Haven’t updated for awhile, here’s where I went.

Once I got to a certain point on this blog I wanted a better “home” for it, so I registered the domain http://electricporsche.ca all info related to the conversion as well as other information is available there.

Electric Porsche – Removing the ICE

One of the power hungry options that usually needs to stay when converting from ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) to electric is the power steering.  Since most 944’s have power steering leaks, mine included.  The easiest and cleanest way to get rid of them is to swap in a manual steering rack.  The biggest benefit is no longer wasting energy on the power steering pump, plus it would be somewhat embarrassing if my electric car had an “oil” leak!?!  Fortunatially the first year of the 944 (1983) came with a manual rack, along with some of the racing versions however those are tough to find.  Trying to get a used or remanufactured rack up here in Canada was proving to be an expensive task.  On my birthday an ad showed up on kijiji, an ’83 944 with a blown engine for a good price.  This is what I had hoped for when starting the project, a cheap 944 with a blown engine!  To bad this one is the “old” style and I’m not a big fan of the interior styling.  However after much contemplating I decided to buy the car with the end goal being swapping the steering rack, and also swapping the good engine out of my 944 into this ’83.  Then I have a running car that I can sell to help fund the electric conversion.

In short this makes a lot more work before I even start my electric conversion, however by selling this ’83 along with the other parts of the ’86 my donor car will cost nothing or maybe even make me some money in the end.

Engine..

No Engine..

I also bought a small MIG welder that I will use to build brackets/mounts as well as the aluminum battery boxes.  I welded up a quick and dirty cart to allow me to move the engine around.  Along with removing an engine, welding is something I haven’t done since high school but it’s all coming back slowly, thanks Mr. Nickel!

Engine and cart, you can just see the hole in the side of the engine!

And a nice view of the hole, easy to see why this car was cheap.  I’ve pulled out a few pounds of aluminum and steel, including the connecting rod,  parts of the piston, oil pan and block.

I’m just about ready to start the engine removal process all over again on the actual donor car.  Then I will be installing that engine in the ’83 and fix it up a little.  I’m actually quite surprised how easy things came apart on a car that is over 27 years old, nothing was rusted or seized even the exhaust system came off without a problem.

Electric Porsche – Parts revision

With any project parts selection is a difficult process, balancing budget/performance/availability isn’t always easy.  After many more calculations it’s very clear that the battery pack will be the limiting factor on the actual power output of my Porsche conversion.  So unless I plan to upgrade the battery pack, using the Kostov 11″ motor and Soliton1 are simply overkill which wastes money that could otherwise be put towards the limiting factor which is batteries (I will state that the Soliton1 isn’t a waste of money, it looks like an amazing piece and if the funds are there when it’s time to buy a controller I will choose it over the Warp Drive, however if the funds aren’t there the latter will prevail). 

I’ve decided on the Warp 9″ motor, which is common to many many car and truck conversions, it’s reasonably priced, good quality and definitiely proven.

The Warp9 should also provide good performance, with the new controller I have chosen I should still be able to get between 237 and 339ftlbs of torque at maximum motor current which will be between 1000A and 1400A this is still quite a bit more than the stock 2.5L motor.  Using the 1400A version of the controller the 9″ motor would put out more torque than any of the stock engines of any year the 944 was produced for both the Turbo and NA.

This new controller is also from the Warp family in the form of a Warp Drive 160V 1000A/1200A/1400A beast.  The hardware is all the same, and software upgrades unlock the higher current levels ($$$).  Higher voltages are also unlockable with software updates with the appropriate exchange of $$$ of course.  The nice part is the controller is about $1000 less than the Soliton1 in basic form, with optional but slightly expensive upgrades to allow more power output than even the Soliton1 is capable of.  One of the nice parts of this is the controller is designed for it’s maximum power level and scaled back in software to the basic versions, so the controller will not be pushed to it’s limits and should last for many many years.

