Electric car conversion: Project ForkenSwift

[MetroMPG]

Took a 35 minute break before lunch and aimed the torch at the frozen brake line nuts. Worked like a charm.

I got both brake lines off, and I've been to the parts store for the right number of new lines, nuts & unions to reassemble it.

We'll still be using the flare tool to re-use the forwardmost section of the original lines (because that area wasn't corroded, and has a bunch of jigsaw bends & turns in it that would be hard to duplicate).

38 bucks later... it'll take a trunkload of recycled batteries to recoup the cost of this repair!

[MetroMPG]

DAX asks about power brakes in an EV...

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A lot of conversions use electric vacuum pumps & larger reservoirs (often a capped length of large diameter ABS tube) to retain full brake assist.

OEM conversions would have also had pumps.

Some people forgo the pump and swear that by drilling the vac reservoir (behind the master cyl) and piercing the diaphragm inside that the pedal effort becomes much easier.

Other people switch to a master cyl with a larger diameter (and skip the pump).

For the ForkenSwift, we've talked about looking for a vacuum pump from a junked VW diesel, but the brakes are actually pretty managable. The blue Metro had significantly smaller discs and calipers (and noticably harder unassisted pedal effort) than the 4-cyl red Swift. So we swapped over the Swift's front brakes onto the blue car.

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And... the brakes are functional again. Just got finished. Drove the car around a little. It's addictive.

Next task is fixing up the leaky transaxle. Probably just an axle seal. Can't have an EV dripping oil on the garage floor. That's just wrong!

[MetroMPG]

Axle seal changed. May have another small leak around a "gasket-in-a-tube" type of gasket that was disturbed when swapping the transmission mounts around.

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Had a serious inquiry about the torque monster today. I advertised it in a Toronto area EV association's Google group. They're about 3.5 hours away from here (at normal people highway speeds).

I offered the guy who's interested a healthy discount if he comes & picks it up (to avoid having to make a crate - or 2, to get around courier weight limits - and shipping it).

[MetroMPG]

I heard from the prospective motor guy again tonight - sounds promising. But I'm not going to say another word about it until I have the cash. Don't want to jinx it.

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so that would be good "garage" weather. I'd like to get the tranny oil leaks completely sorted out. Plus need to remove the e-motor and rotate it 90 degrees to get its terminals out of the way of the battery rack that will sit over top.

Once that's done, we can look at continuing with rack fabrication. Now that the welder is broken in, I'm eager.

And of course: drive it around the neighbourhood to "test" each little repair/mod

[MetroMPG]

One axle seal and 2 other gaskets later, the transmission leaks are fixed. Henceforth, no driveway shall fear the ForkenSwift!

[MetroMPG]

Project cost update: brake line repair + bought a bunch of marine battery terminal adapters for the floodies a while back.

Total to date: $978.35 CDN or about $876 US.

(Hope my spreadsheet is up to date. I thought my last update was around that amount.)

Sold a transmission mount/bracket this week for 5 bucks .

[MetroMPG]

Didn't do any more work to the FS today, but drove it a couple of blocks to "test" the transmission gaskets. Still not leaking!

This week we'll rotate the motor and start working on the battery trays again.

[MetroMPG]

Had a very productive visit to the Ottawa EV association meeting last night.

Project ForkenSwift was loaned a cool home-made battery pack monitor: it's an analog volt-meter in a small box with a rotary dial that lets you "flip" through the pack to check individual batteries. That'll come in very useful.

But the biggest news: one of Ottawa's EV owners recently changed out his battery pack, and he offered to donate his old pack: 22 6v floodies. He drives his Ford Ranger p/u daily, and its range on the old pack was down to "only" 20 km, thus the pack change.


http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/600.html

The good thing about these batts is they will be much closer in condition to one another than the ones we've received from the forklift company to date.

Have to talk to Ivan tomorrow and see if he wants to drive back to Ottawa in his pickup to get them.

[MetroMPG]

Ben:

You lucky dawg! With all the batteries you'll be making money on this damn thing soon enough!

Yeah. That's funny eh?

There are other people in the group who might be able to use some of the leftover batts (we can't use more than 12 max, and more likely only 8). So we probably won't just turn in the extra ones for the recycling fee in a desperate attempt to reduce the build cost

[MetroMPG]

Visitor Eric wrote:

your video has inspired me to do the same ! i found two forklift for free but one is 24v and the other is 36v could it work ?

Hi Eric -

Depends on what your goals are. Can you make a highway capable car with only the parts from a 36v forklift? No. Can you make something similar to what we have made (low speed, slow acceleration)? Sure.

The advantage of used parts is they're cheap (or free). The disadvantage is their voltage ratings are lower, plus you end up doing more "custom" work to make things fit together (e.g. non-standard motor shafts, etc.)

It's too bad there is no EV club in the Montreal area. If I recall, there seems to be a few cars in that area in the EV Album.