after lurking for quite a while it's finally time for my first post. I am a handy mechanical engineer living in Leipzig/Germany. I run a digital dental production facility and have experience and access to FDM and resin printers as well as small 5-axis mills. I have a lathe and a crude CNC mill (MPCNC low rider 2) at home. I can TIG weld steel and aluminium and I have built a hydraulic sheet metal bender.
Electronically I am less proficient. I have built a small arduino project: A water carbonator. Just a pump, level switch and some solenoids.
I have also converted my 1st gen Honda Insight to plugin hybrid with lithium batteries. But that was with a very good build guide from the insightcentral.net forum: https://www.linsight.org/
I am always open to learn new things and hope to understand all the different zombi values some day...
I hope to follow the forum rules by marking this [WIP]. That does stand for "wondering im pubilc", right?!
So, I am dreaming of converting my little runabout. It's a 2001 Daihatsu Hijet S85 Bus called Bruno. The guy I bought him from named him thus and it stuck, because it suites the little guy!
I will post some pictures, but I guess I cannot do that in my first post.
In Europe they were built under Licence by Piaggio and were also sold as "Piaggio Porter".
He has a 1.3l 4-cylinder petrol stinker, that I would like to deICE. 48kW is much more than the original japanese Kei trucks have. And with 1000 to 1550kg (empty to max) he is quite nippy.
I use him mainly to get my firewood from the nearby forest. So the stinker hardly warms up and as I am using electric chainsaws now, the exhaust annoys me.
I hope this can be an easy starter project, because I don't need much range or power. Apart from the fuel injection, which I plan to ditch, there are no electronics. No ABS, no power steering, no A/C.
drivetrain
I looked at Leaf stacks, but I think they are overpowered and rather large for my application. I like the london taxi adaptation to directly drive the rear wheels. Bruno has a rear diff (live axle?) with a 4.44:1 reduction. So I guess a 2:1 reduction for the motor would be ideal?!
Later I found your successes with the Prius gen 3 inverters and gearboxes. I think that would be a better fit powerwise. I am wondering if I could split the gearbox and only use MG2 without the planetary gears, MG1 and diff. That would save a lot on weight and space. What do you think? Maybe I would need to change the motor bearings for closed ones with lifetime lubrication. Do they exist for those speeds? Alternatively a tiny oil circuit for just the bearings could be possible.
I think I will keep the original gear box at first. 2nd gear is 2:1 and I could play around with the other gears before finally comitting.
As far as I can destill from the support thread, the Prius inverter hacking happened 5 years ago. Not much about running projects... Is that because they work so well or did all of them fail?
Gregski's Rabbit made me think I should get an inverter logic board from Damien in order to get around the power and speed restrictions. But which version? Does it only depend on the inverter model?
I haven't looked much into batteries, BMS and charging yet. I haven't figured out what is readily available in eastern Germany. BMW has a factory here in Leipzig. Maybe I should check if something drops of a truck there?
I am planning to get a 3D scanner from a buddy and scan Bruno's nether region. It is a face scanner for dental work, but it could be accurate enough for a rough space analysis. I got a scan of a P410 Prius gearbox via the diyelectriccar forum. And batteries can be quickly modeled up as boxes at first.
Firewood season is just starting and I will need Bruno in running condition from September to February. But I guess I can start getting parts and bench test the drivetrain before installing it starting next spring. More realistically some spring in the coming years. This is not my only project and I am at the very beginning. I am greatful for your tips and opinions.
Cheers,
Nils
