Firefly Electric Conversion

[spdfrk]

Been watching your build and you'll need to fish out the reverse light switch wiring from the ECM harness. Your joke about the smaller motor was funny but there's an ME1003 that I'm using in a Swift with no issues at 72V. I can do a maximum speed of about 90 kph with it which is more than enough for around town.

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by spdfrk

Been watching your build and you'll need to fish out the reverse light switch wiring from the ECM harness. Your joke about the smaller motor was funny but there's an ME1003 that I'm using in a Swift with no issues at 72V. I can do a maximum speed of about 90 kph with it which is more than enough for around town.

Took me a bit to figure out which small motor that I was joking about, since I was just talking about a completely different "small" motor in my last post. But I eventually put 2 and 2 together and remembered my original post.

I'd love an ME1003. Good choice. Love the power to weight ratio. Not sure if it would handle what I need, though. Give it a tail shaft to input more power when necessary, and it would be great.

Found your build page. You photo links don't work, except the first handful, but it wasn't hard to figure out the proper links, one at a time...anyway, looks like you've had some fun along the way! Some of your musings parallel my own. Get much use out of it? Daily driver or not?

[spdfrk]

Originally Posted by Stubby79

Took me a bit to figure out which small motor that I was joking about, since I was just talking about a completely different "small" motor in my last post. But I eventually put 2 and 2 together and remembered my original post.

I'd love an ME1003. Good choice. Love the power to weight ratio. Not sure if it would handle what I need, though. Give it a tail shaft to input more power when necessary, and it would be great.

Found your build page. You photo links don't work, except the first handful, but it wasn't hard to figure out the proper links, one at a time...anyway, looks like you've had some fun along the way! Some of your musings parallel my own. Get much use out of it? Daily driver or not?

I pretty much daily it in the summer for pleasure use. The front springs need to be cut as I'm generating some pretty serious lift at freeway speed with the current setup. Need a better heat setup for Canada. Thinking the quartz heater I put in isn't working well but not sure how much I can do about that since I ran it for the first time recently but bought it almost 8 years ago...

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by spdfrk

I pretty much daily it in the summer for pleasure use. The front springs need to be cut as I'm generating some pretty serious lift at freeway speed with the current setup. Need a better heat setup for Canada. Thinking the quartz heater I put in isn't working well but not sure how much I can do about that since I ran it for the first time recently but bought it almost 8 years ago...

What's the 72v controller you're running? The old one looked to be a Kelly.

If you're not making heat from the battery to keep the cabin warm, perhaps some for of heater that has some thermal mass to it, like an oil filled radiator heater. Should give off heat for a while after it's turned off. You could do something similar if you had a coolant pump and some kind of insulated storage tank through the original heater core, were you looking for unusual methods. Otherwise it's back to sucking juice from your traction pack (or some other source).

Edit: Nevermind, your EValbum lists your controller.

Slowly poking through some more pics of yours...are you running with only 2 motor mounts? Were you only using 2 with the D&D motor?

[WyrTwister]

This is a totally uninformed comment & you all probably already know this . If you do please forgive me .

I know you wish to use little or no energy from the propulsion battery for cabin heat . If you can avoid it .

I saw a video , some time ago , an EV'er added a water / coolant heater to an EV . It ran off of gasoline or diesel . He probably had a small coolant pump to circulate the coolant flow to a cabin heater using a heater core . Think the electrics involved were 12 VDC .

Would this help you guys out ?

Another though . If you have to use electricity , from the propulsion battery for cabin heat , I am pretty sure you can use 120 VAC resistance heaters ? If you have 72 VDC available , using it on a 120 VAC heater would produce a little more than 1/2 the amount of heat they would produce on 120 VAC . This amount of heat might still be useful . And the household heaters are inexpensive .

If you can find one at the Thrift Shop , almost nothing . The oil heater mentioned would be safe , since the surface temp should be low enough to avoid burns & fires .

God bless
Wyr

[Stubby79]

Originally Posted by WyrTwister

Another though . If you have to use electricity , from the propulsion battery for cabin heat , I am pretty sure you can use 120 VAC resistance heaters ? If you have 72 VDC available , using it on a 120 VAC heater would produce a little more than 1/2 the amount of heat they would produce on 120 VAC . This amount of heat might still be useful . And the household heaters are inexpensive .

Have one sitting on my shelf. Pulled from a heater that was left out by the garbage.

Not 100% sure on this, but if it's a PTC element, it won't have a linear resistance...so at lower voltages, it will be able to draw more current. Still probably wont get 100% of the rated heat, but I would assume it would be notably more than 50%. I'll hook 72v and see what kind of draw it takes with air flowing through it. Need to know for wiring purposes anyway.

[WyrTwister]

Was thinking of the old school Nichrome heating elements . Know little to nothing on newer technology .

If your heater has 2 internal elements , you might be able to re-wire the heater , from series to parallel . But this would give you 70 + volts to an element designed for 60 volts . Unless you can dial down the DC voltage .

Or you could buy nichrome heating wire and make your own custom heating element ?

Temperature changes the electrical resistance of wire , some . As the heating element temperature changes with air flow ( fan ) the amperage will change , some . Do not know if this will help you or hurt you ?

God bless
Wyr

[Stubby79]

It's basically 3 separate heating elements together, so you can vary how much heat it puts out by turning on one, two, or all three elements, without any fancy circuitry. I wasn't expecting that; originally I was going to use a "PWM" (pulse width modulation) to vary how much power it would get.

Plenty of options here.

I like the idea - for those of us without regenerative braking - to use the otherwise wasted braking power to generate heat for use in the cabin. It would be regen braking of a sort....just not going back in to the batteries. It would be an interesting challenge to rig it up, though. You'd need to dissipate/collect a lot of energy quickly for it to be any use.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by spdfrk

I pretty much daily it in the summer for pleasure use. The front springs need to be cut as I'm generating some pretty serious lift at freeway speed with the current setup. Need a better heat setup for Canada. Thinking the quartz heater I put in isn't working well but not sure how much I can do about that since I ran it for the first time recently but bought it almost 8 years ago...

What quartz heater setup have you done? I don't see it in the pics ... or am I just not paying attention?

I'm looking into options for my Mazda build, in Saskatchewan

[Stubby79]

It's actually below freezing here, for once. I'm charging my accessory battery. The cold temps had me look in to charging voltages at lower temps. While they aren't affected, I see I need to consider a battery warming option for sub-zero charging. Sigh.

Good thing it rarely gets below freezing around here, and that it will probably do most of it's charging in the day time, when it's a bit warmer.