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Jimmy's Electric Adventures

J1000

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Morrison, CO
@DouglasVB Yep a huge amount of the restoration/classic car economy is going to be transformed into EV conversions. Personally, I don't think it's going to make sense to convert a commuter car to EV for financial reasons for at least several years. Right now, though, converting a classic car to EV is definitely cheaper in a lot of cases than rebuilding the original motor for a lot of vehicles. It's not like a Mini Truck is ever going to break down but if the engine blew for some reason it might make sense to do a conversion at that point, but not while it's a running vehicle.

I bought an entire wrecked Nissan Leaf for $3500 and that got me a 24kwh battery, motor, inverter, chargers, etc, etc. I'm going to buy another Leaf hopefully a few years newer and use the battery out of that in my Land Cruiser. I could have used my current Leaf battery pack but its from a 2013 and I measured the capacity at only 17kwh so it's degraded quite a bit. That amount of capacity is perfect for the Electrek but a little low for the LC. I am going to try and buy a 30kwh 2015+ Leaf next and use that battery in the LC. Salvaged Leafs and Fiat 500es are the most cost effective method to get lithium batteries with serious capacity, but you have to dissemble yourself. So far I have paid back about 1/2 of what the Leaf cost me by parting it out. I'm hoping to break even on the next one by selling the motor/inverter etc too.

Yes, I really would like to make this a business. I think once I get my LC running I'll be able to use it as an example and look for my first customer.
 

J1000

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Morrison, CO
Anyone want to help me re-grease and re-boot my Electrek's CVs? Then we can install them and take it around the block!

Also if anyone is interested in pulling the ECU from the Land Cruiser or installing a VW e-pedal I would appreciate it! These are a couple small jobs that would help me big time!

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DouglasVB

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People's Soviet Socialist Republic of California,

J1000

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1,557
Location
Morrison, CO
Does anyone have any mig welding gas I can borrow? I was going to do a bunch of welding on the LC this weekend but I just realized I'm out of gas and the supply place is closed until Monday, possibly Tuesday. I will replace whatever I use and then some!
 

IoN6

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Sep 2, 2019
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Arvada
@rover67 @IoN6 yes the motor will be separate. Since it spins to 10,000rpm I cannot get the tolerances close enough and everything lined up well enough to mount it directly. A flexible driveshaft will give me a little more leeway.

The steel mount is actually very stiff even with just tack welds. All of the flex is in the rubber pieces. New rubber and adding a little angle to each so that they don't jiggle together should help a lot.

Wait, the electric motor goes up to 10,000 RPM? Are you going to limit that to something that more resembles a typical gasser?
 

J1000

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Morrison, CO
Wait, the electric motor goes up to 10,000 RPM? Are you going to limit that to something that more resembles a typical gasser?
That's what the Blackbox-C doubler is for. It has a 2.7:1 reduction to bring that 10k RPM down to normal RPMs. At 10,000 RPM it should go about 75 MPH.
 

IoN6

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Figured that was the plan, looked at their site but did not see any max RPM. Assume they confirmed it can handle that?
 

J1000

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Morrison, CO
Figured that was the plan, looked at their site but did not see any max RPM. Assume they confirmed it can handle that?
Haha funny story! No, they didn't confirm they actually said they hold no responsibility for anything going wrong if used on an EV conversion and they didn't want any part of it. Max speed is all theoretical I plan to work up to it bit by bit. The goal of this truck is trails at 35mph or less and I need the reduction for that and that's also well within the Blackboxes design spec. I will use the 80's transmission cooler and a pump and t-stat to keep it cooled also.
 

J1000

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Morrison, CO
New episode up!



I am putting out the call again for help! Any time you would like to help I can use it. If you want to see these projects succeed and are interested I urge you to come check it out. I am really close to making some big breakthroughs but need help if I'm going to get things rolling before snow hits the ground.
 

J1000

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Oct 11, 2018
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Location
Morrison, CO
I have gotten enough views to unloack my custom URL! Now you can video my channel directly at: https://www.youtube.com/c/UniqueMobility

@DomOfTheDead and @MonPetiteShoe kicked butt over the weekend and we got my chargers and inverter mounted. Today I got the charge plugs mounted. Next steps are wiring.

I also dropped off my shafts with Englewood Driveshaft I hopefully will have a custom driveshaft made in the next few weeks!

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Inverter on the passenger side, Chargers on the driver side.

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Ran the charge ports up through some spaces and mounted just behind the grill. I want to have some sort of hinge to open a door in the grill and expose the charge ports:

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Plug in on the front just like the Nissan LEAF!
 

HDavis

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Feb 13, 2019
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DouglasVB

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