Electric bus

I think he’s got himself into a good line of business there. We’re only at the start of the EV revolution. Great skills to have.


And yeah, some activities just require bigger hammers to ‘make it work’. Others require caution and attention to detail. We can’t all be good at everything!

 

Time for a catch up…

Let’s start with a downer… a few weeks ago I crapped myself. I fried my BMS. That’s the battery management box, kind of essential. It really knocked me when it happened. Probably wasn’t about to kill me, but when you’re fully PPE’d up with giant jelly fingers and you realise there’s a smell of burning plastic it’s a real brown pants moment.

What got to me was that I didn’t know what was happening. It obviously wasn’t supposed to happen and at the time I was at a loss. Making a mistake is one thing, but not understanding the mistake you’ve made is worse. I take the safety seriously and if I couldnt explain what had happened I shouldn’t be anywhere near it.

Worked it out though - as simple as having swapped over 2 connectors. Arseholes!

Here’s what a fried BMS looks like. It got a large amounts of volts where it didn’t expect them to be


So that needed replacing. Unfortunately you can’t get these at Screwfix. Or B+Q. Or anywhere really. Especially as I’m using a newer 60kWh battery. Most DIY conversions depend on crashed cars supplying parts and as the Leaf 60kWh version is newer, there aren’t many crashed parts available.

In the end I got another one, although it’s not quite what I needed. More on that in a bit…

All this is a level of detail I’ve not really shared here, but I thought it was important to show the pain aswell as the successes - in-line with the previous post.

I’ve also had to contend with a single weak cell, which I knew about when I bought it, and negotiated a big discount on the basis of it. Fortunately looks like I’ve been able to bring it more or less inline with the others.

So that’s a bit of the dark clouds. Standby, for some sunshine…

 

Update Part 2 (go back a post to read about me being an idiot)…



so starting to put a few miles on it. Here’s another exciting image of another public charger! Winchester InstaVolt incase you’re interested.

With all the internal panels out and no furniture you are really aware of every rattle and ding as you drive. It’s taken a few drives to start relaxing that it’s not my bolts or welding falling apart.

Did 100 miles today, mixed driving, plus 60mph when the M4 and A34 traffic allowed it.

Range? Well good question. You remember the fried BMS I mentioned? The replacement was from a 40kWh battery. Mines a 60kWh battery. What that means, is that it thinks zero is at about 100 miles of range, while I reckon the battery has 150 miles. What I have not yet had the gumption to do is go down past zero. I have no idea what’s going to happen there. Yet.

So it’s another little problemette to solve. There’s some options and I’m asking cleverer people than me what they reckon.

I think a long time ago I suggested I might get 200 miles. I guess that was optimistic. So I’ll settle for 150, if I can get it.

We’re getting closer to the point where I can move on to body work. There’s a classic VW place going to do some work, I’m hopefully popping in on Saturday for a chat.

 

our i3 has 44 kwh battery i think - most we've had out of that is about 150ish miles with some range remaining - if you get somewhere near that honestly i think that is all you need - that equates to about 2-3 hrs of driving by which time i will either need a wee or a coffee (or both). do you know what the charging time will be?

 

yeah, you’re right about all that. We’ve also got a ‘proper’ EV. The wife has just been away to Dorset for a couple of days with a mate. It’s about 90 miles there one way and incredibly she’s just got back with 90 miles still in the tank and she hasn’t charged while away! I think that’s her driving. I would have come back with less than that

As for charging, looks like I’m getting around 30kW. So in theory that’s 1 hour for 75 miles. Not as good as a new EV by a long shot and I’m still working out how it performs but I reckon most of the time it’ll only need a short top up to get back from wherever it’s been.

 

Buttons.

I need to craft myself some suitable EV control buttons. The system I’m using needs just momentary button presses to switch between the 3 modes - Drive, Neutral, Reverse. I can source suitable momentary button switches no problem, but I’d like to keep it classic VW style in looks.

If anyone has broken VW light switches or just the rubbery end piece without the switch mechanism at all and wants to donate to the cause, I’d be most grateful!

Working switches seem to be £20+ on eBay. Seems a bit much when I need at least 3 - maybe more when I think properly about the interior. And the original vw switch part I would just discard.

I could just buy the end piece, eg
https://www.coolairvw.co.uk/product...b-with-insert-type1-type2-karmann-ghia-type3/

But still seems silly when there must be hundreds sat in boxes that will never get used.

I will take the rubber round bit and mount to switches I’ll find.


Here’s my temporary solution I’ve been using so far. I think I’m thinking to mount them properly under the radio instead of in the radio slot as shown. That way they’re easily accessible without having to reach through or under the steering wheel.

 

you could maybe get an old radio with push buttons for frequency, and re-purpose those? would be a good anti-theft device too

 

Great write-up, thanks. Make sure you keep us updated as you complete the shake-down.


Oh and a tip for checking the integrity of insulated gloves - blow into them to see if they fully inflate and check for air loss.

Don't fill them with water and look for leaks.........

 

yep! That would definitely win a Darwin Award

Another good thing is to avoid wearing loose clothing as dangling zips could be fatal.