The controller uses a CAN bus system for expansion and if a few companies get on board there could be a nice selection of extras available in coming years.  Since the maximum voltage for the controller is 160V in the form I will be using the battery voltage must be scaled back, I will be using 48 Thundersky cells instead of 90 for the 288V pack, however I will be using larger cells to get a slightly larger pack size than the original design.  The new nominal battery voltage will most likely be 153.6V at 200Ah, which is about 15% larger than the previously planned pack.  I could also drop down to 160Ah cells which would make a pack just slightly smaller than the previous design, at the cost of continuous current which reduces maximum power.

Peak power (only limited in duration by the amount of heat the motor can dissipate) is 86,400 Watts, the controller and batteries can handle this power on a continuous basis, however the pack would be dead pretty quickly.  If I am able to find a source for the CALB 180Ah 4C cells peak power would increase to 103,680 watts.  Peak torque is based on the amperage output of the controller, at 1000A being 237ftlbs, 1200A around 288ftlbs and 1400A around 339ftlbs.  The RPM range for this torque level will be zero to x rpm where x is the point where current starts to get traded for voltage by the controller based on the current limit of the battery pack.   It should be around 2000-2500rpm.   The higher current CALB cells would allow maximum torque up to a higher RPM, but either pack will allow full torque at low RPM.  To get maximum range the battery current will have to be kept to a reasonable level, so just the same as a gas car, the harder you press the gas the lower your fuel economy gets.  With all the upgrades the controller is capable of over 1/2 a megawatt of power or the equivalent of 675 horsepower.  However that would require a bigger motor and better batteries than I ever plan on putting in the Porsche.

Right now the car has about 2/3 of a tank of gas, when it’s empty the engine comes out.  The gas parts start to go up for sale and the electric motor will get ordered, so I still have a little time to change my mind again on motors.

2001 Ford F150 SQ install – Wiring and Sub box

I was able to squeeze in a few more hours on the truck install.  I finished up the box, stuffed it with ~1lb of acousti-stuff packed very loosely.  I’ll give it a listen and add more/less as required.  In it’s current state it should act like a box just slightly under 1cuft per woofer.  I also got all of the heat shrink required for dressing and labeling all of the cables.

Every wire I put in the truck will be labeled at each end, as well as one or more places in the center of the cable for longer cables.  Most cables will also be covered in techflex for protection.

Deans connectors will be used for all speaker level wiring to make removal and servicing of all drivers simple and efficient.  They provide a very solid low impedance connection with more than enough current handling for my application.

Every wire has a printed label for easy identification and trouble shooting should the need arise, as well as simplify the final install because there will be no question as to what any wire in the truck is for.

The sub box turned out incredibly solid and “dead” and with one woofer pointed in each direction most of the energy from cone movement is cancelled out between the two woofers and the box itself should radiate very little energy that isn’t supposed to be there.

There will be a layer of foam around the outside of the box, then the center console will be built around this foam layer using isolated mounts so that the arm rest of the center console will not vibrate from these woofers.  Ideally the listeners should not be able to tell that the center console IS the sub box.

Electric Porsche

For a few years I’ve toyed with the idea of converting a polluting and inefficient gasoline car to electric.  With the cost of batteries and other components building an electric car for the sole purpose of saving money on gas just doesn’t work.  However there are many other reasons to make the switch.  It’s becoming very obvious that Global Warming is real, it’s affecting us today, it’s no longer a prediction or a catch phrase used by environmentalist.  The oil disaster in the gulf is another example of what our continued dependence on fossil fuels can do, and will continue to do to the environment.  I’m happy to see that there are a few commercial offerings in the car market today, with Tesla’s Roadster, and soon to be released sedan, along with the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and many others that have at least gotten to the concept car stage.  The future is looking brighter as far as alternative energy is concerned. 

