Karmann Ghia Conversion to Electric (The Process)

I'm going to show you a sped up video of how to convert a car from gas to electric we're going to replace the noisy with a state-of-the-art electric motor that puts out probably five so we start by just stripping everything out of the old car it's a Volkswagen so dropping the engine is really easy it's only held on by four bolts to the transaxle take out the steering wheel seat gauges we replace those everything's got to go move all this old 40 year old installation carpet headliner everything's got to go hold on the old emissions stuff please who needs that get rid of the whole mess of old wiring keep what I need and throw away the rest after figuring out where to put all the batteries time to start making the brackets and put Hold'em in there's a total of the 45 individual lithium iron phosphate batteries wired together in series to give a total of around a hundred nine people have to be kind of creative figure out where to put them business for the floor of the battery will be kind of funny it goes right where the old fuel tank went what some of them right here another set down here right in front where the spare tire used to go and the rest had to leave that little door so that I could have access to the transmission shifting linkage so that I can replace the transmission without having to remove all the batteries and now it's time to start the wiring this is a box that I'm making that's gonna hold all the fuses the main contact or the contactor that engages the DC converter and the shunt these are the contactors they need to be able to handle a thousand amps you could see the shunt right there and now we have to make all the connections these are all crimped on connectors very important to make all the connections good because you'll get a lot of heat if they're bad that's the fuse holders this is kuat cable and it's extremely important to do a good job installing the lugs because this needs to be able to handle a thousand amps and if you have any bad connection at all it's gonna heat up to the point of melting things so you have to crimp on the connectors with a hydraulic crimper and put on some heat shrink tubing that's the hydraulic crimper right there you can't just hit it with the hammer and hope to be good time to feed all the cables through the car that's connected to the master switch right there that cuts off the whole circuit a lot of cable obviously no need for a gas pedal anyone eliminate the throttle cable I'm gonna replace it with a throttle from a Toyota Prius basically a the holodeck pedal with dual sensors and analog outputs it was a challenge trying to figure out which wire went where had to do a lot of testing with a multimeter especially since there were five wires that came out of the throttle and only board a plug into the controller every connector had to be individually made had to improvise a throttle mounting bracket since in 1974 Volkswagen didn't realize that I was going to put a Toyota Prius throttle in it installing the motor coupler and the adapter that connects to the transaxle and also specially made lightened aluminum flywheel very light why wheel doesn't have to have any amount of inertia on an electric motor but it does serve as a backing plate for the clutch pressure plate then installing the stage for Kennedy clutch and finally hooking it up to just a regular 12-volt car battery to give it a test run very smooth no vibration I'm sure a lot of you will be offended seeing me cutting into this body that wasn't happy about it either hey the motor wouldn't fit what am I supposed to do get a smaller motor please just lining everything up and it only takes four bolts to put it in place hooking it up to that same 12-volt car battery just make sure it's linked properly to the transaxle and soldering all the wires into the connector for the Prius throttle and onto the end that connects to the controller next it's time to assemble all the wiring into that box that I constructed earlier really important to clean all the contacts drill well and apply a copper paste a better connection wiring in the DC to DC converter and finally the charger installing the controller the Ziva MC 1000 1000 amp controller the cables installing the wiring that links the controller to the poor and the core to the monitor communication between components is done by a four wire can bus interface fairly universal time to start plugging up the - make room for the monitor gauges switches and everything that VW never thought I've been a pleasure this monitor displays a bunch of electrical parameters like a voltage current and powers which is kinda like the fuel gauge controller temperature and many more cutting holes for the temperature gauges and toggle switches again cleaning the terminals and applying copper paste to all these high current connections very important time to install all the batteries and the bus bars my special effects team had to work overtime on this and now it's time to test it with the full battery pack controlled by the throttle which is the main reason why I look so happy right there I'm gonna put everything back together just good enough to do a test drive I don't want to do any more work on restoring it till I know everything is gonna work due to the extra weight I had to place the stock shocks with these coil overs even the lithium is a lot lighter than I still have right turn on this remote switch then it sends power to the pre charger starts the pre charging sequence which will charge the input capacitors to the controller and then close the main contactor so should hear a click and a few seconds there it is everything's live now as you can see by this I'm only giving it 11% throttle a little more holy [ __ ] that was hardly anything that like a corner throttle and it really took off insert here Wow now that I know everything works I'm gonna make a look pretty I'm gonna install this plastic dashboard veneer which looks almost exactly like I carved the entire dashboard out of a single piece of walnut the custom gauges wouldn't fit in the holes that were already in the - so I had to make this stainless steel gauge rosary and one for the stereo another cuz the monitor is talking about and the speed Hut tach and speedometer the GPS and of course you got app tunes everything works it's always nice when you hit that switch and you don't get a bunch of Sparks and smoke and crap installing the padded top of the dashboard and then finally it's on the bodywork as you can see there was a lot of body filler rust repair Jam as you see the the willd right there and to get all that crap off I didn't want to go down to bare metal on the entire cars already cleared out my fuzz and I vowed to never do it again my intention was never to do a full frame up restoration I just wanted it to look kind of good that's all I really wanted to get this thing out on the road and I just really don't have patience for body working just trying to take care of all the areas where there's obvious rust or cracking or damaged otherwise the paint itself is in very good shape and should be a good base after I sand it or the rest of the paint job priming it it just would have been way too much work that try to take this whole thing down to bare metal unless I had a sandblaster but I don't lie in the base coat couple coats of it attempting to paint some electrical looking stuff on the hood so that matches the bug really don't have any idea what the hell I'm doing just kind of making it up as I go and this is what it ended up looking like came out a little better than I even thought here's that - and the interior and let me show you what it's like out on the street [Music] watch the tacking speed on accelerate it's just constant steady torque and acceleration no positive shift no power curve I don't think VW's were ever designed to go this fast driving this car is just incredible and as an added bonus these cars get recharged exclusively from solar so they're not responsible for the burning of any fossil fuels it's nice havin to that way at least one is always charged and ready to go if you want to know more about these two cars check out my other videos on this channel thanks for watching hope you enjoyed it

Channel: Botts Fine Vids

Views: 529,368

Rating: 4.8534942 out of 5

Keywords: electric karmann ghia, electric car conversion, how to convert a car to electric, electric car, diy electric car, karmann ghia

Id: nrT5dbgSx4E

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019