[WIP] Triumph Spitfire with Leaf [FINISHED]

[alucas]

A WIP that is getting closer, its been over a year.
I have the motor, batteries and transmission installed. The batteries are split between the front and back. The transmission on the car was shot so I replaced with a torqbox (https://www.torquetrends.com/ev). As expected it has not gone perfectly to plan, but it feels like I am getting close to rolling.
Currently I am having issues with the master HV- contactors not turning on. I have a set of contactors in the trunk batteries and one in the front pack. Things worked prior to splitting the pack and installing in the car.
Next steps get the contactor working, plump up the coolant system then test with HV.

[MoonUnit]

Exciting. Can I ask what you are using for contactor control / VCU, and what batteries and motor are you using?

[alucas]

Hello I am using the Zombieverter as the VCU. The motor, inverter, charger, DC/DC is a Nissan leaf stack from a Gen3. The batteries came from the same car. The throttle is also from the leaf. I tried to reuse the radiator and pump but couldn't make it fit. I currently don't have a BMS which makes me nervous but I have temp sensors in the battery boxes. I use the IVT shut to measure overall voltage. Long term plan is to get a master slave BMS like the thunderstruck Dilithium. I like the people at thunderstruck and used them for contactors and the torqbox.

The car has rolled in the driveway but it was terrifying as I was using the stock Zombie settings. Something was off with the throttle settings and it gives 100% power with the slightest touch of the pedal. This basically launched the car then it does some madness with regen. I watched some videos on setting the pedal range and had that correct but the other settings such as the throttle ramp seemed to cause problems. I now have it detuned and have gone 1/2 a block at 6 mph. It really hates going slow downhill and jitters like mad. Some odd pulsing is going on with the VCU telling the motor to do odd things. I hope more tuning of the throttle and such will fix this.

[MoonUnit]

Presumably you've got your contactors working then. As to the motor control, I can't help but commonly people post their parameter file so that the issue can be diagnosed.

[Bratitude]

Please post your prams then we can review.

What steps did you take to tune the throttle pedal?

One should never run “the stock” zombieverter settings. Everything must be setup for your build.

Also if you are using the leaf batteries, why not use the leaf bms? Works with tbe zombie

[alucas]

Hello All
Thanks for the replies. I am getting very excited about having this thing run. It also great to finally get more involved on this forum.

Zombie Settings
I will post the zombieverter settings in about a week. I have a trip and can't work on the car.

Contactors
I kind of have the contactors working. I went overboard because I split the battery pack and I wanted the power lines isolated when the car is off. I have four Kilovac EV200 contactors all on the zombie main2 control line(HV- pin 3). Two contactors in the rear box and two in the front. My best guess is this main2 transistor can't sink enough current to turn these on. I connected all 4 and measured the current was about 0.5 Amp. I then setup the rear box with a manual switch; this worked fine for one day. Two days later I started getting pre-charge failures. Now I can't pull down the front two contactors. I connected the front contactors to the same manual switch and that allows me to get through pre-charge. When I get back from my trip I plan on testing a low power relay driven off pin 3 to see if that works. The HV+ Kilovac has one contactor and is working fine on pin 33. I have looked at the HW design on the zombie board I think the transistor is a NCV8402 https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/on ... vSnQ%3D%3D and it could handle 7 amps but only 1.25W. I have 12V * 0.5 Amps = 6W, maybe that's a bit much.



BMS thoughts
I have keep the leaf bms and tested that prior to splitting the batteries into two stacks. I have been reluctant to run the 48 some wires between the front and rear pack in order to run the leaf BMS. I read that this doesn't always work and then I have all these "hot wires". I had planned to try this and have a wire bundle that has 25 wires per bundle. Then I thought I would need to make a set of fuses on the wires to make is save. In the end I decided to wait until I have solved other problems. I would prefer a master slave BMS setup so I don't have to run all the wires.

DC to DC question
I have not yet figured out how to get the leaf DC to DC 12 volt charger working. I have looked over several sites and docs but none seem to match my unit. I have the gen3 leaf stack. Can someone point me to docs on how to get it running?

Thanks
Aaron

[Bratitude]

2 contactors per box is over kill, and yes once latched they draw .5amps… but to switch them they draw a lot more initially.

Again, we need to know how are parts are wired, as the dcdc should switch on when hv is active, the zombie will send the correct messages

[alucas]

Hello
I was able to drive the car around the block and it seems like its going to work. Granted I still have lot of work to do.

I am glad to hear the dcdc should just work. Something must be connected incorrectly or configured incorrect. I have followed the leaf gen3https://openinverter.org/wiki/Leaf_stac ... ombiverter doc but I have a IVT-Shunt.

I did connect up a third can bus that is not depicted, I think it is for Quick charging. This is located on the PDM pinout as pin 6(can l) and pin 7(can h).

