openinverter forum

I have now taken the decision to replace the MGR with a Leaf motor/inverter. Started the work this weekend and can so far conclude that it fits nicely in the engine bay, with space to spare. Plan is to control the Leaf inverter via CAN and retain the Prius inverter for DC/DC and charging.

bexander wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:23 am I have now taken the decision to replace the MGR with a Leaf motor/inverter. Started the work this weekend and can so far conclude that it fits nicely in the engine bay, with space to spare.
Plan is to control the Leaf inverter via CAN and retain the Prius inverter for DC/DC and charging.

How much voltage for Leaf motor?

I see with Lebowski brain FW area can be really wide. I would think you could use 200Vdc and still retain up to 8000rpm with reasonable FW no problem.

My battery voltage is nominal 360V (96S).

bexander wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:44 am My battery voltage is nominal 360V (96S).

Oh, oh, that is plenty!

Does this look familiar? The Leaf motor didn't feel true to my idea of maximum efficiency and also my desire for less is more. It was just to bulky so the MGR is back in the car.
I'm eager to test the latest SW but unfortunately I totaly broke my coolant pump while trying to fix a small leak so I have to source a replacement before any testing can be done.
Any ideas from which car I can get a good pump, preferably with 16mm inlet/outlets?

For the water pump i would suggest Bosch 0392023004.
It has 18mm diamaeter on the Inlet / Outlet.

bexander wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 1:35 pm Does this look familiar?
IMG_1659.jpg
The Leaf motor didn't feel true to my idea of maximum efficiency and also my desire for less is more. It was just to bulky so the MGR is back in the car.
I'm eager to test the latest SW but unfortunately I totaly broke my coolant pump while trying to fix a small leak so I have to source a replacement before any testing can be done.
Any ideas from which car I can get a good pump, preferably with 16mm inlet/outlets?

Like Zapatero said Bosch aux pump can be found on MB cars as well as VW and Audi. They are usually quite tough. Also your options are good to just go to a scrapyard and get yourself one or two of those. You might also get connectors that way.

The correct connector for that pump might be 4d0 971 992. And I'm pretty sure 66182 002A kind of fits, but not perfectly.

Hopefully it wasn't the other way around. My notes are really bad.

Thanks for great information.
I found a Lexus CT inverter coolant pump, G904047090, with controlable speed and feedback signal as well as 16mm inlet and outlet.

I'm unable to figure out how to control the Toyota pump.
Is it possible to control the speed of the Bosch pump using PWM?

The Bosch pumps don't have any inputs other than power inputs. They also aren't super powerful, PWM wouldn't make any sense - I think usually they take way less than 1 A when running. Personally I control some directly using MOSFET outputs and some via external relays.

Aha, the Toyota or Aisin pump takes 2,5A at 14V at full speed, give quite high flow though.
I will have to source out a Bosch pump then.

Got a Bosch 0392023000 pump from a Mercedes W211. It is a very tight fit when using the Toyota hoses. I also have a cheap 16mm aftermarket hose which does not stretch enough to fit.
The pump draws 0,87A at 14V (12,2W) with my setup. It will however run slower at lower input voltages and at 6V it stops.
At 7V it draws 0,67A (4,7W) and at 8V it draws 0,70A (5,6W) so my pla is to run it at close to 7V.

I use some hot air and silicone spray to make wrong hoses fit into wrong fittings. Or when it's winter and the right hoses are very stiff.

celeron55 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 11:09 am I use some hot air and silicone spray to make wrong hoses fit into wrong fittings. Or when it's winter and the right hoses are very stiff.

I recommend WD40 as lubricant to push hoses on fittings. But really you can use it to fit power cables through orange hoses more easily...

I recommend WD40 as lubricant to push hoses on fittings. But really you can use it to fit power cables through orange hoses more easily...

the solvent in wd40 breaks down rubber. coolent lines will age quicker!

Bratitude wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 11:59 am the solvent in wd40 breaks down rubber. coolent lines will age quicker!

OK, Mazda shows evidence of the contrary then, being that i generously used WD40 on its hoses from 2013 onwards....

Now it is getting silly but the Leaf motor is back... Have so far managed to change the resolver setting in the inverter and testdriven it inside my garage... 0,5m reverse and 0,5m forward. So far so good! A bit hampered until I got a working DC/DC.
Plan A is to use the DC/DC from the Prius inverter. Will try to put it in a custom case and place it on top of the inverter and hopefully get good enough cooling this way. Plan B is to source something OEM.
Charger will be home built based on 7pc of FlatPack2 HE:s. Will make it capable of charging with up to 17kW from 3-phase and still also able to charge from 1-phase 2,3kW outlets.

bexander wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 6:10 pm Now it is getting silly but the Leaf motor is back...
Charger will be home built based on 7pc of FlatPack2 HE:s. Will make it capable of charging with up to 17kW from 3-phase and still also able to charge from 1-phase 2,3kW outlets.

So does this mean you totally gave up on your research to make the MGR work? If Leaf motor is too big I'm sure there are smaller motors available?
Also are you giving up on using gen3 prius inverter as a charger?

I haven't totaly given up on the MGR and OpenInverter SW but will pursue the Leaf options to get the car out of the garage as soon as possible. There are smaller motors out there but I was given this Leaf motor for helping a friend and decided to test it in my car. The Leaf motors advantage is that it is hacked and well proven so should be much more straight forward to use. Might find another, more suitable, car to put it in later on...
The Prius gen3 charger works but has its drawbacks such as requiring 3-phase power and poor power factor. Using the Flatpacks provides more flexibility at basically the same weight and doesn't require liquid cooling.
The Prius option makes sense when used as an inverter/charger and DC/DC in one very compact package. Not so much as a separate charger only.

Sad, but glad you are pushing threw, chasing efficiency.
I’ve learned quite a bit from following along your SW adventure. thanks for keeping us up to date

Have done some SW programming for the control of the inverter and have successfully driven the car with acc and regen in both directions. More tuning needed to get the feel I'm after but getting closer. Will soon need the DC/DC so I can do longer test drives but my milling machine broke down and this have slowed the progress on the DC/DC. Parts are ordered, hopefully they arrive this week.
Also have an issue with EMC. The communication between BMS master and the slaves is blacked out when I produce torque with the inverter. Had issues with this before with the Prius inverter as well and thought I had solved the issue, but no, so chasing this as well.

Regarding my EMC issue. Turns out it wasn't so much EMC but rather poor error handling in my BMS SW...
The error is triggered by EMC which explains why I got some effect when moving cables and other bits around but the total loss of communication with slaves depended on bad handling when error occur. When the BMS slaves detect error in manchester encoding or other bit errors a register is set. If not clearing this register and just try to resend then the SW is stuck in an eternal loop, and no communication gets passed. So when a bit error occurs, clear status register and resend, voila!, communication works.

The progress on the DC/DC has been very slow but this is what I arrived at. It is a cast aluminium box that I have added flanges and sealing surfaces to. I've also cut out the center piece from a Prius inverter. It all connects thermally to the top plate of the Leaf inverter which is the lid for the water cooling so hopefully this will also keep the DC/DC cool. Waiting for parts for the control circuit of the DC/DC so started to work on the charger.

Cool, did you extract that from the converter I sent? Did you manage to repair it yet/find the fault?