Third Conversion, ultra efficient (1993 Geo Metro EV)
 

After doing a few conversions and doing a lot of research and developement, I came up with some good ideas to build something that is more efficient. This 1993 Metro was selected for its already light curb weight, and the basic theme of the car is to build it with lightweight materials. As most members of this forum are already aware, the biggest factors in efficiency are weight and the rolling resistance associated with it, and aerodynamic drag. The other huge thing that effects a cars efficiency is heat. When you pop the hood of a car and get blasted by a wave of heat, those are dollars and cents that go up into the air. The heat that goes out the exhaust pipe is a huge waste as well. Heat is waste, so this car will be equipped with an HPEVS AC35 and Curtis 1238 7601 controller.

Here is the Metro. Old, worn out, rod knock, and cheap.

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First order of business is to get rid of that fuel hog 3 cylinder engine, and all the related stuff that runs it.

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And then fit up the motor and factory 5 speed transmission

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The two mounts on the transmission are the stock mounts, and the bracket on the end of the motor was fabricated to use the factory mount on the passenger frame rail.

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The lower radiator support was cut out, and a new one was fabricated. Aluminum does not weld to steel, so the new aluminum lower support needed flanges to adapt to the frame rails.

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Here is the lower support all set up with its lithium batteries

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I keep seeing you using these white cells. Who makes them?

Here is the framework for a bunch more lithium. 21 200AH batteries under the hood, and 15 in the hatchback.

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Kind of a tight squeeze up here on the upper support, so some clearance notches were added.

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The firewall had a bunch of holes in it that are no longer needed, so they have been patches up. The frame rails were a little out of alignment, so I put it up on the frame rack and twisted everything back to where it goes. It looked like the car had been wrecked at some point in its life, and was not fixed right, but it is right now.

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a little filler work, and then primer.

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Then some white

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I don't like to mask things off, so I always remove everything and do it right.

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The suspension is completely removed, so I like to rebuild all that as I reassemble the car. New wheel bearings and seals are a must.

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New struts, plus I like to add a little extra spring on the inside of the big coil to get the correct spring rate for my extra weight. I kinda like a stiff suspension, but not super low, so I have a system where I trim the outer and my custom inner coil to certain lengths.

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Here is the fron suspension all rebuilt. The wheel lugs are upgraded from 10mm to 12mm, new bearings, seals, and axles, new rotors and pads.

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These are Tornado lithium iron phosphate.

Next, I need to couple the motor to the transmission, and hang it in the car. I start with a flywheel from a four cylinder metro, since the 3 cylinder flywheel is meant for a 6.5" clutch, and the four cylinder holds a 7.5" clutch. The 6.5" clutch will not hold the torque. I remove the starter ring teeth, and then it gets milled a little for some weight savings, and then surfaced and balanced.

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The outer lip on the backside gets milled down before balancing, as you can see where the balancing holes have been drilled onto the milled lip.

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I had a machine shop make to my specs my one piece billet aluminum motor to transmission adapter plate. The more of them get made, the cheaper the cost per unit, so I have a stack of these. I also had them make my matching flywheel hubs. The alignment of the motor shaft to the transmission shaft is critical, so I make sure that they are perfect.

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Flywheel bolted up.

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and clutch

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and now it is hung in the car

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Almost forgot, here is the rear suspension all reworked too.

The usual new bearings, seals, shocks, wheel studs upgraded from the stock 10mm to 12mm, and custom inner coils trimmed for my desired spring rate.

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New brakes too

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Now the batteries get loaded in

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This upper beam supports the upper battery box

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Here is the upper battery box

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Upper rear battery box

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Needed a special bus bar to connect these two battery banks

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Found some scrap plastic to make the main fuse holder

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Here it is installed

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Napa had some of this copper nickel brake tubing, so now there are fresh brake lines

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No sense throwing out the gas tank, since there is room to put stuff inside, and it already fits the car. Here it has been zipped open and is ready to recieve electronics.

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This space will hold the Curtis 1238 7601 motor controller with my custom made water chill plate, the water pump, the water cooled EMW 12000 battery charger, and the contactor.

