Honda VF500 Interceptor Electric Conversion: Electriceptor

Shelina Moreda Pics

SuperTango — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:57:37 +0000

So, during the TTXGP/e-Power race at Laguna Seca in 2011, I took a bunch of photos of the various teams and riders. I’m going to put some of them up here. First up is Shelina Moreda from the eCRP team. She is a local (from northern california) racer who performed well, and is just as hot as her bike.

Speed Test!

SuperTango — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 20:22:23 +0000

Hey folks, i did a max speed test on the bike about a month ago. Here’s a pic from it:

Speed Test!

And also a video:

72 mph on the GPS! 75 on the spedometer!

Talk to EAASV

SuperTango — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:14:39 +0000

At last month’s Electric Automobile Association of Silicon Valley (http://www.eaasv.org) meeting, I offered to give a talk about my build at some point. They asked me to give a talk at this month’s meeting which was this past weekend. I wasn’t sure how long it’d go, and was somewhat scared that i’d get up there and have nothing to talk about. Well, i was a little bit wrong as the talk went almost 55 minutes. The group is great since they’re obviously of like minds, and some are very technical so there were lots of good questions.

Also in attendance was Mr. Lightning Motorcycles: Richard Hatfield, just 3 days off of his team’s record breaking land speed record for an elmoto at 218 mph! (Video here of a run that’s only 216 mph).

I recorded the talk and put it up on youtube:

TTXGP Laguna Seca Race Day!

SuperTango — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:34:21 +0000

Here’s the next set of photos from TTXGP Laguna Seca: Race Day!

I’ll post more about the experience and the race later, but here’s the pics first!

TTXGP Laguna Seca Practice Rounds (Saturday)

SuperTango — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 07:13:19 +0000

I volunteered to shoot photos again for Azhar and Rupal from the TTXGP at the Laguna Seca race. Rupal was able to get me media credentials, so I spent saturday at the track mainly hiking all over the place trying to find good places to shoot from. Mainly i practiced with the gassers, but got some good shots during the TTXGP/FIM round as well. Here they are.

The Mission bike is FAST. Best lap of 1:31, which is faster than some of the 600 bikes, and less than 10 seconds behind the fastest 600 lap.

So here are some pics.

TTXGP 2011: Infineon Raceway Photos

SuperTango — Mon, 16 May 2011 05:57:08 +0000

Hey folks, so lots has happened since i blogged last. For one, i had my elmoto painted and have been working furiously to get it done in time to show for this past weekend’s TTXGP race. I wasn’t racing of course, but wanted to bring it to the race to show to the other elmoto.net folks. I’ll post more soon about the troubles i’ve been having, but i wanted to get a post up with some of the pics that I was able to get during the day.

Thanks to Azhar, Rupal, and the TTXGP, i was able to get a photographer’s pass to the race. This let me get trackside access to take photoss. I agreed to let them have the photos i took in exchange. This was an awesome deal as it was a total blast to get so close and take photos.

So without further ado…

OMG…First (Franken)ride!

SuperTango — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 06:24:13 +0000

Hell yeah!

I got the bike back from GPSports on friday. Actually, it was ready earlier than that, but i wasn’t able to get back to the shop to pick it up until friday.

Batteries and frame (and working brakes!) after coming home from the shop.

Bike with the new LEAF in the background! All Electric baby!

After getting it home, i decided to get a test (aka frankenride…which is were the important parts are installed, but it doesn’t look good and things may move). It didn’t take that long since the wiring harness is pretty easy to setup.

I attached all of the lights and the license plate on saturday night, and was able to take it for a test ride today!

Here’s a video…

As for first thoughts, (other than “hell yeah!”) I thought i was having a voltage sag issue, but actually, i think it may be an issue with the LVC timeout on the MiniBMS. I think the LVC is tripping very quickly (almost instantaneously) when the voltage sags on the cells.

I talked to dimitri (maker of the MiniBMS) and he said the trim-pot should be configured so that it takes 4-5 seconds. I should probably get a voltage meter or hookup the CellLogs that i have to ensure that this is the case.

The other thought is that the motor is fairly noisy, especially when accelerating. Back in January of 2010, i sent to visit Mark at EnerTrac, and got to ride his Lifan. I remember the motor being somewhat noisy, but i had forgotten about that. It’s still more quiet than a gas engine, but it’s louder than expected/remembered. There may be some loose parts on my frame that contribute to this, so maybe when i get the whole thing built for real, some of the noise will go away.

Thanks for reading!

Bah…brakes

SuperTango — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:52:07 +0000

So, last week, i was able to put new brake rotors and pads on all three of the brakes (the bike has 2 front discs and 1 rear) bled the systems, and thought i had everything up to snuff.

New Front discs and pads

Unfortunately, after i got everything done, they didn’t work properly. They were sticking closed… I looked on the net and asked around and it’s probably one of a couple of things:

Sticky seals or O-rings in the brake caliper.
A clogged or bad master cylinder (something about a release valve that may be clogged or jammed)
bad brake lines.

