A Beginners Guide to EV Conversions - Episode 1

welcome to a beginner's guide to EV conversions I'm Richard with ev4u custom conversions and in this series we're going to go over all the aspects of a conversion and we're going to do it in a specific manner so that you will have the greatest opportunity for success Thomas Mann said that order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject and that is what we're going to do we're going to do this in an orderly and simplified manner so that the beginner will understand and help to build that big picture view that big picture understanding that is necessary in order to do a conversion well and to do it well the first time I'm sure you've all heard the saying that you don't know what you don't know well in doing an EV s in a lot of things in life what you don't know can cost you and it can cost you time money or injury and so a big part of this series will be to give you the information you need to know to do this safely and safety is number one at EV for you our slogan has always been safe simple reliable and affordable and that will always be our Focus with safety first and when you're doing something like this you know when in doubt ask as we go forward you'll see that some of the systems that we're going to be dealing with have the potential to cause injury and you don't want to make a mistake and injure yourself or someone else or your vehicle and so if you pay attention through this you should be in good shape but if you ever have a question or uncertain about something ask somebody who knows and you can always ask us we're available by email and phone and all that information is on our website at ev4unow.com and you'll see that information at the end of the each each episode so that's our starting point we're going to offer you a beginner's guide and we're going to focus on doing a conversion that's safe simple reliable and affordable because order and simplification are the first steps to Mastery of a subject and we want to be able to have a good grasp of this subject so let's get started just some of the things that will be discussed in this beginner's guide I'm going to talk about some of the main components the vehicle battery pack charger motor controller inverter diesel DC converters adapter coupler 12 volt battery some additional systems that will be discussed power steering power brakes cabin heat cabin cooling air conditioning uh component heating and cooling systems BMS instrumentation and much we'll also go over the 12 volt control wiring the traction pack wiring charging system the controller inverter wiring instrumentation wiring and BMS and more some of the tasks we'll discuss will be the motor mounting cell containment and mounting component placement and mounting wiring of the individual systems which I kind of mentioned programming components and testing of the individual systems this is just some of the information that will be covered in this guy well starting with the donor vehicle pretty much have you know options some people choose to convert a vehicle that they already own others will you know go out and purchase a vehicle specifically to convert but the one thing that we want to kind of start off with is that vehicle well suited for conversion and you can convert any vehicle but not all vehicles are practical to convert and not all vehicles are as well suited to convert so along those lines we're going to talk about some of the main factors that make a vehicle better Suited or not as well suited for conversion so we're going to talk about weight coefficient of drag rolling resistance Transmissions the value proposition and I got a suggestion for you that I'll give you at the end in a vehicle decision weight is probably the top of the list weight will affect your price your range performance and it can limit your options going forward there are different weight concerns that we have and so the curb weight the converted weight the gross vehicle weight rating and payload are some of the most important the curb weight is the weight of the car basically sitting at the curb with all its fluids so forth so if you're looking at vehicles you know one that is lighter is usually a better choice for a conversion we'll talk more about this going forward but uh like I showed you before when it's going to affect your range price so forth so that's the weight now the converted weight and curb weight or basically the same thing but at different points in time this is the weight of the vehicle prior to conversion this is the converted curb weight okay the weight after conversion gross vehicle weight rating is set by the manufacturer that's the most that vehicle can weigh curb weight plus all your passengers and luggage you never want to exceed the gross vehicle weight rating you then pass away from that safe card to an unsafe car and then payload and payload is simply the difference between the gross vehicle weight rating and the curb weight okay so the difference between the maximum weight that the car can weigh and the weight of the car by itself that would be your payload and payload can be passengers luggage whatever so this is the one that we're going to be concerned about and depending on your conversion it's not uncommon for your payload to decrease a little bit because the converted weight may be greater than the original curb weight but it's important to to keep these different weights in mind as you go forward and as you're making your vehicle selection for instance a lot of your lighter cars don't have a very high payload and then just give you one example the first generation Mazda Miata they have a 380 pound payload so that means if you put two 200 pound guys in that car you will exceed the gross vehicle weight rating so in converting one you have to really be mindful of the weight because you don't have a high gbwr you don't have a lot of payload to deal with to work with and so another example would be a little vehicle that has a lot of room and you think oh I can put a lot of batteries in there and what happens is you get up close to this but you didn't leave enough payload for yourself that passenger the dog whatever I've seen a lot of times with people the converted weight is very close to that there's really not any payload for themselves to be behind the wheel so keep those things in mind next we'll talk about the coefficient of drag and basically that's just the resistance of the air as the car passes or the vehicle passes through it and some of the things that affect debt drag coefficient will be the frontal area the wake skin friction and under body flow and I'm not going to go into any of these in detail in our online EB Workshop we do go at all these things in detail um let's see things to keep in mind are that the drag Force increases with the square of speed simply put double the speed equals four times the drag and we talk a lot about this if it works out absolutely we go into a lot of detail in regards to the drag coefficient uh the drag the coefficient of drag has a major effect on vehicles at speeds in excess of 45 miles an hour and different cars it's different that that's a good rule of thumb you get over 45 miles an hour this becomes a factor so if you're just going to be driving around town real slow you can drive you know a billboard it's not going to be as big a deal as when you start increasing the speed