Another motivation in converting the Porsche from gas to electric is simply the process itself, I enjoy designing, building and solving problems.  Also, I like to be different, living in Calgary AB which is arguably the oil capital of Canada, there are barely a handful of highway capable electric cars that I know of in the entire province.  I would like to take one step towards changing that.

I decided to convert a Porsche 944 for two reasons, 1) it’s small, relatively light, drives well, with good parts availability.  2) it’s a Porsche, it draws attention regardless of what’s under the hood, however as an electric car, I hope it generates more interest and gets rid of a few myths about what an electric car has to be, and show what an electric car can be.

Once converted the operational and maintenance costs are very low, electricity should cost about 2 cents per km, vs 13-15 cents per km at current gas prices (92.9/l) in my G35.  It’s also pretty fair to say gas prices are only going to go up in coming years.  There is also less maintenance for electric cars, of course they need the basics, tires/wipers/washer fluid, however there are no more oil changes, some cars may not use transmissions (my conversion will retain the 5 speed manual).  There is no massive cooling system, since electric motors are greater than 80% efficient vs ~15% for gas engines.  There is one drawback though, no free (waste) heat to warm the cabin on those chilly days, an efficient and dedicated heating system needs to be installed, however you no longer have to wait for the engine to warm up before you get that heat.  The electric motor should go for 50,000 to 100,000km before requiring its major service, which is new brushes (~$100-$200).  Cars like the Tesla and Nissan Leaf are using brushless AC motors that won’t even need this service, making bearings virtually the only part that can wear out.  Brakes will also need less service on the Tesla and Nissan, however my conversion without “Regen” will still require regular brake system maintenance.  I may look at a method of converting some of that energy to heat electrically instead of by friction.

The Porsche 944 is known for its classic styling, great handling, and expensive maintenance.  Well at least most of it is good, I will be removing the main source of that expensive maintenance as the 2.5L 4 cylinder gas engine.  No more timing belts, counterbalance shaft belts, oil seals, spark plugs, motor mounts, clutches to replace (and that’s only if your engine is running perfectly).  The cooling system, exhaust system, and fuel system will also go, I will have to do more research but it looks like the car’s computer can also go.  All of these parts will be sold off to help pay for the electric replacement parts that will be going in.

Replacing the engine will be a Kostov Motors 11″ Series wound DC motor.

Rated at ~40kw continuous power at 192v & 250A and capable of much more than that for short periods of time (ie. at 1000A) it should make the Porsche just as much fun to drive in electric form as it was as a gas car.  The peak HP of the electric motor will be similar to the gas engine, however the torque output will be in the range of 2-3x that of the gas engine.  Fortunately the car I bought has the transmission from the 944 Turbo which is apparently much stronger and can handle more torque than the regular version.

The motor will be controlled by a high power DC motor controller, capable of 1000Amps continuous at 300V DC (300kw) unfortunately both the motor and batteries will not be able to support this, and I will be limited to between 100kw and 150kw depending on the battery pack.

The battery pack will consist of a 288v series string of ~90aH  LiFePo4 cells.  I will be looking at a total pack size of 20kw – 30kw which should give a conservative estimated  range of 100 – 150km per charge (in a perfect world the calculations predict 250km, however that is for non stop cruising at about 90km/h on flat ground)

The batteries can be charged from either a 110v 15A “normal” plug, or much faster from a 220v 30A circuit.

There will be some extra work required in adapting the power steering, air conditioning and heat to work with the electric conversion.  Since the motor doesn’t “idle” when the vehicle is stopped there would no longer be power to the AC or power steering, I will have to look into different dedicated electric systems to power these items.  I had considered removing the AC system all together, however the main goal of this conversion is simply change the power source of the car, not to change any functions or convenience features of the car.

The lucky car is a dark grey 1986 Porsche 944 with the 2.5L NA engine, with a “wet” curb weight of around 2800lbs I am hoping for a final conversion weight around 3000lbs or less.  While maintaining the perfect 50/50 f/r weight distribution as designed by Porsche.

