Hello everyone,
My wife and I are happy to join this amazing forum and want learn and share with like-minded people like you. We are so excited for our build and have been lucky to find the right Jeep!
Veronika grew up watching Gilmore Girls in Austria and always dreamed of owning the Jeep they drove in the show. It was a 1999/2000 Jeep Wrangler. We found one on CL in Idaho and flew there to pick it up back when it was still warm out...
And the last time it had one of these stuck in it:
It is a good start as it has a few powertrain issues so we didn't feel so bad about pulling it out. That will be our Christmas vacation since Austria is locked down with COVID fear.
We are still debating the powertrain options. Probably down to a Model 3 RDU from Zero-EV with their gear reduction and LSD mounted transversely in the car to keep 4WD (but then it is full-time 4WD) or use a Cascadia Motion iM-225 + Torquebox into the stock NP231 so we can have 2H - 4H - 4 still... It will probably be all controlled using the AEM EV control system. I think the Tesla swap has the added "cool" factor, but the mechanical mounting aspect might be more complicated (plus the loss of the 2H option which should be more efficient). Still debating.
For batteries, we have a few Mach-E packs and those modules are either 4P8S or 4P7S:
Using the modules as-is will be tough to get the voltage up to where we need it (~400V) so we are exploring re-configuring the modules into 2P "slices". This is two cells in parallel with the cooling plate in-between. Multiple of these just stack together to make the modules.
This is halfway easy as the bus bar configuration and the modular construction of the modules make the slices have 2 cells each that are in parallel and you should be able to cut the bus bars here:
...and have then a 2P2S "slice". The challenge is reconnecting the bus bars on the other side of the module...
If anybody has some suggestions, we are all ears... We are exploring mechanical connections as well as spot welding new bus bars to the existing bus bars (to not cut the factory welds on the cell tabs).
We are taking the cells to Orion BMS so they can characterize the cells to hopefully make them available for other DIYers in the future. They are nice 65Ah LG cells.
Anyway, we are excited to start being a part of this community and to pull the current powertrain out and see how much space we really have. Veronika will be documenting the entire process (the good and the bad) on her channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/c/ElectrifiedVeronika
Cheers!
Don and Veronika
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