Nearly ready for Top Coat

I visited Brett (spray painter) today and discussed the colour for the Vogue. Most likely we will stay with the original "Moonstone" but we are just checking out possibilities.
I took a quick photo while I was there. It's all in primer now.

The Vogue is almost ready for Primer

Brett (Old Auto Classics Restoration) sent me some photos for the blog.
They are just about ready to prime the main part of the body.
He mentioned that on removing a lot of the paint they discovered a few "secrets".

My Motor Awaits Shipping

QIN WEI Sent me some photos of my motor, ready and waiting to ship.

The terminal box is a lot further forward of where the drawing said it would be so I'll have to see if I can replace it with a low profile ABS or aluminium box when I get it.

The idea is to try and mount the motor as far back in the transmission tunnel as possible. It's 258mm diameter so it might fit - I won't know until I get the engine and gearbox out of the Vogue. The terminal box will be an issue though.

Door Trim Material

I've decided not to use the plastic sheeting. I looked at 3mm MDF on the weekend and it looks like it would be soooo much better. I'll just have to exclude that from my weight shedding plans.
I won't get it until we have the fabric. Plans are to get some fabric samples in in the next 2 weeks and go looking (if we have to) during the June school holidays.

I did visit Jacka Wortley (upholstery) and the lady there was really helpful - basically saying she would go for fabric sold expressly for automotive uses.

(2014 addition. We bought all the fabric, underlay and extra vinyl from Vyfab in Moorabbin, Victoria. The blue and silver seat fabric is leftover from Holden production runs.)


This is the worst of the door liners.

I took photos of all the door liners before I pulled the clips off when I noticed they have a specific clip orientation for a given liner.











One of the door liners will need the woodwork re-veneered (not this one). I have yet to find out where to get Walnut Berl veneer in a long enough strip.

More Components

We are having a new back door fitted (to the house) so I'm home this morning and using some of the time to update the Vogue blog.
I have added labels to make finding things a bit easier in the future.
I bought enough of this plastic sheeting to try as a door liner. It's pretty light which is good but it may be too light to mount the front speakers in.















It's 3 mm thick. Should be a breeze to put holes etc. in but is it strong enough?

Now to track down some kind of thin padding and spray adhesive.

I can't actually do it until we have the fabric but I can cut it to shape using the old door lining as a template.










More retrospective blogging. From eBay again!

This emergency stop switch will mount in the dash where the choke used to be. The choke is the far left-hand knob on the dash in the previous post about the dashpad.








The forward-neutral-reverse switch will mount where the generator (yes, not alternator) light used to be.






100 Amp 700 VDC fuses. I bought 9 of them on eBay (again!) about a month ago. I only need three of them but AEVA forum people have committed to take a few.

They are 110 mm long.

More Restoration Stuff - Interior Fabric

Not much done this weekend to do with the car. We did start checking out places to get auto-upholstery and selecting possible colours and patterns for the seats and door liners.

I did purchase 10 of EV200 DC contactors on eBay late last week. I only want two but other guys on the AEVA forums have committed to taking the rest of them.

The Dashpad

The Dashpad is the padded bit on top of the dashboard.
This is becoming a high cost-for-result item. I have had 2 quotes on restoring the dashpad - $800 and about $600 (including shipping back from another country).

I have found a couple of ideas on the web that make me think I might be able to do it myself but it will be time consuming and no guarantee of a good result.

This one seems the best way.
I actually emailed Daron checking how easy it was to get "Bed Liner" spray.
Turns out it has nothing to do with the bed you sleep in.

People with Utes (that's trucks in the USA) like to stop the truck "bed" getting scratched etc. so they either get a hard liner or apply a spray - hence bed liner spray!

Higher Power Controller

While I am retrospectively documenting things I'd better mention this one.
Back in December I found a Lenze 9329 on eBay for a bit over 550 Euros.
The 9329 is a 30kW continuous, 45kW peak (for 60 seconds) - pretty much what I was looking for. The fact that it was a Lenze brand from the same "family" made it even better because I have got to know this controller reasonably well.

I made an offer of 499 Euros and he accepted. Shipping was about 85 Euros.
At the time the AU$ was pretty much AU$2 = 1 Euro.
When it arrived it was in pretty bad shape - again! Worse than the 16kW I started this
blog describing.
This is the fan end. No fans and where they mount is unusable.
There is a heap of other damage as well. Note the heatsink at the lower right-hand side of the photo.

I checked inside for "loose bits", and finding none, ran the controller up on my 2.2kW test motor. It actually still worked fine.

I sent this and some other photos back to the guy and he was really good. He refunded me 200 Euros (he asked me to give a figure). Once paypal had taken it's share (not sure why - it shouldn't have), that translated to AU$371 refunded. So overall it cost me about AU$800. I would have been happier with a complete unbroken case and the full price but with a bit of work this should come up OK.
He also sent the 2 missing fans - free. I get the feeling that the damage occurred over there and he just kept the fans hoping to minimise the impact of the damage - anyway I got them.

I have the fall-back that the 9327 (16kW) controller is in EXACTLY the same case.

This is the 9327 (16kW) with my "boost transformers" (to get enough voltage to allow the controller to operate) and my donated test 2.2kW motor (thanks Glenn).



The little red box on the top has my speed control (10K linear potentiometer), forward reverse switch and enable switch. You can see what the fan end is supposed to look like. I don't have the fan cover for the 9329.

The Heater

I bought one of these on the weekend.

It' a 240 VAC, 1500 Watt Ceramic heater with 2 heat settings.








Inside it looks like this.
I found it be be very well built AND it was a cheap brand ($25 at Bunnings).

Essentially there are four elements connected in series. Each element measures 160 Ohms (when hot). Curiously, when stone cold, they measure 500 Ohms.

If I use them all in series I will only get about 600W which appears not to be enough going by other's experience.

The plan is to link the 2 outer connections (there are blue wires going there now) together and feed power to these and the centre. This will give an overall resistance of 160 Ohms.

Since that is way too much power from the 600 VDC system (2250 Watts), I will be PWMing (Pulse Width Modulation) power to the elements and ensuring I do not go over 1500W. I have the parts for a custom PWM controller so that's yet another project.