The car needs some minor body work, however for a 25 year old car with original paint it’s in pretty good shape.  The interior is pretty much mint with the exception of some small cracks on the dash.  The Porsche will be driven for a few months to get a good feel for the car, and find out if anything else needs replacing, as well as get an idea of fuel economy so I can get a better estimate of what to expect when it’s electric. 

The engine will come out in the next few months stay tuned.

2007 Infiniti G35 Sedan, real 10’s in the doors

I’m taking a small detour from my F150 build to take the first step with my ’07 Infiniti G35 Sedan. This will be a slow build going forward though.

From my teaser post in my F150 thread, I got the chance to evaluate a pair of shallow mount 10″ woofers. Dayton NS270-44’s to be specific, although the G35 with SOW (Studio On Wheels as named by Infiniti) comes with factory 10’s in the front doors, the midbass from these is pretty poor to say the least. After a few measurements I figured that I could make the Daytons fit with only a spacer/mounting ring and the removal of a bit of sheet metal. It turns out those measurements were correct and it’s actually very very simple to get these mounted. (I do however need to do proper sound deadening/sealing/reinforcing of the door) The factory 10 is a one ohm single coil “speaker”, the Dayton is a dual four ohm woofer, initial tests will be using the factory amp as a simple woofer replacement with no other changes. Later I will upgrade the amplifiers and signal processing as the system evolves.

But since since pictures speak louder than words here is the most basic requirements to install a more traditional 10″ woofer in the doors of a G35 Sedan.

I made a small write up, and have included the cad file in dxf and eps format hopefully one of these work for anyone who wants to cut their own baffles.
They can be found at Support | RW Audio.com Just a tip, if you don’t have a CNC machine many cabinet or sign making shops do and many of them should be able to squeeze a small job like this in their line without charging an arm and a leg. I would be happy to cut baffles for anyone in the Calgary area.

Just a small update on sound, I don’t have much time on the woofers yet (I wasn’t bright enough to break the woofers in before installing them.. oops) but there is more low frequency energy than the factory woofers and less muddy boom which I think was supposed to make up for the lack of low frequency energy. I think they will only improve as they break in, and after I sound deaden the door.

2007 Infiniti G35 Sedan 10″ Door woofers

I recently got the oportunity to try some new shallow mount 10″ woofers, given that the 2007 and newer G35/G37 sedan with the “SOW” sound system come with factory 10″ woofers in the doors it’s the perfect oportunity to improve on what Infiniti has given us (which isn’t much honestly I’ve gotten better mid-bass out of 6 1/2’s) .

A little bit of measuring later it looks like things will work nicely after I build a spacer/mounting surface for the new woofer.

The factory woofer is quite unique, it’s a single 1 ohm coil (yes ONE ohm)
Very shallow speaker with the main frame of the basket in front of the cone, or where you would normally find the cone anyways.  The back is somewhat open with the cone and spider clearly visable.  I’m not sure what kind of power it gets from the factory amp, but it can’t be much.

Front view:

Back view:

Size reference:

The doors will need a good sound deadening, as well as some “guiding” of the front wave of the woofer, a good portion of the door skin is in the way of the woofer and translates into resonance and a good deal of arm rest vibration.  (there is of course no factory attempt to deaden this part of the panel to avoid these problems)

As soon as the woofers arrive, (in transit with FedEx as this is written) I will CNC cut a mounting ring/spacer for the new woofer, and play with the total thickness of that spacer as required.  Inital testing will be done with the factory amp (new woofer is dual 4 ohm so it will be tested at 2 ohms in place of the factory 1 ohm speaker) I don’t expect much from this, I have a feeling that the factory woofers only received 30-50 watts at their very low 1 ohm impedance.  Then I will decide if I want to use one of the Arc KS300.x amplifiers in the car or one of the Coustic DR amplifiers.  I have a feeling that the Coustic DR’s will end up in the truck and the Arc’s in the car.

