Hi people,
I'd add pictures, but I don't know how from my free photobucket account. Maybe I need some other picture sharing service? If you have ideas, that would be cool.
I've done lots of EV builds or helped other people with their EV builds. I've just never shared before in a forum. I usually take something worthy of upgrading (decent frame) and then work on the things that can make it into a good performing EV. I have a pretty good handle on how to build EVa, rewind motors, mess with electronics, build battery packs and so on. Most of the time I know what I am doing, but there are exceptions sometimes.
I found this Zap scooter on Craigslist and it's in pretty good condition. I bought it from a lady for $400. The SLA batteries were dead so there was some risk there might be problems with it. The worst damage on it was the rear side panes where the side lights mounted were broken. I had a wrecked Zap scooter a few years ago that I got for $50. It was thoroughly wrecked and destroyed. All the plastic cowlings were destroyed from who knows what abuse. Lights were broken or missing and someone had blown up the 12v system in it. I knew the motor was 12 phases and taking it apart, I saw how large the stator was so I had a good idea that it would be pretty strong if over watted. Too bad the factory controller is so tepid! The motor can handle lots of wattage that the factory controllers can't deliver to it!
This is soon after I got it. I took off the rear side panels to repair them.
Anyway, that wrecked Zap, I kept the motor and controller and various things that were salvageable. The rest went to the landfill.
This Zap scooter is in really good shape so it's getting upgrades in steps. I had some multistar 10,000mah packs that I made into 16S4P which is close enough to the 62v the SLA's made. At full charge I was seeing 66v on the LIPOs, but the factory controller didn't seem to have problems with a little too much voltage. I was happy to see that the scooter was 100% working and rode around about 50 miles on it as is. It was pretty boring since the scooter got to maybe 42 mile per hour and was super slow at getting there. One time going down a steep hill I saw 47 mph after going about a half mile down that hill. Going up the other side, the scooter quickly dropped off to 25 or 30 mph. Super duper lame!
I wanted 82v and planned on using 2 of whatever identical controllers I had on hand. I found out about Nucular controllers whatever that was...2 years ago and have bought 3 24 fet and 3 12 fet controllers. They were what I had that was 2 of the same controller. I was thinking maybe the 6 phase hubmotor might be capable of a lot more than 6kw like the 12 fet Nuc controllers can handle. I had one 24 fet already in an EV and another waiting to get used. That other EV lost it's controller so I could put 2 24 fet controllers on the Zap.
Like I said, I have done a lot of builds and helped others with them too. I have a lot of batteries from various sources and projects. I had an extended range Prius battery pack. It's filled with A123 LIFE cells which are 2500mah each. The pack has barely any miles on it so its cells were practically new. Under the floor of the scooter is a large space so I made a LIFE pack and got in 24S5P in the space...not too bad! It's only about 12.5Ah which is a bit smallish for capacity. The upside is it cost me $200 to build and that is almost 100% the cost I paid for the extended range pack from the grandma that didn't know what it was. I have a spot welder so after taking many of the modules apart to get the cells, I spot welded the cells together into a battery pack and then used an ANT BMS to manage it.
Those 10,000 multistar packs had friends from old EV builds or whatever. I took apart all those old battery packs down to the individual 4S packs inside, tested each one and to my surprise, most were still doing close to 10,000mah each. Any lower capacity packs got spread spread across the new 20S, 82v pack I made from them so that they were not all in parallel. I have them on another smart BMS in 20S4P. The BMS is saying I'm getting about 32Ah instead of 40Ah...oh well.
Then I had a bunch of LTO pouch cells...yeah LTO...not that great for charge density! I thought those LIFE cells were pretty pathetic for capacity, but the LTO cells are even worse! They have really good life cycles and for a forklift in a fridgid warehouse should do well in the cold. They are left overs from a forklift rebuild so who cares since they cost me nothing. I scrounged up an LTO capable BMS for them. I'm not sure of capacity since the BMS doesn't say so I'm trusting the cell specs or 11Ah. This is 28S1P. The cell voltages are a bit high as 2.8v per cell is really the upper limit and I'm running them at 2.92v each. So far no cells have bulged and I was unable to fit a 29th cell in the space. I don't really care, the cells were free to me and let's face it, they are LTO which takes abuse nicely! At least they got me a bit more capacity and filled the last space I had for batteries on the scooter.
