Electric Porsche!

Still in the pondering stage. Found an (apparently???) reliable fellow who might be willing to come to town (for a fee plus travel expenses) but since we might not know what really needs doing until he's here working on it, that might not be a great idea. Just before I left, I think I might have talked a local guy into installing a controller. There's also the possibility of trailering it to Seattle, where competent people could (if I want) do the whole project over from scratch.

In the meanwhile, it remains my daily driver, and works perfectly well, except that I am dissatisfied with the amount of power it has, so it's not like I need to do anything immediately.

I know about the Zilla. But the low-voltage version will not be produced until all orders for the HV version are met. Also, Otmar will not be building them. He has licensed someone to build them, so quality remains to be seen. And the Zilla might be overkill for my application. CommuterCars uses the Zilla in the Tango, but I don't need to do zero to sixty in 3.9 seconds. I think the Logisystems should be adequate for me.

The big unknowns are whether I'll have to have the pack rewired to 288 v or whether I'll want to dump the 11-inch Warp motor in favor of the 9-inch (broader torque curve, and does not need the higher voltage) or even go to an AC motor. Any of this would require a trip to Seattle or farther. Just installing the Logisystems controller could be done here.

Right now I'm leaning toward having the local guy install the Logisystems controller, if he's still willing to do it, and see how it performs. If I am still not satisfied, I might have to bite the bullet and go to Seattle and have the whole thing done over. That will cost a bundle, but still only a fraction of what I have in it already. I'd still be driving a great car before you get your Model S, though once you do I'll be envious. Well, I'm driving a great car now. It just doesn't have the power and range I wanted. It's still a big step up from the Xebra.

 

Yes, the 2K Zilla fell through when the local guy changed his mind and said he would not install it after all, because he does not feel comfortable building on my battery pack, which he is not sufficiently familiar with.

The original builder in Florida has given me the difference between the controller originally contracted for and the one he installed, plus part of what I have spent correcting his shoddy work. No agreement yet concerning compensation for the failure to meet the range promised.

I am still researching alternatives, the most extreme of which would be to install an AC motor (along with its own controller). People are building conversions that really scream. It should be possible to make this car perform as I want it to (far short of a racing car). It's just a question of spending money. I might possibly be able to talk another local guy into working on it. He is torn between really wanting to get his hands on it, and being afraid of damaging it. This is, as they say, an ongoing story.

 

Some more about the Porsche:

The builder had sent me the underbody panels which he had failed to put back on the car, so I took it to the Porsche dealership to have those installed, and also to have the mechanic check the belt and motor. Twice in the three months I've had the car there has been a squeal and a smell, and I suspected a slipping belt. What I found out at the dealership:

The builder had only sent me one of the three underbody panels. I had the dealer order the other two.

The belt tension is good, but the configuration could be a problem: Stock, with a water pump on the belt, the drive pulley contacts the belt around 75% of its circumference, but now, without the water pump, the belt only contacts the pulley around 50% of its circumference. This might be causing slippage. However, the belt still looks like new. I might eliminate the belt entirely by going to an electric power-steering pump and removing the A/C entirely. In Spokane I'd only miss it 5 or 6 days a year, and there's a 50-50 chance I would not even be home then, and in any case the A/C takes so much power from the motor that I would not want to use it on the freeway, and in town I can open the windows.

The Porsche mechanic didn't want to open the motor, but he peeked inside through the screens, and there's a lot of small black bits lying on the screens. I feared one or more brushes might be disintegrated.

I talked to a guy at NetGain (the motor manufacturer) and he thinks it's not the brushes at all, but rather the fan: if a bolt was inserted too far, it would have demolished the fan the first time it was run. This would be incompetence on the part of the guy who built the car. But it would be easy to replace, and would not cost a lot, unless he has to remove the motor to work on it. The NetGain guy also said the squeal and smell could be caused by a bit of the fan being sucked through the motor. He thinks there's no permanent damage since the car still runs fine. On Monday, a local EV builder (not the original builder of my car!!!) will open up the motor and have a look. He should be able to tell what's going on.

The NetGain guy also told me that 144 volts (which is what I have now) is ideal for this motor. Everybody I've talked to so far had told me that because of the longer armature, compared to the 9-inch motors, the 11-inch Warp motor needed higher voltage to function well. I was upset that the builder had configured my pack to 144 volts instead of 288 volts, and was considering having it re-configured. In fact, the NetGain guy said, all I need is a 1,000-amp controller, and the car will have plenty of power. And it turns out that NetGain will be offering one soon. I consider that the ideal solution, because NetGain is a bigger company, and probably more reliable, than most of those offering controllers of that size. Curtis is a very solid reliable controller, but 500 amps is too small.

The NetGain guy explained that amperage gives you torque, while voltage gives you horsepower. Torque is needed for acceleration, while hp is needed for higher top speed. My top speed of 70 mph is acceptable, given that my battery pack is not large enough to sustain that speed for the distance I want, so I only go 60 to 65 on the freeway to maximize my range.

