Exploring the cheap DIY electric Volkswagen samba

hey guys Richard rich rebuilds here for quite some time now I've been hearing about Jay who Garcia the youtuber that builds DIY power walls but also has an electric Volkswagen Samba that he built in his garage this ties into my last episode where I talked about being careful around the prices of DIY V's but Jay who did it himself and say the ton of money so while I was out in California I went to check out what he was all about and take a ride in his Samba but before we get to this episode I want to say a couple of things number one the electrified garage grand opening is July 19th from 4 to 9 p.m. click on the event link in the description box below to RSVP we're gonna have a few vendors there gem our wheel and tire machine equipment company as well as Tesla yes Tesla is gonna be there giving tasks rides with your new Raven cars that's how big this is gonna be so make sure you sign up number 2 shout out to smart charge America I reached out in the community page because I needed some batteries loaded up for an e V project that I'm working on they loaded the batteries onto a pallet and they actually brought it back to their warehouse which was way above and beyond the original ask they really helped me out so shout out to them and check them out at smart charge of America comm for fast affordable and safe electric car charging solutions for both your home and work thanks again for that guy's ok now let's get in this episode and see what this electric bus is all about why do you want to paint this this is actually the same colors Deloris right now Lloris I got her I got her wrapped in in primer yeah I mean you can't so to be clear this tape we have one on all right let's take a look at the thing that actually powers this thing all right let's see in the back of it looks like yeah it's the real one yet Ryland practice thing it's got a special key uh-huh this is not no modern car this is called a church key oh look at that I don't know why it's called sure yeah I think it's because that's how the open churches they use hundreds of years ago yeah stick it there so hey this tool do you stick it on here this is live so no matter how long this takes you I'm not anything any of this out what nope all right first things first I like that LED light there little cucumber light and it's just 80 kilowatts and basically the the bottleneck on the system is the 80 kilowatt yeah controller why you be swapping it out for another one so yeah I think we're eventually just gonna get rid of this system and put a quarter in really yeah oh the big boys oh it's got a lot of issues cuz this motor you know you slap it in they both to the frame horrible to go yeah right and you drive this with the clutch to drive it just like a regular car oh so you still have the manual in here and everything yeah you can shift through all the gears and stuff and then those are the chargers on the side just I already explained to you what happened with that tell you to get some help you said the profile [Laughter] and then what in the back is that a second is that more batteries you have back yeah okay and how much range do you have under sting so have a hundred go slow yeah usually like at night when I come from like Evie West is 91 miles away yeah and there's no traffic at night I just step on it yeah barely yeah yeah yeah no that this is this is damn because like sixty miles of the variance between going fast and slow all right so I want to sit in this thing to actually see yeah what it's all about so what would you call this paint code classic do I like this a lot man this is cool classic primer there's no seat belts there's no signals isn't it oh yeah alright so this is the battery meter it's a battery meter yeah okay we have 355 amp hours okay 116 volts right so we're fully charged on that fully charged but we're like eight ninety percent or something that's pretty cool all right how do you start this contraption so then you have keys yeah back in the old days we used to use metal things no keys hey the contactors click on that just click yeah now you hear the high pitch of the switching yeah your garage door opener and now we roll it so this is an induction motor yeah there's no cog in whatsoever and I thought that Tesla you could hear the Coggan so you still this isn't direct drive a manual transmission alright and it's manual driving there's no there's no assist for power steering that's all whatsoever no fancy and so this is a PhD air-conditioning I like this look at this a little windows and stuff open here are your knees yeah accident your knees must be pushed in pretty much it's got this the brake yeah it's got a clock yeah it doesn't work yeah but you have a Samsung I I can't hate on them this thing's been on 24/7 for six years wait is that really measuring the rpm [Music] and how was it with the manual steering well once you're rolling it's fine yeah it's only when like no and I can move around freely because I don't have a seat belt that's permanent okay so now this really isn't a bad stuff this kind of follows up to my last video where I talked about the hidden cost of v's now this is just a great alternative to doing it yourself it's a very basic setup you can get the motor and use control for about three grand and Jehu actually sources the batteries on the cheap let's see how he does it this is tight in here oh my gosh listen I heard that you make DIY power walls I just heard it from someone that true yes really so one thing you're gonna notice about a Jehu is that he has this massive oil stain which he has not explained to me and it's so what's going on here what's underneath a piece of cardboard you know these are VW's no matter yes yeah I heard congratulations yeah no no your house clean Wow because people can't just show up at my house without three hours know that okay my place first you know I mean yeah production company here last week yeah kind of cleaned I see I see production company yeah but for some production company in Europe really yeah yeah it moves man pretty good so this is where you do your stuff if you look at mine it looks like a this is actually very well thought out and organized so what am I looking at here exactly that's your back lighting your face it nice and smooth nice and sexy yeah you got a you got a bounce