Being that it could be a bunch of different things, i decided to take the bike to a shop. Finding a place that will work on the bike has been a bit difficult. There’s a shop local in Mountain View that has a blanket “we won’t work on any bike that’s older than 15 years old” (the donor bike is an 85, so that’s a bit past their cutoff). Other places said they won’t work on the bike unless they order and install the discs and pads (which i already did).

So i ended up talking to Dave at GP Sports in Santa Clara (http://www.gpsportsonline.com). He was super cool and said they could deal with my bike no problem (especially since this was a pretty stock component). I took it to them on monday and they’re going to have it done for me today.

Once i get it back, i should be able to get a frankenride going pretty quick.

More Wiring Diagrams

SuperTango — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:38:34 +0000

Well, there’s been more wiring diagram stuff going on since last night. Turns out that I do have an ElCon charger (well…sort of. Elcon chargers are a rebranded version of a charger that’s made by some unknown corporation. Although mine doesn’t say elcon, that’s what it is).

In any case, the elcon chargers have a bms control cable, so there’s no reason to use the external AC high current relay to shut the charger off.

I checked it out and shorting the two “pigtail” wires (i have the two wire pigtail bms control wire version), allows the charger to work.

So this became v1.15:

v1.15

Then, i decided to change the diagram for the controller J1 and J2 wires to reflect a bit more how it’s actually laid out instead of listing each wire in order.

v1.16

So that’s where we are now. Everything seems to be working! Woohoo!

Wiring Diagrams

SuperTango — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 06:47:25 +0000

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the wiring of the bike. Originally, i was thinking about how the main traction pack wiring was going to work (how each of the sets of cells would hook up to each other), and came up with this:

First wiring diagram

However, once i started down this path, i started trying to figure out where more and more of the parts would go. Mainly, i wanted to do this because although I’ve tinkered with some electrical appliances and whatnot, i’ve never worked with this much electricity in terms of voltage nor amperage. So, i’ve got a healthy amount of fear (hopefully enough) about working with this stuff. As i keep telling myself as i’m working around the batteries “this crap can kill you…so be careful”.

Seriously.

In any case, I drew some diagrams on paper, but it wasn’t working out very well. So, around september, i started laying out all of the pieces of the project as best as i could in a drawing program. The first “real” diagram is shown here:

v1.1: The first version of the "real" wiring diagram.

Every time i figured out a bit more, i’d update the diagram… Here’s version 1.2, which has separate DC/DC converters:

v1.2: separate DC/DC converters

I sent these diagrams off to Dimitri from MiniBMS, Mark from EnerTrac, and Kelly Controllers. Each of them had some input that caused some things to change, so i kept updating the diagrams.

V1.3 was after Dimitri told me that running the MiniBMS control board off of 24V would kill it, and also that I didn’t need to run it off the 24V circuit since everything is isolated.

v1.3

V1.4 is from another set of comments from Dimitri where he pointed out that the tyco contactor doesn’t need a diode and that the 12V/24V relay was wired wrong.

v1.4

V1.7: I learned about the “main contactor driver” on the controller, so decided to try to have all of the switches that drive the contactor run off of that. Also added some information about using Anderson Powerpoles to control the charger/BMS interaction.

v1.7

v1.11: figured out that I can use the handlebar run switch to turn the entire 24V system on and off. Also learned that the “main contactor driver” (Pin J1-3) on the controller is not a powered pin…it’s actually a GND pin that’s closed when the controller is running properly, but open when there is a controller fault.

v1.11

v1.13: figured out new way to wire the charger. In this version, instead of trying to break open and split the hot wire on the charger’s power cable, i’ve got the charger plugged into a normal looking inlet that’s mounted on the bike. Next to that inlet is a male plug also mounted to the bike that is connected to the house power via an extension cord. The relay is wired between those two plugs. The benefit of this design is that i didn’t have to crack open the AC power cord on the charger. The down side is that it seems odd to be running so much stuff into the bike when trying to charge.

i also had an issue with having all of the emergency disconnects attached to the contactor, because even when the contactor is disengaged, there is still that 1KOhm resistor that spans the contactor poles…that allows some current to flow to the controller. If you disengage the contactor and wait a few seconds and then twist the throttle, the wheel will spin a bit (less than 1/4 of a turn). This can be disconcerting and also dangerous. i moved the inertia switch to the 12V/24V relay so when tripped, it will shut off everything so turning the throttle will not make the wheel spin.

v1.13

While i was actually wiring up the charger plug box (the male and female power next to one another), i noticed that i could make it even simpler by moving the BMS AC high current relay off of the bike. Then the only wires that need to go into and out of the bike are the relay control wires and the actual charge wires. This became v1.14.

v1.14

Now, the only problem is that the charger isn’t working properly. Whenever i plug it in, it always says (via the diagnostic LED, that the battery is not connected).

After doing a bit of research on this tonight, i found someone on the DIYElectricCar forums who is having the same problem. There have been some suggestions, and i’m going to try some of them. Looks like my charger may actually be the same as an ElCon (i bought it as a no-name charger), so i may have to do some wiring. If this works, it will mean i don’t have to use the relay at all.

I’m sure there will be more wiring adventures, and i’ll post more pics about how it actually is wired. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading.