Hi All,
I have been meaning to build a electric car for some time, and figured the most straight forward approach would be to convert an existing car than building a car from scratch. I wanted a small car, which had readily available spares and importantly looked cool. I settled on the Classic Mini.
I have been collecting parts for some time, currently have an 8in Advanced DC (ADC) motor, a coupe of lynch 200 (LEM) and some Lynch 170 motors. I had been debating which motor to use, either the large ADC motor or two LEM motors in the front subframe. To get the torque required at the wheels I would build a simple gear reduction most likely using the gear reduction in a standard differential.
Last week I stumbled over a classified where someone was selling parts from a prototype car, all the parts I needed for the conversion. The parts included a Yasa motor that made direct drive to the wheels possible, and Sevcon inventers (Gen 4, S8). I figured it was worth a shot using these parts so I made the deal and they are currently now in my garage (gulp!).
So now I better start designing! The idea is to modify the existing mini subframe to accept the two Yasa motors, and drive the front wheels via direct drive. For me to test the inverters I wanted to build a solid base to mount the motors so I will be modifying the mini frame first.
I have attached a pic of one of the motors in the subframe, you forget how small the mini is, the subframe is tiny or the motor is massive! With some mods I think I can get the output shaft of the motor to align with the hole in the subframe for the drive shaft. I will be designing the motor, inverter, coolant pump mounts in CAD and most likely get them laser/plasma cut. Saves me time (I have a 5 month old I need to play with).
Once I have the motors mounted, the next step would be to get the inverters working. I have done some research on the inverters, and can see that getting them to work will be a challenge. They were modified to work in a particular way in the prototype and I doubt they will work in my set up as they are. To modify the programming it looks like I will need a USB to CAN interface and special Sevcon software - this part is going to be the most challenging part (I think). ie getting the software and learning how to work with CAN.
Anyway, this will be a long and slow journey (the mini wont be slow though) so pls check back in to see progress. Anyone that can help me with getting the Sevcon inverters to work, drop me a line!