Building an electric mini cooper on a $5,000 budget

Lena can we like maybe do work and stuff well we have a car to do if I don't take a picture it didn't happen but you're not doing anything I mean I'm doing a video you're just taking photos of yourself doing nothing no I got the I got the mini thingy in it what's up guys Richard Richie builds here back with my electric Mini Cooper build now last episode I found a car with the blown engine for an electric conversion on a budget I paid $1,500 for it and I could have paid less for running and driving one but none of them were this pretty blue color the color is literally called electric blue which seemed fitting so of course I spent more than I should now before I get too far into this I should let you know my budget that way it makes everything else make sense the budget's $5,000 including the price of the car so right now I have 3500 left to spend to make it an electric car now in the first episode I brought it to the electrified garage to rip out the engine and transmission the catalytic converter was hauled out and the exhaust was being held up by chicken wire and the engine was in fact blown now that everything is out I can start the planning process of finding the most important part of the car the motor now the manual transmission already has the provisions for me to get the motor power to the ground so I'd be stupid to get rid of that and add complexity so it's going to stay manual if you're pretty Savvy you can go to sites like DIY electric car.com or endless fear.com or Facebook on a page called DIY electric vehicles now don't forget eBay I typed in DC motor into eBay and this auction with a single thumbnail popped up and said it was an advanced DC 8 in electric motor but if you look at the auction carefully it also has what looks like another device attached to it which is the motor controller and not just any motor controller a zilla motor controller arguably one of the best DC motor controllers you can get your hands on which I'm going to need as well now if you go on eBay and type and Zilla controller look at these prices that's my whole budget pretty much needless to say if you see a motor and controller for 800 bucks I'm buying it I gave the $800 and I went on my Merry way so I have a car shell motor and a controller for $2,300 spent now the not so good part is that I don't think my 8 in motor is going to be able to move this car as well as I would like normally 8 in is good on paper but in reality you want 9 in so I'm still after a larger motor now a couple weeks later this gem popped up a warp 9 for $200 hands down one of the best places to find parts is a technical school the kids make EVs and many of them abandon the projects because they're like wait a second this girl's in this class what am I doing they pretty much lose interest and the vehicles sit there a lot of the times so I got this part for a huge discount a lot of people are going to ask why I didn't go with an AC motor so I can have regenerative braking well two reasons one DC motors where I am are a little bit easier to come by and can be found in things like forklifts for a low startup cost and number two Simplicity for this application DC motors are much simpler to set up just like this web page I made using Squarespace it's easy to claim a domain or URL like www. yes I'm aware that there's an electric mini Cooper from the factory.com or www.h high schools are a great place to get abandoned EV projects.com so then you can create a custom site that matches your style and enthusiasm check out these page templates because they'll make your web page look better and the looks on Eevee Enthusiast faces when I unveil my new diesel truck project head to www.squarespace.com rebuilds to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code in the description box below shout out to Squarespace for making platforms for people's passions even if the community thinks they need to convert it into something else now let's get to work okay here we go with judgment day now this is the old engine and uh this look at this greasy disgusting mess it's amazing that I even work on these things in the first place but this motor is just gross what we're going to do is we're going to do a quick time lapse of the tear down of this again I am keeping the original gearbox the plan is to separate the gearbox uh from the engine once I separate those two I'm going to figure out how to mount the motor to the transmission [Music] itself [Music] there it is boys and right now I want to take off the clutch uh I already started loosening it so I'm just going to pull it off here for the first time but um there's a special part that I need in this that's going to help with the rest of the filled Jesus Christ all right there we go this is what we need I have to mate this to the love joy connector all right here we are Linda if you could just like not use your phone and stuff pay attention okay whatever so what we're going to do now is we took the uh the old motor out and now we have to put the electric motor in here somehow I'm going to take you over and like show you what the components we're going to use are I like how they work together I know this is your first time I not know what they are but you know I