[DRIVING] VW Beetle 2003

[Bigpie]

I spotted this for sale locally, for the pricey sum of £300 delivered to my door with 77k miles. Hopefully selling the engine, exhaust etc will get me >£100 back lowering the purchase price further.

I already have a Gen 3 Prius board from EVBMW (~£340) & a Gen 3 Prius inverter (~£80 IIRC). I also have a full front gearbox from an Outlander PHEV with the motor and generator. (£450 IIRC)

Planning on just using one of the motor/generators and bolting to the existing gearbox, hopefully selling the other motor/generator and gearbox to bring the price down further.

I'm aiming for an ultra budget local run about so will be looking at the BMW hybrid packs, hopefully pick one up for < £1000

I guess the first steps are to workout what the car expects to see from the ECU, how to keep the ABS and maybe the ESP before removing the engine.

[DaveH]

Looks like you got yourself a bargain there. Very tidy. I think the ECU and electronics should be very similar to a Mk4 Golf - not too complicated.

[Bigpie]

Did you document it anywhere? It'll save me a load if time if I can rip off someone else's efforts

My main concerns are how to make sure the ABS still works, and the air bags. The car has ESP, no idea how that works.

Need to get someone round to evacuate the a.c also.

[johu]

Yes
https://openinverter.org/wiki/Touran_Conversion
https://github.com/jsphuebner/stm32-car

Should run pretty much plug and play on your beetle.

[Bigpie]

Yes
https://openinverter.org/wiki/Touran_Conversion
https://github.com/jsphuebner/stm32-car

Should run pretty much plug and play on your beetle.

I've got as far as finding the ECU, if that's going to be plug and play I'm going to be very happy. Do you sell the board?

EDIT:
I'll try knock something up with one of my bluepills and see if it'll keep the car happy. There's probably a fair bit I can delete. I unfortunately have a belt drive P/S pump

[Cookie6000]

I'll try knock something up with one of my bluepills and see if it'll keep the car happy. There's probably a fair bit I can delete. I unfortunately have a belt drive P/S pump

TRW electric PS pump, €35 from the breakers, to the rescue
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=335
These get used in a lot of conversions. Works a treat in the Audi

[Bigpie]

@Cookie6000 It's on my list to buy, looks like I'm going to need a vacuum pump for the brake booster also.

@johu Is there anything you recall in the stm32-car code that would prevent it from working on a bluepill? I'm not so good when the code isn't in arduino. I've built and flashed with serial on A9 & A10, then moved to B11&B10, moved BOOT0 back and restarted then sent

echo -n "help\n" > /dev/cu.usbserial-1410 with no response

Any pointers to get going appreciated

[johu]

Try echo -n "json\n"
help isn't printing anything
Apart from that you will have to alter the pin mapping I assume. Check digio_prj.h and anain_prj.h

[Bigpie]

Thanks. I'll have a look tomorrow. Failing that I'll buy a olimex stm32-h103

[Bigpie]

So having blown up the buck boost of my gen 3 prius trying the charger code, I've now got a short between the + and - DC bus, I've started trying to desolder all the legs from the board so I can try and cut the igbts and maybe still use it to drive a motor while I source a replacement.

I've been ripping off Johannes stm32-car canbus code to drive my instrument cluster with my UNO for now.

Red is Canbus High [19 according to the documentation I found, but this doesn't match my findings], Yellow low [19 according to the documentation I found, but this doesn't match my findings]

Blue [pin 1 - (Terminal 30?) ignition] and Purple [pin 23 (Terminal 30?) - permanent] are 12v

Same as the Touran I need to ground pin 10 on the blue connector for oil pressure but over ~200 rpm to no get the angry beep and the oil symbol.

I've still got a couple more lights to deal with, though hopefully they are because the cluster is on the table.


My fuel sender seems to be simple too

Seems to range from 55 ohms on empty to 288 ohms full. I've not tried controlling the fuel gauge yet.

I still get the coolant light to be either blue or red and I'm still getting the flashing ! and the angry beeps when starting up.

I don't have fancy consumption meter or cruise control deal with.

[Bigpie]

Exhaust deleted.
Engine delete coming up.

[Alibro]

Great updates, really looking forward to seeing more.
Subbed

[bobby_come_lately]

Excellent. Keen to see how much space you're left with when that engine comes out.

[Bigpie]

Engine deleted.

Gear box lowered first, then the engine lowered next. Lifted the car up and over the engine.

Ran out of light so will have to clean up in the engine bay and photograph the space. It looks like there's more than I thought though.

[Bigpie]

Still some more removal to do, but there's more space in there that I'd thought.

[bobby_come_lately]

That's a lot more than I was expecting TBH. Tetris time!

[Cookie6000]

Cool!
Looking good bigpie. Keep it lit.

[Bigpie]

Quick mid-week job, bracket for the Zafira power steering pump. Welds are poor, even by my standards but at least seem solid. Not sure where it's going yet, but that's for the weekend. Hopefully my fluid will have arrived by then and I can tick off my first reassembly job.

It'll get the corners rounded off and a spray of paint at some point too.

[Bigpie]

Not a great deal of progress to report. Ive mounted the zafira power steering pump, pumbed in and filled up. Man, that thing is noisy, but does the job.

I found a bloke on eBay that'll machine the part to press my 2 clutch centres in to for £20 on his lathe, waiting for that to arrive.

Also waiting on the rectangular box section that I'm going to try use to mount the motor to the gearbox.

The engine was supposed to be collected this weekend but the buyer has vanished, so he's so far paid me 20 quid not to sell him my engine.

I did play around with the FOC firmware and have managed to get the motor spinning closed loop using rectified mains.



I've ended up with a chademo port and a type 2 for 60 quid, seemed too cheap to not buy.

[Bigpie]

Well, that's the coupling made, no idea if it'll hold or vibrate the car to pieces, but it's what I've got.

The spacer arrived from eBay and was a great and snug fit.

With a bit of a trim and a press together (only loose in photo) I couldn't get it perfect without any run out using the dial gauge and a hammer.

First spline (badly) welded

I used the spinning motor to round off.

Then welded (badly) the other spline

A bit more grinding and maybe welding to fill in a little and it might look OK.

Next up I'll be offering the motor up to the gearbox and start making up something to bolt them together.

[Alibro]

Good job getting the motor spinning.
I'm a little behind you regarding the coupler as I sent my disc centres to a mate who is machining everything for me. Unfortunately my welding won't be any better than yours so I expect lots of grinder action too.
I was thinking of using the motor to spin the coupler so had a chuckle when I saw you doing the same. I'll probably use a flap wheel on the grinder to smooth it off.

[Bigpie]

I refined the method a little by putting a long bolt in to the motor face to help keep the grinder steady

Hopefully it'll be good enough but there's only one way to find out.

[Bigpie]

Started working on the adaptor, motor looks tiny sat there, hopefully get it finished this weekend and maybe spill in to the week.

[Alibro]

Are you using box section to make the adapter? I never thought of that and bought some 20mm Alloy for the job.
I'm sure there will be armchair warriors that will say it will be out of line or not strong enough so it will be great to see what really happens.

[bobby_come_lately]

Are you using box section to make the adapter? I never thought of that and bought some 20mm Alloy for the job.
I'm sure there will be armchair warriors that will say it will be out of line or not strong enough so it will be great to see what really happens.

I used two sheets of 8mm plate and box section for the adaptor plate after I watched Damien do the same. Seems square enough for now...