I spent the weekend tearing out yet more of the cars interior. It's a vicious circle, the more I remove the more things I find to fix.
I removed the heater core and found some rust behind the pedal cluster, so I started removing that too. Now almost everything is removed, I didn't quite get the pedal cluster out; it's still hangin on by the clutch cable. I have to get underneath the car and loosen the cable at the clutch. I didn't take any pictures of it as it's not very exciting...
Instrument Cluster
The deconstruction of the car has begun, I've come to the conclusion that most of the interior will have to be replaced. It is not entirely suprising when you consider how long it had been sitting outdoors with the top partially open. The instrument cluster pictured above seems to be in good shape though, as is all the wiring.
Oooh, shiny!!
After some soap and water the car is looking quite good.
I've been looking for a decent cheap fiat spider ever since I spotted a yellow one on craigslist just before christmas. This morning there was another ad on craigslist for a 1977 fiat spider, the ad read:
"77 Fiat Spyder for restoration - $100
this car has been sitting for 6 years. it did run but obviously the battery is very dead. The body is not damaged but the top will have to be replaced."
Happy holidays!
I haven't had much time for the EV project due to the holidays, but a few things have happened.
New BrushesAs you may recall the brushes that came with the motor were more or less gone, so I sent an email of to Jim Husted of Hi-Torque Electric asking if he had some brushes lying around that he could spare.
I went to the Alternative Car Expo in Santa Monica this weekend to check out some EVs and get away from home a bit.
EV in parking lot
I was assured we had arrived at the right place by the abundance of Priuses in the parking lot, a couple of EVs could be seen too.
I have been modeling some different configurations of the power stage in Solidworks.
First attempt The first attempt was an all bus bar based design that didn't come out very well. It became a little too tall for my liking and it doesn't use the available space effectively. I also modeled the capacitors the wrong size, the ones I have are a bit smaller.
The most basic form of switching DC motor controller is the DC chopper. It consists of a single silicon switch, a freewheeling diode, some capacitors for filtering out current spikes and electronics for controlling the switch.
Controller Diagram
Work on the motor is progressing slowly as I'm waiting for some parts to come in.
I've spent a lot of time lately contemplating what to do for the motor controller. The function of the motor controller is to regulate the current flowing from the batteries to the motor, based on input from the drivers lead foot.
There are a number of options for motor controllers, none of which seem very desirable to me at the moment. There's the king of motor controllers, the Zilla line made by Cafe Electric. The Zilla controllers are expensive but well worth the money, they're very reliable and dish out more power than I could possibly use. The problem is that they are back ordered for at least 6 months and there seems to be some production problems at the moment. You can read more at the Cafe Electric blog.
Quite some time ago I designed a quick and dirty prototyping board based on the AVR ATMega16 microcontrollers. I find it useful enough so I decided to share the design here.
