[DRIVING] 1998 Nissan Frontier Minitruck - LEAF 40kwh

[EVSwap]

The car is legal now! I helped Dave get it all taken care of this morning. He opted for the new Colorado EV plates so we have paper tags for the time being. Registered as an EV and exempt from emissions testing! He also got it fully insured at an agreed-value so he's worry free about driving it anywhere he wants.

[johu]

Great, congratulations
Is there any kind of inspection or just paperwork?

[EVSwap]

Mostly just paperwork. There is an inspection but it's mostly to verify the VIN and check for theft, though they do make sure it's been converted.

[EVSwap]

Truck needs a few more interior parts like a seat belt plug and front section of carpet. Dave is getting the headliner professionally refinished by the guy who did the seat so that should look great. Putting some Dynaliner underneath it on the roof as well. The doors make a bunch of noise so I'll be adding Dynamat to them.

Truck got a full brake job front and rear with a pair of reman calipers on the front. Repacked the front wheel bearings with new grease and seals. Full brake fluid flush. Dave also changed all the bulbs in the whole truck to LED including an LED flasher module.

Truck weighs 3207 lbs right now, but will gain a few more pounds as we tidy up the rest of the vehicle. Original vehicle weight was 3000 lbs or thereabouts.

Been putting some miles on it and it drive awesome. It's extremely efficient I can already tell. Also at WOT it pulls over 125kw instead of the 110kw advertised!

[Sector7e]

Where did you get the coolant line adapters from?

[EVSwap]

Where did you get the coolant line adapters from?

The silicone reducer is from here: https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/produ ... CVEALw_wcB

Then Dave got a 1" to 3/4 brass reducer at the local Ace.

[jrbe]

https://www.verociousmotorsports.com/Sh ... e-reducers are good too.

[EVSwap]

Got the speedo working. The truck has a speed sensor on the rear diff and also one on the transmission. I didn't realize the one on the diff is for ABS only so I had to add some wiring for the 240SX transmission. Don't know if it's accurate yet but it is working.

Road testing has uncovered a few bugs. Brake pedal switch is sticking on which causes the throttle to stop working until it frees up. Going to replace the switch with new. There is a vibration in the tailshaft above 65ish MPH. Doesn't matter what gear or motor RPM it comes and goes with speed only. It's not a very big vibration but it's enough to make me want to fix it.

Other than that she's running smoothly.

Buddy brought by his 62kwh LEAF and we compared them. The Frontier is longer and a hair taller but most importantly several inches narrower and a few hundred lbs lighter.

[Sector7e]

The silicone reducer is from here: https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/produ ... CVEALw_wcB

Then Dave got a 1" to 3/4 brass reducer at the local Ace.

I found this adapter on Amazon that can be cut to fit with less fittings:

Sealproof Universal Pond Tubing Pump Fitting, 30 Configurations, Works with Most Pumps, Fish Safe, Black, 2-Pack https://a.co/d/6qemFeA

Hopefully this will stand the test of time. What do you think?

[EVSwap]

I found this adapter on Amazon that can be cut to fit with less fittings:

Sealproof Universal Pond Tubing Pump Fitting, 30 Configurations, Works with Most Pumps, Fish Safe, Black, 2-Pack https://a.co/d/6qemFeA

Hopefully this will stand the test of time. What do you think?

PXL_20240608_023605860.jpg

PXL_20240608_023614835.jpg

PXL_20240608_023636451.jpg

Dang that's cool! It says for ponds so it should be durable it just depends if it can withstand the chemicals in coolant.

[EVSwap]

Well I feel dumb. This entire time I have been trying to make the vac pump stop oscillating nonstop. I replaced hoses and fittings and even changed the vac pump. The whole time I simply had the vac switch on the wrong side of the check-valve! Wow. Just realized while I was falling asleep the other night.

I also moved the pump off the firewall down to the inner fender so it's practically inaudible from the driver's seat now. I also added a delay relay to run the pump 1.5s after the switch opens.

In other news the Frontier was featured on Hackaday yesterday, so cool! Big thanks to whoever made that happen!

https://hackaday.com/2024/06/11/from-ni ... eaf-heart/

Check valve located near booster, doesn't work:

Check valve located near pump, does work.

[Bratitude]

The fact the full stack fits, AND it’s lighter than a stock leaf is amazing.

Seems like a perfect candidate to start making full kits for

I wonder if there’s a certain trans that has the bellhousing face sit farther forward, as the full stack does not fit in my 720.

[EVSwap]

I agree, @Bratitude, It's just so clean and fits really nicely. Do you think you could fit the full stack in your 720 if you did away with the original transmission mounts and just remounted it a bit further forward? Then you could just extend the driveshaft to make up the difference.

Speaking of driveshafts, some updates. Dave came by yesterday and took the Frontier for the weekend, his son is visiting and he wants to go enjoy the truck with the amazing spring weather and greenery on father's day. First place he took it was his friend's mechanic shop. I'm a little miffed that the first place he took it was to another mechanic to scrutinize my work but that's ok. They did uncover that the driveshaft is bent about 1/8 inch which is where the vibration is coming from. Glad that they caught that! Dave will bring it back to my shop Monday or Tuesday and he's leaving town. He'll leave me with a list of stuff to fix, no doubt. They went on a joyride for 20-30 minutes and Dave said his friend absolutely loved the truck.

He traveled about 25 miles on that first stint and used only 15% of the battery, arriving with 85%. Dave is installing his L2 EVSE at his house today.

Before he took it I did get all the seatbelts fully hooked up and reset the airbags. We got lucky and found the missing passenger seatbelt receptacle in the pick n pull. Now the truck has seating for 3!

I also just hit the easy button and installed a Dakota Digital speedo correction device (https://amzn.to/4c3j8py) and calibrated the speedometer with GPS.

Isak at Resolve-EV hooked me up with some new firmware which corrected the 204C error on the display.

So we're working on just the last few % to complete the truck. Dave is ordering some window trim pieces and we got some replacement carpet on the way. Dave also go the headliner off to be recovered and then we can install that.

Lastly, we got the metal EV plates!

[EVSwap]

Dave sent me pics of his charger setup at home. He won this slick ChargePoint EVSE setup in a DEVC raffle about 2 years ago.