light you can do it right cuz in harsh yeah all I have is harsh sunlight so I get too many messages now like help me I have an RV how do i what's the best battery right I mean like hundreds yeah so I yeah you know much where I'm like I can't answer all of them I'm out be in the phone or in the computer all day answering questions yeah do nothing else yeah for people to be like ok thanks for the info go on there right so I kind of been establishing a little ways where I can help people and also get a little bit you know right off of that like affiliates and stuff is working yeah that's good finally I might be able to get out of debt yeah actually be able afford a Tesla right well you have a pretty cool sound but for now that's a thing so like a lot of it is that a necessity it drys curiosity the innovation you know because before you couldn't afford a Tesla right so you made a badass electric sounds I had to make my own if you could afford a tough so you just have a mom of three and then no one would care yeah that was a great Model S yeah I you know and you'd be like you know four hundred thousand Model S owners in the zip code yeah so that actually is a good segue to the things that I'm doing the thing that people are now Tesla announced terrible's yeah a long time ago mmm-hmm and no one can get them cuz they don't they're not really selling them right and so so I think you they only have they don't sell the power walls individually but they could have power walls with their solar insolation is that right well they just don't have my very limited amount really well so I think are you always expected that didn't have enough cells cuz they they actually Tesla wall - yeah I've jumped into the 21 70s right which is the same ones the model 3 batteries their model 3 is a high production vehicle so the all the cells available were gonna go the mom free product right because they were going through the production hell or whoever so they're not gonna be any selfs available for bright power balls yeah I mean spirals right I mean that's a that's a tiny little market right half a million orders of cars and you know Elon just stuff you know like a couple of weeks ago he actually confirmed that is like yeah we were self starved yeah and we had no cells for the power so there's people way in years really has no idea and they can't get them right and so you know people need a battery for their home because it does a bunch of things that helps you you know it takes all that energy that your solar system that it's sending right to the doors the ones getting paid which which I hate because a lot of the cases what they're doing is it's like you just said they're just taking the solar right from the panel's feeding it back into the grid and you just get a discount on the electricity pretty much but actual with actual powers diminishing discount is like they started a one-to-one ratio right like how about I just give you one cent and then we charge you one dollar and and the common misconception is that a lot of people are like well you have solar if there's a power outage you'll still have you still have power right no cuz I don't have the battery and it's just yeah so it's you're doing your own DIY batteries so actually make it yeah yeah and you know we were doing these sort of stuff right yes this is the modules I'm working on easy summary of what's gonna go into somebody oh really so this kind of size so module I was sizing it to put it in but essentially we were doing these back in the day and we were here's one of the ones that went kind of famous this little thing here I was doing our proof of concept how to do the Tesla fuses yeah this is the way Tesla yeah thermally yeah oh yeah I knew that well they fused individual cell right so I was doing this a long time ago and then eventually that led to this module which is the full-size and actually in a while yeah so these are dead laptop batteries cells yes I remember that you were on motherboard and yeah we're actually taking purchasing old decrepit laptops opening the batteries up and actually extracting the cells themselves sorting the good ones from the bad ones and run a good ones we would make them into this so this is capable of doing like a thousand amps where do you get your batteries from well that's that's a cool subject so there's they're really hard to get right yeah that was the main thing that was very hard of it and so we were getting stuff from China like all because I'm Stephen it's like a million batteries around here yeah so if it turns out here we have a million millions and millions of batteries mm-hmm I mean for the last 25 years there's every laptops got like eight of them yeah right and then usually those batteries wouldn't last very long and so then you would replace the battery and you throw it away right and then I mean you wouldn't throw it away you take it at like a recycling center and then yeah second Center would put them in big containers and ship them over in China right China would get them crack them open real able them right rewrap them right we ship it right back to us yeah recycle it yeah so you know I paired up with a bunch of these recyclers mm-hm yeah so I have to the major one so one here in the States you're here in the California and another one back there and PA and instead of sending truckloads of batteries to China now where my audience is buying them and they're cracking them open yeah they're like testing that and they're putting them into power walls that's damn cool man yeah we designed like whole little things like what's the best way that's the definition of recycling right there oh yeah because you don't want us to melt all this stuff before it doesn't have life right so we kind of like look for the best like the charging and testing equipment hmm so people have walls like this also you see so you take out the batteries yeah and then you put them in these in these charging blocks right here to determine what the charge state is if there's actually still good yeah so so good numbers it just tells you right so Holies turn on and then you put in the batteries and then you tell it like okay I wanna you know normal test and this will charge and this charges test this up right and tell you like oh this one's good this one's no good this one's good so then you take the bad ones out and