figured I'd show you cuz you're you be working for me now you have to know this stuff okay all right so any idea what this is looks like a DC motor to me excuse me oh wow all right not bad what does DC stand for direct current okay we're getting somewhere all right so basically no that's that's I nailed it yeah you're spot on you nailed it it's not the state so that works no no def this is not a state any ideas what this is uh is that a controller DC controller that is the controller very good as a pair right yes exactly she's damn she's damn good all right these these come as a pair yeah so what we're going to do is we're going to connect this DC motor controler to this DC motor and this is going to tell it pretty much how to spin what direction to go and all that good stuff so this is the love joy connector right here and what this is is this actually mates the two surfaces together so what this does is this um it comes apart like that and there's a rubber bushing in here this goes on here right and then this goes on the inside of this but the thing is I got this used this was a used one so the so yeah so the spline is different so basically what has to happen is I have to make this fit that transmission cuz right now it doesn't work because it's this is for a different car yeah so what I have to do is I this is actually pretty clever I'll show you what I have to do you know what this is any guesses it looks like something that I don't know a wheel yes yay it's a wheel what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut this out this is part of the clutch I'm going to cut this out and get this spline because I know this fits over this perfectly right yeah that fits on there perfectly okay are you going to weld that together then or something that's what I have to do so I have to cut this out and get this Center piece yeah and I'm going to put this Center piece right in here and what that'll let me do is I could slide it it on here from the back yep and then it'll go through that centerpiece right and then you'll be able to connect and then the love joy if I could figure yeah will connect right there oh and then the motor goes on you see the little key the little key in the hole right there that's the same key in the hole that fits on this one that little slot okay so this actually makes together yeah like a puzzle and and then that actually makes the rest of it go um so your first order business Lea we're about recycling here and reusing and this is the gas tank out of the Mini Cooper that we're going to convert to Electric I need you to take the gas from this gas tank and put it in this truck cuz it's still good ass gas in here yo this oh there's a lot in here yeah this thing's actually pretty heavy yeah yeah there you go now it's down the throat you want some free gas for your car too there's a lot of gas in here I mean yeah wow look at this just Community gas y all right so we're almost ready now so here's the uh motor I got from that car and it's funny cuz this car was actually on a website called EV album and EV album is a good website to go to you have an EV project you want to start so you can see how other people have built their cars and this car that the motor this is from actually was on E album it's a really really weird three- wheeled car that was kind of ugly no offense to the person that made it but um the person that bought it actually had a lot of these components in it already and I'll tell you one of the best ways uh to get an EV conversion done for cheap honestly is to buy someone else's EV conversion because those parts are heavily depreciated not many people want to buy someone else's project because it's literally someone else's project and uh what you could do in a lot of cases you could buy that take the parts that you need and then just build the car that you want cuz again like you saw on eBay these parts are worth a damn fortun yeah we gave a bunch of these away for the greater good and it's funny I wouldn't done it for a second if like these parts ended up in someone else's project and to keep the budget low keep the price low this is what you have to do so we have a lot of the components that we need already to act kind of make it move we have the Hairball interface and we have the controller uh what I'm going to do is I have to I have the old mount for the transmission I'll put the mount Right Here Mount the transmission to it and again that love joy connector is is what I have to mate those two Services together uh to make sure that I could have this thing actually move and and and move around as I see fit so this is an interesting motor here because this is the one that I picked up from a school that didn't need it anymore and this is what I was saying in the beginning that a really good place to get a lot of these projects are school projects or School EV conversion programs or schools that have have any kind of like Vocational Technical program a lot of them have these things because the students want them teachers want to convert uh you know cars from electricity or to teach students how to work on these cars and they buy stuff like this and the students lose interest so they actually sold this spe for 200 bucks and this is a warp 9 and warp 9s go for like 1,00 bucks