Poodle playtime and Vogue passes 9000km

The Vogue passed 9000km on battery power at the start of this week.
Meanwhile the Rag stealers play...

The Rag Stealer gets a Playmate

Well not quite a playmate yet, she (the older dog - Xena) is still at the growling if-you-come-near-me stage. We have high hopes though. The new dog is SO much like Xena was when she was a pup - naughty.

The Vogue is going strong - still waiting for the front end work but in no great hurry - other stuff has moved to higher priority (new kitchen floor, new puppy) so it's better to wait for couple of weeks.

First step toward building an on-vehicle Tailshaft Balancer

I alluded to this in my previous post and I realised that I should elaborate on my intentions regards tailshaft balancing.
The final straw of getting help with the tailshaft issue came after I rang a Ford service manager and enquired into on-vehicle tailshaft balancing. I had read on a couple of Ford forums that some Fords required the final tailshaft balance to be done on the vehicle.
The service manager was very helpful and pointed out that the balance is done in conjuction with a diagnostic tool that plugs into the car's ECU (that's not what I thought but he was adamant that it only worked with Fords). No hope there.

So, I have bought one of these off eBay. It's a three axis acceleometer with analogue outputs.

It claims to be highly sensitive. (So is our dog [the rag stealer] but she hasn't helped. She's only allowed on the bed if she has just been washed and someone is sick - special times).

I'll be making up some simple electronics to detect one of the output signals and flash a high-intensity LED at some repeatable point. It then should be a matter of:

1. Secure the accelerometer board to the motor frame.
2. Shine the LED at the tailshaft
3. Run the car on axle stands

Of course nothing is ever simple so I'll start by looking at the signals on a CRO and seeing what I've got.

I'll use hose clamps initially and place one on the tailshaft to deliberately mis-balance it so I can calibrate it all.

Then the whole shebang should tell me where to place the balance weight. From there it's should be just a matter of varying the weight to minimise the vibration.

I make a big effort to blog this as I go, success or not!

On other matters - we had a really nice storm last night and the Vogue was the last car home so had to be charged in the pouring rain. No problems. The plug was dry when I unplugged the EV "special" extension cord. In fact I was more concerned about leaks in my new rubber seals (windows, doors) throughout the car - also no problems (hmmm - see later posts).

Driver side Rear Door liner ready

Things haven't gone to plan in the past couple of weeks. I was hoping to have all the door liners on by now and to have bought the Vogue in to work for it's new tyres (over the road). A bout with a pinched nerve in my back and some family events have slowed things down a bit.

Anyway, the right, rear door liner is ready for the wood trim to go on.

The door has been fitted out so it may get the door liner fitted tonight (unless I'm clipping the rag stealer).

 The rag stealer doing her best to escape William's clutches and be the first dog in the world to be run over by an electric Humber Vogue (during the second drive).

Door Liners ready for fabric

I finished punching out the holes in the door liners and we laid one of the front and one of the rear door liners out to see how we would cover them. The rag stealer was nosing around.

Here is one without the black silhouette in the way.

The orginal liners were covered in red vinyl with vulcanizing in several strips under the armrest area.

We decided to do two or three strips of silver starting where the vulcanizing starts at the bottom but not going quite to the armrest (the two smaller holes through the vulcanized area). When we laid fabric on the liner it was apparent that, even though the fabric has a foam backing, that the backing was not thick enough - it felt cheap. I'll buy some 3mm foam backing to go behind the fabric.

At some point in the past two weeks I made the decision to use the constant current balancers on all the battery packs in the car, not just the ones that showed errors on the drive - I just didn't mention it here. I have been moving the balancer chargers from pack to pack as each pack got to 59 VDC (3.69 x 16). Every pack has taken more than two days to reach internal cell balance - thats about 9AH (for a 20AH cell pair). The packs were certainly not correctly charged. The last two battery packs are on the 180mA constant current balancer chargers now - nearly there!

Parcel Shelf disassembled

I found the parcel shelf and dragged it out from under the house. It is in worse condition than I remembered.

I don't think it deteriorated too much while stored as it was wrapped securely in polythene sheet. Xena thought it smelled odd though.

I removed the vinyl on the shelf section then detached the front - probably the only part that I'll keep.

 The red vinyl was quite loose on the front and the reason was the completely deteriorated foam underneath.
Scrape, scrape - off it comes.

Now to decide whether to make a new cardboard section or do something different.

New Seatbelts

The seatbelts that came out of the Vogue were way past their use-by. The front ones were very faded and the rear were not much better - and they didn't match the front. From out of the blue I had an offer from one of the AEVA members that reads this blog (and incidently developed the speadsheet that the Vogue motor/controller specifications were designed from), for a set of seatbelts. It seemed he had been shipped the wrong ones from the USA and was instructed not to bother to return them. They have chrome buckles and are a great period match for the car.
Here is one with the front passenger seat. They are a perfect match for colour scheme in the Vogue.

Even Xena (the rag stealer) likes them. Thanks Anthony.

Front Seat Diaphragm Partly Installed

At about 8PM last night I went out to the garage. At 10:10PM I came back inside.
It doesn't look like two hours worth of work but there was a lot of fiddling around to get an approach right. I took the picture this morning and Xena (the rag stealer has a name) was puzzled by what I was doing.

The Triumph TR6 rubber diaphragm is secured at the front and back. I have yet to drill the holes in the side pieces of aluminium (you can see them at the front of the seat on the floor).

