gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

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Johny
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gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by Johny »

Good to hear that everything is going well James. Thanks for the update.
Have you got to the stage yet where you don't mention that it's electric when you get the odd admirer. I now decide on the spot whether I'll just take the compliment for the "old" car and leave it at that (always thanking them profusely).

Edit: made it make sense
Last edited by Johny on Tue, 29 Sep 2015, 08:35, edited 1 time in total.
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gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by gholm »

Yes, exactly. I've had a few times where I've mentioned it's electric and they've looked at me as if I'd just given birth to a camel. Then I've spent the next hour or so explaining why/how/who/what/where etc to the nth degree.

Nowadays I just look for the expression on their face as I "start 'er up" then move off silently. It's a unique blinking/head shaking usually accompanied with their pinkie finger wiggling in their ear ... classic!
Last edited by gholm on Tue, 29 Sep 2015, 08:41, edited 1 time in total.
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gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by Johny »

Ha - exactly!
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gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by Adverse Effects »

its grate to hear its going so well it would seem you did a good job :-)
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by gholm »

Hello again everyone!
Happy Christmas and New Year for all your wonderful EV peeps. Thought I'd better check in with updates seeing as it's been a while (over 3 years!) as I'm *sure* you've all been just hanging out for updates.. :lol:

Yes, the J2ev is happily still on the road as my daily driver, and is still bringing smiles to kids and adults alike.

A few points of note:

- I have a Nanfeng dual contactor for fwd/reverse which is installed into the front control box above the motor. (in the old ICE motor space between driver and passenger) . Anyway one day late last year after an few days parked in the garage, I started up and had a bit of difficulty getting the van to switch into reverse. A couple of flicks on/off of the cabin switch finally engaged it but I did smell something burnt. Hmm.
Opening the lid I discovered a fairly extensive spider web all around the contactor but no sign of the spider. I isolated the front from the battery pack and cleared away all the web with some burnt "material" from in and around the contactor itself. It seems that the poor spider had met its maker between the faces of my reversing contactor, an ugly and hot death at high voltage!
I'm so sorry, little guy but next time please do read the High Voltage warning stickers before you build your web..

- In August this year in the rush out the door for weekend Sports Taxi duty, I had a brain fart on how much charge the van had left and had left the carpark thinking it was full. On the way home after the morning rush, I was cruising along the M5 at my usual 80kph when the BMS started beeping at me. Normally I have my battery gauge set to view the pack's amps so after flicking it over to voltage, I saw that the pack voltage had dropped to below 110V (normally sits above 130v) and the van was noticeably slowing.
Uh oh as it dawned on me that my state of charge was not as I thought.
Anyone in Sydney who knows the M5 knows that it really isn't a very friendly nor safe place to try and stop. In the time it took for me to find somewhere to pull over safely, the pack voltage had dropped to under 100v and a noticeable chemical smell had started permeat the cabin.
Not good.
I called for a tow and once the NRMA safely flat-trayed me, the kids and the van back home, I took a deeper dive into what damage was done with some serious fears that I'd totally killed it.
Most of the cells seemed OK however I found 2 of them had completely failed (on zero volts and in a shortcircuit state).
After pulling them out of series, the pack registered what would be acceptable for a low voltage range so I gave it a good long charge to see if any other issues arose. Since the pack was now 43 cells instead of 45, I feared I may overvolt the remaining cells but after some discussion with Geoff O'Toole (thanks Geoff!) I was reassured the CMS circuitry allowed charge to bypass per cell once each reached capacity. The charger eventually brought them all back up albeit a bit of beeping/switching jiggery so all was well.
The traction pack is now 43 cells so is still holding up well enough for daily use, even though they're all about 7 years old.
Nowadays I am a lot more careful with state of charge for longer journeys and never take pack below 40%DOD.
I can still get the amps I need for hill starts and can keep up with traffic so I hope to put off buying a new pack for a bit longer still.
I have however started "research stage" for my next pack, and if there are any suggestions for 145v, 25kwh packs, fire away!

- Rust. In Sydney, the eastern suburbs are really not a great place to own an older vehicle, especially those made with 1966 mild steel panels. The humidity levels and salt spray make chasing rust an ongoing challenge, so I regularly get out my aircompressor and shutz gun to liberally coat the underside, inside the double skin and around the cabin with Lanox MX4 lanolin. (seriously great stuff, no smell and 100% non-toxic)
This routine has put a dead halt to any new rust breakouts however over time I've noticed the previous owner's panel work had started to bubble up in spots especially around the rear skirt closest to the road.
In an attempt to counter this, I recently took some time to strip off all the old bog and paint right back to baremetal to see what where the bubbles were coming from. There are quite a few old holes that had started bleeding rust and it became clear that the previous owner had just bogged over all the old rusty spots without treating the rust beforehand.
After clearing out the bog and filler, a liberal dose of rustkiller and a good clean, there are now a few larger holes, many tiny pin holes and a few old dents which are now rust free.

I bought myself a tiny TIG welder and am (slowly) teaching myself to buttweld thin practise panels. As a first timer, I'm making plenty of mistakes on test pieces but I hope to learn enough to stitch up/ butt-weld patches over the damage. I have to say that after so long doing not much, it's quite cathartic to have some work to do on the van again.

In the meantime, I've coated the exposed metal with grease which is holding back further rust beautifully, though it makes the van look a bit too rat-rod for my liking. So be it.