used in a lot of cases for for decent money so I think this is uh definitely a good pickup another place to get cheap stuff from try a school go to a school and then just say hey you got any free stuff for me and then um when they say no uh peek in their Windows anyways cuz they're probably sick and tired here people go don't be like him he has light no glasses on yeah well with no glasses huh very unsafe very unsafe hey do me a favor Lee can you just before you start welding actually while you're welding with plasma cutting just talk about how reliable minis are cuz I got my ass there is no reliability on I got my ass handed to me about all these people that are buying cars for 50 bucks online saying that Mini Coopers are the most reliable cars they've ever owned in their lives from a shop perspective since you own one tell me uh what tell me what you're seeing Lee for these minis cuz you been work anything after 50,000 Mi are but you you were at BMW aren't you y so you know the deal mhm so you know the car yeah and mini yeah so r53s r50s transmission main shaft snapping clutches going completely by 5,000 7,000 Mi wiring harnesses not built correctly water leaks from the sunroof Mass Le sunroof Creeks suspension bolts breaking randomly in the rear Su suspension uh engine oil pressure dropping uh oil filter housings leaking let's see uh timing chains on the newer ones timing chains are Nightmare on the newer ones which one if if if someone had a gun to your head and said you have to you have to pick one mini which one are you going to pick what year what model year oh yeah exactly no I'm dead it's nope I I would have to think too hard probably the one at the junkyard knowing that the already has problems a few I looked at most of them weren't running but the one that I looked at it had an issue with it got flooded I think they were they just parked it outside yep and it rained really hard and the car never worked again actually four of them I looked at did that is that like a common thing yes very common flooding problems very common almost all their sunroofs leak mhm uh they have some towl problems in the front that leak uh also windshields oh the early ones windshields are cracked just randomly you could be 10 miles after buying the car or 1,000 miles windshield just crack randomly just cuz yep uh sunroofs randomly stop working jamming that's low mileage and you always have sunroof creaking noises in rear hatch creaking MH it's it is the cheapest BMW owned but the worst built BMW car with the I don't know the crap Parts they have just sitting around on the the Shelf the shelf or the floor from from all the other cars that did right yeah like oh these parts are junk what we going to do with them we going to recycle them or we going to you know what just build a car yeah let we bought the rights of mini let's build something yeah I got you all right good and that's the reason why people that these cars are literally $1,000 on Craigslist yeah so that's that's the reason why so which ones are better the supercharged ones or the turbo ones which ones are worse I should say worse I would actually the more problems uh the turbo ones okay they had the more problems The Supercharged ones have their own problems uh supercharge will detonate they ran the water pump off the supercharger mhm and the supercharger had its own oil in the back of it it would suck the oil slowly into itself and these gears would actually just fry themselves and the water pump would stop working then you have overheating issues shops to tell you you need a thermostat this and this no you got to take the th the supercharger out take it all out and a lot of guys didn't know what to do it they had to make you buy another supercharger water pump assembly inate that like almost 3K later on a car that's worth maybe 3500 at the time maybe 3K right all right well we there it is there's your answer let's see if the plasma cutter will cut through this whole well that's some nasty weld yeah the reason why I'm using a plasma C instead of a torch yep we don't want to damage or cut through part of this coupling it are pretty damn important right oh it's cutting it already oh it's already yeah I just was there for a few seconds all right good right give me give it me Lee give it me you see that it out all Shake It Out Shake That Grill Out Shake It Out yeah watch go ahead and touch that that hot I don't know you grab it one two damn yeah start that was hot that's hot all right good we're off to a good start now we grind that down make it nice and sexy now here's the thing so now let's see yeah that should work all right I won't tell you how to do your job on keep talking to Chris about about girls I'm prob just hit it with a hammer yay that's a hell of a difference H can you still look at that wow okay so we have that machine it down mhm in this or this either one make that inner diameter larger to fit that and I would make it so it's within like a thousand so it' be a very tight nice perfect fit that would clean up everything of that go ahead touch that fing not now you sure it's warm it's [Music] going I see how it's catching on the slide taking my time send it Lee send it home all right your eyeballs y my Harbor Freight welder doesn't do this well holy