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Brad's Del Sol Build

13K views 51 replies 15 participants last post by  MajorK 
#1 ·
I've been working for a couple of months now on converting my 1997 Honda Del Sol. I figured it's time to share some of my progress.

I found the car on Craig's List. I has 64K miles on it and the engine ran fine. I'm trying to sell the engine on Craig's List. It took me a while to get up the nerve to pull a perfectly good motor out of the car. But since I bought it specifically for this project, it didn't take me too long.
 

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#2 ·
The car came with an automatic transmission. I picked up a manual transmission off of ebay for $150.

A web search turned up the dimensions of the holes in a Honda transmission. As it turns out, the data posted was not very accurate. I made one plate, measured the error and corrected it when I made the second plate. I then made a plate to attach a Warp 9 motor.

I decided to go clutchless. I made a hub that holds the original clutch spline and springs.

The Warp 9 motor has a hole bored in the end of the shaft, so I made a bronze bushing that fits in this hole and captures the end of the transmission shaft.
 

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#4 ·
To get the power from the trunk to the front of the car, I chose to run the wires through PVC pipe. The two main wires fit easily into 1 1/4" pipe. I ran an extra 10 gage wire for charging since the charger will be in the trunk and I wouldn't otherwise have access to both ends of the battery pack in the trunk.

I cut a hole in the front of the trunk and ran the pipe underneath the car and held it in place with large tie-wraps.
 

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#7 ·
I worked on my electrical panel today. I have most of the 144V wires hooked up now, but I don't have photos yet.
Hey Brad,

Looks like you have the motor wired for CWDE rotation. Did you get it special for this?

Advanced timing (for counter-clockwise rotation when viewed from the transmission, CCWDE)
Contact us if your motor rotates clockwise when viewed from the transmission (e.g. for some Honda vehicles)
From a seller's web site.

Regards,

major
 
#11 ·
Thanks for the comments, guys.

You can change the timing of the motor for clockwise rotation. It's simple to do. You take out the four bolts holding the brush end on, rotate it to the CW position and put the bolts back in. They have tapped holes in positions for CW, CCW, and neutral timing.

Yes, the standoffs will see some torque. I have a pocket machined into each plate and I faced the ends of the standoffs with a lathe, so they should all sit flat. I'm hoping they can handle the torque.

I'm going to be using a Kelly 650 amp controller. I have a kelly in my electric motorcycle and it's working well for me.

I'm hoping to get a 30 mile range. I base this on what I have read of similar setups online.

I hoped to get more done today, but I'm sitting in jury duty. At least they have wi-fi. :) I've spent my time designing my pot box. When I get out, I'll go to the shop (where I work) and make some parts.

- Brad
 
#14 ·
Here's today's progress. I built a pot box. It looks like this controller will only take a 0-5V signal. I dug through an old bag of potentiometers my dad had saved and found one that I think will work. I'm going to power it with my 13.8v dc-dc converter and since I'm only rotating it 90 degrees or so, I should be able to get close to 0-5V out of it.

You can see the power steering reservoir in the photo. I removed the power steering pump and routed both hoses to the reservoir.
 

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#15 ·
Woah, wait on the pot box. The 0-5 volt comes from the Kelly controller, NOT an external power supply. You will blow up the Kelly if you try your idea. I have a Kelly controller, and a 0-5v Pot means that the pot is connect to +5 at the one end, Signal in the middle and GND on the bottom, and all that is attached to the Kelly control connector.

What ever POT you use, you need the full swing, or it's useless.
 
#20 ·
The Kelly is probably the most fragile controller out there, and it relies on it's own +5 for software calibration for the throttle, and it's regulated.

The controller is one thing that you NEVER want to deviate from the wiring schematics, because what if you accidently exceed the 5v? Boom de Ada on the proccessor, then you go rocketing off down the road with no control what so ever.
 
#21 ·
Yes, I can see that the risk would be putting over 5V into the 0-5V input. Other than that, I don't see why it wouldn't work, but I'll see if I can find an alternative method.

I was going to do it this way because I didn't have any pots that go full range with only 90 degrees of rotation. Maybe I can modify a pot. I'll have to take one apart.
 
#22 ·
Search through the threads here - there is one guy who built a really cool gear-set driven potbox (his reason was for a very smooth ramped start). He built it with parts from Radio Shack and stuff he had lying around.

I believe he converted a Saturn, but I'll let you look. (Who knows what neat scraps of knowledge you'll uncover;))

Keith
 
#23 ·
Another idea for DIY potbox is to take any TPS ( Throttle Position Sensor ) from any modern car at the junk yard. Modern TPS is a 5K pot, perfect fit for our purpose, all you need to do is mechanically connect to it. It helps if you get entire throttle body assembly from the junk yard and adapt your throttle cable to it.

