New Clutch

I'm still waiting on the final forms from my university before I buy my batteries, but I went ahead and purchased a new flywheel and clutch. Its a stage 4 clutch that's good for 400 ft lb of torque so it should do nicely. 

I am also waiting on the final parts for my charger which should be in by the end of the week. I am gearing up for the conversion, which I hope to start within the next 3 weeks!

High Powered Fun

I decided with this new EV I was going to try to design a 4+KW charger. While I am going to get a 2KW Elcon charger for the CALB 180 Ah, I wanted to build something with more kick and compatibility with the J1772 charging stations.

Over the past few months I've been gathering parts and now I'm ready to assemble then program the charger. I've purchased a lot of new parts, but I salvaged the inductor from my old broken K&W BC-20.

This charger is partly based on the 10 KW Open Source EV charger from DIYElectricCar.com Forum, but I've added some of my own features and changes. The first version will be 4 KW, and once that works well I am going to bump it up to 6 KW. I will probably build it for 10 KW, but I don't have access to that kind of power.

Now that I have free time I have started to really get things going. I have orders a new 5 stage clutch and lightweight flywheel, 25 ft of new 2/0 battery cable and tomorrow I am going to pickup a new hood latch and release cable. I have to be able to easily open the hood before converting it so might as well start there. I also have to replace the rear suspension.

I am also ready to order the CALB batteries, once some purchase order paperwork is in the computer system. Once that is done, I'll have 45 180 AH blue CALB cells waiting for an EV! I told my self I wouldn't start the actual conversion until I had everything, so I'm going through my list and ordering what I need.

Lithium Batteries

I've been going over my choices for lithium batteries for probably a good two years now, since driving my 1996 Civic EV. There are four main contenders out there, Thundersky (now Sinopoly), CALB, HiPower and A123. After careful research, and looking at my goals of 80 to 100 miles range, I've decided on CALB.

I spent the past year saving and planning this new EV, and now I'm ready to order my 144 volt 180 AH pack of CALBs! The CALB cells have a continuous rating of 4C, so that means I can easily pull 720 AMPs for accelerating! And they can be peaked to about 12C for 10 seconds, so this is going to be one fast EV!

I am ordering the cells from Evolve Electrics and I have been happy with the communication so far. It's a large payment, the most I have ever spent in my life so I have been taking my time with the research on both the batteries and distributors.

I am also looking to get an Elcon 2000W+ charger to get me going while I work on my own 4+ KW charger. My charger will have a lot of fancy features when it's done, including J1772 support. There are a lot of charging stations being installed in Massachusetts and I want my EV to be able to use them!

In about I week my time will be freed up to really get going on the conversion. I hope to have pictures of my charger progress this weekend, and while I wait for my batteries I am going to replace my rear suspension to handle the new batteries in the trunk. I also need to replace my hood latch and release, they were broken when I purchased the car but are cheap enough for me to fix. This time I am getting the car in perfect order before I convert it to make my life easier.

Last week I did have the rust on the body all fixed up, and I purchased an insanely expansive set of new keys from Honda. I needed a new remote and key, and the key is microchipped so it's pricey.