openinverter forum

I bought a used contactor from a seller in Israel but when testing a year or two later it had a resistance across the terminals when closed.
TBH I wasn't even checking it as I assumed it would be good so was very lucky to catch the fault before installing it.
I'm not sure I'd trust a contactor that had been welded and have even binned one or two for this reason.

Alibro wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 12:15 pm I bought a used contactor from a seller in Israel but when testing a year or two later it had a resistance across the terminals when closed.
TBH I wasn't even checking it as I assumed it would be good so was very lucky to catch the fault before installing it.
I'm not sure I'd trust a contactor that had been welded and have even binned one or two for this reason.

I 100% agree, the autopsy shows that once the weld is separated the surfaces it leaves behind are no longer smooth and most likely prone to sparking due to their sharp and now granular finish

Nobody: hey what's it like trying to do an EV Conversion in California?

Me: it sucks


so I ordered this three way rocker switch, up (green) will be for Drive and down (red) will be for charge, yes this will be done manually during the first phase of the project, well, AMAZON shipped the switch but refuses to ship its housing as it may cause California in the state of Cancer!


the struggle is real

This should be turned into a TV late night show

RetroZero wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2023 4:59 am This should be turned into a TV late night show

you can't make this shiet up !

That is the norm for Democrat states in US. My company moved out of California.

oh this toggle switch, the gift that keeps on giving, so it was advertised on AMAZON as a DC switch but then they shipped me an AC switch

Charging for the first time using a first gen Chevy Volt onboard charger, Arduino Due (with a COPPERHILL TECHNOLOGIES Dual CAN Bus Interface For Arduino Due With Extended Power Range CAN bus shield), and Damien Maguire's free code off of GitHub, thank you sir


so this is what the simple Charger Menu looks like, I just wanted to show it to you guys, it is so easy to use:


[me commenting from the future on the apparatus below, though it will work, you will not be able to save your configuration settings such as Volts, and Amps setpoints to the EEPROM, since the Due does NOT have an EEPROM]

a bunch of Science went down tonight


pointing to a thin orange wire to make myself look smart

I don't know for sure but I think this will fill in some missing pieces. Damien's Arduino Due CAN and eeprom shield, https://github.com/damienmaguire/EVShield

Gregski wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 5:18 am a bunch of Science went down tonight


IMG_6306.JPG


IMG_6308.JPG


pointing to a thin orange wire to make myself look smart

IMG_6310.JPG


IMG_6312.JPG

What you or I would call science my good lady would call playing with toys.

Alibro wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 11:52 am What you or I would call science my good lady would call playing with toys.

so true, my wife comes in to the garage as I am swearing up a storm in 107°F heat doing her brakes, and goes, why are you so upset, I THOUGHT YOU LIKED WORKIGN ON CARS ?!

um, honey bunny there's building hot rods and then there's brake jobs and oil changes, that's a big difference, no ?

Gregski wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 3:51 pm so true, my wife comes in to the garage as I am swearing up a storm in 107°F heat doing her brakes, and goes, why are you so upset, I THOUGHT YOU LIKED WORKIGN ON CARS ?!

um, honey bunny there's building hot rods and then there's brake jobs and oil changes, that's a big difference, no ?

LOL, This is so true! I spent a full weekend trying to replace a bad wheel bearing in her Ford Kuga only to find I had swapped the wrong one (long story) and she said the exact same thing.

I think a huge part of the difference on maintenance and repairs is the pressure to complete the job in a timely fashion. I somewhat lucked out that the head gasket on my daughter's gen 3 Prius started leaking about 2 weeks prior to her going out of the country for 2 weeks, so it made that knucklebuster of a job much less terrible.

Gregski wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 3:51 pmthat's a big difference, no ?

No. But in an only negative way, also yes.

You know why I'm building an electric car? Because I never got into cars, I didn't even learn to drive. I didn't want to get into all the shit that can go wrong with them, especially as they start to wear out (since I'm cheap, I'd spent my whole life there). But an electric vehicle I can understand, and I can maintain.

This has become "so you like working on cars, right?", no. I HATE working on cars, I hate even the idea of working on cars, which is why I didn't even learn to drive until I had to for work.

I've now entered my 5th year working on my electric car, in no small part because I'm now "the car guy" for TWELVE vehicles in my family/friends fleet. But that's the work I hate doing, right? So, it's still joyous to work on my own car, right? NO! Enjoying working on my own car does not translate to enjoying working on other people's cars. But, hating working on other people's cars somehow DOES translate to hating working on my own car.

Excitement-wise and other positive attributes? No transfer, separate buckets.
Burnout-wise and other negative attributes? Same bucket.

"Oh, but like, you know a lot about cars though, right?" NO! I go to thrift stores and buy junky tools, and then I go to Youtube and read up for the first time what the thing even is that's broken, then I go to the junkyard and wreck the first two parts I'm trying to take off while learning about how to best do it, then I try to be careful on other people's vehicles while I fix them. I have absolutely nothing about me that separates me from all the people who apparently need help (i.e. "do it for them"), from "their car guy."

TWELVE vehicles. All 15+ years old in the prime of their "shit falling apart every trip" part of their lives.

Well if you're only driving a $1000 or $3000 car you sure as fvck can't afford to maintain a $1000 or $3000 car.

