Zach’s Electric Diablo

I know it sounds like an excuse, but the house remodel is taking all my time.  Check out these videos:

I promise… one of these days I’ll make time to work on the car.

I’ve been working on my car almost everyday for the last three weeks. It has been great, I’ve gotten a ton of stuff done.

My roll cage/body mount needed to be tweaked in order to get everything lined up. This meant cutting it off and re-welding it. Now the body sits on the chassis squarely and the wheel wells line up with the wheels. While I was at it, I finished up welding the windshield columns and added some gussets to beef up the roll cage.

Long ago I cut out a large section of the center console. The chassis came with a center console that was extra large to make room for a large fuel tank. Seeing that I didn’t need a fuel tank, I decided to retake the space by cutting it out. Now I’ve re-welded a smaller center console and filled in all the holes.

I added connectors on the battery cables and the cables to the motor. This adds a level of safety when working around the high voltage. It also makes it very easy to remove all the high power electronics, just take apart a few connectors and all the high voltage electronics can be removed.

I started wiring the battery box for BMS v2. One wire to each battery.

I started preparing the body for mounting. Step one is to scrub off all the resin wax. I flipped the body over and scrubbed the heck out of it. Next I’ll be painting the underside black and mounting all the grills. Then I can glue it to the chassis.

Here’s some other misc. stuff I did, but didn’t take pictures of:

- Cut out a safety cover for the batteries.

- Fabricated a safety cover for all the high voltage electronics. I used 1/8 polycarb bent in a sheetmetal break. Polycarb is great as is bends just like metal.

- Discovered that my air lift system kind of sucks. To install it, I would need to modify the chassis a bit. Plus in the best case it would raise the nose by 2″. I think I might ditch it and just put rollers under the front nose.

- Solved the problem with the vacuum brake booster. I figured out that one of the ports on the reservoir had a built in one-way valve, and I had the tubes on backwards.

- I modified the battery box to accommodate some better battery hold downs.

Now that the high voltage electrical is starting to look good, I figured it was time to start cleaning up the 12 volt side of things.  I made a fuse/relay board to mount everything to:

The weather has finally started to change and today was the first day I need to move my car while it was raining (there is a short drive from my storage container to the shop). I didn’t want my electronics to get wet so I used a little shrink wrap to make a windshield and trunk lid:

It may not look so in the picture, but my shrink wrap windshield is quite easy to see through.

All the high voltage electronics are now neatly mounted on the rear tray.  In the process of remounting everything, I removed a lot of excess wire  to clean everything up:

My goal is to make the tray removable to enable easy access to all the electronics.  To make this work, I need to “connectorize” the pack, the motor and all the low voltage control lines.  My plan is to get two beefy Anderson connectors (one for the battery pack and one for the motor) and some kind of multiconductor bayonet connector for all the low voltage lines…

Here’s a couple pictures I took a while back, but didn’t include in previous posts.

This is a shot of the roll cage/body mount:

As you can see, I still need to weld the last piece to attach the windshield pillars to the chassis.

Here’s a shot of my LED tail lights:

It’s been two weeks since I have posted an update so there is lots of progress to report.

1. The BMS version two is up and running with a single MAX6802 (I should be getting some more chips any day now). There is just one bug I need to figure out. The last battery in the chain is reading 0 volts. All the others read fine. This could be because it is supposed to be wired up to the next string which isn’t installed yet. However, I think there might be something else going on. We’ll see…

2. I welded up a new aluminum mounting bracket for all the high voltage electronics.

This tray will be the final mounting location for everything that uses full pack voltage; motor controller, charger, etc… It will be accessed from the rear hatch:

3. I remounted and started the process of re-wiring all of the high voltage electronics. I am mounting everything to a piece of polycarbonate which then bolts to the aluminum bracket I made.

4. I installed my new 500amp 50mV shunt. This should give me better readings than the previous 1200amp 50mV shunt.

5. I received and tested all the LED lighting for the car. These will replace the standard incandescent backup lights, turn signals, brake lights, and side markers.

6. I cut out the safety cover for the battery box.  It is 1/4″ polycarbonate.  Later I will figure out the best way to vent it.

After some jumper settings and a secret configuration menu, my Mac Mini and Lilliput screen come on when I start the car and automatically shutdown (cleanly) when I turn off the key. The main trick was to use a “smart” power supply. The one I used was a Carnetix CNX-P1900. It takes in 12v and a signal from the ignition switch. It outputs 18v for the Mini and has a controlled 12v output to power the screen. It has a special plug which attaches to the Mini’s motherboard and lets the power supply virtually press the power button on the Mini. It is fun to turn the key and hear the Mac bootup sound (even though it boots to windows XP).

My seat is now bolted to the floor and the racing harness is installed.

I also installed the Mac mini, 12v power supply and an LCD screen (the LCD mount is temporary until I mount the dash). This setup will be helpful during testing to display battery status and speed information.

Now that I am starting to accumulate the 12v devices, I thought it was about time to officially wire up the DC to DC converter. It takes the pack voltage and charges the 12v lead acid accessory battery.

I finished assembling the battery monitoring boards (including the fix for low voltage).

Now I just need to program them and find all the bad solder joints and those darn little threads of metal that seem to plague this board run.

I made some battery connectors similar to the ones Thunder Sky provided with the batteries, but just a little longer. These will connect each string of 9 batteries.

I also started making the 2/0 cables to connect the pack to the motor controller. I hope this weekend to get the pack installed and wired.

Today, I sent off my Battery Monitoring System (BMS) circuit to the fabricators. If all goes well, I should have 50 of these boards in my hands by Friday.

I also mounted the battery box (which is now powder coated) to the chassis and bolted on the power electronics (the charger, controller, main fuse, and both contactors):

The next step is to install the batteries and start wiring everything up.  I want to make everything really neat and clean, so I will be taking my time.

Yesterday, I got to spend a few hours on the car. Didn’t get a whole lot done, but figured out a few things. I started by figuring out the wiring coming out of the steering column:

There are still a few mystery wires, but I found all the important features: ignition, wipers, lights, and turn signals.

I also started building my wiring harness. I used this list that Jim Dinner posted on Kitcentral.com as a starting point, but soon realized that without an ICE there are a lot fewer circuits needed (granted, I will have one or two really big circuits for the DC motor).

The last and most important thing I got done was making a list of all the “stuff” I still needed to order (listed in no particular order):

• Vintage air A/C system and DC motor to drive compressor
• Vacuum pump for brakes
• Touch screen for dash
• GPS for nav system
• Power supply for mac mini
• Relays
• Mirror motors (the ones I got from allelectronics.com were just too big)
• Interior switches (door lock, windows, mirrors, air lift, etc)
• Shifter (I need to decide on cables or hard linkage)
• Dash vents (forward facing and defrost)
• Battery charger
• Battery monitoring system
• Seat tracks
• Loom holders
• O-ring grommets
• U-bolts for airlift conversion
• Air fittings for airlift
• Thumb key latches for the outside
• Clutch kit
• Brake lines, bender and flare tool (ordered)
• Bondo for the headliner area
• Metal for roll cage
• E-brake lever (ordered)
• E-brake calipers and cables (ordered)
• Flashers for turn signals
• Rollers for front lip
• Fuse box
• Windshield wiper and motor
• Seat belts
• Oh-s handles
• Sun visors
• Rear view mirror
• Dome light
• Wheels/tires
• Batteries