More Battery Placement

I know it's been to long time since I have updated the blog.  I have been busy with non-EV tasks.  I have managed to get some stuff done.  I got rear battery hole cut.  The picture shows emergency break cables and how they were routed around the fuel tank.  So, no changes will have to be made to them to go around the battery box.  The lip at the front of the opening is actually a boxed section that I'm sure provides lots of stiffness to the body so I did not want to cut into that area.

Looking towards the back you can see part of the rear suspension that prevented me from having the hole any larger going back.  The black rear break lines are also visible, they did have to be re-routed slightly, just some hand bends and a new clap to make sure they would not rub on the battery box.

The next couple pictures show how the rear batteries will be placed in the battery boxes.  The support for the battery box has been installed.  It is a simple structure made up of some steel strap and angle that hangs the batteries from some of the beefier parts of the Audi structure.

Looking under the car, the angle makes it look like it hangs down but it is actually about an inch higher than the floor.  I may make a belly pan to prevent snow from getting packed around the batteries in the winter.

I made another mount that bolts to the adaptor plate for the over the motor battery box..  A battery box will sit between the far motor mount and this angle.



The wood is temporary to make sure the batteries fit.  Battery box will span the same area. 

Checking for clearance, with an inch and a half of wood there is still a gap between the battery and the hood.  This will give room for the added height of the battery box.

I picked up some 0.080 5052 aluminum sheets from Storm Steel, a local metal supply shop, to make battery boxes.  Thanks to Doug for his help and the use of this well supplied shop, we sheered and bend up the battery boxes in an afternoon.

Doug has a really well supplied shop, he offered to pre-drill rivet holds in the end caps using his CNC mill.  This was a quick way to get a dozen holes with 1 inch spacing.  It's good to have tools but it's better to know someone with tools who knows how to use them.

Rear battery box riveted together and sitting in place.  I used AN426 and AN470 rivets that I had leftover from when I built my RV-8 airplane.  The rivets on the bottom of the box are countersunk AN426 so the boxes would sit flush.  Rounds head AN470 rivets were used on the sides.  I had fun bucking rivets again, maybe I need to build another plane?  I still need to make mounts to support the front edge and something to tie into the old seat belt attach points.

Another shot of the box and the tight fit to get 13 batteries across the little TT.

Still working on the front battery boxes, Lower front is almost done, needs the added 3 cell pouch on the front.  The over motor box still needs the end caps installed. 

My parts pile is getting low, I need to order parts to get Audi power brakes and power steering functional again.  Until next time.

Registration and More Battery Placement

7 weeks after buying my little TT from a Dealer in Minnesota, I finally received the title this week.  I had a little dilemma of what to do about the registration since the easiest thing would be to register it as a gas vehicle but there is no gas motor in the car and all the gas parts have been removed.  After doing some research, I went to the county treasurer to register the car and see what my options were.  I arrive at 8:00 as they were opening, hoping the clerk would be in a good mood.  She was but of course she had no idea how to handle an electric conversion.  After asking around, no one else in the office know either, she got on the phone to the head office in Des Monies.  I was expecting to get a response that the car has to be inspected  to verify that it is electric.  Nope, just a written statement from me stating that the gas components had been removed and electric one installed. She even went and got me a piece of paper to write the statement on.  Then came the registration fee, Iowa Code section 321.116 states that electric vehicles older than 12 years have a $15 registration fee.  Of course the computer did not agree right away and required another parameter under the VIN to be manually changed.  Everything agreeing, I walked out 30 minutes later with my Electric Vehicle title.

One note, that someone in Iowa does not like the reduced registration fee for EVs and the legislature is trying get section 321.116 removed so EV's pay the same registration as everyone else.  My registration going up to $50 is not going to impact me but a new Nissan Leaf owner's registration would go from $25 to around $450 every year.  If you in Iowa, write your Representative and ask them to support this fledgling industry.  One of the things I found was a Fiscal Note on the bill, and it states that as of February 2012 there were 13 electric vehicles register in Iowa.  There are 4.1 million cars registered in Iowa, 0.0003% are electric.  The estimated revenue gain from the law change would be $1300 per year.  If they added $0.01 to all the registrations they would have 40 time the revenue.  I'm sure the Fiscal note to look into the revenue gain cost  more than $1300. 

