Tilting the Truck Bed (beginnings)

I wanted to write up a quick post without photos, because it has been awhile since my last post. Work is still continuing on the truck, mainly with the bed. A couple weekends ago, we spent most of Sunday welding hinges onto the bed and the truck frame only to have the hinges bend when we attempted to tilt the bed. My analysis determined there were 2 factors that caused the problem. First, the hinges were too far forward and put a lot of stress on them trying to raise the bed. The other issue was the hinges themselves were just not up to the task. Sorry about that Lowes!

I ordered some heavy duty hinges online and the following weekend, we found a different point on the bed to weld the hinges on. A piece of angle iron was welded across the rear of the truck frame, and to this holes were drilled and the hinges were bolted. This is good because I wanted to be able to remove the bed to replace the batteries when necessary. Our test tilt was successful and the next working session will be to remove the bed, finish reinforcing the hinges and welds on the bed side, then install the gas springs and some kind of pins to hold the front of the bed down.

Next post will include photos of the above work. I continue to keep moving forward.

Installation of Batteries, Test Run!

I reached a major milestone this weekend! Thank goodness for the 3 day holiday! It was appropriately named Labor Day. Let me cover a few things that I accomplished leading up to this weekend before we get to the fun stuff!

During the previous few weekends since my last post, I re-attached the cable running to the tail lights and ran the hv cables from the under the hood to the rear battery box. I also put 50 pounds of pressure in the air shocks as a starting point. I will adjust this to level the truck once the bed is re-installed. I cut some pieces of a rubber mat to place in the bottom of the battery racks to keep the batteries from sitting directly on the steel and give them a small cushion.

On Saturday I went to our local Sam's Club to purchase the batteries. They are Energizer Brand (made by Johnson Controls) 6v golf cart batteries. I got a few strange looks and had to offer some explanations. "What are you going to do with all those batteries?", was the most asked question. I was glad the great employees there loaded them into my truck (many thanks!) or I would have been there all day...followed by a trip to the hospital to fix my back. Each battery weighs 65 lbs. I was dodging thunderstorms and made it into the driveway before the downpour began. Luckily, I had a tarp to throw over the batteries.

After a short break, I unloaded the batteries one at a time, and put them into the racks. I had to make sure they were in a certain pattern, so the cabling would follow a path I worked out on a drawing. Once they were all in, I installed the hold down straps that I made. The day was nearly over by then. Cabling would start on Sunday.

I began making the interconnect cables, a process I believe I covered in an earlier post. It involves a torch, solder, 2/0 welding cable and terminals. All the batteries are wired in series. Half way through the day my son Matt came to help me finish. We also installed a 300A fuse in a box in the middle of the battery pack. This protects the pack if there are shorts within the pack. It was near the end of the day when we had everything wired.

We put the rear axle up on jack stands for testing. I had already previously run through most of the testing (less the HV part) and everything passed. I used my trusty voltmeter to check for voltage at the main contactor. Good! Next, the key was turned to the "on" position. Controller fan running, (check) vacuum pump running..then stops, (check) dc to dc converter operating, (check), radio playing classic rock, (check-a-rooney)!

Next there are 3 conditions to be met in order to drive. A relay box ensures this. First, the key must be on. Second, release the parking brake. Third, foot on the brake pedal (then release). Next, push slowly on the "gas" pedal. The main contactor then "clunks" into place, feeding the high voltage to the controller.

I pressed slowly and the rear wheels began to turn...all good. We let the truck down and proceeded to back out of the garage. No need to use the clutch to start and stop, only to shift gears while underway. I drove once around our pond, then Matt drove around once also. I can only guess that the croaking alligator I heard in the pond was congratulating us on the maiden voyage ( or else he just wanted to eat us ). Either way, it was all good :)

It was a very exciting drive! I was thrilled that everything was working! I would have driven around the block, but I needed to charge the batteries. That about wraps up this blog post! Next on the task list is to put the pickup bed back on the truck...more to come, stay tuned!!

Oh, and one last thing. If you happen to come to see my truck, don't say, "that's a lot of batteries!" I heard that quite a few times throughout the weekend...lol

Paint, Front Batteries, Circuit Breaker...Progress

It has been quite sometime since my last update. The weekends are the primary time to work on the S10, and I have been gone a few, and had more pressing things going for others. So, here is what has gone on since the last blog post.

I completed all of the priming of the rear battery boxes and frame. Following this I applied 2 coats of flat black paint to the same area. Next I installed a set of helper springs to the rear leaf springs. These will enable 1500 pounds of extra load. Then I ran the lines for the air shocks and tested them. This pretty much completes the battery racks until batteries are purchased.

Up front, the 4 front batteries were installed and cabled in series. I also ran the wiring to the controller and the motor. This is all now complete. My attention then turned to the main circuit breaker for the high voltage. I purchased a box from digikey to mount the breaker in. I had a difficult time finding a place inside the cab to mount the circuit breaker box and finally decided to put it under the driver's seat. When finished there will be a line attached to the breaker to a ring mounted by the driver so that the driver can trip the breaker to off if needed. The photos show the breaker during and after installation. I then ran the 2/0 wire to the main contactor under the hood.

That about wraps it up. I have one more 2/0 wire to run from the front batteries to the rear battery box, then I will be ready to buy the remainder of the batteries and install them. I believe the light is starting to be visible at the end of the tunnel! Until next time, I will .....keep moving forward!

Finish Battery Boxes!! Finally

Hello, everyone! I made a lot of progress on the truck this week. I took vacation days on Tues, Weds, and Thurs. Each day I put in 10-12 hours to get to the place where I am today. My twitter friends may have noticed me more absent than usual on these days.