then the ones that overheat or whether you take them out and then you recycle those yes are bad they're too far gone what's the failure rate on the batteries let's just say you get a shipment of like 200 batteries what's the average percentage of batteries that aren't usable so it depends where they come from right laptop batteries aren't worried that about 50% we're good 50% we're back Wow okay and that's because laptops were terrible they hate they have a terrible life right cycle right so they aren't they're plugged in all day long so they're always fully charged right which is not a good thing four batteries that's one thinker they should happen set their very high for us but then once you disconnect your laptop then it's a tiny battery running a very power hungry so it's like two hours runtime it's a power to now yeah a lot discharge high charge high this church rate right and so then you like charge it up again and so they're running through like full depth of discharge cycles right so by the time you get a couple of years into that battery this day hmm right but thousands they use of thank you that's same cells right you put them in on some other light duty use and then five to ten years right that's pretty close essentially what I have in my humble right I have Panasonic 2600 milliamp power cell they're 10 years old really and they're like 90% capacity still that's pretty damn good then right so just the new early they're like if you just use these correctly yeah they'll last a long time you don't have to do nothing right you know Elon says like literally what they're yeah I have configuration to the cathode in the sphere Lehrer but it's like nothing groundbreaking right I mean maybe now to like when they started 10 years ago right there's a difference in of changes that maybe he can see makes a drastically different cell right but they started literally with like roadsters or originals off the shelf yeah you know NCR 1860 PBS that's what the that's what they were in there is that what you have in your in your Samba what do you have any fun for batteries right now uh other Tesla's soul early first-generation Tesla Roadster era right but they were kind of smart fortwo uh yes yeah but you had a smart fortwo yeah yeah five hundred so they owe my god well you the guy buying up all of the I remember you had a way back when you had an episode when you were actually making a skateboard yeah remember that we were yeah he'd make me a skateboard IRA let your car don't they I watch your man thank you no I know what's going on that's right we ended up breaking that thing yeah yeah yeah no they were paying me off and we just didn't want to spend so much time like cracking it or it wasn't enough interest the orders weren't big enough the batteries were halfway gone cuz we making other DIY cars oh right and once you disconnect one thing things like no I'm not gonna work out more yeah and then those were not production vehicles so you couldn't just go to like some shopping like oh you have diagnostic - yeah and they're like no this is like an odd it doesn't it's not none of these codes match to them so we're like forget it it's a nightmare right unless you got like an engineer from from smart Mercedes or whatever yeah yeah you would never do yeah and I were like screw it let's just put these batteries and other cars and stuff in this graphic what's in this power box right here actually you have a smaller one right here so so the blue one here is to attach an external battery yes so you double your capacity on this guy right right this one you plug in solar panels and then that soap as well charger battery or you can also just charge it like this one charging it so this is a pretty pretty cool versatile little box here it'll do like you know you can connect it straight into your like RV and then you could do 12 volt right so it has these two bolts and then a bunch of USBs yeah that's a one tens here's how you turn on the actual there's a perfect camping box yeah this will last you a while and I show people how to put it together you don't side tape don't use double side table yeah I figure I noted that well yeah actually a 2000 watt inverter care this search in 4000 and what batteries are these so we're using these lipo packs that tom has like warehouse full of them yeah I think these came out of like buses city buses then we're testing uh these batteries right and so they're very powerful they're like they're capable of doing like 200 amps at 25 C and you know uh Google just did a video on this Oh I mean II on this one you're so low they did a video where they show it like me with Google yeah and so they have this sequence where people where you you're typing into the screen like searching for stuff and then they type in how to make a solar generator yeah my videos come on oh look at that yeah you look you look a little even a little Elon Musk because it's like you think about it his idea was to remember fix Puerto Rico's power problems that's right so he went there when there and he said sending solar panels and our packs and the restoring power to Puerto Rico you're doing the same exact thing yeah just different scales right right billionaire I'm out yeah you're coming could you give a couple bucks but yeah we help like 50 families in Puerto Rico really yeah they got temporary power while there the grid goes down you know about fifty five thousand dollars donated for that cost we I flew over there someone flew me down there yeah that's awesome yeah check them all on your channel I want people that actually did go see down your channel to be really cool I wish I could help people like you help people and said I'm just kind of hitting sitting here yo okay guys I hope you enjoy this episode with Jay who and I just shooting the breeze about his setup make sure you check them out in Jehu garcia on youtube and also check out his work helping to restore power people in need don't forget to sign up for electrified garage open house I will see you guys next week

Channel: Rich Rebuilds

Views: 525,053

Keywords: tesla, cars, teardown, mechanical, salvage, rebuild, how, to, fix, whats, inside, ev, repair, electric, vehicle, volkswagen, vw, electric volkswagen, powerwall diy, powerwall tesla, electric vw bus

Id: Tto6bglCevA

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019