Where to begin? First, the title says it all: Robin is converting a neglected and abused 1957 T-Bird to an E-Bird! A pure electric conversion powered by the same Lithium Iron batteries Midnite is developing for use with the B17 Inverters.
I'll be posting more info and pics of the progress on the entire project here in this thread. The master plan is for a fully functional Electric T-Bird. This will be a ground up restoration and conversion. The E-Bird will be going to the various solar trade shows to showcase the MS batteries and several other products, charge controllers etc.
This is going to be a very interesting and ambitious undertaking! Stay tuned for more details and pics.
And so it begins....... :)
A few more pics...
Another round of before pics...
This is it for now. Next step is pulling the body off and having it stripped down to bare metal.
This car is a real mess. I do have quite a few 57 birds, but this is one that was never going to run again, so what to do with it?
At the big solar shows there are all sorts of Lithium batteries. Most are less than memorable. David Katz mentioned that we should make some of the B17 modules be batteries too. That was such an interesting idea, we started kicking it around. Now what it has morphed into is a unit that looks just about like a B17, but is strictly Lithium Iron phosphate batteries. Keeping with the theme of the B17, they will be hot swappable modules. We will have 7 per B17 sized unit. We think each module is rated at 23 amps and 48V. Each module will have the analog meters and canbus communications to the inverter, MNGP2, Comm box and beyond. This is a tough project just like the car. We may even need to make some shorter custom battery packs to round out the battery bank under the hood. Seems like a lot of work to make a custom 22" long battery system just because of the car, so maybe that too will make it into production. Why not? The short one will have maybe 4 modules?
I am in the process of building a huge garage to store and work on my T-Birds. That is where we will continue to build this electric car. The Pictures shown above are taken out behind our building #4 under canopies. It is too cold to work on this car out there, so the garage will be welcomed. The garage is also something special. I will have over 1500 real watts of Spectro Acoustics amplifiers that boB and I built fourty years ago powering a couple dozen Klipsch speakers and subwoofers. There is a Rockola Juke box for the source. It holds 100 oldies CD's. boB and I used to exhibit our stereo gear at CES show in Las Vegas in the 70's, so of course I had to pick up a restored Golden Nugget slot machine. Oh yeah, I'll also get the biggest flat screen I can find. So far it is looking like an 82 incher. All this will make it easy for me to go out and pretend to work on these cars. I suspect we will be having a lot of engineers over at my house each day working on things in order to meet our September SPI date. We do have one full time mechanic on the project now. Wish we had a body man lined up? There is a large 1500 square foot bonus room above the garage that may be utilized for dealer training events once the inverters, comms, Barcelona, Hawk's Bay and Andy's and Jim's inverters are on the market. Oops, I forgot to mention the Sunspec compliant rapid shut off system, 1000 watt turbine and Blue tooth dongle for the Kid and Classic. Look for something soon on our website that explains how and why we come up with the goofy names for products.
Robin ans Onanparts, thanks for the update. Loved all throe pics...
Problem: when I tried to view them as I normally have done, I just clicked on then one after another, the first one opened nearly full screen but none of the others did...???
I now (am having to) use a W10 and it P#$%$%^^'s me off . all this cloud based stuff etc, makes one go looking for the equivalent program since they did not include W Picture Manger . Apparently it too is going like W7...
Anyone having the same problem on multiple pictures?
"Blue tooth dongle for the Kid" ????????
- Jeff
Quote from: Robin on November 17, 2018, 12:13:45 PMBlue tooth dongle for the Kid
So local app for the kid? Simple firmware update?
Maybe Graham's Linux App could be modified? Much more usable if only wanting to view the data, not able to change the parameters though...
LOVE it....
Stopped by Midnite last Friday and snapped a bunch of pics of the EV Black Bird project.
Some pics will look odd, that's because Robin has the Bird on a big jig that can rotate it 360 degrees. Position it as needed. Makes it much easier to work on. :)
More pics? Ok, if you insist!
A couple more...
This is one of the parts donor birds......
Also, I did see the Electric motor and controllor but forgot to take any pics.... :( Next trip up I'll be sure to grab some.
Robin disappeared before I could get details on the EV motor and controllors. Maybe he can chime in here with what the voltage is going to be. 96V? or 144V? The controllors are rated 144V. The dual motor has two rotors on one common shaft and of course two stators in one case/frame.
Pics and spec sheets on the motor at 96V and 144V. :)