1994 Honda Civic Conversion to Electric

Logisystem's Contoller is here!!!

2009-07-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I got caught in the Logisystem's recall on some of their faulty controllers so my order took almost five months while they fixed the problems. Not too big of a deal, I'd rather get a good controller slow then a bad controller quickly.

I got the 120-144 volt 500 amp controller. Thanks to a friend who also converted his car and got this controller I realized the cooling fans were missing. Quick call to Logisystems and viola....they arrived a few days later.

Starter Block Off Plate

2009-02-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a shot of the mount for the old starter. I used a piece of sheet metal to cover up the hole. One of the bolts is the original motor mount and the other is from the starter mount. Tin snips and five minutes later.......and viola. The sheet metal was flexed out a little so I used a bit of adhesive caulk to glue it to the transmission housing.

I used a clamp and ratchet to hold the sheet metal against the transmission housing.

Here's the finished product.

Engine Wiring Harness

2009-02-07T17:33:00.000-08:00

This was the part I was dreading the most. I am more mechanical than electrical and wasn't sure where to start with the wiring. Uh oh.....I noticed that I didn't have the engine wiring harness! Since the car had the engine pulled when I got it the harness went with it. Didn't notice until I started thinking about this step. But called my friend Alex and he called his families salvage yard. Here's the harness. I retained the backup-lights, speedometer, idiot lights (oil, battery), temperature gauge and the two main wiring harness bundles and the main alternator wires to reconnect. I spent several days unwrapping the old, oily cable wrap and bought the standard black plastic flex hose to re-wrap. I also labled each wire that I needed to use.

Plastic Board for Electronics Mounting

2009-02-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

I purchased a piece of 1/2" black plastic Starboard to mount the controller, charger, potbox, etc on the front of the firewall rack. It measures 27" x 8.5" and should provide a nice surface.

I used six countersunk screws onto the front of the battery rack. I should be getting the engine wiring harness tomorrow and the motor controller this week. I can then place the major components and map out the wiring. At least that's the plan.......

Batteries in the Car with Hold downs

2009-02-07T16:54:00.001-08:00

Racks installed, time to put the batteries in. Here are the rear batteries. I used galvanized 3/4" angle iron with threaded rod for the hold downs. Still have room for the spare tire and storage.

Here is the sixth battery in the trunk. I used a 1" wide steel bar underneath the car to anchor the threaded rods. This battery just sits on the trunk bottom.

Just to be safe I cut out notches in the angle iron to avoid touching the terminal posts.

Here is the front rack with batteries. That's my son's hand in the picture.

Uh oh, when I put the batteries and hold downs in the firewall rack the passenger side forward threaded rod hits the hood.

Here is where the rod hits the hood.

Since there is a open space further out on the hood, to the left in the above picture I cut a small piece of 1" flat steel and moved the threaded rod further to the left. That worked quite well and cleared the hood. Everything seems to fit quite well.

Symbolic.....at least to me.

2009-01-26T12:36:00.000-08:00

Good riddance!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spinning up the Motor

2009-01-04T17:51:00.000-08:00

I decided to spin up motor before I installed it. I ordered lugs and 2/0 welding cable so I made the power cable to connect the armatures across the Warp9 motor.

Here's a video of the motor spinning. I used a battery charger to drive the motor.

Powder Coating the Battery Racks

2009-01-02T19:06:00.000-08:00

Once all the racks were measured, cut, drilled, assembled I disassembled to have powder coated. This will protect them from corrosion, battery acid and gives it a better look. Here are the three racks displayed before coating. They are from front to back: fire wall rack, rear rack and front rack.

I've wrapped them up into three neat bundles.
Here they are after coating.
Here is the firewall rack back in the car after coating. Isn't it shiny? I didn't take pictures of the other two before I put batteries in. The frequency of pictures seems to be decreasing the further along I get in the project.

Firewall Battery Rack

2009-01-02T19:05:00.000-08:00

This was the most difficult rack to fabricate. It has many pieces to cut and a lot of holes to drill. I'll try to give brief assembly description. Detailed instructions are from Tim's blog here: http://civic-ev.blogspot.com/2008/10/redesigning-firewall-rack.html

First I cut 4 vertical supports that hang off the shock towers. Each support is 9 1/2" long and bolts to an existing hole.
I cut two 1 inch diameter galvanized pipe approximately 2 3/4". These are used under the to end angle iron pieces towards the rear. These also bolt into holes in the frame.
Cutting all the angle iron was 'fun' to say the least. Lots of sparks, metal bits put a nice coating on my mitre saw. I cut the two outer pieces first, held them with c-clamps and then measured the cross-pieces to fit.
The two pieces in the middle will help support the plastic board for mounting electronics.
Once everything was cut and aligned, making sure to provide a gap above the transmission, I marked all the holes and drilled and rebolted the entire assembly again.