Nice build, I always liked Del Sol, pity you stuffed it with Lead, but I'm sure it will live to see Lithium one day :)
 
#24 ·
Yeah, it's lead today. Eventually, it will be an EEStor ultracapacitor! :)

I got some wiring done this evening. I finally completed the battery loop without getting bit. I hooked up the charger and am charging the batteries for the first time. I'm not so sure I like the sound of the post by Quickcharger that says this charger won't charge my batteries fully.

I wired up the DC-DC converter and hooked it into the existing 12V circuit. Interior lights, key in the ignition chime, headlights all work.

Now I have to start studying some wiring diagrams to see where I should pull +12V out of the system when the key is turned on.

Oh yeah, I filled the transmission with oil and put the front tires back on.

- Brad
 
#25 ·
I've got it wired and the wheels spin! I'll put the wheels down on the ground tomorrow evening.

I wired the pot using Kelly's 5V output. I only get 0-2.5V output since I'm not turning the pot all that far, but I can program the Kelly to only operate in that range.

The Kelly wiring diagram shows the Kelly pulling one side of the main contactor coil to ground. I couldn't get this to work, so right now the contactor pulls in as soon as the ignition switch is activated. Does anybody have any tricks to getting this to work as Kelly shows?

I had my Quickcharger plugged in for most of the day. I checked the battery voltages when it said it was 88% done and they ranged from 14.3 to 15.6! I could hear some bubbling going on in the batteries. I thought the voltage was a little high, so I unplugged the charger. Should I just let it go and balance? Do I need to separately charge each battery first?

Thanks for the help.

- Brad
 
#27 ·
I made a few laps around my neighborhood. It's about a mile each lap.

I used 2nd and 3rd gear. Shifting wasn't bad without a clutch. If I started too quickly in second gear, I got a shutter from the motor/transmission. My motor mounts may need some work. It created a bucking action, kind of like when you're learning to drive with a clutch and let it out too quickly with the engine running too slowly. Once I got moving, it was fine and if I started off slowly, it was fine.

I don't have my vacuum pump hooked up yet, so I had to push pretty hard to slow it down.

I takes a little effort to steer it when going slowly without the power steering. It's manageable, though. It does feel a lot heavier than it did. The rear end is sagging pretty good. I'll probably have to get stiffer springs for the rear.

My voltage was dropping lower than I was expecting. I could get it down below 120 volts pretty easily under load. It wasn't fully charged when I started, but it should have been close.

Acceleration was pretty good. It was about what I would normally do in a car. I'm not sure I'm getting full acceleration because my pot isn't putting out full voltage. I got it up to 40 to 45 mph. I don't have my speedometer working yet.

The aluminum bars that I have linking the batteries got pretty hot. One of them didn't get as hot as the others, which I can't really explain. It may be that that one bar is getting a better connection to the batteries. The copper bars I made out of 3/4" water pipe didn't get hot, so I'll probably replace the aluminum ones with copper.

I'll see if I can get some video tomorrow.

- Brad
 
#28 ·
If you watch the first test drive video on my website you'll see that I had the exact same problem in 2nd gear with my car. I still don't know 100% why, but I had to remove the motor (1st one burned up) and replace it after about 1,000 miles, and when I did that, the shudderring went away entirely. Now, no matter how much juice I give it in second gear, it's smooth. I had to incorporate a mount for the passenger 1/2 shaft into my motor mount during the build. I suspect that I either had this slightly misaligned or didn't have the motor mount tightened properly. Either way, when I removed mount and motor and reinstalled, it worked fine and has since... I would recommend you make sure everything it lined up properly and tightened well. Hopefully, it will make it go away like mine did.
 
#29 ·
I watched your video and your shutter is similar to mine, although yours may be a little worse. You say it went away when you changed the motor. Are you pretty sure it was a mechanical problem and not a problem with the motor (brushes?) itself? Did you change anything else when you put in the new motor?

I'm not liking the fact that your first motor burned up.

Did you leave the clutch springs in the system?

Thanks for the input.

- Brad
 
#30 ·
I installed the motor mount slightly differently the second time. I attached it firmly to motor and tranny, then attached 1/2 shaft and did the tightening of the motor mount bolts last (and probably made them much tighter than the first time around) to the car's original motor mount with the rubber bushings. I did not make any changes to the layout or setup from the first time around - just the way I tightened things, which seemed to make the 1/2 shaft align better.

I am convinced I was just sent a bad motor to begin with as the second one has been much smoother, quieter and more powerful from the moment I first drove it. ADC replaced the original free under warranty and I know of at least one other DIYer who had a similar blowup and was replaced for free, so maybe they just had a bad batch. I believe (though don't know) the brushes weren't seated properly on the first motor.

I am convinced the shuddering was caused by the slight misalignment and not the motor because it ONLY happened in 2nd gear. The entire time I had the original motor I used first to start off.. now I can use 2nd if I like, but I still tend to use 1st as it accelerates faster from a standstill when using 1st.

Oh.. I had a one-piece solid coupler made that connects motor shaft to tranny shaft, no springs or clutch.
 

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