There's A New Kid In Town

After much deliberation The Handyman has decided to put The Orion on the backburner. Between the kids and the shop obligations, working only on Saturdays to build a car from the ground up was becoming a lofty goal.

While the Orion is still his number one, there is a new cat in town that Royce has his eye on these days...

This summer (2011) we opened our shop to our friend Bob, who has his own Electric project converting a TVR 280i. As Bob was getting closer and closer to finishing his car, R felt he was falling farther and farther from his own. There was no particular moment of clarity or change of mind, but one day Royce started scanning the ads for Rancheros because of a childhood attachment having to do with his dad. He came across an ad for a Cougar, and thought, "Man, that is a good-lookin' car. I forgot about those. And... (unlike the Ranchero), it has a backseat."

She's looking shabby, but she still purrs:

Oh! Here is the other motor-vation that had R in a tizzy to move on this. Hold onto your hats Aficionados, you know what this is:

A little more research.......

Well, after some digging it appears that the great state of Ohio has no regulation for headlight placement. The only requirement for custom built vehicles is that any part used from another vehicle must have a sales receipt to prove that the part did not come from a stolen vehicle and that it has headlights,turn signals and brake lights.
That being said, I think I'm still going to do some modification to the front fascia. That way if someone out of state wants me to build one there won't be any problems. 

A major set back....

Well I probably should have checked this out long ago but I didn't. Now having just read the regulations, it seams my headlight placement is at the correct height, but width between beams is to narrow, by several centimeters. It looks as though I may have to do a complete redesign of the forward section. I don't know how this is going to turn out. Obviously I'm very disappointed. The thought of having to do a complete redesign with the limited time I have to actually do the work makes this an even harder project. 

After Much Breakage Of The Balls...

Blogging Assistant Has Returned.

Here is something special to share during show and tell.

This, the photo following the blurb, is called a CNC (Computer Network Control or something like that. Google it and let us know) Mill.

The Handymen built it from a kit they found on Ebay which priced around $200. They purchased the drive motors separately also on Ebay; 6 for $20, and they built the computer and drivers themselves from parts laying around. ("They" are the original Handyman and also his brother, the other Handyman). (Very Handy to have two in one family).

Originally this mill was used to weld battery tabs on the 26650 A123 battery cells that they were selling to other DYI Handymen. And no, they are no longer using it for that or selling cells, sOOoo... don't ask.

The Mill is now being used for making copper busbars for the motor controller.

The disk in the machine in this photo is the adaptor plate that will bolt to the torque tube which will bolt to the transmission. The plate purchase was from Ebay, 1.5" x 14 3/4" 6061 aluminum. The cost of that was around $30. We'll chat more about the disk in a future post.

I just wanted to show you the dandy mill:

The photo below is the aluminum heatsink that Royce made with it. He is building his own motor controller which we've mentioned before but no pics, yet.

The heatsink will suck heat out of the electronic components that do the work for the motor controller. Basically, it was a solid chunk of aluminum and he just carved it. He bought the aluminum on Ebay for around $57 from an actual merchant. It wasn't a great deal, but was something he needed and found.

The thing below the heatsink is the copper busbar. The busbar carries the current to the motor from the batteries. There are 3 in total in different shapes, and we'll go into the reason why when we show you the motor controller.

The next photo is just a pic of the busbar at a closer angle. Up close and personal:

 And another pic of the heatsink with outdoor lighting:

Pretty :).

So much to do...so little time...

Well after several weeks of being extremely busy at the shop,(preparing for major construction on the building itself), it looks as though I can get back to the project this weekend. :) I have been working on the power section of my motor controller in the few spare minutes I have. I have set up my cnc mill and have it cranking out the copper busbar. It took a few attempts at writing the code but she works all by herself now with out any supervision. This saves me enormous amounts of time, and lets me multitask on running the shop and building the Orion at the same time. I promise to get some pictures up of the recent progress very soon.

More work on the body....

Well quite a bit done on the body today, no pics yet, those are soon to be posted. Still hoping to start doing fiber glass work in a few weeks. Also, I've been finishing up my controller design. With the help of some very nice folks over at the "ecomodder" site it should be quite the beast. I have a few of the components and am actually going to start machining the heat sink section next week. And yes it will be liquid cooled for anybody wondering.
It's very important to keep the controller as cool as possible. Heat breaks down the efficiency of the mosfets that are switching all that power on and off to the motor, the hotter they get the less power they can carry. Ask them to do to much while hot and poof, out comes the magic smoke. Then it's all over but the crying.

Shoestringin Along..

This site needs an update.
Let's QandA with Mister Mechanical:

Assistant: On October 12th we posted a pic of a Tsubaki PowerLok. You mentioned something about shaft squeezing..? Have you had any luck with that?

Mechanic: Well, first I needed to make certain that the Powerlok fit the output shaft of the motor.

Assistant: How'd you do that?

Mechanic: I chucked the armature of the motor in the lathe and machined it to fit the Powerlok. Then I needed to machine an adaptor that would go between the Powerlok and the input shaft of the transmission.

Assistant: Got any good pics?

Mechanic: This is the piece that I made:

I took some tooling steel stock, chucked it up in the lathe and starting cutting and milling. Basically, I used the Powerlok as the template to mark my points that I needed to machine, and then used the input of the transmission as a template for the other side. (We have a 3 in 1 lathe mill machine that comes in handy). (Found on Craig's List for $400).

Here is the completed unit. This is the input shaft of the transmission which is bolted to the adaptor which is bolted to the Powerlok.








Assistant: Nice. Is this actually pretty cool that you did this?

Mechanic: Yeah, it's very cool because of the Tremic (a.k.a. "transmission"). The way the transmission is set up I was able to use part of the torque tube which made the adaptation very simple. Very modular. I like modular designs.

Assistant: So, what happens now?

Mechanic: Once the motor modifications are done I'll be able to bolt (this is where the shaft squeezing comes in) the Powerlok to the output shaft of the motor and then mate it to the transmission.

Assistant: And in 9 months...?

Mechanic: Hopefully way before then.

Recent pics of the body....

Well I know it's been a while since any posts but running a small business can eat up time. So I thought I would post some recent pictures of the body of the car. She's still not finished but getting closer. These pics are not all that new but they are the most recent, she's actually farther along than this. :)

I've also done some lathe work on the coupler for the motor to the transmission. It came out very well and I'll post some pictures of it as soon as I take some.