So then now I had 3 packs capable of running at 82v, each on it's own chemistry specific BMS in parallel. This seems like a bad idea, but so far it has worked out OK as will be seen soon. At max power right now I am seeing 500 battery amps peak.
I like signals at the controller, not at the LCD like Nucular controllers can do. This lets me plug in any controller and there is no special wiring considerations to account for. I forget where I read about it, but some clever guy was using the exact same connectors on all his controllers, EV's and battery packs and wired identically to those connectors for everything. He used the same wiring scheme on his motors too. No idea who that was, but I thought it was a good idea and even found the same connectors he used and have in my own way copied him. Any EV I build or help build gets my "Standard" set of connectors and wired identically.
The dual 24 fet Nucualr controllers: I brought out the control signals in a cable that ends in an 8 pin IP68 connector. This is on both controllers. I can plug in the same throttle, regen throttle, 3 speeds, cruise and reverse signals into either controller individually if I need to. Both controllers use a 6 pin IP 68 connector for halls and temp and another for the canbus cable signals. The factory connectors on Nucualar controllers are not water proof or secure so they got cut off and replaced. I want connections to be as secure as possible. Another thing I don't like about the Nucualr controllers is the ring terminals for the motor phases. The battery wires use 6mm bullets which are really good connectors. I put them on the phase wires too exactly like I do on everything.
6 phase hub motor: I'm not a big fan of hub motors in general, but I have installed them for others and they do OK. This hub motor at 65mm tall on the magnets and stator was going to be pretty strong so I went ahead and used it. I'm not fond of 10" tires, but that's the rim on the motor...what can you do? I got a new set of Kenda tires as they ones on the scooter are something like 11 years old. Since I had the motor off the scooter to bench test with the 2 Nucular controllers, I replaced the halls, installed 2 PTC 10K temp sensors and opened up the motor shell. One of the things I don;t like about hub motors is the nearly total lack of cooling. I over watt everything and after riding around on 3kw, I knew closed up, there was a good chance the motor would get hot when running at higher wattage levels. The phase wires got 6mm bullets and the new halls and temps got connected to a 6 pin IP68 connector and wired exactly like I do on everything. THe motor got cleaned inside and out and then the magnet ring got painted with electrical paint to protect hem from possibly rusting. The motor end plates have 8 slots in them for venting. I put in new bearings too since one of the original ones was "crunchy" inside. No point in using new axle seals with the motor opened up. Opened up and 2 temp sensors to confirm with, I see the motor get to 110-120C.
I couldn't find a DC breaker with the amp capability I thought I might see so I used 2 breakers. One for each controller. They are optifuse 200 amp breakers. This isn't as good as the controller limits, but I was not expecting to see more than 200 amps per controller so I was not worried about it too much. The upside is that the entire scooter is almost entirely redundant now. I have 3 battery packs. Lose one and I keep going at lower amperage off the other 2 packs. Lose a controller or half the motor, turn off the breaker for that half and run solely from the other half/ The only non-redundant parts are the throttle and regen throttle and other control signals. THe factory DC-DC converter is rated for 60v to my surprise. It seemed to work fine at 66v. But I thought there was no way it would survive 82v so it got replaced with one good up to 90v and 25 amps. When I hooked up the 82v packs to the scooter electrical, the factory battery meter was something I had forgotten about. It soon died...oops! Oh well the Nucular LCD shows pack voltage instead of a dumb needle swing anyway.
After much time spent getting wiring, connectors and what not set up and rechecked several times, I put it all together in the scooter and started testing as a complete system. I did find a few problems to work out before I could go for a ride, but nothing major and no explosions or melted wires. I reused the scooter electrical system for the 12v lights and horn, but everything else got all new wiring. All the incandescent bulbs got replaced with LEDs including the halogen headlight.
