[DRIVING] Project RX8 , Prius gen2, Lexus transaxle to rwd

[Bigpie]

Yes, the SoC is a bug that I've not looked at I switched to using simpbms reported SoC.

Glad to see it in action on another car. What unit model and network was that?

[Ev8]

Ahh ok a known bug, good stuff! charger was reporting 100% soc and esp was reporting 0, I will do some more wiring and use bms, this also means I won’t have to leave the isa powered!
Charger was something that claimed to be powered by instavolt, I’ll go back in the week and get a better look.

I take it the 1k pull-up you mentioned in your read me is between 12v feed to the relay and startstop2(chademo pin10)

But yes it’s a good bit of kit thanks for sending the board my way. I will start logging chargers it works with!

[Bigpie]

1k pullup line needs removing from readme, not needed. Think it was left over from the Due version.

I still get a kick out of it every charge, very pleased with it

[Ev8]

ok cool, if not needed i will remove it, i didn't seem to do any harm! Yes i got the usual strange looks and questions you get public charging! was super happy it worked first time!

[Ev8]

Well today I found time to wash the car and button up Jamie’s esp32 chademo, soc is now taken care of by the bms, it required a bit of a re arrangement of the bms can wiring to make the bms one end of the network and the chademo the other, with cab500, Outland charger and battery modules in between, my prototype board simp bms now being one of the oldest parts of my conversion it’s been “adjusted” so many times it’s now a right mess and amazing it still works! I forgot to take a photo, I will replace it one day with something more permanent!
The esp chademo board itself is in a nice housing and zip tied to the inverter controllers, I will get out one evening this week and do a quick vid of it charging

[Ev8]

Mk2 rear battery frame and additional 3 modules ready to fit in the next few weeks. I made this one from aluminium angle and have doubled up where it spans the well in the boot floor

[Bigpie]

That's fancy

[Ev8]

Should do the trick!

[steveknox]

I'm amazed how much you can fit in the boot. Really nice design. Cutting the boot floor out of mine seems like something of a mistake now!

[Ev8]

Yeah 12 modules is the limit of what I can fit in there! Would love to have used the space where the fuel tank was but it didn’t look doable with these bmw modules, maybe with leaf modules

[Ev8]

Do you have a build thread going for yours?

[rstevens81]

Mk2 rear battery frame and additional 3 modules ready to fit in the next few weeks. I made this one from aluminium angle and have doubled up where it spans the well in the boot floor

wow, did you make that or have it made? looks very sleek

[Ev8]

I made it, it’s just angle aluminium stuck together with my spool gun on the mig welder and the welds ground smooth so you can’t see how ugly they were!

[steveknox]

Love to see a pick when installed. When I upgrade my batteries, i'd like to use a solution like that in mine. Maybe re-instate the original boot floor to make it look a bit more legit. Probably cheaper to just buy another rx8 instead though!

[marcexec]

I did a bit of searching and see this link: https://tinyurl.com/2fzxdynn (Sorry to those in the future when this goes away)

It looks like there is a second motor that bolts to the "bellhousing". I see a second set of 3 phase cables as well, so they must have ditched MG1 in favor of something more powerful. The inverter also seems to have 3 separate 3 phase outputs: https://tinyurl.com/bdctkesm

It's quite interesting. I saw a Mirai chassis without a body on it on display in Tokyo in 2015. I only have 3 pretty lousy shots of it on my iPhone still. I didn't really know much of what I was looking at back then. I sat in the car on display as well.

Saved that for the future for you: https://web.archive.org/web/20230608103 ... bly/475453

[Ev8]

Love to see a pick when installed. When I upgrade my batteries, i'd like to use a solution like that in mine. Maybe re-instate the original boot floor to make it look a bit more legit. Probably cheaper to just buy another rx8 instead though!

Lol, I had thought about using mine as a development bed them finding a nicer one to transfer everything into as my bodywork is tired but I think I’ll just start another project instead, looks like I now own a Lexus mgr aswell!

[Ev8]

Well I have some hours free after work yesterday so I pulled all the rear battery modules out, swapped the mounting frames and loaded all the modules back in, currently only the original 9 are hooked up as I needed to drive home and I still haven’t fabricated and bus bars or cables to include the extra 3. I ache today as loading the battery frame has to be done with it pulled as far backwards into the boot opening as possible and then once loaded the whole 12 modules have to be shifted forwards as one!

Please excuse the wiring it’s not the final version!

[Ev8]

Hooked up the extra modules over the weekend, having previously changed the 5s modules up to the same voltage as the new ones, once hooked up I charged everything as one and there was a 23mv delta at 4.1v so I let the car sit and balance for the rest of weekend got into work this morning and was greates by 4mv delta.
I also uploaded 5.27 and had a little test drive, it’s made a nice little improvement, not huge but I can now draw 120kw

Picture of the business side of the rear pack, I’m currently designing some pcb’s with fuse links and a connector each end to go between the cell tap wiring and the module cell taps as currently there is no failure protection and 342 cell tap wires!

[Ev8]

Gone away for a long weekend, car is at home, hv disconnect hung up inside! #ultimate immobiliser

[Ev8]

I can’t imagine it’ll help with efficiency any but I changed disc and pads today and added these springs that seem to be appearing on lots of modern cars

[Ev8]

Report on the springs… I no longer hear the pads dragging at low speeds which is nice

[bexander]

Report on the springs… I no longer hear the pads dragging at low speeds which is nice

Are the springs for an RX-8 or are them from another car or home made?

[Ev8]

The springs come as part of delphi fitting kit LX0712 intended for the Hyundai i30 and Kia Ceed, I just drilled some appropriate holes into the pad back plate to slot them into

[Ev8]

Not much to report car passed it’s annual mot yesterday without issue, I paid attention to the axle weights when it was on the brake rollers and it came in at 700kg on both front and rear axles so a perfect 50/50 weight distribution and at 1400kg total weight that’s 150kg less than the book weight for an RX8

[Pete9008]

Great result

How on earth did you manage it, the rx8 engine isn't that heavy to start with and you now have two motors and a fair number of cells in there now?