Chapter 5, Buying the controller

I have just ordered a kit for building the cougar controller!

First of all I would like to explain how a controller works to all those watching, who are not in familiar with the components in an electric car:

In an electric car the controller is the component which adjusts the speed of the car as mentioned in chapter 4 (about the potbox) In a DC electric car, such as my own it does so by adjusting the voltage.


Back in the old days, adjusting the voltage to control an electric motor was done with big resistors, the resistors were then bypassed by a switch one after one when you wanted to increase the power and speed of the motor.
However this was highly inefficient as the resistors would just burn of all the power that would otherwise been used in the motor! Kind of like controlling a combustion motor by opening a hole in the fuel connection and just burning off the excess fuel when you want the motor to slow down.



Because this was highly inefficient the old trams back then also tried, as much as possible, to avoid using this to control their speed.
If you notice it there are a lot of wires sticking out of their traction motors, this was because they could also choose only to turn on parts of their motor at a time so that they could control the speed in a such way.

Luckily new technologies came along, so I do nether need big power consuming resistors nor a complicated motor.

This is how it is done today: Full voltage is fed into a modern controller it turns the voltage by switching the power on and off in a series of rapid pulses typically above 15000 times in a second depending on how much it is left on the ON position or the OFF position the voltage "changes" and thereby the speed and power of the motor can be controlled.

The Cougar Controller:

The Cougar controller unlike others on the market is an open source controller, which means that the plans are free on the net so you can build it your self out of parts you find, or you can (as I did) buy a complete kit from Paul ( http://www.paulandsabrinasevstuff.com/evmotorcontrollers.html ) The person who developed the open source controller.
Open source projects also allows people to improve on the design along the way

Usually I recommended to go for factory stuff when building an electric car. This is because of safety reasons. It is easier to test and certify components build in a large quantity than the fledglings of armatures.

However in this case this particular controller has various safety features that is comparable to the ones at a commercial controller. http://ecomodder.com/wiki/index.php/ReVolt#Frequently_Asked_Questions
see under "EV DC Motor Controller "Cougar" Features"

Videos from the project on Youtube!

I finally got a nice camera so I can document the project in living pictures.
I almost can't wait to film the next stage of the conversion.

A little art work

Just a little drawing I did of my myself and the project.

To annyone who might reconise the character design I was mimicking the style of Brösel the artist behind Werner: a German comic and animation films about a custom motorcycle enthusiast and all his adventures and mischief.

Chapter ,3 ½ Motor arrives!

November 2010

the motor has arrived. At the time it was delivered I was in Viborg and busy at the animation school, but as soon as I came home I moved the motor down to my workshop to fire it up for the first time.

Here is 24 KW complete with adaptor and motor mount just ready to install.

Watch it spinn at 12 volts supplied by a car jumpstarter:

Now I cant wait to install it and se how it works with the Trabant transmision.

Currently my Trabant is standing at a garage somwere and the wether is to cold to work in. To those who are not familier with the current situation in Denmark: Everything is cowered in snow and we are having the coldest December in 100 Years!

Chapter X Burning EV

Arrgh! it annoys me but due to current events I feel obliged to go off topic for a short while to write about that cursed fire on-board the Oslo ferry started by the extension cord of an electric car.
Since that I am afraid to say some journalists has started a scar campaign against electric cars.
As sensationalism drags attention the media is loaded with articles pointing out the fire hazards of electric cars to grab the attention of the overfeed receiver to chew down yet another catastrophe.

But before we ban the electric car lets look at what exactly happened at that ferry!

An electric car, a homebuilt one like my own, yet this has nothing to do with the case, rolled on-board the Oslo ferry. During the crossing the ferry offered the car on-board recharge. During the recharge the extension cord (not able to handle the high Amps) caught on fire and apparently ignited some spilled oil and fuel on the floor which caused the electric car and another car to catch on fire. The fire was brought under control by the ships automatic fire extinguishing system and competent crew. No one was hurt.