Drivers door:

 Woofer opening:

Factory midrange (mounted to the door skin, with all the vibration from the woofer it’s a poor mouting location/method):

All in all, it’s better than your average factory system, but it’s still crap.  The car will maintain a 100% stock appearance so factory locations will be adapted to work with the drivers that I choose, so saying that I will be forced to use drivers that can work in the stock locations.

2001 Ford F150 SQ install – Truck repair & Updates

There hasn’t been a lot of work done lately, partially because of the weather and partially because the truck started acting up.  Any Ford owners that have the 5.4L V8 and have a few years or many thousands of miles on it may have already encountered the COP’s (Coil On Plug) setup Ford uses.  Long story short, the coil packs on cylinder 1 and 4 were toast, which left the truck running on 6 cylinders with the other two miss firing randomly.  I replaced all 8 for good measure, and the truck runs again!

Sound deadening update:
I was able to work on a few other stereo related projects as well.  The sound deadening of the truck is almost complete, I finished off the two remaining doors, no pictures of this because it was the same as the drivers side.  I did however decide that I would tackle the ceiling as well.

Unfortunatially I didn’t get photo’s of the foam or MLV layers,  however the foam was simply attached to the ceiling with spray adhesive and the MLV is held in place by the same things that hold the head liner in place (dome light/clothing hooks/sun visors/other assorted clips etc.) if anyone was wondering, it isn’t very fun putting a ~17lb sheet of MLV on the ceiling.  With the remaining doors, and ceiling completed the truck is much quieter now.  The majority of noise now comes from the firewall (engine and front wheel noise) and the glass.  The one downfall of getting all of the doors done is, now there are no remaining factory speakers so no music of any kind until I get the pillars or floor enclosures done.

Subwoofer enclosure update:
I was also able to start glueing the subwoofer enclosure together, although it’s a very simple task, I didn’t want to use any fasteners, so it is assembled with glue and clamps (lots of clamps)

Got Clamps?

2001 Ford F150 SQ install – Amplifier Modifications

A few people have been waiting for this section, and the final modification really is easier than I expected.  When I started looking into modifying the Arc KS300.x amplifiers I looked at replacing the op-amps and coupling capacitors, however without a schematic I decided to simply bypass the entire preamp section.  This means that very few changes are required and returning the amp to stock isn’t a huge task.

This leaves the amp with no gain control, no crossovers, and no first gain stage.  So another means of level matching, voltage gain and signal processing is required, any quality high voltage processor should do the trick.  This also leaves the first stage DC coupled, so it’s a good idea to make sure the processor before the amp has either an output coupling capacitor, or confirm there is NO dc voltage on the output under any operating conditions.

And finally before I get to the details, please do not perform these modifications if you are not comfortable with opening an amp and desoldering/soldering.  I can not be held responsible for any damage to your amplifier, yourself and anyone or anything around you.

I’ll start with the Arc KS300.2 but the modification is virtually the same for the KS300.4.

Step one:

Carefully desolder U10, two wires need to be soldered to the now empty pads.  Pin 1 is now left input, and Pin 7 is right input, the remaining pins are left unconnected.  (The pin out is the standard dual op-amp)

Step two:

Remove the input coupling capacitors C3 and C28 from the board by cutting the pins as close as possible to the capacitors, leaving short pins protruding from the board.  This will make it slightly easier to attach the wires to in the next step.

Step Three:

Solder a small awg wire (I used 24awg) from + terminal of C3 to pin 1 of U10, then solder a 2nd wire from the + terminal of C28 to pin 7 of U10.

That’s it, that’s all.  It’s not rocket science, it’s simply taking the signal from the input connector and connecting it to the output of the preamp/crossover section.

These are the parts that were removed, the capacitors might be difficult to reinstall, however the SO8 chip is easier to install than it was to remove.  I would recommend using Elna Silmic II capacitors in place of the stock input capacitors simply because the leads could be left at about 10mm-15mm and soldered to the pads from the top of the board.