So I'm now on the waiting list for a NetGain controller. Once the motor is cleaned out and fixed the car will be drivable again, and when the controller is available I'll have it installed and should have much better acceleration, though I'm not expecting it to be as fast as the builder originally promised.

In the mean time, I'm still driving electric, thanks to my trusty little Zap Xebra: the garden-pest-green three-legged clown car that induces kids to shout "cool car!" nearly every time I drive it.

 

One of the local EV builders, a fellow named Gordy, managed to get one of the screens off for a look inside the motor. The black bits are the demolished fan, not brushes. The fan would be easy to replace, except that the way the motor is crammed in, it will have to come out to get at it, and it's likely that everything will have to come out in order to get the motor out.

Gordy won't have time to work on the car for several weeks, maybe a couple of months, due to other projects and commitments.

I deeply regret ever having bought this car. But there is hope that it may still be possible to put it right. Maybe by spring, if I'm really lucky. If someone offered me 80% of what I paid for it, hard cold cash on the line, right now, I'd probably take it, accept my losses, and consider that I'd gotten off easy.

The good thing is that I didn't sell the Xebra, so I'm still driving electric. Maybe I'll just quit going to Coeur d'Alene. Then I won't need anything more than the Xebra.

 

Yeah. That's what he said.

 

Thanks, Evan.

 

I originally got my Xebra with an aftermarket battery pack claimed to provide 40 miles of range. I occasionally drove it to near empty (which was, indeed, 40 miles if driven gently) and frequently drove it to 30 miles. After six months the batteries began to fail. I've had no problems so far with the LiFePO4, but at $7,000 installed it was an expensive solution. Worth it to me only because I hate driving gasoline, even at the Prius's 45 to 50 mpg.

I am now totally down on lead. AGMs deliver a lot of power, but with a short lifetime. Floodies will give better longevity, but must be watered, and are not suitable unless they are located outside the cabin. And in any case, lead is too heavy to provide the range I want.

I wish I'd ordered the Tesla when I first looked at it. I'd be driving it now instead of hassling with the Porsche (which I chose in part because it was promised to me in 4 months, with 50% more range and ten times the power; I'd have gotten it a year ago!) OTOH, the Tesla is less comfortable to sit in than even my Xebra, and the Porsche is more comfortable than the Prius.

One more thing about lead: I am convinced that string charging is a bad idea. There should be a separate charger for every battery, which could easily be built into a single unit.

 

Read Dickens' book Bleak House. Note the sub-plot concerning the case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce. Note also that you can't get blood from a stone. Suing Paul over this would cost more than the car is costing me, and even if I got a judgement, that doesn't mean I'd get any money out of him.

I appreciate your good wishes and your intention to give good advice. But I'm in WA and Paul is in Florida, and I'd either have to move to Florida, or make multiple trips there in order to sue him. A local attorney would not be able to help me with a case in FL even if he wanted to.

Finally, our so-called justice system is so out of whack that the outcome of a case has nothing to do with right or wrong, or even with legal and illegal. It's a debating game between the attorneys, in which their skill (not the facts or the law!) determines the outcome.

I have some experience with the U.S. legal system. It's completely broken, and serves no useful purpose whatsoever. I'd have a better chance of winning a lawsuit if I was in the wrong!

 

Lets's see...

Threatening to sue is premature. Paul has given me the cost of the controller originally promised and most of what I've spent at the Porsche dealership to fix his shoddy work. He has stated that he wants to work amicably with me to get the car up to snuff. While he has not promised to pay the labor of installing the new controller, he has not refused either, so until that time I cannot assume he will refuse.

The delay at this time is that my guy here, Gordy, is busy and won't have time to work on the car for a while; and I have decided to get a better controller than the one originally promised, and I'll have to wait a while for that. With luck, that controller and Gordy will be ready at about the same time.

The battery/range question is an open issue. We have not reached an agreement, but I would not say that we are at an absolute impasse, either.

I traveled to Florida to meet with Paul, signed the contract there, bought the car there, had it delivered to him for the conversion work, and he shipped it to me here. I do not know if that constitutes an interstate sale, but it would seem to me that it comes under Florida jurisdiction.

I feel that Paul owes me for the labor yet to be performed, and he has tacitly agreed by paying the labor performed so far. I feel he owes me something for failing to meet his contractual obligations regarding the range of the car, and though he does not agree with that he has agreed that it remains an item for discussion.

A lawsuit would be the absolute last resort, and I would get no satisfaction out of a lawsuit that did nothing but fill the pockets of two lawyers. I do not like lawyers. Lawyers and MBAs have brought this country to the point where we're about to topple right into the toilet. I've seen our legal system from an angle that few Prius owners have, and it's rotten to the core. I say this not because of how it treated me. I went in with my eyes open after taking nonviolence training and seminars on prison survival; and the system treated me (a middle-class white guy) with kid gloves. But I saw how rotten the system is, and how the court system worships its own procedure and discards fact, truth, and justice as worthless annoyances. I will not initiate a civil suit lightly, and as long as there's a possibility of an amicable resolution, that time is not yet here.