- Other costs - pretty much zero except rego and insurance. Tyres and brake pads still fine, I replace my own brake fluid every 12 months, and my last 3 pink slips were the standard $35 and no other. Oh.. I blew a 50year old fuse for the horn, so that cost $2.50.
Pretty good for a 52 year old van used daily, I'd say.

- Wish list 1 - The ride quality is pretty agricultural, the front drum brakes squeak a lot on humid days and the steering box has always been pretty loose. To solve all these in one swoop, I'd love to swap out the front end for a Mitsubishi LM300 van front axle with disks, proper springs instead of leaves, and a decent steering rack. In quiet evenings I find myself fiddling around in my favourite CAD package to see how this can happen. Stay posted.
- Wish list 2 - when I eventually buy a new battery pack, I'll likely upgrade my controller to the 1000amp version. Of course this will mean new traction cabling at 95mm2, new contactors, new fuses and a battery pack that can handle occassional peaks that high but the extra grunt I'll get will keep me from feeling like the slow old guy when driving in increasing-impatient Sydney traffic.
- Wish list 3 - Airconditioning - there are days when I feel like I'm sitting in a river of sweat.

All in all, I'm still loving it. Most roads around where I live are smooth so it remains mostly an enjoyable driving experience. It's so cheap to run and maintain, it runs quiet and cool, and I still get a great response from all kinds everywhere I go.

Carry on.
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by jonescg »

Wonderful to see you're still driving the beast around!
AEVA National President, WA branch director.
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by Johny »

Again, good to hear that the van is mostly well. I get lots of spider webs and at a car showy thing a year or so ago that I spontaneously attended (didn't wash car) someone commented I didn't drive it much (yeah, just every day). I looked down where they were looking and the grill was laced with webs.
I pointed out that the lack of oil fumes caused the spider issue.
I think your van, like my Vogue, went through a time and ownership where folk did quick and dirty panel work. I found with that on the respray but still have to fight rust here and there.

Edit: fixed auto-correct typos
Last edited by Johny on Wed, 12 Dec 2018, 06:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by gholm »

Hey there again Jonescg and Johny
Actually, spiders haven't been an issue so this one caught me by surprise. That you mentioned oil/gas fumes made me realise it could be that the underside of the van is still pretty greasy. I left it alone for sake of rust prevention, and so apparently it prevents spiders too. Added bonus!

So glad to hear you're still in the Vogue daily. Call me a grump but I just can't go past older vehicle styling and body shape. They have character.

So it seems that the classic marques are realising the same thing , evident in recent times with

https://www.autoblog.com/2018/08/23/jag ... ch-654458/
and
https://www.alphr.com/the-future-of-car ... m-electric

I just need their budgets. Then I'll be driving the perfect vehicle.
- power steering
-independent front suspension and disks
- airconditioning
- full access to coach building skills from the halcyon days of Rolls and Bentley
- 400+km range

Call me a grump indeed. :)
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by T1 Terry »

7 yrs out of the battery pack in an EV and still going strong, gotta be happy with that. Our house battery systems have a few over the 7yr old and continuous duty now and they have all tested at over 100% capacity still remaining using the Winston 0.5CA test. I thought it must have been the more gentle discharge rates we put on the cells (rarely over 1CA) but in an EV I would think the load on each cell was much higher, what would you estimate the highest discharge rate and the length of that discharge to be?

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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by gholm »

Hey T1Terry
I have no idea though since my gauge monitors the battery side (not motor side) I can see that I rarely pull more than 340A, roughly 1.9C out of my 180AHA . That'd be be max they ever see. I know since the BMS starts beeping as the voltage drops too far at that rate.
I can get around town mostly under 1c.

I'm just happy that I can still drive it. I baby the van when I can.
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by T1 Terry »

So a peak of 2CA and an average max of 1CA, roughly about the same as our Winston cells see in our house battery packs. Our cell might see a bit more action above the 1CA draw but generally not for long periods of time, a cycle of the coffee machine or a few mins in the microwave. The air fryer does run for 30 mins or more some times but the heat cycle isn't constant so probably about the same load as the microwave. The only time they really see much over a 1.5CA draw is when the air conditioner starts up while one of the appliances are running a heat cycle at the same time, then it's only that high start up current to get the compressor spinning.
Anyway, great to see a sensibly sized pack designed to keep the load generally under the 1CA and short peaks into the 2CA range can return a long service life as long as sensible maximum and min cell voltages are maintained, even in a DIY electric vehicle using LiFeP04 cells.

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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by gholm »

The time has come, the time is now...The van is for sale.
I moved house and now I have nowhere to work on it nor any realistic possibility of getting a powerpoint at my car spot.

So the gods have spoken and I have to let it go to a good home.

https://forums.aeva.asn.au/viewtopic.ph ... 101#p74017
https://www.justcars.com.au/cars-for-sa ... JCW5062295
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by Rolf »

So cool!

I just have too many vehicles already. Unless you’d swap for a very clean 1983 Mercedes 300D (With turbo)- No power point needed...and some cash?
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by gholm »

Hey all
Been a while, but I thought I"d share this gem.
My old van is back on the market.
It's parked somewhere in WA and is looking rather neglected.
Just needs a proper EV enthusiast to get it back onto the road where it should be.

https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/mayland ... 1292688277
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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by T1 Terry »

Sent him a message to ask how much it cost to transport back to Adelaide and if it runs at all.
Any idea how bad the rust problem is?

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Re: gholm's Morris J2 Van- 1966

Post by JodieMac »

Hi Gholm

Thanks... Ive been reading your detailed info on build and drive. I'm in WA and enquiring with current owner.
What would you recommend for a new battery pack?

Cheers

Jodie
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