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Here it is all ready to close up into a normal looking gas tank. The blue box in there is the CANBUS optical isolator, since I run an Orion BMS that links to the controller. The two components have different power supplies and need to be isolated from each other, so the CANBUS data gets translated to optical in this box, and then the other optical translates it back to CANBUS. You can see my waterpump at the top middle of this pic. My "gas" tank has hose barbs on the outside of it so I can run the coolant in and out of it to a heat exchanger.

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The last detail for the engine bay is a throttle. This is just 1/8" aluminum plate cut to fit on the strut tower, and then a Chinese pot box, PB6 style is screwed onto my custom aluminum. I got set up with polishing stuff over at Harbor Freight, so I am enjoying polishing the aluminum work on this rig. This uses the factory throttle cable.

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So, the engine compartment is set up, so now the body needs rework.

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The body is pretty hammered, dents all over every surface.

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so I fixed all that kind of stuff.

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Had to tear it down pretty good

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Primer

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Paint

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Here is the grill block for this rig

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Next I put all the panels and windows back on the car, so it looks normal again.

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Black out area between the windows, since the back three windows will be limo tint.

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Here are all my windows that I had dropped off at my local glass shop for window tint. Hard to believe that they all fit in one of my Metros...

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I put this strip of limo tint at the top of the windshields of all my builds.

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Simply Stupendous
 

Not many folks would give a Metro that much love. I'm impressed by your fabrication and layout, and the phenomenal attention to detail- can't wait to see numbers on the final result!

Glorious. That is straight-up beautiful. The engine bay comes out so...clean.

Heh. The engine bay just might stay clean without an engine in there.

There are not enough likes in the world for this thread... that's simply awesome retrofitting work!

Seems like a good way to repurpose an old car... very little wasted or thrown away (except for the engine... duh... :D ). I love having the controllers in the gas tank! Is it sealed well enough to survive flooding?

In the immortal words of Wayne and Garth, Schwwwwingggg.
JJ

Thanks fellas...

Since there is no more hot water coming from a gasoline engine, I have selected ceramic elements for my heater. These cheapo space heaters can be found at wal mart or home depot for around $30.

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When you open up these heaters, you can see the ceramic heater element that is needed out of the space heater.

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Each space heater is 1500 watts, which is enough to warm up a bedroom or bathroom. Since cars are a little more drafty, I use two of them for 3000 watts. More than enough for a Metro. I need to swap out my water heater core for an electric one, so I made this one. It is polyester body filler, and my multimeter does not detect it. After running my heat gun on it and watching it with my infra red temp gun, I was able to determine that this stuff is suitable for use up to 500 degrees F. I also do a lot of bodywork, so there are always cans of body filler around in my shop... Anyway, here is my electric heater core. It slips in and out of my heater box just like the factory heater core did. Two elements side by side, and ready to wire up.

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Here is how it looks in my heater box

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Since there are two heater elements, I set it up so that you can turn on one at a time. Kinda like high and low. When my heater control knob is in the cold position, The linkage looks like this. Note that I have added two micro switches on the lower left in this picture.

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In this pic, the heater control knob is moved halfway, to the point where the blue stripe transitions to a red stripe. Notic that micro switch number 1 is pressed by the linkage, but switch 2 is not pushed yet. This turns on one element for 1500 watts

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When you turn the heater control knob all the way to hot, the second micro switch gets pushed which turns on the second element as well for 3000 watts. 3000 watts is excessive, but it is nice to get into a cold car and have 165 degrees F blowing out the vents within seconds. Once the car is warm inside, 1500 watts is very nice for maintaining a nice warm car so I turn it back down. From a drivers perspective, the electric heat mod is seamless, but it has more heat output capability than factory and there is no waiting for a thermostat to open for the heat to start.

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So here is where things get even better in the world of efficiency. I have done research, reading, road testing, and lots of learning about the use of regenerative braking. What I have learned, is that the principle of regen really does work, but the only way that it can actually improve efficiency is if it is utilized correctly. Unfortunately, manufactured new EVs, as well as all of the conversions that I have seen, do not utilize it correctly.

