VW Country Buggy - Leaf Motor Conversion

[Chris1080]

Hi All,

This is my first EV conversion project. The car is a Australian designed and manufactured 1968 Country Buggy.
The running gear is a beetle pan and swing axel gearbox, it has reduction hubs on the rear wheels from a VW Kombi (this was original and added for ground clearance).
About a year ago I did a full restoration on pan and suspension, and have kept the original patina.

I have a 2013 Nissan leaf with EM57 motor as a donor car.

Would love to get the forums guide on how to go about this conversion.

Pics to be posted once I figure out why I cant upload..

Thanks
Chris

[Chris1080]

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[tom91]

Would love to get the forums guide on how to go about this conversion.

Do alot of research then Spend loads of money.

Plenty people have done beetles in the past, even ones who use nissan leaf parts so go looking for those as a start.

[Chris1080]

Been doing a fair bit of reading to see which way I wanted to go with this.
I'm keen on using as much of the donor leaf I have, so most probably looking to use a Resolve Controller.
I'll be looking to pull the motor stack out, and also drop the battery. Is there anything else I should be pulling out before I get rid of the body of the car?

Thanks alot
Chris

[cajamatt]

The important ones i can think of are the electric power steering assembly if you want that, cooling fans, radiator, cabin heater, and charge ports. i also harvested a ton of random stuff like the heated seat switches and fuse boxes not knowing whether i'll need them or not but it's easier to harvest and later scrap than to hunt for some of this stuff

Been doing a fair bit of reading to see which way I wanted to go with this.
I'm keen on using as much of the donor leaf I have, so most probably looking to use a Resolve Controller.
I'll be looking to pull the motor stack out, and also drop the battery. Is there anything else I should be pulling out before I get rid of the body of the car?

Thanks alot
Chris

[ianlighting]

^ think cajamatt covered it. I’ll just add the coolant pump is likely an essential item and save all the coolant pipes. I found them to be a useful space saver if you can repurpose their moulded ones in your build.

There’s a cover in the side of the boot where a tyre pump is hidden which is a nice little bonus worth grabbing if it’s in there.

You can also use up a surprising amount of leaf nuts and bolts (I did anyway) so well worth keeping what you take out from the car until the end.

Edit - one of the pedal options for Resolve is the original Leaf pedal, so you may want that also.

[ianlighting]

Your big challenge with using Resolve is going to be the restriction to only Leaf components and so how with you squeeze the full stack into the engine space of your Vw. I used Resolve myself, so not saying don’t do it, just that the Leaf PDM is a big lump even if you take it off the motor + inverter.

[Chris1080]

Hello Again,

I have a opportunity to pickup a 2019 leaf motor and 62kwh battery from the same car).
Having a quick look - the battery is pretty heavy. Is there a way i can use less modules to decrease the kwh and also the weight?
Still looking to use the Resolve controller with everything else, just less kwh.

thanks again for your input..

[J0hannes]

Why you want to use Resolve EV instead of Zombieverter?
Zombieverter does pretty much all the same stuff but actually lets you configure your setup

Using less modules means that probably you need another BMS too, that you'd have to check (or maybe someone can confirm whether you can use Leaf BMS with less modules)

What's the condition of your originally planned 2013 Leaf battery?

[Chris1080]

I’m not wed to the Resolve - just seemed like a easy plug and play, but will end up using what will work

The 2013 only has 4 bars, so only good for 50km as it is. Probably ok for most of the driving I do, but just has this newer one come up, so investigating options..

[Chris1080]

Hi All.

Finally got the motor today, so going to get cracking on taking off the bits I don't need.
I couple questions I hope you can help with:
1. Which water pump do I need to use? I believe there are two in the AZEO engines?. I'm going to installing a small motorbike radiator with a fan of sorts.
2. I see there are two charge connections. I wont need the fast CHAdeMo charger. Ill just be using my tesla wall charger with a adaptor for J1772. Is it as easy as just disconnecting, or do I need to look out for anything else?

Thanks

[Bratitude]

-ether one of the water pumps will work.
-to remove the chademo youll need to take the cover off the pdm to get at the terminal bolts. but other than removing the charge port and pluging the hole, no theres nothing else you need todo to remove chademo