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.

A weekend with mostly head scratching

This weekend I was mostly scratching my head trying to figure out where to mount everything. There is not a lot of space in the tiny engine compartment of the Audi A2.
Anyway, I manage to squeeze in the box with the SSRs for the heating. It mounts on the front battery box, just next to the main brake cylinder. The original lid for the box will not fit so I will have to make a narrower lid from a piece of plastic. The SSRs are mouted on heatsinks that are glued to the connection box. It is the heatsinks that are bolted to the battery box so in fact the connection box is mounted to the SSRs and not the other way around.

The box with the heater SSRs just below the brake cylinder

Closeup of the SSRs

The Meanwell  DC/DC doesn't have any real mount points so I fabricated a mount by gluing on aluminum angle bars which will be bolted to the front of the battery box. I managed to glue it to the wrong side first but I realized that before the glue was dry ;)
According to its specs the glu has a shear strength of 12 N/mm2 so this mount, which is about 4 000 mm2, should withstand 48 kN. Since the DC/DC weighs about 3 kg, the mount will stand for 16 000 m/s2 or 1 600 g. I think it will hold!

 

Glue residue on top of the DC/DC

The stock Audi A2 150A battery fuse fits perfectly on the Meanwell.

The 150A fuse the used to be mounted directly on the 12V battery

I mounted some protective tubes for the cables to the motor controller. The top tube contains the brake lights cable (that turns the motor off if the brake pedal is pressed) and the ethernet cable to the controller. The bottom tube is yet to be filled with lots of stuff. I have ordered shielded cables to use for the throttle and tachometer so they won't. pick up noice from the controller.

The Soliton motor controller monted below the battery box and in front of the motor

I test mounted the front to see how much (little) space there is. There is some space to the right of the controller, in front of the transmission. There the charger will go. Note the red Sigg bottle to the left which is the vacuum container for the brake booster.