The most common use of regen out there is off throttle regen, where you get some regen when you let off the accelerator. It does in fact harvest energy that would have been wasted as heat coming off of the brakes, but there is a big catch to the deal. When you use regen, you also destroy the kinetic energy of your car traveling at a steady speed. It takes more energy to speed up than it takes to maintain a speed, so the most efficient way to travel is at a steady speed. Off throttle regen causes an unsteady speed, whether it be very tiny fluctuations in speed as you would see in an experienced eco driver, or big fluctuations of speed that you would see if the driver is bull****ting with a passenger or talking on his cell phone.

If you see a red light ahead and want to back off to time things so that it is green when you get there, it is often the best to "freewheel" in neutral or with the clutch pushed in, so that you never have to use the accelerator or brake, so that the car keeps as much kinetic energy as possible. There are also times when a little braking or acceleration are needed to maintain the steadiest speed, and this is where my circuits come into play. I wanted the freewheeling capabilities of a DC motor, but I also wanted the benefits of regen that come with going AC. Off throttle regen typically is set for about 10% of total capability, so if you have off throttle regen, you are missing out on the other 90% of what is available.

What I have done, is add an "on demand" variable regen button to my conversion that allows me to utilize all of the available regen capability, but only when I want it. I set my controller up to give me no off throttle, so it feels like I am driving a DC system instead of AC.

Here is my on demand variable regen button project:

I picked up an automatic shifter over at pick n pull out of an old Buick. I was looking for something that would look as close as possible to a manual shifter, but I was after the button as well. The Buick shifter was severed in half, and same with the Metro 5 speed manual shifter. They were grafted together, and this potentiometer added.

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When the button is not pushed, there is no resistance.

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As I push the button down, I get variable (and very smooth) resistance all the way up to 5k. In this pick, I have the button all the way depressed for maximum regen.

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When I went to put the center console in, my big cage around the potentiometer (so the shift boot does not interfere) was right where the shifter passes through the center console, so the center console was interfering with my shift pattern. I had to modify it a little to get the shifter hole below the potentiometer.

Here Is a factory unmodified center console just like the one I modified. This is in my beater gasoline powered Metro, just a reference photo.

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I cut a slice out of my console (seen in the foreground) and lowered the surface. (That's a few hours of reshaping) Here it is after I modified it.

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Now the opening is just below the potentiometer on my shifter. I have the boot pulled back so you can see the clearance while it is shifted into reverse.

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Here it is all installed with my custom shift boot installed too. It should resemble a regular 5 speed shifter.

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I found that a setting of 70% regen allows me to make an emergency stop, all the way down to about 5 mph, all electronically. I can still use my regular brake pedal, and it works just like it always has, but this variable on demand regen button does handle about 95% of all my braking needs. I can now put way more energy back into my pack, and I only do that when the energy that I harvest is truly waste energy. This button feels a lot nicer than using the brake pedal, and has mind boggling braking power.

I had a pretty good sized scrap of honeycomb fiberglass laying around, so I chopped it up and made this electronics enclosure with it. This will all be hidden, so I am not going to make this thing pretty. The fiberglass honeycomb is extremely light, but very strong material. When this box is empty, it feels like an empty cardboard box. Anyway, I have some contactors in this box, an Orion BMS, and an old skool DC DC converter that I had leftover from another conversion, all of my configuration switches and relays, and my wifi and Bluetooth signal transmitters in this box. The wire junction strips on the end make it easy to connect this module to the car, since I have all kinds of relay logic going on in here.

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Those two contactors that are side by side in the above pic are for my charging cord inlets. Since the charger does not care if it gets 110 or 220, both of the charging inlets can be wired in parallel. The problem with this, is that the pins on the car need to be male, so if you were plugged into 220, the 110 male pins for the 110 extension cord would be live and dangerous. Those two contactors and some of those little cube relays are used to isolate the two charging inlets from each other. I also set it up so that you can plug in your regular 110 extension cord, and then forget that you already plugged it in, and then plug in the 220 cord as well. The 220 inlet will dominate, and the 110 will not go anywhere if you make this dumb mistake.

