openinverter forum

So yeah. I really need another project with all that pesky free time:)

Owned by a friend of a friend (actually a relation of a friend!), partially converted in the UK and now in my drive way sits a Range Rover P38.

Equipped with two of those horrific Enova motors that I can't seem to get away from and a REALLY dodgy front battery box that going to die by acetylene flame (on camera of course) very soon.

then we're gonna stuff in two Prius inverters and see what happens.

Here is a video of it when it was at Dave's :

Ha. I have one of those but it's currently working so I don't want to touch it at all.
Also 1 that became on fire. True story.

I shall be watching this tonight

I have fairly extensive knowledge of the air suspension on these cars so if you don't figure it out maybe I can help.

The air pump is limited by a pressure switch and temperature switch. It's job is to pressurise the reserve tank mounted onboard of the chassis rail on the right underside.

The black thing with pipes in the top and bottom loose in the engine bay is an air dryer.

There are height sensors for each wheel mounted to the chassis and axle. They feed a variable resistance to the EAS computer under the left front seat. They are simply brass fingers on tracks and can wear out and produce erratic readings which is a common cause of faults.

The system is disabled if any of the doors are open though the air pump will continue running to pressurise the tank.

The ride height is controlled with a switch in the upper console and has 4 height settings. Lowest to highest is Access, Highway, Normal, Off-road. Access is only selectable when stopped. Highway automatically drops the car when driving over approx 90kph. Off-road can only be used under 55kph. There is actually an additional Extra-lift mode that is engaged if you get stuck and total loss of traction is detected. The light on the switch that is solid indicates the height the car thinks it's currently at. The blinking light indicates the height it's trying to achieve. All lights on indicates an error. There will be a message in the gauge cluster too.

The air suspension will continue to operate when the car is off and you get out. It's trying to level itself. The ticking noises are the air valve solenoids operating.

There is some free software for calibrating the height sensors and whatnot. I think it's called EAS Unlock.

Under the left front seat where the EAS computer sits is the relay that controls the suspension system. Pulling that will disabled the system which I recommend if doing any work under the car. As I said before, the car will continue to shift when off unless a door is open and you don't want that sitting on your face.

The thing in the back of the engine bay with the accumulator bulb is indeed the brake hydraulic pressure pump. It should only come on when first started and then when the brakes are used. If running more often the accumulator has probably perished and the pump will burn out soon after.

You have a later version of the P38 which used BMWs Bosch engine management, hence the plug I guess. You also get 4 wheel traction control. Previous version only had TC on the rear. The front and rear diffs are open type. Center diff is (or was in your case) viscous.

Today's lesson in how NOT to convert an ev. Guy who fitted the motors chopped out most of the floor under the driver and passanger seats including the front seat mounts to get the motors to fit. Then cleverly refitted the carpet to cover it all up. The air suspension tank was in his way so that was professionally re mounted.

Oh dear god.

Has this been setup with 2 motors in the drive tunnel connected to each of the drive shafts?
The drive shafts are offset from center as they are fed from the transfer case at the back of the gearbox and on the left side of the car.
Are the dimensions of the motors at issue?

Could it be possible to mount 1 Leaf motor directly to the diff on each axle? That way you could lose the drive shafts and the extra unsprung weight would hardly make a difference to the axle. It's already a huge heavy thing.

You know Damien if you connect one of the wires to 12V "Enable ignition" relay and after that apply the other one to "latching start" relay the pump will start immediately and stabilize pressure in like 1 second. Try it, i am not sure which colour wire is "enable" and which is "start" since i spliced them my own wires quite close to the casing. You just try any of combinations and then mark correct wires.

EDIT: I did write about EHPAS wiring in my blog. Black wire is enable signal and blue/white is engine running signal after ignition.
https://leafdriveblog.wordpress.com/tag/steering/

Oh! Another 5c on throttle pedals.
Toyota Prius, Auris or Yaris vehicles all have hall effect sensor pedals with dual sensor each. Sensors are all the same. Even connectors from different vehicles are the same, which is a first in automotive industry . I am using Prius pedal in Mazda and Auris pedal in Peugeot.
Connector wiring is here:
https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_ ... cts_id=274
https://evwest.com/support/prius_pedal.pdf

Wow, structural carpeting. I'd be careful lifting up any more of that carpet. It may be all that's holding the floor together.

Back roving the range today.

High voltage junction box nearly done so decided to modify the Ampera charger to get the cables ran in as of course dont have the connectors. Also started wiring up the front battery and hv wiring. Thanks to Arber for the info on running the charger :
https://leafdriveblog.wordpress.com/201 ... a-charger/

Given I'm running an ISA shunt for battery monitoring decided to use a modified GS450h vcu for control of the charger , precharge and hv monitoring.

Another De-Ranged Rover image dump. HV system done. Cooling system done. Moving onto modifying a GS450h vcu for tieing it all together. IS300H inverter bench tested and ready to go.

Jack Bauer wrote: ↑Sat Apr 11, 2020 1:28 pm De-Ranged Rover

Well that needs to be it's new name.

Deranged Rover.

I like it.

Did I missed something? How are you going to control both motors with Johu's board, if this not a secret, ofcourse.
Board only taking inputs from one motor? Does it just PWMing MG1 inverter in parralel with MG2 without feedback, orienting only by MG2 feedback?
How effective is this? I wondering, because my plan is to make dual motor AWD car with prius mk2 invertor, two MGRs and Johu's board.

No secrets here:) The current board just runs one motor at a time. The next version will have two STM32s one for each motor.

Great video, well done

Hi Damien
Nice work there! Also some winning comments too.

As a suggestion you can just bypass that turd of encoder and mount a 64 hole disk (really whaterver you please) onto your driveshaft and using one of the arduino IR sensors. Basicaly your single input encoder.
It worked for me using normal Liycy cable for years before mounting modern AB encoder. Also it is open collector output so it doesnt have a preferred signal voltage. You have to keep it dry though...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2x-IR-Infrar ... SwEMpbVt8y

arber333 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 6:28 pm You know Damien if you connect one of the wires to 12V "Enable ignition" relay and after that apply the other one to "latching start" relay the pump will start immediately and stabilize pressure in like 1 second. Try it, i am not sure which colour wire is "enable" and which is "start" since i spliced them my own wires quite close to the casing. You just try any of combinations and then mark correct wires.

EDIT: I did write about EHPAS wiring in my blog. Black wire is enable signal and blue/white is engine running signal after ignition.
https://leafdriveblog.wordpress.com/tag/steering/

This tip just made my week!

Hi Damien

I noticed you bypassed the boost bridge in lexus inverter. Is there a reason? Do you think if you connected HV to original inverter input it would shut itself down due to overvoltage?
It is kinda important for me, since i am getting nowere with Gen3. Even though it can sense up to 420Vdc i cant fire buck from 600Vdc to 360Vdc!

A

It's bypassed in order to get hv (240v dc) to the dcdc.

Jack Bauer wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2020 7:46 pm It's bypassed in order to get hv (240v dc) to the dcdc.

Ah, so you just tapped it for getting 12V conversion working...

tnx

Jack Bauer wrote: ↑Sat Apr 11, 2020 1:28 pm Another De-Ranged Rover image dump. HV system done. Cooling system done. Moving onto modifying a GS450h vcu for tieing it all together. IS300H inverter bench tested and ready to go.

where are the files for the IS300H? im working on that mazada rx8 project, i need the control board for the inverter then im buying the main control board off the webshop

https://github.com/damienmaguire/Lexus-IS300H-Inverter

Should be all you need, it needs a Rev3 brain board.