Letter to Engineer in 2012

I wrote this letter to the Engineer (that approved the Vogue) in January 2012 prior to his first visit.
It's actually one of the best summaries of the car - something lacking in the blog until now.

I began converting the Vogue to electric and restoring it about 2 1/2 years ago.
The Humber Vogue Mk3 (1965) is a medium sized sedan that was powered by a 1600cc overhead valve engine coupled to a Borg Warner 35, 3 speed automatic transmission. Made in Australia by the Rootes Group, the Vogue is very similar to the Hillman Minx of the era.

The Vogue has front 9" disc brakes with no booster, no power steering and no air conditioning. These things make the electric part a lot easier as there is no need to power a separate steering pump, vacuum pump or air conditioner pump. The Vogue is still registered and has been continuously for the past 47 years. I have owned it for about 17 years and driven it about 50,000km on the old engine.

The Vogue is now powered by a nominal 11kW induction motor (3 phase ACIM) that has been rewound to a lower voltage with high temperature windings, embedded thermister, independently powered cooling fan and shaft encoder. The motor can develop around 65kW peak and since the continuous rating of 11kW was at 1500 RPM, the manufacturers concur that it can comfortably maintain 22kW at 3000 RPM.

The motor is coupled directly to the tailshaft which has been custom modified to include a sliding spline.

The motor is driven by a Lenze 9329 DC to 3 phase Variable Speed Drive (controller) which in turn is powered by 384 Lithium Iron Phosphate cells arranged in 2 parallel 192 series to deliver around 600 VDC. The cells are packed into 12 battery subpacks of 32 cells each (2P16S). Each cell is 3.2 V, 10AH. Each sub-pack has it's own 3A charger.
Each sub-pack weighs 12kg. The accelerator is an Audi A6 pedal (new) and feeds a custom configuration in the controller that provided a very petrol engine-like "feel" with full Torque control. Being an AC system the Vogue has very powerful and configurable regenerative braking.

The entire battery pack is isolated from the car chassis and has a vacuum contactor at either end of the pack that is rated to break maximum voltage and current. In addition there are two contactors that isolate the center of the pack from a nominal "center" connection (required for the DC-DC 13.8 V convertors of which there are two). The control system will not allow the car to "start" unless it is in Neutral and the Charger is disconnected.

For the purpose of wiring layout and identification I generally refer to a +300V and a -300V side of the pack.
The packs can be broken into six isolated sections with hand-safe connectors and that is how I work in the vehicle.

The 12 chargers are sequenced on in four stages to avoid large mains inrush (in 2 second intervals). The car draws 2400 W from a 240 VAC supply. The mains supply inlet is protected with a combined 16A RCB/MCB.

The seven front battery sub-packs are split into four mounted on a 1.6mm stainless steel tray which is mounted on the firewall and to the front inner guards. The other three subpacks are on the motor frame. The motor frame mounts on the original engine and rear transmission rubber mounts.

Four of the rear five subpacks are mounted on an aluminium frame which is secured to the Vogue "upper" boot area immediately behind the steel rear firewall. The fifth rear subpack is securely mounted where the Vogue guard-mounted fuel tank used to reside.
All 12kg battery subpacks are secured with 300kg polypropylene camlock straps (Lion brand). The three front motor frame mounted subpacks have two straps each. All metal corners where straps are involved are rounded to a radius just short of the metal thickness, finished with 1200 grit wet-and-dry and, if aluminium or mild steel, painted.

While I did not weigh the car before starting, I did measure the ride heights of front and back, right and left sides, and have documented all weight removed and added to the vehicle. So far it is about 6kg lighter than original. A great deal of effort has been made to keep the weight distribution the same as original which meant "stuffing" as much as possible into the engine bay. For instance, my original design had six subpacks in the front and six in the boot but this was changed to seven in the front and five in the boot to move as much weight forward as possible (battery packs are light compared to cast-iron engine blocks).
There are very few places where I have had to drill new holes as the Vogue provided extensive mounting points. There has been no steel cut from the vehicle (other than drilled holes).

The Vogue has been professionally resprayed and is currently having a completely new interior fitted. The steering box has been professionaly overhauled and the car is entirely rust-free.
I have tried very hard to adhere to NCOP14 throughout the design and implementation of the conversion.

The "electric" or conversion part of this project has been 99.9% finished and drivable since July 2011 - the restoration has taken somewhat longer than I envisioned.

If I have left anything relevant out, a complete, up-to-date (and time consuming to read) build blog is available at:
http://electricvogue.blogspot.com/

Navigation is easiest and fastest if you use the "Labels" on the right of the page to pinpoint any specific areas of the build.

The Vogue is Insured

I rang Shannons Insurance this morning. They were toally accommodating. We changed the Vogue to a daily driver and upped the insurance considerably. I'm very happy with them.

The Electric Vogue is Legal

I went to Vic Roads this morning (state road authority) and handed over the Change of Vehicle Details form and the Engineers form. The counter person asked me to bring it over to the inspection bay and after a few minutes appeared and just wanted to know where some indication might be on the car that it was a 1965 model. This despite the fact that the Vogue has been continuously registered in Victoria for the past 47 years. The sole comment on the car was "these are really quiet aren't they?". I assume she meant electric and not Humber Vogue's in general!

Anyway, she was happy and there was no charge. The Vogue is now legal to drive on the road.
Now let's see what Shannon's say (insurance)....

Engineer Final Inspection - Passed

We are in the middle of tearing my daughter's bedroom apart for redecoration this weekend as she is away for another 3 weeks. So in the middle of taking delivery of new furniture, dashing out to hire a wallpaper steamer and packing all her stuff away in boxes (our loungeroom is FULL), I took time off to meet the engineer at our place on Saturday afternoon. He was happy with the car and went over the NCOP14 checkboxes with me. He checked out the stuff I had done since he first saw the car then we went for a brief drive. Satisfied, he took away the Electric Vogue manual (written on the preceeding two days), the NCOP14 document and some pictures that he took.

Before leaving though, he stuck a nice new sticker to the engine bay side of the firewall indicating the the Vogue now had Electric Drive (pictures to come).

He will mail (or has already mailed) out the complience document to me which I then take to VicRoads for the fuel type change on the registration. He was concerned that the Vogue has the Chassis number on an aluminiun plate pop-riveted to the front of the engine bay and wants me the take along supporting documentation.

Since the Vogue is already registered I can't see that being an issue but we'll see.

Note smaller aluminiun plate to the right of the bonnet latch.

Final Inspection Booked

The engineer is booked for Saturday afternoon.

Heater works and Ready for Final Inspection

I installed the heater vent control and heater variable control and the moment of truth was upon me. The PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) control worked flawlessly - even better than I expected. The PWM system gets power from the blower 12V so the heater cannot operate unless the blower is going. I also have a microswitch on the vent flap so if it's nearly closed the heater cannot operate.

Sliding the control up about halfway shows about 2 Amps being drawn - about 1200 Watts. Moving the control further to the left (hotter) show the current going up to 5 Amps for a second then dropping back to 2.5 Amps. That's the self limiting ceramic heater core doing its thing. A great success.

The dashboard controls are also labelled.

We were on holiday last week and the family knew I had a list of things to do before being ready for final inspection - with times allocated to each entry (10 hours in all). It's been entertaining gradually crossing off each item until we came down to zero hours.

I reckon the Vogue is ready for final inspection by the engineer.