This is the 110 charging inlet that I use. Although this is the slowest way to charge an EV, 110 plugs are EVERYWHERE in North America. If you ever get yourself in trouble and need a charge, 110 is your friend. I don't use the 110 very much, but I think it is foolish to own an EV in North America and not have one of these on your car.

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These can be mounted with the threaded nut that is on these threads, or with screws on the front side.

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I modified a part for a home electric panel to accept my inlet, and mounted it solidly to the car.

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and then chopped a hole in my filler panel between my tail lights. The filler panel is not strong enough to take the abuse of repeated plugging in and unplugging, which is why the inlet is mounted solidly to the car. The filler panel is pure decoration.

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Here is that panel all repainted with metallic black from a 2012 Dodge Charger

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Now the car is restored, ready for tail lights and the filler panel

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Here it is all built. Tail lights polished and loaded with LEDs, and a very functional and good looking 110 inlet. The slowest and surest way to charge an EV. The automakers are still trying to sell new EVs with a big ass cord with a funky heavy box in order to use 110v. I think it is called an EVSE?

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This is what I use for 220. This is a 50 amp connection, so this is what I like to use the most. I can draw all 50 amps and then some from the wall, and I have a big circuit for my welder at the shop with a 25 foot extension cord already, so I am well set up for charging at work.

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This is the box that I mount it in. The lid squeezes the cord end into the box so I can ram my charging cord in and out without having to worry about things. Very rugged.

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Here it is ready to plug in

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Here it is plugged in

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Very nice workmanship! :thumbup:

Were the small wheel studs breaking?

Thanks. I use a 14 inch wheel with 12mm wheel stud holes on all of my Metro conversions, but the earlier Metros like this on came with 12 inch wheels with 10mm holes. All the Metros after 1994 came equipped with the 12mm, so this just brings it up to date.

Here is a pic of my vacuum pump for my brakes. Although this EV does not need much from my on demand regen brake, I want fully functional and nice traditional brakes as well. I was tempted to not use a vacuum system on this EV since it is being constructed with weight in mind, but I really want nice brakes if I am in too much of a hurry to use my regen brake.

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The black round thing behind the motor is my vacuum storage tank, and you can see my vacuum switch on the frame rail.

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I use four 30AH lithium batteries, wired in series for my aux battery that runs the headlights, wipers, and regular 12 volt stuff. This is my "squeeze box" that holds them in place. Just stick them in, and tighten the bolts.

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Here they are installed in the box

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The bus bars are pretty small, so I just cut them out freestyle with my 3" cutoff wheel, and then buzzed the corners off with my little roloc grinder.

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A little work with my polishing wheel, and we get to have a beautiful product that is hand crafted in the USA. Stuff like that is getting hard to come by...

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No, those are just 6x1.0 flange nuts. I really like the flange style nuts n bolts, but that is probably from years of wrenching for a living.

A big part of the theme in this car is keeping it light, so I have been keeping extra or fancy features to a minimum. I deviated a little on the mirrors for this rig, and went with the larger folding style that was found on the GT versions of the Metro (Swift). I suspect that they are less aerodynamic than regular mirrors that come on the plain Metros, and they weigh a little more, but these ones fold. I have purchased numerous non folding mirrors after they break off, since they are so cheesy, so hopefully these GT mirrors will cure that. I kinda like how they look too. I did select manual only, no powered or manual lever. If you need to adjust the mirror, you roll the window down and adjust it with your hand...

Here are the GT mirrors painted to match, and I went ahead and did the handles too, for a little more style.

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Here is how this stuff looks on the car:

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I have a lot of electronics in the hatch, as well as 15 of the lithium batteries. I still want to be able to throw a case of soda or groceries back there, so here is an aluminum cover for the electronics. This will soon be carpeted, so I wanted to show this stage before that.

