Have you ever wanted to own an electric car? or have you ever wanted to drive a Porsche 911? I wanted both, so I decided to build one. This blog is here to document my journey as I convert a 2002 Porsche 911/996 Carrera 2 from a gas guzzler to a completely electric vehicle - not a hybrid!

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Updates

I did confirm that the 1000W power supply was also damaged beyond repair.  I didn't want to throw down the same $$ for the 2 supply solution again, so I went a different route and replaced both DC-DCs with a single 750W supply from Astrodyne, the SP750-12.  This set me back another $200, but now that its installed, I'm up and running again.

During the removal of the old supplies and the installation of the new supply, I found the source of the anti-freeze spray that blew out the DC-DCs.  It was a two part problem.  Water shorted out the circuit that turns on the relay that powers the dual 1500W Kats tank heaters, so the heaters turned on, but the fluid pump did not. So the stationary fluid got so hot that it melted a hole in the thinnest walled portion of the tubing.  Picture below shows the hole.  This tubing was used because I tried to re-use a coolant pump for a computer which required small tubing.  I've ordered an electric automotive coolant pump and will replace with 3/4" ID automotive coolant tubing so that should no longer be an issue.


I also completed a few mods to the charger.  I put the 15uF cap back in, and completed the install of the remote LCD display near the J1772 plug port inside the fuel cap compartment.  See the picture below.  Now I no longer have to open the hood of my car to change charger parameters.

I've also learned a few more things while driving the car...  Driving in automatic mode sucks because every time I step on the gas, the transmission takes me out of gear and downshifts, oftentimes resulting in the car not going into any gear(that is a story for another day).  Also, whenever I slow to a stop, the car automatically shifts back down into 1st gear, even though I'd like it to stay in 3rd or 2nd.  What I found works best is to keep the position stick in the Manual position.  This makes the Tiptronic computer back off on the auto-shifting, and only shifts when the vehicle conditions are getting to an non-operational state.  So now, I can manually paddle-shift into 2nd gear, and it will stay in gear when I push down hard on the gas as well as when I come to a stop at stop lights.  As I'm driving, I use the paddle shifters to move into 3rd-5th and the car generally stays in the gear that I leave it, with the exception of when I slow to a stop, it always drops me back down to 2nd, which is ok because I can leap off the line in 2nd.



1 comment:

  1. I just wanted to say great blog and project. I'm doing an electric motorcycle build and it's tough to get started. Bionicmotorcycle.com
    You've got this e-Porsche lookin good.

    ReplyDelete