No Car For a While

Well the Vogue made it OK down to Moorabbin.
Old Auto Classics Restoration Co. are stripping back and repainting the Vogue. It's going to be pretty much the original colour due to there being an increased cost if I changed it.
Over the next 8 weeks I have to chase down a complete set of window rubbers, boot and bonnet seals and where to get upholstery fabric.
There's other stuff to do too. I'll try to document it as I go.

Motor Missed Shipment

Bad news. My Motor will not be ready to join the planned shipment from Taiwan on Tuesday due to a "Dragon Boat Festival" in Taiwan. It will have to wait another 4 weeks for the next shipment.

Good news, the car is confirmed for the spray painter tomorrow.

I hadn't mentioned it here, but it's got a mostly blown head gasket so the trip down there (about 25km) involves 2 or 3 water stops. I'll run the radiator open so it has less pressure and is easy to top up. I got it there and back about 2 months ago for the quote so I should be OK.

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!

The Electric Motor

About 6 weeks ago I located an electric motor manufacturer in Taiwan and after about 30 emails (in both directions) had ordered the motor for the Vogue. While this conversion was supposed to use an "off the shelf" AC Induction Motor (ACIM), I really wanted some slight changes.
I wanted:

• lower voltage windings so it would have more torque at high revs.
• a shaft encoder built in. I could add it later but this was WAY easier.
• auxiliary forced air cooling - not just a fan running off the motor shaft.
• a built in thermal sensor so the VFD can adjust to the motor temperature.
• class H winding insulation so it can safely run a bit hotter.

This isn't the motor but it looks something like it (aluminium frame Qin Wei motor).





They emailed me last night saying it was ready to ship. I might have it in 2 to 3 weeks. (Shipping it is getting complex.)

First the Restoration

A lot has happened since I wrote that first entry and I'll try to document it in the next few weeks. I got off to an excessively complex start. I'll try not to get too carried away with details again.
The most important thing at this stage is that the Vogue paint job is in very poor shape. The thing that attracted me to the car 11 years ago is now its undoing.
The bonnet, roof and boot lid have all crazy-cracked (of course you can't see it in the photo).
I got the price of a complete respray down a bit by having me remove and reinstall all the metal trim. Above is a before shot.

Now with all the trim removed. I will remove the black fresh-air inlet and fuel filler down at the painter's place. I'm glad I decided to do this myself, even though it took pretty much all day Saturday and Sunday. This way I get to restore all the chrome work before it is reinstalled.
Unfortunately they are not ready for the car until 30th May so here it sits with masking tape keeping out the rain out from all the holes where the trim clips have been drilled out.











What a way to reduce drag. Now you see it...













Now you don't.