Battery Update

They hadn't arrived - my mistake - it sure sounded like they were sitting on the dock. They arrive Monday the 1st of Feb.
They will be moved to the Customs broker's warehouse and after AQIS inspection, I can pick them up from there. I am informed that there is no duty on these batteries - hooray!!

Heater Control

I plan on making an electronic control box so that I can alter the heat coming out of the ceramic heater element. I may be suffering under a delusion that I can get too much heat but it is almost as easy to make it variable as it is to have just on and off.
Here is the original cable-operated control. The cable goes to the hot-water tap under the bonnet - which no longer exists. The other (lower) cable is the vent control and the choke cable is on the left of the photo.
I'm kind of looking forward to losing three out of the four cables that connect to the dashboard. The speedo, choke and heater tap cables are gone. Pulling the dash out is going to be dead easy in this car.

Here is my new control. The linkage now goes to a potentiometer with about 120 degrees of rotation. The pot gives me 0 to 8K Ohms variable resistance which will be the input to the heater variable control box (PWM control). The pot is mounted on a piece of aluminium which is held using the old cable outer sheath securing bolt.

For the technically minded, the little pieces of linkage metal are from the strain relief of a DB25 connector I had lying around at work. One vice and a pair of pliers...
I will seal up the gaps in the pot before installing it to ensure that dust doesn't cause problems.

Motor positioning

I have been messing around for a week now with the motor mounting within the Vogue body.
I always knew that the terminal box on the motor was going to give me grief but I was hoping that I was being pessimistic - I wasn't.
Here is a near final drawing of how I intend to mount the motor and 2 of the battery packs. The front of the car is to the right.

Now here is the problem.
I have overlayed a line diagram of the Vogue chassis with the body to help with visualisation.

The terminal box on the motor is around 80mm high. On this drawing I have dramatically reduced it's height - maybe about 20mm. You can see it will still hit the transmission tunnel roof. I can move the motor further into the engine bay but that is a comprimise that I would like to defer if nothing else can be done.

My current investigation involves removing the end caps and rotor from the motor and reversing the whole lot. That will place the terminal box on the other end of the main body of the motor. Curiously, that's how the motor looked in the original diagrams sent to me before the motor was made.
This image tells it all.

I have emailed the motor manufacturer basically asking if it is within my capability to do this and whether the end caps are "reversible".

My Batteries are in Australia

I was notified by Global Logistics Melbourne P/L yesterday that the battery packs have arrived in Melbourne.
I had to scurry around finding a customs broker.
I really should have done that before the packs left China.
The other issue is that the packs were shipped in a wooden crate without the correct procedure for fumigation so that has to be done here.
You live and learn. I should have known as this was an issue with the motor crate as well.
With any luck I may have them within the next few days.

Steering Box Pitman Arm is FREE!

This may not seem a big deal but it has taken me a couple of days to get the dang thing off! I bought a "Pitman Arm Puller" off eBay (seller was very near my work) and removed it last night.
A Pitman Arm Puller (the steering arm is called a Pitman Arm).


Even with the arm puller on very tight (my socket spanner arm was flexing with the strain), I still had to give it a couple of taps with a hammer to get it to release. Now I can remove the steering box.

Cardboard Motor and Removing Steering Box

We made up a cardboard motor with the same basic dimensions as the real one. That way it's easy to play around with mounting positions.


The first thing I found is that I can't have it as far back in the transmission tunnel as I'd hoped. It fits OK but the rear cross-member gets in the way. I need about 50mm clearance from the motor to the cross-member.


I have wasted an enormous amount of time trying to remove the steering box. The reason that I want to remove it is that the lower seal leaks and it will make it a lot easier to clean around it if it isn't there. I am unable to get the steering arm off the tapered spline on the steering box. I may give up and leave it to a professional once the car is on the road.

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.

Exhaust System and Fuel lines out

I figured the exhaust wasn't going to come out easily so I just did it the destructive way. Out with my trusty angle grinder which I haven't used much since getting it to cut ceramic tiles. Down to Bunnings for a couple of metal cutting off disks and away we go. Very quick but the sparks actually hurt. I know, I should have had long sleeves but it was hot weather.

You can see in this shot that the drivers side (left) has more built up grime due to the crankcase breather being on that side of the car. (I have scraped that side a fair bit.) Two years after the Vogue was built, Rootes changed so that their cars fed the breather back into the intake (into the carburetor) - not so the Vogue - straight to atmosphere.

Removing the Petrol Engine and Auto Gearbox

Holiday time! I have taken a couple of weeks off the try to get ahead with the Vogue.
The pictures tell it all. We (11 year old son and I) decided to split the engine and gearbox and remove them separately. Reason being not enough headroom in the garage.

This is the "before" picture.


I removed the bonnet then the generator, starter motor, radiator and water pump first.
Then, with all bits unbolted and the engine released from the transmission (gearbox).... That was a saga in itself. Apparently I did it incorrectly as I left the torque converter on the engine. This makes it difficult to get back in. Oh well, that's not my problem now!


