Brendon_m Moke

[brendon_m]

If you saw the paint in person you probably won't doubt my willingness to scratch it.
After way to much work trying to make it look good with the panel prep work I ran out of F's to give and decided rough enough was good enough and I just wanted a painted car so I accelerated to process by skipping some steps.
The front and bar etc will be black. Same colour scheme as before but green instead of CAT yellow.

[jonescg]

Sounds a bit like my welding. I welded a bench once, and told a friend "Don't look too closely at the welds though" He replied dryly, "No need, I can see them from here"

Or when I did a concrete slab for a garden shed. Someone asked if I'd written my name in the cement before it set. I said, "No, but you just have to look at the quailty of the work to see my name written all over it"

[brendon_m]

I was going to have gloss black on the front but I started putting it on and it showed up WAY too many imperfections, so I changed out for a satin black. I'm happy with how it turned out. The matte finish contrasts well with the glossy metallic green.

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Now i just need to paint the interior and start reassembling

[brendon_m]

Fairly productive weekend

Not that it looks very different but I've painted the "interior". And fitted up some lights.

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Now I just need to get the seats in, but I still have some work under the dash so I'm holding off that for now.

I've also been sorting out the chargers. After the first chargers let the smoke out (maybe I should tell the designer of the power supplies that rectified 240vac is not less than 200vdc )

And finally I made a more legible HV diagram as opposed to the chicken scratchings in did with a pencil and paper

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[fffffred]

Inspiring stuff, keep it up!

[brendon_m]

I've been on a couple of little test drives now.
First drive out and I noticed a squeal coming from the front under acceleration, like metal on metal or a crap bearing, turns out its a drive shaft contacting the body as the motor twists with the torque.

The head lights did a real good job of illuminating the tops of trees until I adjusted them.

The controller occasionally throws a fault when turning it on complaining about a "sequence error". Cycling the key fixes this but I'll have to look into it at some point.
Also the display is way too bright for driving at night, I'll have to find a brightness setting.

Regen is a bit finicky. If I adjust it down it does nothing (obviously) but if I turn it up it works really well. So well it causes the motor to spin backwards, then it regen's and bounces back forward, then back and then forward etc. The car just sits there shaking. Its a real fine line between going too far one way or the other. I put a relay on the potentiometer for the regen level that is operated by the brake lights now so if the feed back loop starts I can just come off the brake for a second and it's fine. This also allows me to shift gears with out the regen interfering. Ill look through the settings and see if I can adjust the regen somehow to stop it because I would like to be able to ramp up the level a bit more under braking

Next problem is an old car problem. Because the car has been sitting so long and now all of a sudden it's being used naturally the brake master cylinder is leaking, as is the axle seals into the diff as well as one of the rear shocks. Sooo many fluid leaks on an electric car

And the last problem to come up (so far...) is I was rocketing through a car park and hit a speed bump. The jolt somehow snapped the steady bar on top of the motor. Tore my weld right out of the metal.
I guess I deserved it for welding cast iron.
In my defence I didn't actually think it would be under that much stress.
The real sad part is all the load then shifted onto the remote gearstick link rod which promptly broke it's mount out of the gearbox.

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[Adverse Effects]

yep those stabilizer bars are not that strong to start with and i dont remember ever seeing one mounted there on any mini i have ever had
normally there is 1 on the thermostat housing and 1 on the upper part of the block at the other end

moving them down that far will put them under a lot more stress

[brendon_m]

Yeah it used to be on the rear of the block and I cut and welded it to reach down there. Well technically it's both bars cut and welded to get the length.
I'll have to custom build my own I think. Or more likely I'll just go to town with the welder and then it'll break again and then I'll bother to custom build something .
Im more upset about the broken mount for the gear change on the diff housing.

