67 evil eleanor

Congrads on a great build. On the inertia switch do you know the amperage?

sailfish11

Yes, the monte carlo bar is removed temporarily to give Brink some room to maneuver.

The car's not front heavy at all -- if anything, it's slightly back heavy right now. I guess the batteries in back have shifted the center of gravity rearward. There's way more batteries up front, but we also removed a lot of weight up there.

I don't have any good side shots of the car but here's a couple (from when Joe still had the car) to show you what I mean. I may have to adjust the level later.



I'm not planning on removing any of the components for painting. My original intent was to have the engine bay painted nice before Joe put everything in. Joe painted it, but did a pretty crappy job.

At this point, I just want the project done and start driving my car. Unless removing components will make a dramatic improvement in the paint job, I don't think I have the time, patience, or money to worry about that now.

I don't. It's a 12VDC switch -- not part of the HV system. It's the same type of switch used in gas cars. The one I bought is the First Alert switch. I got one that was recycled off an old Ford, which I thought was cool.

rst08tierney

Curious.......(feel free not to answer)

What do you have invested $$$$$$ into this build?

sailfish11

A little over $25K on the conversion -- and I haven't even started the restoration.

EV Conversions can be done for just a few thousand. This one was more because I wanted it to really move and have decent range, while still keeping a stock look. As the project has dragged on, I've often wished I had kept it simple, but there's light at the end of the tunnel now. I should get the car back in the next few weeks, work on the restoration over the winter, and have the car ready by Spring.

sailfish11

Well, Brink continues to make progress. Now that the EV drive is essentially fixed and working the way it should, he's moved on to the other odds and ends that needed fixing up.

This week was heater week. I bought new seals, and Brink took to cleaning up the old heater box, which had the heater door frozen shut. Here's what it looked like before (old and busted):



...and after Brink cleaned it up, installed the new seals, added some micro switches, and freed up the heater door (new hotness):



Still to go:

Re-install the EVision, which is the main display gauge for all my EV-related data. Joe installed it, but apparently not correctly as several features didn't work. Brink is straightening it all out.

Install new battery cell and BMS module. It took a while to get the new module shipped in (it came from Australia).

Install emergency disconnect. The supplier has been very slow in shipping this, as they just (like, last week) came out with a new model and wanted to send us the newer version.

Finally, test everything out and make all the various EV parts are working and playing nicely with each other.

Hopefully, all finished by the middle of October -- then I get the car back and I can start on the restoration!

Gun Jam

have you tried some aggressive launches with it yet? 0-60 time?

sailfish11

Not yet -- I'll need some new wheels and tires before I try anything like that. The wheels now are junk and the tires have been on the car for over twenty years (mostly in storage, but still pretty beat up).

nba1341

If you drive the thing hard are there any electrical parts that can short or blow as a result or what happens?

Gun Jam

There are plenty of things to blow...usually the magic smoke responsible for the operation of all electronic devices escapes from its case and the device stops working...fire could result..

sailfish11

As Gun says (sarcastically), there are things that can blow -- but with an EV the "blow" is usually quiet (i.e. it just stops running), unlike the real blow you can get with an internal combustion engine.

Look at some of the videos posted earlier in this thread and you'll see some EVs really moving.

With an electric motor, you have torque at almost all RPMs so 0-60 times can be phenomenal. The trouble is to do that takes a LOT of amps. The motor controller (the brains of the EV) is usually the limiting factor in how many amps are allowed to go to the motor. The trick is not to destroy the batteries -- pulling amps out too fast can damage them. So controllers are usually set to keep the amp draw within certain parameters. Those can be changed (as I'm sure is the case in the EVs in those videos), but this significantly reduces battery life.

The Mustang is a heavy car (for an EV) which will slow down its acceleration, but the motor I'm using is made to move a bus, so it should be ok. My battery pack is very high voltage and has a lot of amps, so my controller can be set to be pretty aggressive.

Once everything's set up (which should be in the next few weeks) I'll have to let it fly at least once or twice to see what it's capable of, but since batteries are expensive, I won't do it too often.