Easy as she goes. Had to rotate about 20 degrees to clear the harmonic balancer on the front of the crankshaft.


Next the gearbox. I supported it at the back with my trolley jack and just let it roll forward. It leaked lots of fluid when we lifted it even though I had drained it.


Empty (almost) engine bay. You can just see one of the two horns on the right. I will relocate them to the front just behind the side grills. Since taking this picture the auto-selector stuff has been removed from around the steering box (near the brake master cylinder at the back left).
Grotty isn't it. The underside has 44 years of mud/grease/oil gunk.


One Borg Warner 35 automatic transmission for sale. I must remember to grab those rear mounts and measure some dimensions.


Dejected engine sits in corner. The torque converter on the right hand side (low down, brown thing) was only replaced about 8000km ago.


The radiator and water pump already have a new home waiting for them in Adelaide (South Australia). They hopefully should go this week. The Radiator was re-cored not too long ago and Tim in SA has overheating problems.

Batteries Ordered

Well I really am going to use the expensive Lithium battery option I talked about.
The day before yesterday I sent my order to Headway for:

• 12 of 48V20AH battery packs (each pack has 32 cells).
• 12 of Battery Management System (BMS) for above packs.
• 12 of 48V 3 Amp chargers.
• 5 spare 38120S cells (the blue ones a few posts below).

A few bank hiccups but I have partially paid for them and will complete payment today.
They are coming by sea so it may take a while.
The packs I ordered are similar in appearance to the one shown below (white ABS case).

Now I have an Engine Hoist

The time has come to disconnect all things petrol and pull the engine and transmission out.
I had been offered the loan of an Engine Hoist by a kind AEVA member but I have no easy way of transporting it.

Since I will no doubt need it for a while to "adjust" the way the electric motor fits - I figured I would buy one and sell it again when I was sure I had finished with it (hmmm).

Thanks eBay. I also purchased and Engine leveller which allows you to easily tilt the thing you are lifting.
I should have it by the weekend.

I have some house renovation work preparing the family room ceiling (prior to painting) then and I might get time to do some significant work on the Vogue.

Oh, I also dropped my old dashpad up to the restoration place in Brisbane during the holidays. He needed the old one to make sure that he knew how it would fit back into the car.

Maybe Going for Lithium (LiFePO4) Batteries

The battery decision has been an extremely difficult one.
While SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) is the most inexpensive option, about AU$2000 to $2500, all the research tends to indicate that they will only last between 400 and 600 cycles (discharge, recharge cycles). Charging once per day, that's 16 to 24 months. In addition the "pack" will weigh around 320kg. Not only does that put the car over original weight - a problem for road approval, but it will have lower performance.

170kg in a 1000 kg car is important. Why 170kg - because that's how much less a Lithium Iron Phoshate battery pack would weigh. The LiFePO4 pack would also have almost twice the range as it does not suffer nearly as much from "peukert effect" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peukert's_law. Finally, Lithium should last 2000 to 3000 cycles, that's around 6 to 10 years with my expected driving distances. A LOT more expensive though!


My Lithium batteries of choice are 10 of these 60V 20AH packs from Headway in China. (The blue cylinders are what is in the big white box - 40 of them. I earlier had this at 20 - there are actually 40 cells per box.)

Weighing 15kg each, using these bring the theoretical weight of the car in under it's original weight by about 40kg.

The house mortgage is down since we sold our caravan (temporary situation), so finance is possible...

Dashpad Woes

The dashpad (padded bit on top of the dashboard) has occupied a fair bit of my planning time and looks like it is going to be expensive ($550).
We mucked around a bit with some padded vinyl and finally came to the conclusion that it would look OK but would be a pain to get it to extend out as far as the old dashpad - necessary to prevent sunlight from obscuring the LCD backlit displays. I found some 'D' shaped rubber foam molding from Clark Rubber and got a sample to see how it would go extending the bulkhead under the vinyl forward (about 20cm). I reckon it is "doable", but my better half thinks I have enough to do. So Dashboard Restorations (highly recommended from the Hillman yahoo group) get the job of fixing the old one. It seems they have a Singer Vogue mold...

This is what we have to cover.

Winding Window Refurbishing

A few delays going on at the moment. One of them is the search for a "Bailey Channel" that matches the original fitted to the Vogue. Bailey Channel is the name given to the felt lined slotted stuff in which your winding windows slide up and down.

We have given up on an exact match and a long search may have ended up finding one that is made (a replica) for the EH Holden.
This is what we were looking for.

Respray Finished

The Vogue is back home.
It arrived home on the 40th anniversary of humankind landing on the moon (20th July 1969).

No trim, no rubber, no glass, no interior, no lights.
Now to order all the rubbers.

After 7 weeks away and not being started, it burst to life on the first turn of the Engine. I'm going to miss that exhaust note...

The colour is hard to photograph. It changes depending on what angle you look at it. It's a light to medium metallic blue. I LOVE it!

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.

Top Coat Going On

Not a great photo but it shows that the roof is pretty much done.

Why just the roof? Well we changed our minds - now it's going to be a two-tone.

Lower colour goes on next week...

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.