Paul & Sabrina's Cheap EV Conversion

[pletby]

I read this whole thread in 4 hours over 2 days. I think there should be a warning on the first page not to read this too fast. I am damaged physically from laughing so hard for so long. I'm going to need speech therapy to talk properly again. I'm wheezing like an old man with asthma who worked in an asbestos mine his whole life! I am actually in pain. Ha ha!

Loved it and glad I read it. Your sense of humor is awesome!

Paul

[MPaulHolmes]

Thank you Paul!

[MetroMPG]

Agreed. This is a good one.

[MPaulHolmes]

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!

[flores]

awesome

[Stubby79]

Don't forget your BMS to limit the voltage of each cell...

[mrbigh]

Yeah, room for another electromechanical concoction thread

[MPaulHolmes]

Quite a few updates on the gocart! Just about everything except the wheels were from the neighbor's abandoned yard. They told us we could have whatever we wanted though, so it's OK. haha. Actually, the design was modified so that we could just use what was laying around in their yard.

Not perfectly centered, but close enough for the speeds I'm going to let a 9 year old go around the yard:


John's artwork:


before the chain:


After the chain!:


Piece of angle metal cut from one of those hose roll up things (in the neighbor's yard):


Just last night we got the "steering wheel" on. I'll send pictures of those later. It takes like 8 hours to email pictures from our iphone. I'm not sure if the iphone has a little 2400 baud modem inside it?

[jackbauer]

Subscribed! Love it!

[mrbigh]

jackbauer is on tha houss