The PDM connections are
Pin 6 Can L Q Charge for Chadmo from Resolve-Ev manual
Pin 7 Can H Q Change for Chadmo from Resolve-EV manual
Pin 16 12V from "run" relay. As in Zombi doc
Pin 18 12V on all the time. As in Zombi doc
Pin 11 Can L. As in Zombi doc
Pin 27 Can H. As in Zombi doc
Pin 27 Proximity. As in Zombi doc
Pin 30 CP. As in Zombi doc

From reading the Resolve EV manual it looks like I could also have the following but I have not connected these.
Pin 9 12V From a 2015 Leaf doc VC-32 I think this is for DC quickcharging
Pin 10 Gnd I think this is also for DC quickcharging
Pin 12 Used on the Resolve Controller (HV harness connect expected to be between 3-5V)
Pin 15 Used on Resolve (HV harness connect expected to be between 3-5V)

I will attach my param file

spit_e.json

(2.3 KiB) Downloaded 9 times

. The system says I am using FW 2.31. I am a bit stumped on what I should set the DC-DC converter to the options are NoDCDC and TeslaG2.

Thanks
Aaron

[alucas]

Project Update
I have the AC to DC charging working. That is really simple on the Leaf, no need for the proximity line from the zombie.
The DC to DC is now working and it runs a 14V.

I have been working on tuning the throttle and having difficulty. The car ramps up very slowly then starts pulsing around 3000 RPM. I can't get it to go over 25 mph. I set potmin,potmin2 and potmax, potmax2 based on my throttle(they have always been set). At first I had some odd unfinished version of 2.30 FW. I am not running the official 2.30 FW release. I have been adjusting throtramp, throtrpmfilt. I will post a bit more as I learn more. I did go over the code and learned of the spot value torquederate. The plotting tool should help me figure out what is going on. I will post more as I figure out more.

[tom91]

viewing your params you have changed so many params.

It could be any of them. Why you change so many at once?!?

use this as a starting point https://github.com/damienmaguire/Stm32- ... k220a.json

[Bigpie]

For one thing, your udcmin is crazy high. udcmin": 370

[alucas]

Thanks for the responses. I didn't understand what udcmin was doing until I looked at the code and I watched the torque derating while driving. I saw udc derating get triggered.
Now that I have reviewed the code and some of my settings I see why its not working and I feel better knowing what is going on "under the hood".

For one thing I had limited the throtmax to 40% expecting that to be just a cap. I think it does a bit of scaling of the pedal so that a full pedal movement only represents 40% power rather than just capping the power to 40% when the movement goes above 40%.

I actually stated with a set of params like the truck set but I had a weird version of 2.30. I was testing that last winter to see how to run my gauges. I never noticed the beta version was unstable when I had the motor with no load on it. I just thought oh its so powerful that with no load it spins up really fast. I forgot to update to a official release prior to testing after install. I got too excited to see what would happen. Well the odd 2.30beta would just hit 100% power in forward or reverse with the slightest tap on the pedal. It was rather scary. This drove me to set what I thought where very conservative values. I finally remembered that I had the odd FW and upgraded to the official 2.30 but was still nervous.

I am excited to test with a more rational set. It raining so I won't do any testing until it clears up.
Thanks again for the inputs.

[alucas]

This is so exciting it stopped raining so I tested the truck settings on this. It is amazing. With those settings everything is working.
I have had this car for over years. I learned how to rebuild the 4 cylinder when I was 18. Many years later I rebuilt a GT6 frame and engine and put the tub on that. That was very fun. But the Leaf engine in this is a whole other dimension. Its almost hard to control as it has so much torque. So far the diff and "donuts" have held out.
Soon I will get brave and take it out beyond the neighborhood.

Again thanks all for the help. It should have been easy but I made some mistakes that lead me off course. I am very excited to get on with the project and build the gauges and clean up the interior.

[Bratitude]

Good work on getting things running!
But!

why are you referring to the resolve control wiring?

Regarding chademo, thats not how zombieverter works.

chademo is wired up independently of the pdm lv connections.

Make sure you understand what prams do before changing them, because you could have things set you that are potentially dangerous or destructive at certain levels.

Is there anything on the zombiverter-leaf wiki page that is unclear that could be improved?

[alucas]

I reviewed both the resolve wiring and the zombie wiring descriptions of the leaf PDM pinouts in order to be sure I understood all I could. At that time the DC-DC 12V was not working and I thought something was wired wrong. The resolve diagram describes more pins than what I saw on the zombie page. In the end the fix for the DC-DC was to upgrade to the official released 2.30 version.
I currently don't plan to run chademo on this car.

I was running a unofficial release because last winter I was putting together different ways to run the old gauges via PWM. I wanted a more PWMs than existed so I pulled the latest version of 2.30 and modified it. I think someone took my modifications or at least the idea and added them as the classic car in 2.30.

If I had just started with a official release I think I would have had 0 issues. That was definitely my mistake.

I think some descriptions could use a bit more info. For example changing the max Throttle % will change the feeling/range of the throttle. I had expected more like a cap. In the param list is states derate for udcmin and udclim but I didn't understand how sensitive this might be or how much this would derate. What's great is you can always go look at the code and figure out how it works. Now that I have read the code and looked at the params they all make sense.