Once I was satisifed that everything seemed like it was working OK, I took it for a ride. I had no idea what to expect from this hub motor so I started on my low speed setting and 75 phase amps. This was somewhat stronger than the factory controller setup and top speed was now 45 on level pavement. I soon wanted to try medium which set to 75% speed and 150 phase amps. I was sure that the amps would be too much for the motor, but it wasn't. The scooter topped out at 50 and accelerated nicely. After getting used to the scooter and how it handled, I finally tried my high speed setting which was 200 phase amps and 100% speed. I got a little better than 55mph which was disappointing. Acceleration was nice! I had read somewhere that this motor has 16kv. At 82v, that should have gotten me about 62-64mph. I think 16kv is wrong. I then turned on field weakening to 130% and that got me to 65 no problem. First time at this amperage was pretty thrilling as the motor pulled quite well and the top speed on this scooter was what I was expecting at 100% speed. I've since tweaked a bit more and checkened out at 70 mph and 230 phase amps.
All that motor torque on the axle flats created issues. A few days ago I discovered that the factory torque arms were spreading and about to fail completely. THe flats in the drop outs are also getting stretched. What got me to look into this was an odd clunking sound I would hear when I went to accelerate or use regen. The axle was rotating back and forth instead of staying put. I have bought some 4140 steel so I can machine stronger torque arms. I think that will hold the motor torque.
I have discovered another problem. At full acceleration on high, I see peaks of 250 battery amps and 309 phase amps per controller. This is at the upper limits of the combined battery packs. There is a stuttering thing that happens when I crank the throttle wide open at full power. I think maybe my BMS's are going into overload and shutting off. Maybe the breakers are opening their contacts, but never quite pop open? I still have to find out what this is about.
Last Saturday, I did 2 charges. The first one was just to test out my latest controller settings at max power. As long as I stay under that stuttering level, I get pretty good acceleration. I have not measured it yet, but I have had fast cars and I know what a bike feels like accelerating. I think I'm currently at about 0-60 mph in 5 seconds or less. No idea what it will be like once I overcome that stuttering and have solid torque arms on the motor since I can't currently find out. The second charge was to see how far I got on a charge. I want 70 miles or better so I can commute to work and home on a single charge. On my medium setting, I'm seeing 48 miles. On low...well who cares as I won't be using that very much if ever myself. High and medium both tell me the same thing. Yank out that brand new LTO pack and replace it with a better battery tech and probably pull the LIFE pack too. I have a lot of LION cells that I was trying to not use, but it seems that is exactly what I need to use in the scooter to get the range I need.
I'd add pictures, but I don't know how from my free photobucket account. Maybe I need some other picture sharing service? If you have ideas, that would be cool.
I've done lots of EV builds or helped other people with their EV builds. I've just never shared before in a forum. I usually take something worthy of upgrading (decent frame) and then work on the things that can make it into a good performing EV. I have a pretty good handle on how to build EVa, rewind motors, mess with electronics, build battery packs and so on. Most of the time I know what I am doing, but there are exceptions sometimes.
I found this Zap scooter on Craigslist and it's in pretty good condition. I bought it from a lady for $400. The SLA batteries were dead so there was some risk there might be problems with it. The worst damage on it was the rear side panes where the side lights mounted were broken. I had a wrecked Zap scooter a few years ago that I got for $50. It was thoroughly wrecked and destroyed. All the plastic cowlings were destroyed from who knows what abuse. Lights were broken or missing and someone had blown up the 12v system in it. I knew the motor was 12 phases and taking it apart, I saw how large the stator was so I had a good idea that it would be pretty strong if over watted. Too bad the factory controller is so tepid! The motor can handle lots of wattage that the factory controllers can't deliver to it!
This is soon after I got it. I took off the rear side panels to repair them.
Anyway, that wrecked Zap, I kept the motor and controller and various things that were salvageable. The rest went to the landfill.
This Zap scooter is in really good shape so it's getting upgrades in steps. I had some multistar 10,000mah packs that I made into 16S4P which is close enough to the 62v the SLA's made. At full charge I was seeing 66v on the LIPOs, but the factory controller didn't seem to have problems with a little too much voltage. I was happy to see that the scooter was 100% working and rode around about 50 miles on it as is. It was pretty boring since the scooter got to maybe 42 mile per hour and was super slow at getting there. One time going down a steep hill I saw 47 mph after going about a half mile down that hill. Going up the other side, the scooter quickly dropped off to 25 or 30 mph. Super duper lame!