The two main villain in this was:

1: The extension cord, which was not suitable for the purpose.

2: Spilled oil from conventional motor vehicles.


Now sadly people seem to blame the electric car. The saddest thing is the comments left on those articles by ordinary Danish people. I remember one saying that armatures shouldn't be allowed to build electric cars. That cut deep, and it was written by someone who apparently did not even bother to read the whole article to determine what actually started the fire. This car could might as well be build by a regular car factory or the Martians. You need a certain amount of amps to charge your batteries no matter if it is a conversion or a factory build electric car.

I now fear that there will be put up rules that will make it impossible for me to register and use my car when it is finish. Just because of some stupid extension cord.

Why couldn't it just have happened for a factory build electric car instead?

In Denmark we have this lovely party called Dansk Folkeparti (Danish Peoples Party) and they would probably love to make a fuzz about this. They seem to love creating problems which is not there, like the time when they tried to force the shikhs to wear motorcycle helmet when driving motorcycle (shikhs wear this giant turban as a religious symbol, which cant fit under a helmet) in the end it turned out that the shikhs in Denmark was only a handful of people and that non of these even owned a motorbike.
DF has before attacked electric cars, so my fear is real, back then they tried to remove the free ACT (weight fee) for electric cars. Their argument was that it hadn't brought enough electric cars out on the Danish roads... But in the given case that to few was using the possibility it wouldn't be a hard financial expense for the state. Shouldn't we rather use the argument that we have enough electric cars on the road when that day comes as an argument to remove the free ACT.

A computergennerated scenario: My car on fire. After beeing tourched by an angry mob.

How to Not make your electric car go up in flames:

1) Remebere thoes cristmas decorations or your kitchen utilities and how you are not supposed to conect them all on the same extension coard. well lets just say that an electric car is the equivalent of a bunch of kitchen utilities together so dont use any questionable extension coard. especially not that thin one that is only supposed to conect a lamp.

2) Dont use the cheap Lithium batteries (like Thundersky) be shure they are made of fireprofe materials.

3) Dont build your own charger or use a wiered used or non EC aproved charger.

4) Genneraly use cables which can handle your amps. if you can only find 200 Amp suitable cables for the traction power install a fuse which breaks at 200 Amps.

5) Do not charge the car at places where you are not even alowed to smoke due to fire hazzards.

I ow to tell the people out there that I will continue working on my doomsday device.

The first automobile scared the horses and created much more chaos than this in its early days, people passed laws restricting the usage of motorcars. However they managed, and look at the roads. today. Now this difficult early time has come to the electric car. But we shall owercome.

To the electric cars out there:
Keep those wheels rolling for victory!

Chapter 3½ The Motor Adaptor; News from Bulgarya

I got this picture from the people at Kostov Motors showing the motor adaptor being machined at their workshop. the one attached to the lathe is the adaptor plate the one lying down is the Torque adaptor which is going to connect between the motor shaft and clutch plate to the gearbox.

Happy Mortens Aften to all the Danes out there.

Chapter ,2 ½ rust rust rust!!!

When I bought my Trabant I thought I was verry careful at checking the car for rust. apperently i overlooked two fist zized spots partly hidden by non corosive dünoplast parts where corotion had and was still having a party and turning my chassis into redbrown chunks of cornflakes.

Apparentley one of the cars former owners had tried to stop this by stufing old newspapers in the hole. Err... and when the car gets wet the papers soak and stays wet for more rust to come. "GOSH that was smart, that has to be dumbest way of dealing with rust, unless you are actually trying to get it to spread!"

It is a god thing that I know a nice workshop that deals with such things.

So of to the workshop it went.

Through fixing rust costs money I still got the trabant and rustwork at a price were it is still compensating for buying one in better condition.

But genneraly to all you out there. Try to get a fresh corps for your frankenstein!
-Yes master!