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There are doors that open to allow access to the parts that I need to access. This one allows access to my configuration switches. All of the switches are on-off-on switches, so I can select between two options, or turn that option off altogether. There is one for my AC shorepower that allows me to switch between a signal from my Orion BMS or manual override, or disable. There is also a switch that does the same thing, but controls my charge enable signal. The DC DC converter switch switches between off, on with key, or always on. My wifi/Bluetooth switch allows those features to be turned on and off with the ignition key, off, or always on. There is also a motor controller switch that allows me to select between an signal from my Orion, off, or manual override.

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This is my charger control panel.

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This is just a storage compartment or toolbox

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Here is how it looks with carpet on these panels

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The dash had some cracks and some chunks missing, so I dug into them with a mini cutoff wheel on my die grinder..

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and filled them with some two part plastic

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Then repainted the whole dash

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Here is that front pad mounted to the rest of the dash

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Here is the instrument cluster

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The interior is put together now, and the car is all built, so I went ahead and got a weight.

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Here is the interior

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I took it in yesterday for an appointment with a CA smog referee to get this thing exempted from the Smog program. It is now exempt!

Here it is waiting in the special parking spot for the smog ref.

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I have an "economy switch wired into my dash that allows me to switch from full power mode to a different mode that is programmable. Full power gives me access to 650 amps, but I have the economy switch set up to limit my accelerator to 400 amps. I can also program in alternate regen settings in the economy mode, but I have it set up the same as full power mode, since these are already set up for maximum efficiency. After I left my smog referee appointment, I tried out the economy switch for awhile in city traffic, which allowed me to see that 400 amps is about like a gasoline Metro. Nice to know, but I switched back to full power mode after a few blocks...

So I took this one up into the foothills today for a play day. I wanted to push all the limits of my drive system, battery system, and suspension, so I saw lots of twisty roads, went up and down steep grades, and got some flat freeway down here in the valley. One of the things that impressed me the most, was the ability to recover pretty much all of my braking energy. I only used the brake pedal at an occasional stop sign, but never used the brake pedal at speeds over 5 mph. The ability to release my on demand regen button near the bottom of the downgrades allowed me to freewheel like no other EV with regen could ever do, so my efficiency numbers are looking really good. I still have not collected data for conservative flat freeway range testing, but that is coming soon.

This is incredible. At every other picture my jaw just dropped at your attention to detail. This is extremely well thought out.

Why did you put both a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth OBDII scanner in the enclosure? Just in case?

To say I'm a fan of your work would be an understatement! I'd love an EV. At some point I may undertake such a challenge. Meanwhile thanks for letting me see what a top notch, no holds bard, conversion looks like. We've had quite a few conversion undertakings here, and many have done solid work, but I would say you win the blue ribbon my friend.

that is amazing work, what size charger did you wind up with? I get the evse loathing part, but there are a lot of j1772 EVSEs out there which can do at least 7kw, would be preferrable to 120 @1.5kw. Worth considering having something like one of these as well, and checking plugshare to check availability. Would not be hard to integrate, tuscon ev has one with a pigtail and a j1772 with an integrated cover: http://www.tucsonev.com/ for $100 less ($150).

Still, amazingly thorough conversion there!

6x1 I think this is the type he is describing. You only need to get to one side.

regards
mech

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...0&d=1426770750

Thanks for the good words. It seems like the Androids do a little better on Bluetooth, but Ipads require WIFI. Sometimes I like to use the Ipad, sometimes I like to run an Android (and of course an Android smartwatch), so I just broadcast both. I have a switch to switch my wireless on and off with the key, or to have it stay on all the time. If I leave it on all the time, there is a small drain on the batteries, but it is nice to be able to have a look at things from my living room while the car is in the garage. If I use the on and off via the key feature, I have it set up to keep broadcasting during the charge cycle, but then it shuts down after the charge is complete.

Thanks. I am a bit of an oddball in the custom car builder crowd, since custom cars usually have lots of attention put into the big gasoline burner, and rarely into efficiency. I hope to see custom EV car shows one day, but for now, they are showing up in traditional car shows, and they do in fact get a lot of interest and questions.