Power Steering Reservoir

2009-01-02T19:04:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to swap out the steering rack for a manual. So I re plumbed the fluid reservoir as seen in the picture below. I bought a 1 inch piece of hose to fit inside the large reservoir hose and over the metal hose. Basically I shortened all the plumbing lines to allow the reservoir to sit back here.

Motor mount and Installation

2009-01-02T19:03:00.000-08:00

Now that the motor and transmission are bolted together I need to fabricate the motor mount. I used Tim's design for the motor mount. See picture.

I purchased a 1/4" steel plate, 12" x 12" from a local machine shop in Jupiter, Florida, SASCO. I then had a coworker cut out the profile and the center hole. Next it was up to me to drill the four mounting holes for the Warp9 and the three holes across the top. Unfortunately the method I used to measure the angle was a broken plastic protractor that I taped together. First hole lined up, the rest......well..........not so much. Plus the 27 degree angle was different for my motor. Maybe because Tim advanced his timing by himself where I had it done at the factory. Either way that angle changed to approximately 42 degrees. After much drilling and cursing here is the finished product. I'm going to tell everyone those fender washers are required and not an attempt to cover up mis-drilled holes and the extra holes are for ventilation.

Next I tried to lower the engine/transmission into the car from the top. But I couldn't maneuver the assembly down into the space. The transmission mount made it too awkward.

So I jacked up the front of the car and slid the engine underneath.

I reattached the engine hoist and tried to position the engine in place. But the tail shaft hits the frame. I new this was coming but I wanted to do the fit up myself before I deiced what my next step would be. I could either cut the car frame or cut the tail shaft. Even if I kept the tail shaft there is no room to use it run the a/c compressor or other peripheries.

Cutting the shaft (gulp) was my choice. I taped up the shaft to prevent metal shavings from getting into the case and bearing. Hacksaw and 10 minutes of elbow grease later it's cut.

Time to start lifting up the engine into place. The best way was to align the two transmission mounts first and loosely thread on the bolts and nuts. If you look at the right side of the picture I brought the new motor mount up under the original gas engine mount. Next step is to make a bracket to attach them together.

Here is a closer view.

I used a five inch piece of 2" angle iron, 1/4" thick. C-clamps were used to hold the angle iron to the steel plate and aligned to the car motor mount.

Here is a closer view. I taped up the motor vents to prevent any metal bits or dirt from falling in during installation. To level the motor I used 1/2" nuts under the mount to set the spacing. marked the matching holes in the angle iron to drill with a metal scribe.

Here it is bolted up. I used 1/2" bolts in the car motor mount and 3/8" bolts in the steel plate. This mounting system should work very well.

The Batteries are here!

2009-01-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

I ordered the batteries, battery monitoring system, battery lugs, heat shrink, and a crimper that Carlo let me rent at http://www.ev-supply.com/. The batteries are Universal UB121100 twelve volt with 110 ah rating. The batteries were shipped to Miami so I rented a truck to pick them up.

Think the truck is big enough?

The truck came with an electric tail gate which was great to move 70 lb batteries.

My best side.

Oh my aching back!!!!!!

Rear Trunk Battery Rack

2008-11-28T08:49:00.001-08:00

The trunk battery rack is quite simple with two 1.5" angle iron and two 1.5" square tubing. Tim's instructions describe where to drill the holes to bolt down the square tubing. First I cut two 18" long square tubing for each side and put 3/8" bolts 2.5" long through the tubing into the car. These are capped off with nylock nuts and lock washers.

This is the drivers side support.

Passengers side support.

Both supports.

Next was to cut the angle iron to span across the tubing, one next to the rear seats in the back end of the trunk and the other towards the other end (rear of the car). The spacing between the angle iron is the length of the batteries. I only bolted the forward angle iron (near rear seats) and will wait to attach the rear piece once I have selected the batteries.

