openinverter forum

Ok I know I've not been great at keeping up with projects here on the forum. Going to try and get back into the habit with this one. What we have as a donor vehicle is a 2008 Mini R56 with a 1.4l petrol engine. Purchased in early Feb for 550 Euros from a garage but I've not made video etc as there has been a problem with getting the paperwork sorted but that seems to be finally getting resolved. 90k kms. Everything on the car works and it drove home 80 miles no problems apart from a left rear wheel bearing noisy. So plan for the car is I'm going to change the wheel bearing and put it in for a test as is to see how it goes. I'll fix any car stuff but if it fails on emissions or some engine related stuff i'll leave that alone.

The powertrain plan is kinda inspired by Greg and others and also my own desires to help with the prius gen3 hacking and get back to basics.

-Prius Gen 3 transaxle with welded power split device.

-Prius Gen 3 inverter with a bluepill or similar STM32 board taking control of the Buck/Boost converter stage. See below.

-Prius Gen 3 A/C compressor

-Prius Gen 3 gear selector

-Prius Gen 3 coolant pump

-MG ZS PTC cabin heater

-MG ZS high voltage junction box.

-Zombieverter V1.2 to tie it all together.

-7 x BMW Gen1 PHEV batter modules for nominally 420v and 10.5kwh in fuel tank and tunnel space.

In this case I'm going to make the Prius inverter work a little harder for us. In drive mode the buck/boost converter will buck the battery voltage down to say 300v to allow the Prius DCDC converter to run the 12V systems and the Prius Aircon pump to run the A/C. For AC mains charging , rectified 230V will be boosted by the Prius buck/boost to charge the battery so we get Inverter/Charger and DCDC converter in one.

Will be some boring video soon and I'll try to keep this thread up to date.

Just a stupid thought...

Is this the first EV conversion you've done of a vehicle that is younger than your oldest conversion?

Your Youtube channel goes back to 2009, which is only 1 year younger than this Mini, so it's close, if nothing else. Can you say to this Mini "I've been converting cars like you into EVs since before you were born!"?

I also have a Mini r52 (convertible), still driving on burning fuel. I thought that would be my first EV-Project. But than my F11started his bad vibes with rodknock and the priority shifted...

Hi Damien,

perhaps you've already noticed: The battery connector you're pointing to in your newest video (Part 1) is, I believe, the connector for the A/C. At least that's how it is on my Yaris Gen3. The battery connector is directly to the right of MG1. It might be a tight fit with the original battery cable in your setting. Perhaps the A/C connector can be used instead and bridged internally. In fact, there's a common ground connection in there. But it also depends on the wire gauge of the A/C cable ...

I'm very interested in the progress of the Princess. Can the charging function with the bridge rectifier also be controlled by the Prius/Yaris replacement board? Or only by the original board and external Zombie?

Best regards,
Peter

So update video here :

In other news the Princess passed the NCT and is now road legal on ice power. So much for a car sold as scrap all it needed was a rear wheel bearing and few trim clips. Also got a oem prius loom and started stripping out the parts needed for the gearbox and a/c pump.

VCU mounting plate for the prius inverter. Will be a double stack on here. Zom and relay box.