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Old 09-20-2016, 12:44 AM   #534 (permalink)
MPaulHolmes
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Maricopa, AZ (sort of. Actually outside of town)
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Michael's Electric Beetle - '71 Volkswagen Superbeetle 500000
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My 2 kids John (4) and Josiah (9) are now undertaking a new cheap EV conversion. And I mean really cheap this time. We live out in the desert now, and our neighbors recently abandoned their house, and said we could have whatever we wanted from their yard. So, we took a big metal frame thing (see attached).

We are going to get some of those "no flat" tires like these (each can hold around 500 pounds):
https://www.amazon.com/Marathon-15x6...lat+free+wheel

And put on some spacers, and attach a big 530 style 52T motorcycle sprocket:
JT Sprockets 530 Steel Rear Sprocket 52T Silver JTR816 52 | eBay

Then, we're getting one of these things:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

And we're going to use that to clamp onto the Nissan Leaf motor post, which is about 0.86" outer diameter (but is splined). Then, we are going to weld the 13T 530 style motorcycle sprocket like this one:
JT Sprockets 530 Steel Front Sprocket 13T Natural JTF513 13 | eBay

Onto the face of that clamp thing. The Nissan Leaf motor goes EXACTLY half way, so welding something onto the other end hopefully won't hamper removing it later.

Our neighbors left a ton of 2x6 and 2x8 wood over there, and we were just going to bolt it onto the metal frame so we have a surface for the motor and battery. It's going to just be a one wheel drive. Well, I haven't figured out how to do 2 wheel, and 1 seems super easy. Then, I"m going to use a 92.4v 58.8amp*hr, 5.43kWh A123 battery pack that came from a Spark EV I think. A friend of mine just mailed it to me! It weighs 105 pounds, and 4 of them allow for like 85 miles of range in a normal car, I think. So, a "car" that weighs around 300-350 pounds should have pretty good range I hope. Well, the ridiculous tire might not be ideal, but this will be for off-roading in the desert, and getting some good load tests on the controller.

The battery is 27" x 6.5" x 9.5" or so.

We're just going to stick the battery pack near the back (on some wood) right next to the motor, and secure both of course. haha.

The neighbor had a free steering wheel laying around in their yard, so I figure we have almost everything we need! And Astro sent me a PB-6 hall effect throttle, so we'll use that.

The really cool thing is, There will be NO mechanical BRAKES WHATSOEVER!!! It will all just be "gas" and "brake" pedals, with the gas pedal having zero regen at zero throttle so that it coasts, and then the brake pedal will just be commanding regen. And those A123 batteries can handle ridiculous amounts of regen! It might be the first Nissan Leaf dead axle ghetto go cart ever! haha. I'll post pictures of the battery pack as soon as the stupid phone actually successfully sends the pictures to my gmail.

EDIT: The pictures are now available!

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Last edited by MPaulHolmes; 09-21-2016 at 10:46 PM..
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