double speed four times the drag um another thing to keep in mind is that you cannot tell what that um drag coefficient or that aerodynamics is by looking at the vehicle and that's something else we go through in the workshop we look at dozens of vehicles and and their drag coefficients and it's amazing you know that you know we could we could do a test and most people are going to fail because there's no way to tell by looking at the car and I'll just give you one example in 1984 Pontiac Trans Am okay those of you've been around long enough can picture with Trans Am looks like it's a pretty good sized car think Smokey and the Bandit kind of thing anyway Pontiac Trans Am and the Toyota Prius have the same coefficient of drag and I could give you even greater examples so that's just one so that's drag coefficient and you know typically uh you know in my opinion at least and what I use mine for um an EV conversion is a great commuter car uh we use you know we've got one we use as a shop truck we have multiple locations I do a lot of driving between locations and home and so commuter and so end up here most of it's on the interstate so it's above that 45 miles an hour it's typically 75 miles an hour so drag is an important aspect and something to consider another consideration is rolling resistance and to give you an idea how do the brakes work on a car they work by increasing the rolling resistance they resist the rolling of the vehicle that's how the brakes work four-wheel drive vehicles and all-wheel drive vehicles have greater rolling resistance than a two-wheel drive vehicle they make low rolling resistance tires now when we started they were hard to find but now with all the EVS on the road and stuff they make good rolling resistance Tires For All Seasons in a lot of different sizes so forth and another important one is tire pressure very important to stay on top of your tire pressure if you want to continue to get good range into drive efficiently transmission well we typically recommend you convert a vehicle with a manual transmission and we'll talk a little bit more about this when we're talking about Motors and so forth but the transmission is basically a torque amplifier it allows you to have a greater power band greater top speed greater low speed torque whatever um and then automatic transmissions I mean there's a lot that I can say in that topic but this is uh the The Beginner's Guide not going to go into a lot suffice to say that week 10 vehicles with automatic transmissions I know others have done vehicles and automatic transmissions but I don't know anyone that would that's done in automators would do it again okay uh and then direct drive and not that director life isn't possible and basically all your oems are direct drive but again when we're talking about Motors and stuff you'll see the reason why most conversions aren't direct drive and it's a matter of cost simplicity and well enough said on that for right now and here's one that comes up a lot more often than you would would think but you know based on our emails and phone calls this is a topic that we hit a lot especially when the gas prices went up last year and people are wanting to convert whatever was sitting in the driveway and like I said not all vehicles are well suited and one of those reasons is the value proposition conversions aren't really an inexpensive Endeavor there's there's cost to it and not all cars are worthy of the investment and um and then you have the fact that um a lot of newer cars are heavier I mean bottomless newer cars are heavier than older vehicles than and your Classics were typically that's because of all the safety features they have you know extra supports in the doors airbags and so forth so that kind of you know shoots some of the newer Vehicles out of the Arena integrated Electronics causes extra problems so extra weight extra complications um a lot of newer cars are going down in value every year where a classic is going up in value every year it's appreciating versus a new car that's depreciating and so and your Classics like I said tend to be lighter so anyway that's another consideration you know is the vehicle that you want to convert is it a good choice from the value proposition perspective and it may not matter to you but it's something that you may want to consider and then my suggestion my suggestion is that you purchase if you're if you're purchasing a vehicle to convert that you purchase one that is drivable a lot of times people think well I'll buy a vehicle that doesn't run because I can get it at a lower price because it doesn't run but if you're not familiar with the car and it doesn't run does the steering work how's the suspension how's the transmission how's the differential how are the brakes you don't know those things because you don't have the opportunity to test drive the car and know that they work so unless you're wanting to go through all of those systems it's better to buy a vehicle that's drivable and that you can test drive and know its condition and you still may have to go through some of those systems but at least you'll know where you stand well thank you for watching this first episode of our beginner's guide to an EV conversion there's many more episodes to come and for more information on conversions and the services that we provide visit our website at ev4younow.com it also gives you information about our online EV Workshop or you can go directly to that website at evworkshops.com and this beginner's guide is just that it's a beginner's guide It's Not Meant to replace the workshop the workshops have a lot more information a lot more detail and are a lot more informative this is to give you that basic beginners big picture perspective and it helps someone with the decision is this something that I want to tackle myself is this a DIY project or should I hire somebody to do it so hope you enjoyed it I it's my personal opinion in this type of program that each episode gets better and better and better the more that you get under your belt the more enjoyable the more interesting this will be and it's one of those things that we have to do sequentially you can't you know run without learning to walk and so we're starting at the beginning and we're to go through and we're going to you know provide this almost on a weekly basis we may interrupt it every once in a while with that's some other video content but this will take most of the 2023 to go through probably and I thank you for joining and ask that you please like And subscribe and hit the notification uh Bell so that you're reminded that we have a video out we'll try to do as we've been doing for most of last year and that is these will come out on Sunday mornings so until next time hope you enjoy the ride

Channel: EV4U Custom Conversions

Views: 9,032

Keywords: Electric, Conversions, How, to, convert, electric, VW, Karmann, Ghia, EV4U, Custom, Conversion, Videos, Information, Instruction, electric vw karmann ghia, electric vw beetle, electric porsche, electric vw bus, electric mercedes sl, electric datsun 280z, diy electric, diy, diy conversion, ev workshop, diy workshop, online ev workshop, conversion workshop, solar, diy video, vw doka, vw transporter, electric doka, electric transporter, solar powered, ev4u, solar powered vw, solar powered doka

Id: GCqLvANQnqI

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023