Arc KS300.4

Step One:

Carefully desolder U9 and U10, the same pins will be used for this amp as the 300.2.  U9 contains the front inputs and U10 is for the rear.

Step Two:

Remove the four capacitors in the corner of the board by the RCA inputs.  Sorry I forgot to record the C#’s before putting the amp back together.

Step Three:

Solder small awg wire (24awg as in the previous example) from the + pins of all of the capacitors, these will connect to U9 and U10 in the following order.

From left to right U10 pin 1, U10 pin 7, U9 pin 1, U9 pin 7 connect to the capacitor pins also from left to right respectively.

As a final step I would recommend securing the wires in some manner, either hot glue, zip ties etc.

I left out the opening of the amplifier on purpose because if you are not comfortable doing that step on your own this modification probably isn’t for you.  I will also mention this, I will not modify your amp for a fee if you ship it to me (this takes away any value associated with this modification), I will however do it if you are local and can bring the amp in person in exchange for a coffee or a beer and chat about your system build or upgrade.

As for listening impressions, I really haven’t listened long enough to form any kind of opinion yet.  I also don’t have the right setup on my test bench to properly evaluate the changes.

2001 Ford F150 SQ install – Sound deadening – MLV

The truck sat in a state of limbo for about a week, but it is now mostly deadened and more importantly driveable again.

The MLV that I purchased through Shoemaker Drywall Supplies in Edmonton worked very very well.  The service was great and the people were helpful, if you are in the central Alberta area I would recommend them as a great source of MLV http://www.shoemakerdrywall.com/SDS_Edmonton.htm

The other key product required for working with MLV is vinyl cement, after quite a bit of searching and a few phone calls I managed to track down some HH-66  locally at Canvas Mart http://www.canvasmart.com/ again very friendly and helpful people.  The price seems to be higher than other places, but the convenience of finding it locally and not having to deal with shipping made it worthwhile, and probably ends up costing a similar amount.

The MLV layed down quite nicely actually and was actually easier to work with than the foam. 

The HH-66 is amazing stuff, very easy to work with.  Just like contact cement you apply it and let it dry before joining the two pieces.  I found the best method for the size joints I was putting together was to apply HH-66 to one surface  and leave it for 2-3 mins, then apply the HH-66 to the second surface and put them together right away.  This gave a couple seconds of wiggle room to align the pieces before they joined for good.

As you can see the MLV ends in about the same place as the B-quiet and foam, this will allow me to continue working on the floor enclosures without having to gut the interior again.  The seats all went in easier than I expected even with the extra layers, so I may add an extra foam/MLV layer on top of the existing B-quiet/foam/MLV treatment in certain places.

After a short test drive, in the current state (carpet and seats back in also) the difference is quite substantial.  The back of the truck seemed to disappear, the road and tire noise has been virtually eliminated.  The main source of noise now is the engine, along with a little wind noise.  However once the floor is done and properly deadened as far up the firewall as I can get things should change.  I may also look at doing the under side of the hood.

Deadening the Doors:

Before starting on the floor of the truck I actually started on the driver’s side doors.  The smaller rear door came first, followed by half of the driver’s door.

Pretty standard deadening here, the only real difference being I am sealing up all the speaker openings as there will be no speakers in any of the doors.

The stock insulation was removed, a small piece of grey grill cloth was placed over the stock speaker opening and the whole area was covered in B-Quiet.

The door panel then received a layer of foam and MLV.  The door clips hold everything in place at the moment.

The grey grill cloth behind the opening blends very  nicely.  I like it better than the factory look which is a black fabric attached to the front of the stock speakers.

The upper trim panel received a few pieces of B-Quiet, but I haven’t added MLV or foam yet, but this is an easy to remove panel and can be done at any time.

There is still quite a bit of deadening to be done, however the results already look promising, or should I say “sound” promising.