[Driving] MG F - Outlander Rear motor and inverter.

[Alibro]

Well done mate, now you'll have to get us some video footage to prove it.

[Pete9008]

Congratulations!

Looking forward to hearing what kind of performance you get out of the Outlander rear motor.

[LRBen]

So been driving this since September. Probably covered around 3,000 miles with no huge issues. Motor performance is really good, I just put it in second gear and treat it like an auto. I added a tiny bit of regen via the brake lights, feels a bit like engine braking so I can siphon off a little energy down hills if I want too.

Had a few niggles mostly to do with my rushed wiring and then also with my soldering of the cell taps on the tesla boards. Gone through about 6 slave boards, but now I use dupont connectors for the replacement boards that issues has gone away.
The other issues I have been having is with the kokam cells and the placement of the battery box in the cabin. A month or so ago I replaced a couple cells that had burst. Then on saturday I left the car all day at home in the sun, no windows down etc and it seems to have cooked the batteries a little bit. Smells like another burst cell, although capacity seems unaffected so far.

So that has brought on my decision to put it back on the ramps for a bit of an upgrade/reworking. The insurance runs out in two weeks so it seems an ideal time to pull it off the road for a little bit without having to rush worrying about insurance ticking away.

There are a number of things I plan to do:

• Zombieverter: I was going to do a redesign of my VCU to fix some of the beginner mistakes I made. However it quickly started to look like a paired down clone of Zombie. So I might as well switch over properly. It also has native support for the rest of the work planned

• BMW Hybrid batteries: I'm going to swap the batteries out for a 12kWh BMW hybrid pack. They should be smaller, which I, am hoping will mean I can get my passenger seat back. Either placing them in the engine bay, fuel tank area or front tyre compartment, or a combination of some kind. It should still give me the range for the driving that I do. Currently I don't use any more than 8kWh on any one trip.
  The kokam battery pack can then be used as a test battery pack for the tractor. BMW S box also frees up my contactor box for test bench purposes.

• QoL upgrades:
  I would like to swap out my pedal input, currently using the TPS from the original ICE air intake, which is not amazing from a smoothness or safety perspective, as they are a single pot sensor and are known to fail open.
  Might look at cabin heating.
  I would like to redo the coolant loop.
  Wiring Clean up

[LRBen]

Upgrades are pretty much done now. BMW hybrid battery sitting nicely in the front subframe, freeing up space in the cabin for a passenger seat yet again.

Zombieverter is in running everything, had to make a few additions to the charger module to run stand alone but it's working great now. I'll submit those changes to the main Zombie release once I've had a chance to test it a few times.

Didn't end up making much in the way of QoL upgrades, wiring is still a mess, still no heating, still using the original throttle sensor for now. But I did redo the coolant loop which has made a noticeable difference to charging temperatures at least.

Just need to pump up the suspension and then it's road worthy. MOT booked for the 18th November which gives me some time to tidy it up a bit.
Here is it looking a bit dirty again after four months in the barn.

[Alibro]

Good luck with the MOT.

[LRBen]

MOT passed, back on the road again! I'll try and get some video of it driving soon.

[Alibro]

MOT passed, back on the road again! I'll try and get some video of it driving soon.

Sweet!

[Aragorn]

I'm intrigued with the performance that this motor can provide, do you have any performance data? 0-60 time?

What sort of battery power does it pull when at full send?

[LRBen]

I'm intrigued with the performance that this motor can provide, do you have any performance data? 0-60 time?

What sort of battery power does it pull when at full send?

Just had a couple of goes. But I think the phone gps is a bit laggy, got pretty much bang on 11 seconds according to Torque pro.

In terms of battery draw, it seemed to pull a max of 225 amps from the BMW hybrid pack.

[Aragorn]

Useful data, thanks. Comes a little way short of what i was hoping for given the "paper" specs.

The factory figures for a 1.6 MGF are ~9 seconds to 60. The outlander motor on paper at least has more torque at 195nm vs 145nm for the 1.6L engine.

Peak current of 225A at say 350v suggests a peak of around 80kw (again about the same as the 1.6L).

Its a little surprising that theres such a difference, the car cant be that much heavier i wouldnt have thought?

I wonder if the factory outlander inverter is limiting things here, perhaps not allowing full torque or otherwise restricting output?

[marcexec]

Just had a couple of goes. But I think the phone gps is a bit laggy, got pretty much bang on 11 seconds according to Torque pro.

In terms of battery draw, it seemed to pull a max of 225 amps from the BMW hybrid pack.

Awesome! I'd love to see a video of this. Gen 1 Leaf does 0-60 in 11 seconds, also with 80kW but higher reduction...

[arber333]

Awesome! I'd love to see a video of this. Gen 1 Leaf does 0-60 in 11 seconds, also with 80kW but higher reduction...

On a Leaf motor EM61 and Volt inverter 115kW my Pug consistently manage 8s 0 to 100km/h.
I would think the factor would be current ramp reaction as well.
Gearing is 8:1 so similar to outlander rear gearbox 7:1, as you would use 2nd gear all the time.

[LRBen]

Useful data, thanks. Comes a little way short of what i was hoping for given the "paper" specs.

The factory figures for a 1.6 MGF are ~9 seconds to 60. The outlander motor on paper at least has more torque at 195nm vs 145nm for the 1.6L engine.

Peak current of 225A at say 350v suggests a peak of around 80kw (again about the same as the 1.6L).

Its a little surprising that theres such a difference, the car cant be that much heavier i wouldnt have thought?

I wonder if the factory outlander inverter is limiting things here, perhaps not allowing full torque or otherwise restricting output?

I think it is faster, the speed on the phone doesn't update all that fast. It was also not ideal conditions.

In terms of torque I think there may be some acceleration limiting happening when you pull away, you can really feel the torque pick up once you are moving.

It may also not be requesting maximum torque. I think I can log that data as well in the future.

[Aragorn]

Good to know, most cellphone GPS units are only 1hz polling so not the best for that sort of stuff.

I have a SkyRC GSM020 which has a high refresh rate GPS chip and uses GNSS for additional accuracy. Quite a nice little unit for £45ish.

I guess you could also try logging on the Zombieverter?

[tom91]

Best to dump info on the CAN like speed, voltage, amps, and pedal positon then grab a CAN log. The outlander inverter already dumps alot of this on the CAN at a high frequency.

Almost got my Mini R56 with outlander rear motor driving so can also start looking at improvements for its control.

[LRBen]

Learnt a lesson in water proofing today.
Driving to work I noticed a slight cut out of power as I pulled onto the first fast road of my commute. Thought it was a maybe some issues with the throttle. A few more miles and it got allot worse, I checked throttle values in the web interface and it all seemed fine. Ran through amp and voltage min levels just in case those had changed for some reason.
Eventually realised my water pump was not pumping, checked the wiring as best as I could without a multimeter but it seemed ok. The pump was very hot so I figured it had failed, it was a cheapy pump anyway.

Manged to get 20 out of the 28 miles to work then had to get trailered the rest of the way. On hills it would cut out, after a few seconds I could move again a few feet before it cut out again. There were allot of quite fast hills in the remaining 8 miles so I had to throw the towel in.

Values in zombie for inverter and motor temperatures were well under the cut off values set, however I do have a resistor in place of one of the motor sensors and zombie takes an average of the two. So I expect I was hitting an internal cut off temperature and it was the inverter that was derating me.

Once I got to work I removed the pump to find water ingress in the connector. Which is where my issue lay. Replaced the pump with a Bosch pump and made sure this time to add lots of silicone around the connector and wires.

[Alibro]

Bummer mate but at least you found it.

[FFMan]

those pumps are poor i found - i've had 2 fail. My spare in a roadside emergency is to pinch the one from the cabin heater loop.

You're running a similar setup to me Phev rear, phev inverter, BMW battery pack. I initially ran the Prius inverter with openinverter board, but switched to oem invert and home made vcu and its deffo quicker. Have yet to time 0-60. In first gear mine is proper quick. In second gear (which is my default) it feels like 11 sec 0-60. You can see my project E46 + prius + phev in projects section. For regen i put another brake light switch in and this activates on the lightest touch of the pedal before the mechanical brakes come in. I have different regen values depending what gear it is in.

i think the phev setup is a good combo for non-super car performance.

[LRBen]

those pumps are poor i found - i've had 2 fail. My spare in a roadside emergency is to pinch the one from the cabin heater loop.

The Bosch pumps? I've always thought they were quite decent.

Had another little issue with water ingress today. Throttle died on the way to work, noticed in the web interface it was showing fwd and rev as both on. Switch the direction to default forward and I was away again, albeit with no reverse.

Looks like the engine bay where zombie is gets rather wet with water coming up from the tyres. That side of the engine bay has no splash guard and after a long drive in the rain it is soaking in there. I was always planning to make a splash guard, so I guess this weekend is when I actually get around to it. I think I'll also go through all the connectors with some silicone while I'm in there.

[Alibro]

The Bosch pumps? I've always thought they were quite decent.

I'm using pumps pulled from a Nissan Leaf that work well. I believe some Tesla's use the same pumps.

[LRBen]

Another MOT passed last week. A couple bits of work but nothing too major, a front wheel bearing and CV boot. It's covering allot of miles though so wear and tear is to be expected. It's been much more reliable than the backup ICE vehicle we have, which in the space of a few months and a few hundred miles broke down twice and caught fire once.

It's been great fun during the summer months, the addition of regen earlier in the year makes it really nice to drive and gives some pretty decent driving economy. Up to 4.5 miles per kWh on mixed roads.

Now the nights are dark again it's a bit less fun! The lack of heating is again noticeable, eventually I might reroute the coolant loop through the heater matrix. I'm not expecting hot but some luke warm air would be much appreciated in the cabin. Unfortunately a HV heater isn't an option as the battery capacity is needed for the range during the cold weather. Although this might be different with regen putting some energy and heat back into the pack this year.

There are some future upgrades planned, planning to go Foccci in every project now so there will be some CCS implementation on the way. Not planning on high speed CCS for this one though, just something a bit quicker than 3kW.

[snelly]

running a diesel webasto water heater to the oem heater matrix and a water to water heat exchanger to the battery VW GTE water Outlander Rear motor and inverter system plus a radiator bypass, works great

[LRBen]

So I had to jinx it by saying how great everything was running. Driving home Monday evening there was vibration under acceleration. Closer to home that turned into a clunking noise on accelerating or regen. Upon inspection I found the motor torque rod had broken free, it was dark so I assumed my shoddy welding had given out. I had recently replaced the worn tie rod bush with a Polybush, given vibration wasn't an issue I figured the Polybush would be nice for a bit more durability. Although as much as I can try to blame the polybush, it was poor fabrication work that failed.
I switched off regen and nursed it home before the main mount failed and the motor fell out.

Managed to get some time to look at it today. Removing the wheel and side cover it was looking pretty obvious and maybe quite an easy fix. Just unbolt that bracket, weld it back up with some reinforcement and we are back on the road.

However on that evening I was worried about how much the motor was rocking under load, especially with a hard mounting on that side. I was quite worried it would give out before I got home. So I took a look at main motor bracket on that side and saw some further weld failures.
For reference here is the bracket all nice and clean and new a couple years ago.

Here it is now.

I wasn't 100% happy with it at the time. Even less so now. I'll get it to the farm this weekend and clean it up, redo those welds and add a ton of reinforcements. I would ideally like to redesign the main mount from scratch, but I don't really want the car off the road for too long.