Since the clerk was so helpfully and pleasant to deal with, I let her know that she could now claim that she had registered 5% of all the electric vehicles in Iowa. 

I also got a little work done on the car this week.  Just a little since there was a lot of head scratching on battery placement.  My initial plan was to cut the floor of the back seat out and sink 22 batteries down where the gas tank use to be.  After some more detailed measuring, I found that I would have to cut out the rear suspension to get that many batteries in due to the rear suspension design of the FWD TT.

Since I like a car with 4 wheels, the new plan is for 15 batteries below the rear seat, the remaining 16 will be in the car basically where the rear seat back was and partly in the luggage area.  Of course plans are subject to change as I get more ideas.  The plan for now is to sink the batteries down into the hole about 10" then put a carpeted cover over the top.  This will give me a place to through my computer bag or a place for the dog to sit.

The next step is to build a steel support for the battery box, then I'm going to have to decide on how to make the battery boxes.

Motor Mounted

My Netgain Warp9 ended up getting ordered on Monday, I got a call on Tuesday that the motor had arrived already.  This is why Netgain has such a good reputation for customer service.   I wish they included a lift eye bolt. I went to the hardware store looking for one but they didn't carry anything this large.  I ended up buying a large washed and using bolt from my left over parts bin to make my own. 

After getting the motor on the lift, I mounted the Canidian EV adaptor and hub. I was not able to mount the clutch yet at I had not ordered the replacement yet. I wanted to verify the hub would work with the Audi flywheel before I ordered. It fits and I found a high performance clutch on EBay that is on the way. 

With a few days until the clutch arrives, I decided to mount the motor to the transmission and  work on the motor mount.

With the motor hanging in place and a jack under it to level things up I took some measurements and started to build a motor mount.

The motor mount is made from some 4" square tube that I had ordered to much of for a previous project.  It was cut apart and welded together to make a mount.

I reused parts of the stock engine front mount to keep the rubber isolation.  The stock power steering fluid bottle mount to the top of the mount.  Not sure if it will be used or not yet, that all depends on the electric pump I find.

With all the weight on the weight hanging on the suspension, the front of the car is riding very high.  The weight of the electric motor is less than 1/2 of the old gas burner.  At this point the front end is about 3" higher than stock.  This is with the new clutch installed and the motor installed for good.  I didn't get any pictures of the new clutch going in because it went in so fast.  One problem I did have was the clutch alignment tool that came with the clutch kit did not fit the flywheel adapter.  One of the nice things about an electric motor that it spins free.  A little trial and error and spinning the motor I was able to get the clutch centered and pressure plate tightened down.  Even working by myself I was able to get slide the motor and transmission together without any binding.

At address the weight, I am adding some of the battery pack in front of the motor.  I build a rack between the frame rails to hold 11 of the 50 batteries.  They will go into a battery box eventually, but they are set in place for now to see how they fit.

One problem that I found is the clearance to the boss on the transmission for the starter bolt.  It will be trimmed at some point to get some more clearance, I should be able to get about 2 1/2 inches.  You can also see the piece of angle that I out on the motor mount, I was going to use this to mount the controller.  However, now I'm thinking of mounting another 8 batteries over the top of the motor and mounting the controller vertical on the front of that battery box.  That will leave quite a bit of room behind the motor for thing like the power steering pump and the vacuum pump for the power brakes.

 One interesting thing I found is that the frame rails are not the same between the two sides.  The left side is about 2" higher than the right side.  It is a little hrad to tell in this picture since I had the left side of the car on a jack, but the bottom of the battery rack is level with the bottom of the front body mount frame.  There is a 4" spacer on the left side and 2" on the right.

Even with batteries mounted 2" below the right frame rail, there is still room for the stock belly pan to go back on to clean up the under side of the car.

Next up is the rear battery boxes and I need to get back to the wiring bundles that you see torn apart in the pictures.