[WIP] Volvo Vee70 with Outlander Rear Motor
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2024 10:44 pm
Hello!
Soooo, this has been going on for quite some time in the background and today I bought the car to be converted, so it's time to start a thread I guess.
What is it?
The car in question is a black 1997 (Model Year 1998) Volvo V70 I with a 170HP B5254F engine and a five speed manual gearbox. I bought it for 600β¬ today. It has a nice black leather interior with heated seats and doesn't have too much rust. Should I be the first one to obey Rule 1? Well the reason it was so cheap is that the engine looks nice from the top but has a sizeable hole in the oil pan that the connecting rod of the first cylinder punched into it. Actually, in place of the hole should be the oil filter...
What is the plan?
As I live in Germany and have to obey the rules of the German TΓV, only a matching pair of motor and inverter are allowed without huge (read: expensive) hassle of getting everything inspected.
That's why I want to use the Mitsubishi Outlander Rear Motor with the Rear Inverter. Yes, it's not gonna be a power house but I recon it's going to be fine. Remember when people drove around with forklift motors?
Actually... the Outlander motor has been laying in my wintergarten since November 2022... shame on me. The Outlander motor will be mated to the original Volvo gearbox with a Rotex GS38 coupler, which should be sufficient for the torque. I just don't trust my fabrication skills to reach zero angle error and zero offset and fear that a solid coupler might be eaten by the splines or worse: eat the splines.
Other parts I want to use are a BMW i3 CCS port together with CCS Clara (with BMW LIM as a backup), Outlander OBC as a DC/DC and possibly as AC charger or as an alternative an 11kW VW charger. You may have noticed my work on the Mitsubishi Outlander cable glands... that was all in preparation for this project. For the time being the battery for testing will be a 9kWh BMW hybrid battery, which should perfect in the trunk for test drives. This gives me some time to find a suitable battery pack and assess whether or not it'll be worth going for a big pack for long trips or not.. Power steering will utilize a Volvo power steering pump, brake assist will be done with a Hella UP28 (or possibly something bigger if it's not enough), heating possibly a Mitsubishi Outlander Heater or anything that I can find for a reasonable price, really. AC compressor is a must, because I like air conditioning. Mitsubishi Outlander would be a resonable choice here again I guess.
What has already been done?
Well, the original plan was buying a car when the motor is spinning and attached to the gearbox. This plan did not succeed, considering I just bought a car...
BUT I didn't sit on my hands in the meantime and prototyped the adapter plates for the Outlander motor (thanks to Bratitude!) and the Volvo. Fortunately in my university I have access to a precise Leica Lasertracker, with which I was able to measure the bolt pattern of a spare gearbox I bought ahead of time. I will publish the CAD files for everything once the measurements are confirmed. But so far it's looking promising.
These measurements allowed me to design the couplers in CAD as well and 3D print prototypes. The couplers will use clutch discs with the correct spline pattern.
What are the next steps?
There are a couple different sideprojects that run concurrently. One is obviously gathering the remaining parts including (but not limited to and in no particular order):
- Brake Pedal Assembly from an Automatic (we don't need no clutches were we're going!)
- Heater
- AC Compressor
- Power Steering Pump
- some miscellaneous parts for the Volvo to make it more beautiful
- Vacuum Pump Controller
- Large(r) Battery
Some time next week I want to pick up the car and start by taking out the engine. Since it is not going to run anyways, it's not really a problem to pull it. And the main reason is that I need to get the engine block to the Lasertracker again to measure the bolt holes of the original engine mounts and the CV axle support, which is bolted to the engine block as well.
These dimensions are critical and have to be right, so precision metrology equipment is nice to have access to
Furthermore I want to remove the PCB of the original ECU and replace it with a VCU. The communication between the ECU and the dashboard is somewhat digital, but in a sense that the ECU has actual pins that switch the status light bulbs in the dashboard. Most of the gauges are driven by variable frequencies from the ECU, so that's something my new VCU would do as well. The core of it will be an STM32, but the actual motor control will probably be done by ZombieVerter.
What is the time frame?
Well the inspection of the car is valid until January 2025, so I would like to get it done before that and do some test drives (on private property of course) before actually going to the TΓV.
