October 13, 2014

Charger, heater and vacum mounted

This weekend I mounted the charger, the heater and the vacuum system. The Brusa charger hangs under the same aluminum U bar as the Soliton motor controller. The mount is made of two sturdy 50x50x5 mm aluminum angles with two 3x30mm "suspensions" to distribute the load to all four bolts on the Brusa. It also has a small 2mm diagonal angle to support in in the front to back direction.
The black-faced Brusa charger mounted in front of the transmission

The Brusa high-voltage connected to the connection box.
Still to connect are the control wires the go into the black multi-contact to the right

Angle bar to support the charger front to back
The front battery box serves as the mount point to a lot of stuff in the conversion. The A2 is a fairly modern car and there are no big areas of metal around the engine compartment to mount things on, Only two aluminum frame bars and lots of plastic (which is now removed). So, the vacuum pump is now mounted onto the battery box using two pipe clamps. The vacuum reservoir mounts to the lock carrier in front of the right front wheel where there is some space left. This means that there is almost a meter of vacuum hose (in fact it is coolant hose) between the reservoir and the vacuum servo which is in the rear left of the engine compartment. I hope the hose will not "eat up" all the vacuum by compressing itself.
The vacuum pump mounted on the front battery box
The heater also mounts to the battery box with its top mount. Its bottom mount is an aluminum angle fitted to the box that holds the motor controller.
I am getting second thoughts about the heater. It is made from an ordinary steel pipe and it is far from stainless. A couple of days after I had tested the function and watertightness of the heater I emptied it of the last remaining water. Out came rust-brown water. I am not sure I want to get all that rusty water into the heat exchanger in the ACC even though engine coolant is normally corrosion protective. Maybe I will make a new one out of aluminum instead...

The heater (the black cylinder)

It's a tight space
 The wires for the heater goes to the SSR (Solid State Relay) box which will control on/off of the three heating elements as commanded by the Arduino.
More connections go onto the front battery box

The SSRs for the heater...

... connected nicely. Only the control signal from the Arduino remaining.

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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 21, 2014 at 10:45 AM

    Hej!

    Thank you for your superb blog! I am in the process of planning for a conversion myself, and as I'm leaning towards A2, it was wonderful to read about your experience in working with the Audi.

    Keep up the good work and motivation, it will shortly pay off when you get behind the wheel for the first time!

    With friendly regards,
    Janne
    Finland

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  2. truecyborgOctober 21, 2014 at 12:35 PM

    Hej Janne,
    Thanks for the nice words!
    I will be glad to help you if you decide to convert an A2.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousOctober 21, 2014 at 7:43 PM

    Tjäna,

    That's great to hear! I've been pondering about the adapter plate as it should be a precise fit and I don't have a machining shop readily available. Nice to find out that someone has already came up with a solution to that question too. :)

    We have outrageous car taxes at this side of the Baltic Sea, but in turn I was surprised of the ridiculous transmission and brake modifications that are required in Sweden. I guess it's a lose-lose situation... But the rear discs do obviously make a difference.

    I am mechanically quite inclined, but the can bus hacking and whatnot is going to be a challenge. The Audi ECU communicates with the instrument cluster and quite a lot of calculations the car does are performed in the cluster itself - at least on my A6. Therefore it is likely that they can not be separated even though there is no ICE remaining, as e.g. immobilizer (if installed) would then have warning lights flashing on the cluster since the cluster and ECU are paired. Disabling the system is a b*itch and requires serious hacking skills that I do not possess. I'd also like the instruments to work so that tach would indicate amps and fuel gauge the remaining usable pack capacity, but am totally lost as how to convert shunt sensing to actual reading. It would be nice to maintain the OEM looks of the cockpit apart from some EV necessities such as BMS.

    Many electronic modules would need to be disabled at ECU to prevent the massive amount of error codes that the OBD would produce without the non-existing ICE components. At the same time other modules are vital in maintaining minimum certification and inspection minimums, as for example the airbag self diagnostics and indication.

    I'm still in pretty shallow waters as I am still in the evaluation phase. Audi A2 is probably one of the nicest cars for this purpose as far as the usability and looks go. After all it was originally built to be a low-energy vehicle in the first place. But it sure has it's drawbacks concidering the installation space available and special tools and skills needed for aluminium welding. It's a blast to see how you have overcame these obstacles, as if following a "electrifying your A2" -handbook! :)

    Battery pack is still my no.1 worry, as it represents the highest single cost and also the most limiting factor as far as performance or endurance are concerned. Ideally, the batteries should be mounted together as in the Volt or Tesla to keep them in balance both temperature- and resistancewise, but this is hardly ever possible in conversions if not using a flat-bed truck or something otherwise un-ideal for an EV.

    There sure are many things out there to make compromises of!

    Med vänliga hälsningar,
    Janne

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    Replies
    1. truecyborgJuly 8, 2015 at 8:52 AM

      Hi Janne,

      My apologies for replying so late to your post. I haven't touched the car nor the blog for the whole winter.
      It seems that the instrument cluster on the A2 is quite self contained and doesn't worry much about there not being an ECU in the car. Maybe it is because it is the ECU that produces many of the error messages and the cluster that displays them. I think it would be harder to keep the ECU without the engine. That would produce lots of errors. The immobilizer seems to implemented in the cluster sending messages to the ECU and not the other way around. Since I use the correct ignition key, the immobiizer has nothing to complain about. I guess the same is the case for many other functions, perhaps the airbag since I do not get any fault indications on them either.
      As I think I have mentioned in an earlier post I did get an error indication on the oil level and pressure gauge that is connected directly from the engine to the cluster. But, now I am emulating that sensor in the EVCU (my home built, arduino based EV Control Unit) so the cluster is happy about that. I only have one remaining error indication in the instrument cluster and that is for the brakes. That might only be a faulty ABS sensor though.
      Anyway, I am confident that I will get rid of all error indications in the instrument cluster without the ECU. I would be happy to share the ECU hardware implementation and software with anyone who wishes to go down on this path too. Maybe that will be a future post here.
      Since I am controlling the tach in software on the EVCU I think it would be possible to switch between displaying the RPM and the current. As you mention, you have to solve the problem with the current shunt to do that, but that you have to do anyway in order to count amp hours when charging and discharging.
      You mention aluminum welding as a skill needed for converting an aluminum car. I don't weld on the car. I believe that is very hazardous since it might compromize the strength of the frame. Instead I use glue and rivets. The only welded piece of aluminum in the car are the battery boxes which I had a professional welder do for me.
      I can only agree on the challenge with the available installation space. Especially the engine compartment is so small! Instead, there is plenty of available space in the rear for the batteries.

      / Peter

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  4. UnknownNovember 28, 2014 at 7:31 AM

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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