I wanted 82v and planned on using 2 of whatever identical controllers I had on hand. I found out about Nucular controllers whatever that was...2 years ago and have bought 3 24 fet and 3 12 fet controllers. They were what I had that was 2 of the same controller. I was thinking maybe the 6 phase hubmotor might be capable of a lot more than 6kw like the 12 fet Nuc controllers can handle. I had one 24 fet already in an EV and another waiting to get used. That other EV lost it's controller so I could put 2 24 fet controllers on the Zap.
Like I said, I have done a lot of builds and helped others with them too. I have a lot of batteries from various sources and projects. I had an extended range Prius battery pack. It's filled with A123 LIFE cells which are 2500mah each. The pack has barely any miles on it so its cells were practically new. Under the floor of the scooter is a large space so I made a LIFE pack and got in 24S5P in the space...not too bad! It's only about 12.5Ah which is a bit smallish for capacity. The upside is it cost me $200 to build and that is almost 100% the cost I paid for the extended range pack from the grandma that didn't know what it was. I have a spot welder so after taking many of the modules apart to get the cells, I spot welded the cells together into a battery pack and then used an ANT BMS to manage it.
Those 10,000 multistar packs had friends from old EV builds or whatever. I took apart all those old battery packs down to the individual 4S packs inside, tested each one and to my surprise, most were still doing close to 10,000mah each. Any lower capacity packs got spread spread across the new 20S, 82v pack I made from them so that they were not all in parallel. I have them on another smart BMS in 20S4P. The BMS is saying I'm getting about 32Ah instead of 40Ah...oh well.
Then I had a bunch of LTO pouch cells...yeah LTO...not that great for charge density! I thought those LIFE cells were pretty pathetic for capacity, but the LTO cells are even worse! They have really good life cycles and for a forklift in a fridgid warehouse should do well in the cold. They are left overs from a forklift rebuild so who cares since they cost me nothing. I scrounged up an LTO capable BMS for them. I'm not sure of capacity since the BMS doesn't say so I'm trusting the cell specs or 11Ah. This is 28S1P. The cell voltages are a bit high as 2.8v per cell is really the upper limit and I'm running them at 2.92v each. So far no cells have bulged and I was unable to fit a 29th cell in the space. I don't really care, the cells were free to me and let's face it, they are LTO which takes abuse nicely! At least they got me a bit more capacity and filled the last space I had for batteries on the scooter.
So then now I had 3 packs capable of running at 82v, each on it's own chemistry specific BMS in parallel. This seems like a bad idea, but so far it has worked out OK as will be seen soon. At max power right now I am seeing 500 battery amps peak.
I like signals at the controller, not at the LCD like Nucular controllers can do. This lets me plug in any controller and there is no special wiring considerations to account for. I forget where I read about it, but some clever guy was using the exact same connectors on all his controllers, EV's and battery packs and wired identically to those connectors for everything. He used the same wiring scheme on his motors too. No idea who that was, but I thought it was a good idea and even found the same connectors he used and have in my own way copied him. Any EV I build or help build gets my "Standard" set of connectors and wired identically.
The dual 24 fet Nucualr controllers: I brought out the control signals in a cable that ends in an 8 pin IP68 connector. This is on both controllers. I can plug in the same throttle, regen throttle, 3 speeds, cruise and reverse signals into either controller individually if I need to. Both controllers use a 6 pin IP 68 connector for halls and temp and another for the canbus cable signals. The factory connectors on Nucualar controllers are not water proof or secure so they got cut off and replaced. I want connections to be as secure as possible. Another thing I don't like about the Nucualr controllers is the ring terminals for the motor phases. The battery wires use 6mm bullets which are really good connectors. I put them on the phase wires too exactly like I do on everything.
6 phase hub motor: I'm not a big fan of hub motors in general, but I have installed them for others and they do OK. This hub motor at 65mm tall on the magnets and stator was going to be pretty strong so I went ahead and used it. I'm not fond of 10" tires, but that's the rim on the motor...what can you do? I got a new set of Kenda tires as they ones on the scooter are something like 11 years old. Since I had the motor off the scooter to bench test with the 2 Nucular controllers, I replaced the halls, installed 2 PTC 10K temp sensors and opened up the motor shell. One of the things I don;t like about hub motors is the nearly total lack of cooling. I over watt everything and after riding around on 3kw, I knew closed up, there was a good chance the motor would get hot when running at higher wattage levels. The phase wires got 6mm bullets and the new halls and temps got connected to a 6 pin IP68 connector and wired exactly like I do on everything. THe motor got cleaned inside and out and then the magnet ring got painted with electrical paint to protect hem from possibly rusting. The motor end plates have 8 slots in them for venting. I put in new bearings too since one of the original ones was "crunchy" inside. No point in using new axle seals with the motor opened up. Opened up and 2 temp sensors to confirm with, I see the motor get to 110-120C.