Front Battery Rack

2008-11-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

Before I can mount the motor and transmission into the car I need to fabricate the front battery rack. It's much easier to put in the front rack without the motor/transmission. This is to ensure the rack and motor/transmission do not interfere and gives me more room to make the rack. I am following Tim Kutscha's blog, http://civic-ev.blogspot.com/ and his open source ev kit, http://groups.google.com/group/civic-ev-kit?pli=1, see it for detailed instructions.

Before beginning I highly recommend buying a good set of drill bits. I started this project using an old set I've had for years, mostly used for wood and plastic. Those bits quickly turned into dull metal sticks. I bought a nice set of cobalt bits and life is good again.

I am making the rack out of 2", 1.5" angle iron and 1" wide flat steel which I purchased from my local building supplier. The plan is to cut the 1.5" angle iron to 7" long, drill bolt holes and bolt to the front two tow hooks. The flat steel piece will be used as a vertical support. The 2" angle iron provides an anchor for the flat steel. The picture below is on the driver's side.

This is done on both sides of the cars.

Once the two side supports are in place I cut 1.5" angle iron to span the width, approximately 35 inches. I drilled holes and used 5/16" bolts with nylok nuts. These are spaced to the width of the batteries. Since I have not chosen a battery yet I only drilled and bolted the most forward angle iron. I'll wait to drill the holes for the other angle iron.

Various other pictures of the rack in progress.

Much more room without the engine.

Mating the Motor/Clutch Assembly to the Transmission

2008-11-28T08:18:00.000-08:00

The big day arrived.....for me. Mating up the motor to the transmission. I started with the motor laying horizontal on the furniture dolly and tried to bring the transmission and motor together. That didn't work by myself. I could not get the transmission shaft through the bushing in the flywheel lined up properly. So I decide to turn the motor vertically and drop the transmission down on it. Use the tranny weight to help me get things mated. That did the trick. See picture below.
Various other pictures. You can see how quickly my garage gets junky.

Here's the assembly turned back horizontal. You can see the bolts are installed and torqued. I used nylok nuts on all the through bolts.

Next up is the front battery racks.

Installing the Adapter Plate and Clutch

2008-11-27T08:04:00.000-08:00

I've been a little slack updating this blog as I progress on the car. I'll try to keep up so as not to get too far behind. Next step was attaching the adapter plate to the transmission. Electro auto sent detailed instructions to do this and it was very straight forward. Below is the first piece, a spacer ring bolted onto the motor.

Next the bell housing plate bolts to the spacer ring.

Here is the clutch flyweel. You can't see it but there is a coupler bolted onto the motor shaft and split tapered collar with a keyway. The coupler has six threaded holes for the flywheel bolts. These are the same bolts that came with the original clutch but I bought a new flywheel from the local autoparts store. My original was trashed. Noticed the teeth ring for the starter is missing from the flywheel. It was pressed on so I just used a hammer and nail punch. Popped right off. It is this stage where the spacing between the bell housing plate you see here and the front face of the flywheel is critical, called the magic number. You have to leave the bolts on the coupler lose, slide the flywheel assembly until the critical distance is achieved....0.774 +/- 0.010 inches for 1994 Honda Civic. If you were converting a different car you would need to measure that distance before removing the flywheel from the engine.

Well the first time I moved the flywheel to the correct distance, unbolted the flywheel, tightened the coupler bolts, reattached the flyweel the distance was off. Must have moved at some point. Once the coupler with the split ring is tightened it's difficult to remove. Flywheel puller would be ideal, I didn't have one and after much prying with screwdrivers and cursing I used two flat bar nail pullers and off it came.....smashing my thumb. I'm sure most people who are 'back yard' mechanics know the picture below. That blue spot on your nail when you hit it on something. Takes months to grow out. Here's mine. You can see it at the base of my thumb nail. Awesome!

After I torqued and loctite (red) the six flywheel bolts I attached the pressure plate and wear plate to the transmission. You can see the alignment tool sticking out. Be sure to save all your original clutch bolts because the local auto parts store does not carry them. They are metric, fine thread with twelve point heads. Can only find at your Honda dealer. Luckily I still had mine.

Next up mating the motor/clutch assembly to the transmission.

Adapter Plate

2008-11-06T18:31:00.000-08:00

After 8 weeks I finally received the adapter plate from electro automotive http://www.electroauto.com/ . It's specifically for a Gen 5 Honda civic S20 Transmission. It looks pretty good. Most of the holes seem to line up with the bell housing but I'll find out for sure when I try to mount it.

As you can see from the picture below the idea is to mate up the electric motor to the original transmission.