[T1 Terry]

Make the steady out of aluminium and add bushings to take the initial shock loads at the joint ends. aluminium is a lot more forgiving than cast or even steel, it can stretch and compress small amounts that take the initial shock load. This is why high performance ICE engines use aluminium con rods, less stress on the crank and main brg block mounting points. The compression and rebound is the desired effect, but you can't use them for non load reving like compression braking, they stretch and either the piston hits the head and/or the sudden stop breaks the con rod.

T1 Terry

[brendon_m]

So I took the easy way out and just added a diagonal brace and used my hot (metal) glue gun until the problem went away. I'll worry about it if it breaks again.

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Redoing the steady has also cured the half shaft rubbing problem.

I went for a test drive and it's really hard to shift gears because the support bar for the remote gear lever is not attached so things are a bit sloppy jaloppy. But I still managed to coax a temporary new top speed for the moke of 101.56km/h but I really needed to shift gears, both up and down. Acceleration in 3rd is pretty slow going and I kept running out of road and 2nd runs out of rpm at about 60/70 km/h. Also once I got up to higher speeds I really needed to shift to 4th to quiet down the gearbox.

On the other hand the car will probably not have to go over 70 km/h much and the performance taking off in 2nd is great and the motor has an awesome whine to it that just makes it feel even faster

[soyachips]

Nice work, that should make it much stronger. Reminds me of some of the organic designs that Autodesk’s generative design algorithms produce. Crazy stuff!

[Adverse Effects]

oww incase you didnt know the stock mounting areas on the firewall tend to crack and brake out

[brendon_m]

Well that's disappointing news. Hopefully without the vibration of the old engine it will last longer. Otherwise I guess it'll be the trusty mig to the rescue... again.

[jonescg]

You'll have to upload some video shortly. Keen to see how rustic the ride is

[brendon_m]

Alright, I was waiting for some better footage but here you go.



https://youtu.be/bDcUMS6fOw0

Unfortunately that's all I've got for now as the car is up on stands with the gear change parts hanging out while I try to slow down some of the oil leaks and fix the broken mounts

[jonescg]

Nice one. Sounds a bit noisy, but then I realised, it's a Moke. That's actually quiet

[fffffred]

Great stuff!

[brendon_m]

I've finished fixing the gear linkage mounts and went for a short drive. The gear selector has never felt so good. Its no longer vague and I can shift gears without having to throw the stick from touching the dash to touching the seat. Ahh the luxury.
Shifting gears is now possible and works well, even without the clutch. Takes about a second for the syncros to match speed to go up or down a gear.
I'll have to work on some good driving footage and work out my range.
The range is currently tested to about 16km. Hopefully I can go more then that

[jonescg]

Yeah that would get you to the nearest corner store in Perth...

[T1 Terry]

It would get you from our house to our workshop and back home again, maybe even twice. The hospital, doctors, dentist, 2 solicitors and 3 real-estate agents and 2 accountants, post Office, hardware store, 2 food stores, 2 bottle shops, 2 bakeries 2 pubs and a club are all on the same section of road so you'd be fine for that as well. If you wanted anything from a place that sold anything the local shops don't carry then you'd need to take the other car, the next town is a 70km round trip and about the only added shopping opportunity would be a few phone stores, a Kmart, Aldi and a miniature Bunnings. The next decent size shopping spot is a 150km round trip. 220km for the Adelaide return trip but you'd need more like a 400km range cause there is a real big hill involved

T1 Terry

[brendon_m]

I had the cover off the controller box so I thought I'd snap a pic of my handiwork and tetris skills

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Also the engine bay (I guess it's motor bay now) is looking more finished in general.

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Also also I've put the hazardous voltage stickers on the sides of the battery boxes and controller box

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[jonescg]

Spartan! Compared to the Prelude's engine bay there's so much vacant space!

[brendon_m]

Yeah mokes aren't exactly feature rich...

[coulomb]

Spartan! Compared to ...

Yeah! Where's the rest of it?

[Richo]

Its missing the flexible conduit glands.

But its awesome anyway