That's awesome. That's kind of what I figured, but when I saw the Android tablet(? it's hard to tell whether something is considered a phone or a tablet these days) I figured that you primarily use it in place of a cluster. Did you set your port manually in your Torque profile? It connects a lot faster if you set the profile manually.

How far does the Wi-Fi signal transmit through the Wi-Fi adapter? Is it farther than the Bluetooth adapter? Also, what app do you use on the iPad to connect?

Thanks for the good words. I run a water cooled pfc 12 kW EMW charger in this build, so it can charge up pretty quickly. I may add a J plug inlet on here at some point, but I don't see many charging stations yet. I was a mobile tool dealer for a number of years in my area, so I know a whole lot of auto repair shops in town that have the 50 amp welder plug, and I have an assortment of adapters that allow me to use other 220 connections as well. The welder plug is nice for me, since I have a big breaker and 50 amp outlets at my shop for my welders. If the time ever comes to add a J plug inlet, I will leave the 50 amp inlet on the car so I could still have fast charging, and add the J inlet in another location. The J plug grid is being built with an almost obsolete 30 amp service, but if the locations become more plentiful, it would still make sense to have that connection as well. Most of my problem with the J plug network is not so much with the inferior 30 amp service or with the quality of the connection, but more in that new EVs are not being equipped with a traditional 110v inlet as well.

I set the feature in Torque that allows the tablet to go to sleep when the key is turned off, and to wake when the key is on. That is a pretty slick feature, and it gives the tablet more of a factory look. I also found the feature that allow you to bypass the main menu, so you don't have to keep touching the screen to get to the driving screen. You just turn on the key, and there is the driving screen. The only time I need to touch the screen is right when the tablet wakes up to get it out of the locked state.

That's sharp. I've always used Torque on a phone or tablet that's going with me when I get out of the car, so I never knew it had that feature. Still sounds like a useful feature for my phone, but I have to exit Torque for it to turn the Bluetooth back off, so I don't know if it'll do that automatically, too. I haven't used it in my Insight, yet, other than to scan codes, because I already have the FCD in the cluster, and Torque tends to kill my phone's battery.

Still grooving on the quality of your work.

I absolutely marvel at your all-up curb weight. 2026 lbs! WOW. There was a time when that was the kind of weight you might hope for in a glider, before you started screwing in the motor, tranny and batteries - never mind the interior.

With such a featherweight chassis to start from, I wonder what kind of steady-state range improvement you could achieve with a removable kammback, or other aero improvements. I saw you've done some with a grille block but don't know about any other mods you may have done. If anybody around here could put together a trick-looking kamm, you're the guy.

Looking forward to more.

120 is everywhere here. I had the good fortune of visiting europe and was suprised to learn that 230v was standard. I actually prefer it from a practical standpoint now that I'm messing with it at home, 2x power over the same wires (and no goofy neutral wires and multiple voltages in house and double breakers just for 240). As much as europe gets wrong, I think they got that one right. Would be interesting to see comparitive safety stats.

I had a 120v adapter for the leaf, but converted it to 240 :) I would redo the whole house if all my appliances could handle it. Might do a couple rooms and see how it goes. though pretending a live leg wire is neutral is not exactly ideal...

I would have to agree. I lived in Italy for many years, and everything was 230 there as well. My home only had a single breaker, and I think it was something like 5 amps or so, but at least it was not 5 amps of 110v. 110v/120v really sucks for charging, and I would never dream of equipping a car to charge with it if it was not on every wall of every house or business here. The vast 110v charging grid is really the only merit of having one of those inlets on my car.

Love the builds. I have a 50k mile from new Swift in my driveway with a slipping auto trans. I'm very much inspired.

[QUOTE=EVmetro;472308 I lived in Italy for many years, and everything was 230 there as well. My home only had a single breaker, and I think it was something like 5 amps or so, but at least it was not 5 amps of 110v.[/QUOTE]

We use 240v here, a small house is typically equipped with an 80A main fuse, and three breakers of 15A ea (five in the case of electric ovens and hot water). 230V*5A is 1150W, a kettle takes 2400W, but some of those old houses would have been designed for much lower power requirements than is typical today.