Close up of the front. Note the special holes near the middle to relieve the lateral pressure on the aluminium. Nah - I just stuffed up. For some reason the calculations were out by about 5mm so there wasn't enough stretch so I drilled new holes. It's a bit off centre but it won't matter.

I had to use 32mm wide aluminium on front and back but the sides will be 40mm. I really need about 45 mm because the holes will only be 7mm from the edge. It'll only matter in about 10 years if the steel links elongate the holes in the aluminium to the point where it gives way. The aluminium is as wide as I can make it to help support the 50mm foam that will form most of the seat cushion.

Rear Seat Foam Padding

I have finished padding the upright (back) of the rear seat. We were under the impression that this job would be easy once the fabric parts were done - not so. There were lots of places where the strength of Vinyl made life easy for the padderers(???). With fabric we can't put too much stress on it so the foam padding has be be secured before the fabric goes on. We also discovered that there was additional 8mm padding sewn into the vinyl around the areas that were more padded. This created a "plush" effect of rounded padding.
You can see the effect in my previous post about the front seat.

Even had we known about the sewn-in padding, it would have been very difficult and maybe not even possible to do with the sewing machine in use. (We are using upholstery thread and the sewing machine is coping but there is not much reserve.)

The rear seat-back before stripping.

I then removed the vinyl and foam. I left the heshing in place that covered the wire springs but spent some time ensuring the springs would not poke anyone in the back. Also some derusting and rust prevention.

This is the back of the rear seat upright part (shown above).
Note the method of holding the vinyl in place in this 'before' picture. They had some kind of wire tool that stapled through the vinyl or foam.








First we covered the whole back of the seat with 10mm "firm" foam (blue). Yes those are the same clips that held the headlining during glueing.

 In place of the wire staple type gizmo used originally, I used cable ties with cut pieces of shoe insole (new) to support the foam.

We tried square cut 20mm foam for the extra padding but it was obvious when we stretched the fabric over it - too flat!

So we had to come up with "plush" cushioning. We tried "shaping" 20mm foam with the electric kitchen knife and ending up with a raggity edge. The idea was that we would then place 6mm foam over that to smooth it out.

The result - no good! The 6mm foam over the top of the 20mm helped (not shown) but it was getting too bulky.

It got very complicated until someone came up with this idea.

We glued 10mm foam onto the base foam, cut in such a way as to leave 40mm either side where we want padding. Then we place 10mm foam over that in a bridge-like fashion. The second lot of foam is only glued for about 10-15mm along both edges. (The demo bridge piece isn't supposed to be there.)

The base of the rear seat has 35mm thick foam which originally poked out past the frame by about 60mm. The vinyl wrapped down around the foam and held it in position.

We can't do that with the fabric, so the 35mm foam now only protudes about 5mm past the edge of the frame and we have glued 20mm foam to the edge of the 35mm foam.

I will use the same approach that we used on the back of the seat for the 'plush' padding on the seat base.

The base of the rear seat frame before painting.

Foam for front seats waiting patiently in our bedroom.

And the rag stealer finds another new bed. Apparently she gets up there when she thinks no-one is looking.

Windscreen Pillar Vinyl

(This post restrospectively added on 29th Aug.)

The vinyl covering the front windscreen pillars was in pretty bad condition so we took the opportunity to replace it.
The dashpad restoration guy sent me down some spare vinyl (the same as the stuff covering the new dashpad) for exactly this purpose.

Plus a couple of boxes of foldover clips from the local office supplies.

The old piece and a new piece of vinyl cut roughly to shape 

I didn't actually use the heat gun while the clips were on but you get the idea. Heat gun on low and just enough heat to form the vinyl.










All glued and clipped up.

"Can I help? I won't steal any vinyl!". Yeah right.

Rear Charger Mounting

With sore throat and head cold symptoms I braved the cold garage yesterday and cut up the aluminium for the rear charger mounts that I envisioned back in this post.
I started with three 1 metre long pieces of 20mm x 12mm x 1.6mm aluminium angle.

With suitable audience, the pieces are ready for assembly.

I built one first to check I hadn't made any weird mistakes. Here it is upside-down with 1.6mm neoprene rubber glued to the load- bearing surfaces.

Then into position with it. It is a great fit over the pack and is quite difficult to slide even without the strap. The strap will thread through easily, over the side section, between the chargers and the pack. A bit of a pain to get on though so I haven't done it until they are all ready.

Now to make another two of them.

The Rag Stealer strikes again

This time it's my cork sanding block. Super duper mild steel front battery tray mounts (painted black) near the scene of the crime.

The getaway!

Motor Mounting Frame Test Fitting

I had a nice surprise leaning on the side of the house when I got home last night. Anthony had extended the motor frame by 50mm and taken about 40mm off the rear height.
I didn't take photos the first time we tried the motor frame a few days ago but this time I have some to show.
It's just tacked together and there are no gussets or reinforcing yet. It is made from 50mm angle iron 3mm thick.

The rag stealer was on the scene...

Cardboard motor in position and one pretend battery pack. It should take 3 battery packs as well as the motor. I had to remove the "terminal box" (brown thing) as the "motor" didn't fit with it on.

View from the front of the car. The split level frame is necessary to clear the top of the front cross member. We haven't fitted the steel bits to fit to the front engine mounts yet.

View from under the car at the side looking toward the front. The glossy black cross member is the one in the photo before fitting the motor frame (first photo in this post - with the dog). The motor is sloping down toward the rear of the vehicle by about 20mm over the motor's length so one more adjustment should do it (sorry Anthony).