openinverter forum

Started this project around 2 months ago, when I found an affordable 2-door E30 in good condition. The E30 model is not unknown to me; my first car was an E30 325i which is since a couple of years back my daily during summer with meanwhile at around 600.000kms. (at the right in the picture) Get the old shit out:
Make a solid 'gear' lever: ' Fit a PTC heater: Convert the original dash to CAN. All the gauges are controllable by PWM/Frequency signals. Just the RPM-meter (will become an Amp-meter) reaction was not dynamic enough to me. First try was controlling it with a CS8190 but that became to complicated. Now controlling the moving-coil meters directly with a Sine-Cosine signal generated by the arduino. Since designing & etching a PCB was 20-25 years ago for me (in a bucket with FeCl3 ), gave the modern way a try (Kicad). First proto:

... Decided on a rainy sunday to make a basic VCU with some high-power outputs to distribute the 12V. Do already have some further purposes for this thing in mind.
1x CAN-bus, 6x digital input, 10x high-side 8A output, all with current measurement. Switchoff-curves are per channel programmed in the arduino, as well as limiting the total current at about 50-60A.

First proto: Improved & fully working version:

Hello there, nice progress

May I ask what ptc heater you were using? Is it something that will be controlled with pwm?

Looks like the Volvo unit viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1147

Exactly !

FJ3422 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 9:14 pm Search Ebay for "3M51-18K463-FB". Starting at € 10,-

Thanks for quick reply

Very good price, just bought one from an volvo v50, 20euro. very cheap to experiment with,

My idea is to skip tesla 400vdc ptc heater for now, trying to get the Hvdc as minimal as possible.

Very nice project and progress, definitely following this one. Any updates?

Sure ! will update this topic one of these days. If you are curious: I regularly post pics on https://www.instagram.com/teslified_e30/