This week I put my foot down and said "I will try to help you shop for a car to replace this but no more", but, surprise, used car prices have tripled in the last few years, so they can't afford that. It's like, $7000 to get a larger vehicle that doesn't immediately need a bunch of work. So now I've lent away BOTH of my larger running vehicles, driving an electric bicycle, while I spend my nights building over-door garage shelving, because the garage (not mine, I don't even have a garage) is too full of stuff to pull a vehicle in, so that I can rearrange their garage and clean it up, so that I can APPARENTLY DO AN ENTIRE GODDAMN ENGINE SWAP, WHICH I HAVEN'T EVEN HAD TIME TO START LOOKING UP WHAT'S INVOLVED IN DOING IT NOR DO I EVEN OWN AN ENGINE STAND OR CHERRY PICKER FOR.

Somewhere, like, 8th down this list is my own car that, sure as fvck probably won't have time to work on because by the time this is done someone else will be having a crisis of a major repair and need a vehicle RFN to be fixed.

I'm sorry, what was the topic? Oh yeah, building your own electric car. Summer project. Sounds fun! I'd like to learn how to do that.

1971 stock Chevy C10 wire harness going back in, slightly thinned out mind you, I ditched the starter wire, the alternator wire, this was a factory AC truck so I deleted the AC (won't put an electric back in cause this is a Hot Rod and I'm dumb) also deleted the heater, I may put an electric one in possibly out of a Volt some day

the goal was simply to have brake lights, but for that these trucks need the headlight switch, and that needed the fuse block, and of course the brake pedal sensor switch, so the dominos started falling

I somehow went from not being able to find one ignition switch to tripping over three !!!


no more manual toggle switch, now we have an ignition switch (think key starts will really take off some day)


and that headlight switch, yes for tail lights and brakes, I don't make this stuff up

maybe some of you will find this wiring visual helpful when considering wiring up a "classic" car EV conversion

the nice thing about this design is that it does not bastardize the OEM fuse block in any way, it simply uses it's expansion slots as intended

I plan on revising this when I add the water cooled Charger, it adds a tad of complexity and clutter so I intentionally omitted it in Part I

You may well want the DC-DC on the "accessory" side, especially if thats used for charging.

Aragorn wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 8:56 am You may well want the DC-DC on the "accessory" side, especially if thats used for charging.

What's unique about the first gen Chevy Volt charger that I am using is that it charges both the big High Voltage battery pack and the Low Voltage regular car battery so I'm covered when charging by this charger and when driving by the DC-DC converter


[media]Chevy Volt Onboard HV Battery Charger & DC-DC Converter (OBCM & APM)
[/media]

Gregski wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2023 1:24 am Nobody: hey what's it like trying to do an EV Conversion in California?

Me: it sucks


so I ordered this three way rocker switch, up (green) will be for Drive and down (red) will be for charge, yes this will be done manually during the first phase of the project, well, AMAZON shipped the switch but refuses to ship its housing as it may cause California in the state of Cancer!

the struggle is real

I am sorry i missed that post. I would suggest to use the "french" point switch with your fuel cover flap and some spring element.
Once the flap is opened your truck would be unable to drive and when you are done you can simply close it up and drive away. Sort of semiautomatic way of charging. I mean you surely must plug your AC cable some way .

https://mazdamx3ev.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/polnjenje/
https://mazdamx3ev.files.wordpress.com/ ... 09_005.jpg

Dont mind my ranting in Slovenian, just check that plap with the switch...

so here is how I plan to wire my first gen Chevy Volt onboard battery charger so that I can charge in the ACC (turn key to the left) position

I like this method because it has some built in fail safe features:

1. It is physically impossible to turn the key to the left (charge) and to the right (drive) simultaneously so in theory I can't power on the Charger and the Inverter at the same time

2a. the software running on the VCU will check for the presence of the Charger ID "0x212" on CAN.1 if present it will set the ChargeMode=True flag

• in addition the software will look for ACVoltage>100 from the wall socket in order to turn on the Charger

2b. the software running on the VCU will check for the presence of the DC-DC Converter ID "0x1D4" on CAN.1 if present it will set the DriveMode=True flag


keep in mind I am not currently using a J771 charge port and plug, that will be implemented in later versions

Gregski wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 4:55 pm so here is how I plan to wire my first gen Chevy Volt onboard battery charger so that I can charge in the ACC (turn key to the left) position

I like this method because it has some built in fail safe features:

1. It is physically impossible to turn the key to the left (charge) and to the right (drive) simultaneously so in theory I can't power on the Charger and the Inverter at the same time

2a. the software running on the VCU will check for the presence of the Charger ID "0x212" on CAN.1 if present it will set the ChargeMode=True flag

• in addition the software will look for ACVoltage>100 from the wall socket in order to turn on the Charger

2b. the software running on the VCU will check for the presence of the DC-DC Converter ID "0x1D4" on CAN.1 if present it will set the DriveMode=True flag


keep in mind I am not currently using a J771 charge port and plug, that will be implemented in later versions


EF Fuse Block Wiring.jpg

So does this mean the extra fuse block is divided down the center, with power on the left side coming from ACC and power on the right side coming from key on? If so, how will the VCU have power to speak to the Inverter when driving? Also, don't you want your water pump to be on when the car is driving as well? Maybe I'm missing something.

PatrcioEV-ATX wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 5:43 pm So does this mean the extra fuse block is divided down the center, with power on the left side coming from ACC and power on the right side coming from key on? If so, how will the VCU have power to speak to the Inverter when driving? Also, don't you want your water pump to be on when the car is driving as well? Maybe I'm missing something.

i addressed it in the prior diagram, the ON position on these old Chevys includes all of the ACC stuff