I probably forgot a lot of stuff, but that's a general overview of the current state of my conversion
Best Regards,
Chris
Soooo, this has been going on for quite some time in the background and today I bought the car to be converted, so it's time to start a thread I guess.
What is it?
The car in question is a black 1997 (Model Year 1998) Volvo V70 I with a 170HP B5254F engine and a five speed manual gearbox. I bought it for 600β¬ today. It has a nice black leather interior with heated seats and doesn't have too much rust. Should I be the first one to obey Rule 1? Well the reason it was so cheap is that the engine looks nice from the top but has a sizeable hole in the oil pan that the connecting rod of the first cylinder punched into it. Actually, in place of the hole should be the oil filter...
What is the plan?
As I live in Germany and have to obey the rules of the German TΓV, only a matching pair of motor and inverter are allowed without huge (read: expensive) hassle of getting everything inspected.
That's why I want to use the Mitsubishi Outlander Rear Motor with the Rear Inverter. Yes, it's not gonna be a power house but I recon it's going to be fine. Remember when people drove around with forklift motors?
Actually... the Outlander motor has been laying in my wintergarten since November 2022... shame on me. The Outlander motor will be mated to the original Volvo gearbox with a Rotex GS38 coupler, which should be sufficient for the torque. I just don't trust my fabrication skills to reach zero angle error and zero offset and fear that a solid coupler might be eaten by the splines or worse: eat the splines.
Other parts I want to use are a BMW i3 CCS port together with CCS Clara (with BMW LIM as a backup), Outlander OBC as a DC/DC and possibly as AC charger or as an alternative an 11kW VW charger. You may have noticed my work on the Mitsubishi Outlander cable glands... that was all in preparation for this project. For the time being the battery for testing will be a 9kWh BMW hybrid battery, which should perfect in the trunk for test drives. This gives me some time to find a suitable battery pack and assess whether or not it'll be worth going for a big pack for long trips or not.. Power steering will utilize a Volvo power steering pump, brake assist will be done with a Hella UP28 (or possibly something bigger if it's not enough), heating possibly a Mitsubishi Outlander Heater or anything that I can find for a reasonable price, really. AC compressor is a must, because I like air conditioning. Mitsubishi Outlander would be a resonable choice here again I guess.
What has already been done?
Well, the original plan was buying a car when the motor is spinning and attached to the gearbox. This plan did not succeed, considering I just bought a car...
BUT I didn't sit on my hands in the meantime and prototyped the adapter plates for the Outlander motor (thanks to Bratitude!) and the Volvo. Fortunately in my university I have access to a precise Leica Lasertracker, with which I was able to measure the bolt pattern of a spare gearbox I bought ahead of time. I will publish the CAD files for everything once the measurements are confirmed. But so far it's looking promising.
These measurements allowed me to design the couplers in CAD as well and 3D print prototypes. The couplers will use clutch discs with the correct spline pattern.
What are the next steps?
There are a couple different sideprojects that run concurrently. One is obviously gathering the remaining parts including (but not limited to and in no particular order):
- Brake Pedal Assembly from an Automatic (we don't need no clutches were we're going!)
- Heater
- AC Compressor
- Power Steering Pump
- some miscellaneous parts for the Volvo to make it more beautiful
- Vacuum Pump Controller
- Large(r) Battery
Some time next week I want to pick up the car and start by taking out the engine. Since it is not going to run anyways, it's not really a problem to pull it. And the main reason is that I need to get the engine block to the Lasertracker again to measure the bolt holes of the original engine mounts and the CV axle support, which is bolted to the engine block as well.
These dimensions are critical and have to be right, so precision metrology equipment is nice to have access to
Furthermore I want to remove the PCB of the original ECU and replace it with a VCU. The communication between the ECU and the dashboard is somewhat digital, but in a sense that the ECU has actual pins that switch the status light bulbs in the dashboard. Most of the gauges are driven by variable frequencies from the ECU, so that's something my new VCU would do as well. The core of it will be an STM32, but the actual motor control will probably be done by ZombieVerter.
What is the time frame?
Well the inspection of the car is valid until January 2025, so I would like to get it done before that and do some test drives (on private property of course) before actually going to the TΓV.
I probably forgot a lot of stuff, but that's a general overview of the current state of my conversion
Best Regards,
Chris