Hi all

[pmautomotive]

Hi, Just joined. Been watching alot of Fiachra and Damien's videos online. Motor technician by trade. Some of the stuff you guys are at blows my mind. While I haven't had many hybrids or Ev through my garage I forsee it coming. Figure the best way to learn about is to do a conversion.

I was planning to keep it as simple as possible, using tested components. I have an old berlingo van I was hoping to drop a complete battery back into the rear off and box it in. Which would save having to dismantle cells etc. And use the original gearbox. Is there any advice on the easiest conversion components to use for a first time conversion? Tried and tested.

I was thinking Leaf motor and inverter to start. Seems to be a common conversion.

The coding end of it is probably my biggest fear

Thanks All

[Cookie6000]

Welcome!

Yep, stick to the tried and tested. At the time I kicked things off, Damien was working on the E46 Goose and fitting the Gen 1 Leaf stack and at the early stages of testing the VCU so take a look around the projects and see what fits the bill.

Work out first what kind of drive train are you going for. Motor hooked up to the existing gearbox - custom coupler fabrication - or sticking with the Leaf reduction gear and getting the custom shafts made. Depends what you are capable of or willing to get fab'd up and the associated cost but as you have seen from Damien, myself and many others, DIY can be pretty successful

Dont pass up looking at the Prius transaxle and inverter options. You can get the hardware so cheap now, it's a no brainer! The amount of work gone into the VCU's is amazing too. Massive amount of backup from the community if you need it. For build #2, I'm going the Lexus/Toyota hardware for sure. The Gen 3 inverter ticks so many boxes, it's hard to pass it up as a solution on a budget.

I'm right there with you on the coding! Man, it took me a while.... and It's still elusive I do have plans to grab CAN by the scruff and from talking to others on here, it's not as scary as you think... I'll report back

Good luck on the build and make sure to post up plenty of info on the Projects area.

[pmautomotive]

Thanks. I've literally spent the evening reading through the web interface and open source threads and I'm completely bewildered... Almost put off completely.lol How is it everyone knows so much about all this coding etc? Is it something you knew previous and then turned your hands to the mechanical work?

There is just so much technical and terminology to understand. If I were to buy an open inverter board... Will I need to have an understanding of everything Ive looked at in terms of other peoples problems. Or is it fairly straightforward and Im just over complicating it?

[Isaac96]

Well... Lots of people have little to no experience with software etc.
If you just buy kits from Johannes and don't blow anything up, you'll only need to tune your motor.
It's when you have specific requirements that aren't already covered, or want to use new hardware, that you need to mess with software.

It's not simple. But you can most certainly learn. Just take the software slowly, only use it when you need it.

[johu]

I've sold to many non-software people over the years and they got along. Of course you need to be technically minded to understand what precharge is, how to protect yourself and the hardware etc. Ideally you unpack, plug in and it works, this is the case for Tesla and Leaf kits. Then get to know some parameters to customize the behaviour.

If you combine, say, a Prius inverter with a Smart motor you have some more tuning ahead. The more into the unknown, the deeper you'll need to dive in.

[pmautomotive]

Did anyone ever put a cheeky bid on eBay and end up winning it? Just won a 2012 Nissan Leaf with 64k.lol For 4k

[LRBen]

That's how I got my MG F for £190 a year before I was anywhere near being able to consider a conversion. Nice price for that Leaf though!