When I bought the car the transmission had been removed and I lost the mounting bolts. I recommend trying your best to keep these bolts. With the adapter plate some become through bolts that require washers and nuts but others thread into the transmission. The problem is these are automotive grade (10.9 hardened) metric fine thread bolts with varying lengths. Not something you will find at home depot or general hardware stores. I made a drawing and measured depths of the holes as best as I could then went to a fastener company called Fastenal. They only had metric hardened bolts with regular thread, which was good enough for the through bolts. The others I ordered online from Tacoma Screw.

Hopefully these will work and I can start to attach the motor and transmission. I also borrowed a hydraulic engine hoist from a coworker. Next up mating the motor and transmission.

The Motor

2008-10-11T18:15:00.000-07:00

From my point of view there are five main parts needed.

Electric motor
Motor controller
Adapter plate
Batteries
Battery charger

Before I continue I will say up front I am going with DC power. There are advantages to AC; regenerative breaking, higher efficiency, but the complexity and cost go up as well. Plus I live in South Florida, no hills so regen will not give much back. Maybe my next conversion. :)

These items require some planning up front because the selections you make drive the design of your conversion. From my reading most people said the longest part of converting a car to electric is waiting for your parts. So far I must agree. Once the glider was here I started researching motors and it really came down to two; Advanced DC 203-06-4001 and the Netgain Warp9. Either one would have worked fine but the members of the evdl talked very highly of the Warp9 motor. So that was my choice. I went through a local ev converter up in Ft. Pierce, Grassroots EV, www.grassrootsev.com owned by Steve Clunn. Ordering parts locally keeps the money in the community and Steve can provide help, and I'm going to need help!

8 weeks later and ta-da! Here's the UPS freight delivery truck.

Here is the crate in my garage. It was packed very well by Netgain.

And there it is.
Close up view. Notice the masking tape with the words 'Clock Wise'. Honda motors rotate cw instead of ccw as most other cars. I had Netgain advanced the time to make it rotate opposite.

Next up, the adapter plate.

Introduction

2008-10-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Well I finally did it. I started my electric vehicle conversion project. It's been a long time coming. I read Mike Brown's 'Convert it' book and 'Build your own electric vehicle' by Bob Brant. Both are very good books and worth reading before starting out. I also spent way too much time reading the electric vehicle discussion list (evdl.org). So much information and so many helpful people that I'm sure I will be using their expertise very soon. Probably the thing that got me to finally pull the trigger was reading Tim Kutscha web blog of his Porche and now his Open Source Honda Civic conversion, http://civic-ev.blogspot.com/. Thanks Tim for that extra last push to get started. I initially was open to any glider. I was kicking around using a buddies 1997 Saab convertible. He claimed one more large repair bill and he was donating it. But it's a heavy car, I could find only one other Saab on the evalbum (http://www.evalbum.org/) and the convertible top makes the trunk very small. Plus it was running fine and I didn't want to wait too long. After casually mentioning it at lunch at my office, in reality I talk about it all the time, another friend said his family owns a huge salvage yard in Miami. Any car I want they could get it. Well that changes everything. Instead of looking through Craig's list or want ads I had to pick a car right away. I chose a 5th generation Honda Civic for my glider. They are plentiful, lot's of spare parts and they have been converted many times. I plan on using Tim's open source conversion project as my guide. Two weeks later I get the call and my buddy sends these pictures. Here she is at the salvage yard. Aint she a beauty.
So I pulled the trigger. Since the gas motor was useless I got $300 off the price, it was a running car. I paid $598 dollars, minus $2 in change I found under the seats. Here they bring her out. I also want to say thanks to my friend Alex and to his family who owns MOP Auto Parts in Miami. Super nice family! I can't tell you how invaluable it will be to have a salvage yard at my disposal for spare parts. There's Alex checking out the car.
Remember I had them pull the engine out for me? Here's a shot under the hood. What's missing? There's no transmission!
We found it. It was in the trunk along with the axles, two extra jacks and a bottle of orange juice.

Here's one of the MOP guys removing the steering column to remove the steering locking mechanism. The key got lost. No sense waiting around, we wanted to bring it home. I had a key made the following week. Here she is sitting in my driveway. I'm waiting for the HOA to send a letter stating no junk cars in your driveway. Little do they know...muhahahhahahaaa (insert evil laugh). Notice on the window the Spanish words 'No Tocar'. For now that is her name, means 'hands off' or 'do not take'. It will do for now.