Some notes on the Second drive

The drive on Sunday showed up some minor problems.

1. There was a "thump" from the driveline when I eased up on the accelerator too fast - even as very slow speeds. This was easy to avoid but it's a bug nevertheless.
2. Regen braking didn't work at all. Pretty clever for me to muck up something that is hard to prevent.
3. We only travelled about 5km before I got a battery low alert. Upon returning home, 5 out of the 12 packs were showing a low voltage event (blue LED off).

1.
The thump happens when the accelerator transitions through the point where I am requesting full speed (variable torque), to the point where I am requesting zero speed - at about 10% pedal depression.
I left a 100mS ramp up/ramp down in the speed section of the controller, thinking it did not effect torque control - but it may.
If that doesn't help, the easy fix is to implement a ramp function on the Analog input (a function block in the controller), and limit the ramp down speed to that which doesn't cause the thump - but I'd rather identify and take the correct action. I'll put it up on axle stands and have a fiddle.

2.
Weird. I will connect the laptop and monitor the internal controller signals and trace through while on the axle stands. This is pretty easy to do as the Lenze software lets you tap into any analog or digital code of function block output and display as a dial or digtal readout or both. Up to 8 at once.

3.
Seven packs were at 52.5V and 5 (with LEDs off) were below 51 V. After a full charge, I pulled the lowest voltage one (as measured after the fault event) from the car and have so far put 12AH into one of the 20AH cell pairs. There were 4 cells pairs under 3.25V - the rest were 3.6V or higher - keep in mind this pack just got fully charged!
They are obviously way out of balance. To use an Americanism - "my bad". I thought since all chargers had cut out and all packs were at 58V they were balanced - not at all! The remaining 11 packs are on charge for the 4 days it will take for 180mA to charge all cells. It took me a whole night just to charge one cell pair in one pack so that's not reasonable to do for the 5 packs. I will change the the pack I have out to the same "trickle" or CV charge and monitor it closely to ensure I'm kind of OK. I don't like doing this but it's untenable to pull every pack.

Accelerator Mounted

All done. I should show the nutserts without the pedal. I might take another picture and just edit this post.
I haven't used spring washers because I need to remove it and drill a hole for the bonnet release - probably just above the pedal. I LOVE nutserts! I squirted Fish Oil through the lower hole after I drilled it  - plenty enough to pool at the bottom of the panels to stop the drilling swath causing rust.

Accelerator Mounting Idea

I asked around for ideas at work this week and came away at the end of the week with one of our "Nutsert" tools (on loan only).

The plan is to drill two holes in the firewall where I can't get at the other side and use these blind-insertable nuts. I played around with an M4 version and it's pretty solid once it's in.
Before insertion.

"Other" side.

Front (insert) side.

I will have to figure out a way to get a slight angle on them as the pedal mount wants to be angled down a bit.

More Accelerator Pedal Stuff

Well it turns out that there is no way that the VW pedal will fit. It wants to be mounted halfway through the fresh air duct.
Seeing as how the Audi pedal has a metal arm, it follows that it can be modified. A colleague at work does a bit of welding so I asked for help. He had a great idea that I should place it in position and make some V cuts then bend it to how I wanted it. He would then do some fillet welds to fill the V cuts. I didn't quite do what he asked (V cuts too small) but I made it fit perfectly and he expanded my tight little cuts and welded it up. I even got a free paint job (thanks Jens).
Here it is roughly in place with one bolt holding it that I drilled for the bonnet release cable which now has no home - (next problem).

 Another perspective. You can just see the rejected VW pedal in the right foreground. I would prefer the accelerator pedal being closer to the floor than the brake pedal and I might do a little better than shown if I forgo some pedal travel, but it's pretty close.

Now to figure out how to secure the bottom when I don't have access to the other side of the panel (twin panels on mudguard), and to devise a new position for the bonnet release (see just above old accelerator in the previous post).

Accelerator Pedal Mounting

Some time ago I completely ripped out the original accelerator system in the Vogue with the intention of replacing it with a modern "fly-by-wire" pedal. That hasn't been as easy as I thought it would be. I have been fussing with ideas for a week or so. I actually have two pedals, one from an Audi A4 and one from a VW Polo. I bought the Polo one after the Audi one because it seemed a bit more compact.

This is the Polo pedal. This is most likely the one I will use. (Later edit: I didn't - I used the Audi one - modified a little.)

And this is the Audi pedal. The rod is too long and the pedal is biased about 100mm to the right of where it mounts.

One of the problems is that the Vogue has two metal panels in the front mudguard area - inner and outer. The red circle is where I have to add an extra bolt but it will not be accessible in the wheel area on the other side. (Very old picture shown here.)

More as it evolves...

Last of the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) Parts Out

The Exhaust system and fuel lines are out.


The Fuel tank, heater box and accelerator linkages and accelerator poodle, sorry pedal.
The accelerator pedal will be replaced by a "fly by wire" pedal from a VW polo so I do not need the complicated linkage arrangement.
The heater box will have the radiator type core removed and the ceramic heater element fitted.

Basic Electrical Diagram and Layout

I notice that I haven't described anywhere how the electrical system in the car works.
Here is a basic diagram.
Essentially a bank of batteries supplies 600 Volts DC to the controller, that "chops" the DC up to look enough like 3 Phase AC (the type of AC used in factories) to run the 3 Phase AC Induction Motor.

The controller "*speed" signal comes from an accelerator pedal exactly the same as used on "fly by wire" cars like the Holden Astra, Audi, VW Golf etc. (*Actually the pedal controls torque.)

This diagram shows Lithium Iron Nano-phosphate battery packs. There are 12 packs of 53Volts (shown in diagram as 48V) with 20AH capacity - that makes around a 12kW/h pack.

The motor is coupled directly to the tail-shaft. There is no clutch or gearbox.

Here is the proposed layout of these components in the car.
This will most likely change a bit once I have the existing Engine and gearbox out and can better measure where stuff can go. (Updated to show Lithium Batteries.)

Later addition: A note on the battery pack size. 12kW/h is a small pack for an EV but will be more than adequate for the range I want and resulted in the car weighing about the same as the petrol version - a plus for engineering approval. Another plus is of course the price.

The Accelerator Pedal

The humble accelerator pedal.
The Vogue doesn't use a cable like many modern-ish cars.
It uses a system of rods and levers that result in a fair bit of complexity.
A = rod going across right to left and from cabin to engine compartment.
B = lever that causes rod to rotate.
There are lots more levers and rods under the bonnet.

I looked at potboxes, hall effect pedals for EVs and such but all had their disadvantages for the Vogue. A potbox would have me using the existing pedal arrangement and the EV pedals are quite expensive. I bought a cheap twist-grip throttle in the hope that I could couple to that but - no good.

I even bought 3 hall effect sensors and while they were in transit I saw an Audi A4/A6 accelerator pedal and sensor on eBay. An original Audi part - brand new.






A good look at the existing Vogue pedal also showed it was cracked at the base and I would have to replace it anyway.


The Audi pedal price was good and after I had a look at how it mounted on an actual Audi (thanks Neil) - I bid for and bought it. Half the price of a potbox even with shipping from the UK.
This means I can rip out all the standard complexity and just mount this in the cabin.
The connector off an old Audi wiring loom cost me almost half again what the pedal cost.
If I apply 5 volts to a particular pin and ground to another, I measure 0.7 to 4.7 volts out of it with full travel - I can use that!