smokes Lee that's what happens I can't do that with mine no jeez mine just spits everywhere thank you Lee thank you very much when you go home make sure you run a file on these uh splines just when you do it cuz I might have Bunger up I'm not going to do that you know I'm not going to do that I have that kind of Tim oh Hammer right yeah just a hammer you know what F Lee qu quiz for you so name a tool that could make another tool just like it oh easy one is it yeah I'm going blank what is it Hammer all right if you have a hammer you can make another Hammer have a hammer another one allegedly is a lathe yeah it can it can make a lathe you know allegedly you want to see the oldest school I have seriously 1891 say please keep your pants on yeah he comes out from know all right shout out to Lee for doing this coupling for me this is awesome so I'm going to take this out and the next thing I have to do now is this is an old greasy pizza box I have to lay the transmission on top of this pizza box and Trace out the outside of it what that allow me to do that'll actually make the backing plate for the motor to attach to itself so once I trace this out you'll see the tracing on this sheet then I have to bring that sheet to a machine shop and they have to cut out the shape for me all right and here is the shape that I traced out after I cut the out I have to bring this to the machine shop to get this plate cut out now these holes are the corresponding holes that are in the transmission as well and these are important because this is what's going to bolt that backing plate to the transmission and these four holes right here are the corresponding holes that correspond to this uh this motor right here 1 2 3 4 because this is what's going to mount the motor to that actual backing plate here the circle that's where the shaft of the motor comes through that comes through right here the shaft I have to make sure that size is exact I measured that and that's going to be right here so the Machine Shop is going to cut all these things out for me again if you want to be cheap you don't have to go this extreme you could literally get a square plate round off the edges uh get a drill press uh drill press rather drill out these holes yourself this big ass one good luck with that that's kind of big but you could do yourself uh at home for probably like less than about $35 or so the most expensive part is is going to be the actual metal piece uh that you have to purchase uh to cut out in the first place okay so I got this back from the Machine Shop they asked me uh what color I wanted and I said give me the cheapest color that you guys have that people refuse to use and it's this really weird light blue color which is perfect because this powder coat color was absolutely $3.99 and I will take it cuz no one's going to see it anyways The Next Step I have to bolt this to the transmission and then Mount the motor to this [Music] the motor is finally attached to the transmission just think that big greasy disgusting engine was attached to this it looks so much cleaner and streamlined now and like an idiot one thing I didn't realize was I didn't test the actual motor like a buffoon all right so the reason why this was so cheap very well could be because it just didn't work but DC motors for the most part are pretty bulletproof all I have to do is just connect uh it's the 24 48 volts to those two Terminals and make sure it spins um I should see uh this spinning right here on that side and also the other side uh for the other axle but uh that should do it uh so I'm super excited about this I'm going to be testing that I hope it works uh I'm going to keep the manual transmission obviously it's still attached to it the mount is already there so I can mount it right to the car in the original area but this is we're off to a really good start here I think this is it could be a really successful project there's enough torque here to move this thing around uh no problem but again we're up to about half our budget right now for the next steps I have to figure out how I'm going to work on the on the power steering as well as the power brakes uh I'm going to clean the inside of this get all the grease out of there make sure it's nice and clean Linda was supposed to do it she didn't do it unfortunately uh so it's a matter of me figuring out the rest and on how to do this stuff but I'm going to start the wiring process as well next episode and uh we should be in good shape and uh to those that saw leaner in this episode and didn't like it I wanted to personally apologize for the free content I am sorry that you don't like the free content that you watch uh and pay absolutely nothing for and uh that's it don't forget to like share subscribe all that good stuff if you want to see updates on electric Mini Cooper don't forget to follow me on Instagram richb kid and I will see you guys next week adios

Channel: Rich Rebuilds

Views: 1,766,865

Keywords: tesla, cars, teardown, mechanical, salvage, rebuild, how, to, fix, whats, inside, ev, repair, electric, vehicle, how to fix a tesla, salvage repair, mini, cooper, mini cooper, eletric mini, eletric mini cooper

Id: PabBvjOBXR8

Length: 22min 13sec (1333 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020