Milwaukee Electric Car Building

[bennelson]

Hey everyone.

There has been a couple of times I have met with some Milwaukee area guys to get together and work on building our electric cars.

The ringleader is Tom G., who has been a great help in getting me salvage parts for the Metro.

Here's what he had to say by e-mail as a recap of our last get together.
(These get-togethers are getting big!)

Status: September 21st

11 builders, 3 electric vehicles and a good time were all in attendance.

I am not very good at remembering names but will insert what I can:

One builder showed up on an electric bicycle and let others take it
for a ride, it was the fastest electric vehicle around until...

Ben brought his electric motorcycle, a few builders helped track down
a bad battery terminal and rewired it to run on 36V, then it was the
new speed demon!

Swee brought his electric Trike - Front half ATV back half Motorcycle
and worked on getting a thumb throttle working.

I bench tested my motor and AC controller on battery power for the
first time and ran the motor no load with out problems. It looks like
I will be using a small AC drive to generate 240V AC to power the fans
and control transformer in the larger drive. All the AC drives I have
seen use a resistor across a high current contactor to pre-charge the
capacitors on board before switching full current to the drive. I
plan on letting the small AC drive charge the capacitors and let the
contactor connect the high current battery feed to the the drive.
We also started making some cardboard templates for the battery boxes.
I am bouncing between a few different ideas:
Form the battery boxes out of 1/2" rigid foam with metal straps to
bolt it to the car and attach battery hold downs then fiberglass the
whole unit.
Make a bottom panel out of 3/4" plywood and use metal or wood
strips to divide the cells.
Or ? I'm looking for suggestion or comments.

I will be out of town the next week so Brian will be hosting the next meeting:


Next Meeting: Sunday October 5th - Not the alternate location!

If you will be around and would like to stop by the next build day, please private message me and I will get you the details.

I don't think I will be able to make the next build - (This Sunday, Oct. 5th)
as I am required to spend time with my wife and her friends to stay in their good graces!!!

[Oval_Overload]

I want the ATV-Bike thing!

[bennelson]

Originally Posted by Oval_Overload

I want the ATV-Bike thing!

For more on that project, please see THIS thread.

[bennelson]

These meetings are sort of an informal, continuing event.

If you are interested in coming to one, please private message me for the details.

There is another one, this Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008.

-Ben N.

[bennelson]

This Sunday's EVent was LOTs O Fun.

Rich drove out in his orange Citicar.


In the photo, the black truck in front of the Citicar is eventually going to be converted to electric, although it's still a gasser for right now.

In front of that is Brian's S10 which is most of the way there on the conversion. The motor is in, and we hooked up the battery charger onto a pallet of batteries in his garage.





We also got my battery charger for the Citicar working.

There was another guy there who has a Commuta car. I think the three of us might have to form a splinter group and have a C-Car day!

These Electric vehicle builds are a pretty regular get-together, although the times and locations are subject to change. If you want to come out to one, just let me know!

[Daox]

Dang, sorry I missed it. I was caulking windows all morning! I definitly have to make the next one.