Quick review, from the last post we had just welded in the rear of axle battery box. This box holds 8 batteries. Before this week began, I had several weekends of welding fun. I completed all the welding on the front of axle boxes last weekend. On Tuesday myself and Mike welded the front 2 boxes to the truck frame. Wednesday was spent grinding things down to look pretty and then I began sandblasting the frame to get it ready to prime. This was my first experience at sandblasting (much the same as a lot of "firsts" on this project) and to say the least, it was interesting. When I was finished, I had sand everywhere! There was sand all over me, also, in places I didn't know existed! :) It sure cleaned up the rust and left everything very clean.

The remainder of the last day and a half, I spent priming all the metal of the frame and the battery boxes. I used Rustoleum Professional Primer from Home Depot. It took 4 large spray cans to complete. In retrospect, I should have used my air compressor and a spray gun....Oh, well! Everything about this project has been a learning experience.

I was finished using my 4 purchased batteries as templates, so I installed them into the battery rack under the hood. They are ready to be cabled together. You can see these in the photos. You will notice the "Energizer" labels on the batteries. This truck will be powered by the Energizer Bunny! (or several thousand of them running mindlessly around a circular belt)

That about wraps it up for this post...next up is topcoating everything you see in red to flat black. I am getting real close to purchasing the remaining 20 batteries. I even checked them out at Sam's Club to make sure they had enough in stock. Until the next post....keep moving forward..... :)

More Battery Boxes!

I'll bet you are getting sick of reading about battery boxes. Well, I am getting tired of building them! Hopefully we can move on soon!

Whew! Another Sunday is over and a lot was accomplished this weekend! My first job on Saturday was to remove the last remaining original cross member on the rear frame of the truck. Lots of grinding to remove the heads of the rivet bolts and some pounding to finally get the thing to come out of there. With that gone, there is much more room for the battery boxes and complete access to the batteries for maintenance.

I set up some paint cans and blocks to put the battery boxes in place for sizing. As you can see in the photos, they appear to fit. These boxes will not be worked on at this time.

Before the welding began, I had some time to put together a couple of the HV cables. I used 3/8" lugs, solder pellets, and 2/0 welding cable. They are fairly easy to assemble. Place the lug in a vise, add some flux to the strands of copper, heat up the lug to melt the solder, and slowly slide the cable into the lug. Remove the heat and let it cool. Add some heat shrink to cover. I completed the motor jumper, controller to motor, controller to main contactor. Plenty more of this later.

Mike and I (mostly Mike) completed all the welding on the rear of axle box. After some grinding and clean up, we welded the box onto the support square tube on the truck. The rack is very solid and seems to have come out nicely. Two batteries were placed in the rack. It will hold 8 when full. The rear box can be seen in the photos.

This was the end of the work today. It was over 90 degrees and very humid today. Lots of fun. This portion of the truck is taking the most time of all the conversion process. I guess I should have known, constructing these boxes from scratch would take some time....quite a bit of time! Some S10 conversions just place the batteries in the bed of the truck, I guess I could have gone this route, but really did not want to give up my bed space. I also wanted the truck to look as much like a normal S10 as possible. So onward we push toward the goal line.... More to come!!

Welding, not welding, welding...

First post with no photos. Not much has changed since the last post, but wanted to do a quick update. All of the steel has been cut for the battery boxes and just about all the boxes are tack welded together. There were a few setbacks when my Argon/CO2 tank ran out and I had to take it in for a re-fill. The tank was out of certification, so they had to send it away for a week to be pressure tested. The gas company gave me a small loaner bottle to use in the interim.

Last Sunday we got down to seriously welding the main rear of axle battery box. Before this I purchased 4 of the GC-2 golf cart batteries from Sam's Club so that we could do final fitting checks before finish welding all the joints. The batteries fit this box perfectly.

The bad new is: the little bottle of gas lasted about an hour and we did not even get all the joints done on this battery box. So after buying Mike some lunch, we called it a day.

Yesterday, I went to the gas company and retrieved my bottle and some 2/0 welding cable to use for High Voltage connections. Hopefully we are set up to complete some battery boxes next weekend.

I didn't realize this process with the battery boxes would take so long. Live and learn, I guess. Keep moving forward and until next post....

Battery Boxes Continued

This post covers work done over several weekends. All of it involved steel work and some frame modifications to the truck. Since my last post I have done a lot of steel cutting to get all the pieces ready for tack welding on the rear of axle battery box and one of the front of axle boxes. I still have yet to cut the steel for the remaining battery box. This one will be a bit trickier because the drive shaft of the truck is slightly offset and there is not as much room on the passenger side as on the driver's side. This battery box will be a very tight fit.
My son's friend Mike has been a big help with the welding. So far we have spent a couple days tack welding the first battery box together. I have been practicing with the welder also and managed to successfully tack weld the second battery box together. I will more than likely let Mike finish all the critical welds. I am not real thrilled with the idea of batteries bouncing down the road because of inexperienced welding.
On the truck frame we welded in a new support of square tube across the rear of the frame. This will support one side of the new battery box. I then used the chop saw to remove a section of steel between the shocks. This would serve to impede my access to 2 of the batteries. After the pictures were taken, the front support was also welded into place. As soon as the rear of axle box is welded complete, it will be ready to install into the truck and welded into place. So, the battery box work continues, and maybe a few posts left covering it before we move on.
There are some tricky roads ahead, but progress is being made. There have been a lot of comments from friends and others about seeing the truck after it is done. I believe we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Stay tuned for more EV fun!!