I couldn't find a DC breaker with the amp capability I thought I might see so I used 2 breakers. One for each controller. They are optifuse 200 amp breakers. This isn't as good as the controller limits, but I was not expecting to see more than 200 amps per controller so I was not worried about it too much. The upside is that the entire scooter is almost entirely redundant now. I have 3 battery packs. Lose one and I keep going at lower amperage off the other 2 packs. Lose a controller or half the motor, turn off the breaker for that half and run solely from the other half/ The only non-redundant parts are the throttle and regen throttle and other control signals. THe factory DC-DC converter is rated for 60v to my surprise. It seemed to work fine at 66v. But I thought there was no way it would survive 82v so it got replaced with one good up to 90v and 25 amps. When I hooked up the 82v packs to the scooter electrical, the factory battery meter was something I had forgotten about. It soon died...oops! Oh well the Nucular LCD shows pack voltage instead of a dumb needle swing anyway.
After much time spent getting wiring, connectors and what not set up and rechecked several times, I put it all together in the scooter and started testing as a complete system. I did find a few problems to work out before I could go for a ride, but nothing major and no explosions or melted wires. I reused the scooter electrical system for the 12v lights and horn, but everything else got all new wiring. All the incandescent bulbs got replaced with LEDs including the halogen headlight.
Once I was satisifed that everything seemed like it was working OK, I took it for a ride. I had no idea what to expect from this hub motor so I started on my low speed setting and 75 phase amps. This was somewhat stronger than the factory controller setup and top speed was now 45 on level pavement. I soon wanted to try medium which set to 75% speed and 150 phase amps. I was sure that the amps would be too much for the motor, but it wasn't. The scooter topped out at 50 and accelerated nicely. After getting used to the scooter and how it handled, I finally tried my high speed setting which was 200 phase amps and 100% speed. I got a little better than 55mph which was disappointing. Acceleration was nice! I had read somewhere that this motor has 16kv. At 82v, that should have gotten me about 62-64mph. I think 16kv is wrong. I then turned on field weakening to 130% and that got me to 65 no problem. First time at this amperage was pretty thrilling as the motor pulled quite well and the top speed on this scooter was what I was expecting at 100% speed. I've since tweaked a bit more and checkened out at 70 mph and 230 phase amps.
All that motor torque on the axle flats created issues. A few days ago I discovered that the factory torque arms were spreading and about to fail completely. THe flats in the drop outs are also getting stretched. What got me to look into this was an odd clunking sound I would hear when I went to accelerate or use regen. The axle was rotating back and forth instead of staying put. I have bought some 4140 steel so I can machine stronger torque arms. I think that will hold the motor torque.
I have discovered another problem. At full acceleration on high, I see peaks of 250 battery amps and 309 phase amps per controller. This is at the upper limits of the combined battery packs. There is a stuttering thing that happens when I crank the throttle wide open at full power. I think maybe my BMS's are going into overload and shutting off. Maybe the breakers are opening their contacts, but never quite pop open? I still have to find out what this is about.
Last Saturday, I did 2 charges. The first one was just to test out my latest controller settings at max power. As long as I stay under that stuttering level, I get pretty good acceleration. I have not measured it yet, but I have had fast cars and I know what a bike feels like accelerating. I think I'm currently at about 0-60 mph in 5 seconds or less. No idea what it will be like once I overcome that stuttering and have solid torque arms on the motor since I can't currently find out. The second charge was to see how far I got on a charge. I want 70 miles or better so I can commute to work and home on a single charge. On my medium setting, I'm seeing 48 miles. On low...well who cares as I won't be using that very much if ever myself. High and medium both tell me the same thing. Yank out that brand new LTO pack and replace it with a better battery tech and probably pull the LIFE pack too. I have a lot of LION cells that I was trying to not use, but it seems that is exactly what I need to use in the scooter to get the range I need.
