David's 2001 Civic EV (80-100 mile range; 65+ MPH; 8 second 0-60)

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by Cobb

Problems like this would make me toss in the towel. Glad to see it hasnt gotton you down.

Nope, hasn't gotten me down! I have too much money into this EV to give up.

I brought my coupling down to the machine shop at my university to get some modifications so my pilot bearing will fit and they gave it a look over. They found no design flaws and actually think the problem wasn't so much misalignment but something with the shaft. To them it looked like the motor was put into some sort of extreme stress, such as 1000+ amps at stall because they noticed stress on both the front and rear shafts. I never pushed that many amps before and I've only had a speed sensor on the rear shaft.

However, the previous owner did have a Curtis controller failure up a hill, so that's probably what causes the stress. Then a few weeks ago I went from 520 AMPs to 650 AMPs on the Zilla and that may have done it in. Once I get around to taking the motor apart I will know more.

[TheSGC]

My Warp 9 comes tomorrow! I just got off the phone with the shipping company, sometime after lunch tomorrow a 175 lbs box arrives and I have to find a easy way of getting it off the truck. I'm either going to slide it off using a ramp or use my engine hoist.

Now I have to do my transmission rebuild ASAP! I don't have classes tomorrow so I'm going to work on my transmission and wait for the motor to arrive.

[mechman600]

Questions:
What made you choose the Warp9?
Do you have an idea of what is wrong with your transmission and why it failed? Or is it the clutch coupler that murdered it?
Are you gonna finally turn the Zilla up to 11 once the Warp 9 is in?

I want video of an EV smoke show! (preferably from the tires).

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by mechman600

Questions:
What made you choose the Warp9?
Do you have an idea of what is wrong with your transmission and why it failed? Or is it the clutch coupler that murdered it?
Are you gonna finally turn the Zilla up to 11 once the Warp 9 is in?

I want video of an EV smoke show! (preferably from the tires).

I choose the Warp 9 because of all the improvements it has over the FB1.

My transmission issue is not EV related, it's a problem with the Civic's the Input Shaft bearing has a life under 180,000. It was making noise before but I didn't think it would get much louder. My last drive just drove me nuts, I am going to start the transmission rebuild tomorrow and work on it this weekend. It's too cold to work outside so once I get me new motor everything is coming into the basement and will come out when it warms up a bit.

Yeah, I have plans to play with all 1000 AMPs once I get the new setup installed and the new circuit breaker in. I think I'll need some liquid cooling to have the full fun.

[TheSGC]

My Warp 9 finally arrived! Now I'm trying to figure out how to get it into the basement so I can admire it and get the coupling configured....

[darcane]

Originally Posted by TheSGC

My transmission issue is not EV related, it's a problem with the Civic's the Input Shaft bearing has a life under 180,000. It was making noise before but I didn't think it would get much louder. My last drive just drove me nuts, I am going to start the transmission rebuild tomorrow and work on it this weekend. It's too cold to work outside so once I get me new motor everything is coming into the basement and will come out when it warms up a bit.

Under 180,000? Usually much, much less.

My '01 HX has a noisy input shaft bearing, and is dying a slow death. It started at about 145,000miles. I bought a used tranny from another HX with ~90k miles that also had a bad input shaft bearing. That one is rebuilt and ready to go in when my current tranny finally dies.

The problem seems to be related to the bearing cage that is made of plastic. It breaks and the bearings will still roll, both not neccessarily on the right path. When my tranny guy pulled it apart, the balls just fell out of the bearing and you could see where they were gouging one of the races to make the noise (outer race IIRC).

I don't know too much about EVs, but I'd guess you are making more torque than the original D17. If so, you may want to ditch that tranny and see if you can find one from an RSX. The chassis is essentially the same, and many components will swap from RSX to 7th gen Civic. Normally, you can't use the RSX tranny with a Civic because the it won't mount up to a D17 engine, but that shouldn't matter to you since you don't use the engine. I believe engine/tranny mounts, half-shafts, and shift cables all mount the same way, so it should be a very simple swap for a much more reliable tranny.

[mechman600]

I sure hope there is an updated, non-plastic version of that bearing available!

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by mechman600

I sure hope there is an updated, non-plastic version of that bearing available!

I am going to look at the new bearings tomorrow, but I think the new replacements I have are all metal. I will post some updates tomorrow as I have started assembling the new Warp 9 today.

I received my Warp 9 this past Friday but when I went to test fit my coupler I found that the new H bushings were slightly smaller than the specs! I had purchased 4 of the bushings and found each one slight different in dimensions. After a few days of doing design checks from data sheets and going over everything I found that now there are QT bushings designed to replace the H bushing so I got one from TB Woods that arrived today and it looks perfect.

I'll get some pictures tomorrow on the new motor and I am going to bolt everything down and test spin. Then I will get back to my transmission rebuild.

[TheSGC]

I've had a busy weekend mounting plates and clutch to my Warp 9 and breaking in the brushes.


I also rebuilt my transmission today.



The inside of the transmission looked brand new. I only found two bearings that had issues. The Input Shaft Bearing has excessive grinding noise to it (which is the problem bearing I expected) and the bearing at the other end of that shaft has excessive play and fell right off the shaft. I replaced those two bearings and some oil seals and all I have left to do it seal up the transmission and test the setup on the floor.

I'm watching the weather this week looking for a time where I can drop in this new setup, assuming it all goes good in my test run.

[TheSGC]

This weekend was the first Traffic Ban in MA since the blizzard of '78 so I had some time to finish up the transmission and cleanup my tools. In MA a traffic ban means if you are caught driving on any roads you get fined $1k and in jail for a year.

Of course my EV is now buried under 2+ feet of snow and now I'm going to dig it out because tomorrow is supposed to be nice and sunny and I want to put the motor/transmission back into my EV if I can! I am waiting for the liquid gasket seal on the transmission to dry for an hour or so and then I am going to put the transmission and motor together and give it a test run. I won't any fluid in it so it's going to be just for a few seconds to check alignment.

I really wish I had a garage, these past two days were perfect for playing with cars in a garage.