory is right.
  • I have a small radiator and electric pump which i will have to squeeze in, that will be for Motor, inverter, and vehicle charger . Batteries will not be fluid cooled.
  • throttle will be via a potentiometer connected to original throttle cable. from EVwest or EVTV 
  • Heater, i will place 2 small 12v ceramic heating elements in where the fluid heaters were. and plan to use existing fan.,
  • DC-dc have planned to use a small Mean Well SP-480 takes direct DC 350v and gives output 12v 40 amps. might be a bit light on especially with the heater... attraction is they are small and light. maybe a second one for heater?
  • headlights and all lighting will be converted to LED, 
  • Speedo will be controlled by Classic speed, uses gps to drive mechanical speedos. see attached

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  • Forward, reverse, park neutral.... i was hoping to install a rotary dial from a Chevrolet 200 

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but looks too hard. will start with push button momentary relay switching.

To finish off

Here is my GT6 rear end with Suby diff installed. rover 100 shafts fit straight into large Suby CV stub axles with around 10mm play. Hope that's enough..

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Cool. Was looking at the Hyper 9 most probably.  There’s a local guy who seems to have access to lightly used batteries from a major car manufacturer development program (he won’t tell me whom- sworn to secrecy!). The cost is the scary thing...... you can have your pick of IC power trains for half the cost.

There are also guys doing clever things with industrial motors. Short rev ranges make gearboxes necessary though and while you can certainly make them go fast, not so easy to make them go far.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some progress last week.

using the original Engine mount pos' I made up a bracket that i can bolt mid battery box, and support inverter.. clearance is getting tight. top of inverter is about 20mm lower than original rocker cover. Unfortunately Bonnet is at another site. Will need to get that in place to finish of the front battery box.

 

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Yes. The cost numbers are a problem! ‘Tis an improving situation though.

Was looking at the (slight) possibility of Leaf ownership earlier in the year. In a month of looking, only found one within a distance that would have allowed me to drive it home without recharging.

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Hi,
About £60 a 100AHr cell. I have also noticed they are getting cheaper from AliExpress

A string of four are at lead acid charging voltages, they have a much higher voltage over its discharge time as a bonus.
A 200-300 Amp BMS would probably be another £150. Would you need more Amps to start a car? If I was still tax exempt I would buy some. I'm not.

I think the OP is not using a BMS on all the cells and relying on matched strings of cells? They are more a robust chemistry than Li Ion. Really good work!

Cheers,
Iain.
 

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The Batteries are a big hurdle, especially price i remember it well!. my Battery pack is about 216 kg, dispersed around the vehicle. Cost about $12k AUD

I'm sure you can get better options with wreckers ? Although i do like the modular packs that can be packed into any size config. Held together with all thread.. 

The battery selection has its complexity despite the cost and needs to be selected with the motor in mind, how far you want to travel, how quick you want to go, and where you will put them. There are plenty of motors around 96v to 156v so the pack can be smaller. but they require higher Amps. eg. So you need to look at the C rating. a C rating of 10 for 100 A battery will give you 1000 Amps in a  10 sec burst . Also with low Voltage you would probably be wanting a gearbox... if you want torque you need Volts! or gear ratio... if you have a gearbox, chances are you will only need 2 gears at most, and there is the weight, and space.. I really like the idea of the direct drive, in this project. I have looked at using the same motor with a powerglide 2 speed. crunched the numbers on that for a small sedan size car. That could be interesting and no waste of extra gears.

My optimum Direct drive for the spitty was 5.0 :1 diff ratio. That would give less than 6 sec 0-100klm/h and still a top speed of 160klmh. So i think 4.44:1 is pretty close off the shelf!

My motor / inverter has max 400-500 Amp (depending on the age of the spec sheet) and batteries have a C rating of 8 so they can provide 576A in that short burst 10 sec. I need 108 Qty, x 3.2v to get to the 345v target mid range for motor spec. This i believe is 20 kWh (usable) @ 100klm/h will provide range 156 klm. @ 60klm/h around town can be as high as 255 klm distance. The weird thing about EV's to get you head around is the range efficiency. eg, 40klm/h will give a range of around 290 klm. Where as what we're used to, is with petrol, you get better miles / tank at higher speeds than lower speeds. 

Additionally for me at the time i bought these, was that the CAM72 were 30% smaller and 30% lighter than the equivalent. this is before the Tesla and other OEM wreck batteries were readily available. 

 

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The problem i have with the old leafs is because Nissan don't handle thermal management of the cells, the battery deterioration is 20% after 5 years, so in layman's terms of the 150kg of the batteries, you are lugging around 30kg of waste, not to mention the depleted range.

I know a few people with the first gen leaf, and on a cold day, they get around 80 miles, because of the degradation and lack of thermal control.

Im guessing steve doesn't have too much of a problem in the cold in Aus! :P

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Yep, the older, harder used Leafs are getting.... not exactly cheap, but "affordable".  Then you factor in battery age/deterioration and they have a realistic range of less than 50 miles.

Still like the idea of converting a classic and Steve is going the route I'd consider favorite.

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