 

Maybe you should consider making /finding some stick-shift style mechanism, fitting switches there rather than push buttons..
Or just having an automatic style lever in the usual place.

 

I did think about simple paddle switches. But then liked the idea of vw style buttons, which led me to the thing above. They have to be momentary switches, that’s the only fixed item, the rest is open to ideas.

 

And the winning number is… 150! Miles range that is.

So I replaced the incorrect BMS with one that is just about (not quite, but good enough) the right one for my battery. Then, with mainly 50 - 60 mph driving, plus a passenger for half the journey, and some cargo (ikea returns and a car seat) on a warm day, that’s what I achieved. And that was right down to the wire by the time I got home.

Worked it out to be about average 2.8miles per kWh. That would be shoddy if it was a proper EV which ought to achieve somewhere between 3 and 5 miles/kWh. But dealing with the mechanical inefficiencies of bolting to the transmission, and the superb aerodynamics of a T2 it’s all good as far as I’m concerned!

What’s it like to drive?

Bloody love it

I’m in no way dissing the traditional T2 experience because I’ve had enough of them for long enough. So the roar of starting them up, and the smell of the engine is always something that will stick with me. But… I have to say, the smooth serene glide as you accelerate from zero to 60 without touching the gear stick once brings a smile to your face!

This is not something tuned for speed or performance. I have no intention of trying to win anything at Santa Pod. And I’m sure most tuned petrol engines would beat me without even trying. But based on my experience with stock 1600 and most recently 1800 engines, this is way better in terms of acceleration and driving enjoyment. For me at least.

The regen braking (if you’re not familiar, this uses the motor to slow you down before needing to use the brake pedal), makes town driving much more relaxing. A few times now, because there’s hills in my area, after I’ve gone a few miles I’ve actually got more charge than when I’ve left the house thanks to the regen sending power back into the battery. And no more bracing for a long slow climb up a hill or trying to accelerate into it to stand a chance of not causing a tail back half way up! Hills are no problem anymore.


So enough of my pontificating. Someone is bound to ask about some numbers, so here they are. And no, this isn’t about making the money back. Like all our projects that was just done for its own sake because I needed to scratch an itch. The money saved on ‘fuel’ won’t offset the investment in ‘stuff’ I bought. Although if I drove it often enough, maybe it would break even at some point. But it’s not about that for me.

Based on 150 miles of travel.

If it’s filled up from our surplus solar panel generation in summer - cost = £0

Or you could argue I could have exported that 60kWh to the electricity company, so it cost me the 10p x 60 = £6 i could have earned if I’d sold it to them instead.

Or you could say, ‘what about winter when there’s no solar’. So then I’d be filling up at night when it’s cheap with all the unused wind energy on the grid, which would be 8p x 60 = £4.80

If I needed to use a public charger you’re back into petrol price territory. So far I’ve only used them to test it works, not because I needed to. I reckon, for most events I might go to, I’ll probably only need, say 20kWh, to top up to get home if it’s outside my 150 mile range. That might cost £10 - £16. Quite steep due to my mechanical inefficiencies, but I don’t think I’ll need to do it very often.

What have I spent? I could dice this a few different ways. Bottom line about £7k.

Big ticket items -
Smashed Nissan Leaf - £1300
Bigger Leaf battery - £5000
VCU - £800
Wiring harness (I chickened out and bought a prebuilt one) - £600
Adaptor plates / coupler - £900

a surprising amount of nuts bolts, sheet metal and god knows what else, who’s counting…

Sold the 1800cc engine for £1600 which helped.

But all told, actually probably more than £7k now I think about it! So even if that 150 miles would have cost me about £50 of petrol (sound about right?), I would have to do that trip a LOT to ‘break even’! Good job I don’t care


Another important milestone comes in a couple of weeks. I’ll tell you about that in due course…


Probably showed something like this before, but this is current state of the engine / motor bay.

 

Thanks for the brilliant write ups. Its been really interesting and taught me a lot.

 

Nice result.

Thanks for sharing, I’m sure it will inspire many to go down the sparks route

 

Nice one, keep the updates coming now that you are using it - especially the niggles and reworks.

Have you done a cost comparison to handing it over to a specialist converter to do for you?

 

great write up - thanks!

 

Well there’s no comparison really, as long as I don’t include my own labour costs! Like anything time intensive, that’s what really costs when you get professionals to do their thing. They’ve got mortgages to pay like everyone else.

Professional jobs are ball park 10x the price of my DIY job. But I didn’t charge myself anything for swearing at lumps of metal through summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer!

 

That was kinda what I was getting at - just the circa cost of driving a ICE-engined van up to, say, mid Wales, then picking it up as the finished EV job of similar spec to what you've achieved yourself.

£30k, £60k ?

 

Electric Classic Cars and EDubs both, I believe, charge in the region of £70k upwards. But obviously I don’t speak for them, so anyone should contact them direct to be sure of costs. Although I think EDubs did a vid recently with prices on, so it’s in the public domain.

edit - here’s the link to their vid with prices


If you can bear to rewind this build thread there was discussion on different build approaches and costs. Might be about page 3 from memory.

 

Yep, found it - thanks.