Ben's 2007 Vectrix Repair Project

Mwahahhahahahahahhaaaaaa! (Evil laughter)

I am now the proud owner of an entire Nissan Leaf Battery Pack I rescued from a salvage yard.

I think it may have been the only one in the entire United States right now. I look forward to making Vectrix packs from it.

http://300mpg.org/2015/03/17/score-nissan-leaf-salvage-yard-battery-pack/

It's 48 Modules. Everyone seems to be saying that 18 is the right number for a Vectrix.

I finally found another guy in my area who has a Vectrix. I talked with him on the phone the other night. He bought his new, but it's now in the same condition as what I bought mine in - dead dead dead NiMH pack. He said he would be interested in cells.

This battery should be enough for two Vectrixs with 12 cell modules left over.

Hey guys,

Does somebody have a copy of the 2013 Scooter Diagnostic software they could send me, or a link to where I can download it from?

I finished taking apart the Nissan Leaf pack today. After I did, I set 18 modules next to the Vectrix to see how it will fit. The group of 18 modules is 24 inches long, 12 inches tall, and 9 inches wide. Looks perfect! I also have a nice 3-foot long orange power cable from the LEAF pack I should be able to use in the Vectrix with the new cells.

I also finished putting together a J1772 adapter and got to test it out over at a friend's house. It worked GREAT!

Yep, there's left and right-handed versions of the cells. I even point it out in my most recent video. Right after I took the photos shown in post #73, I noticed that I accidentally had two of the same type in a row (right about in the middle.) Better now in a mock-up then after loading all of those into the scooter and slid onto the threaded rods!

Does anyone have version 2.48.16.0 of the Peak can bus driver?
I'm specifically looking for that version of the file 'Pcan_usb.sys'

Yes, I already have the right version of the .dll file, it's a certain sys file that I'm looking for.

Got some more work done on the project today. To fund this project, I'm splitting the LEAF pack up with two other electric motorcycles; Tony, who is working on a Buell Blast electric conversion, and Nick, who has, believe it or not, the exact same Vectrix as me. It's even the same color.
Nick came over today to get his share of the cell modules. The best part was that ahead of time, he built his own wooden box for transporting the cells. It worked GREAT! I liked the removable wood rod handles, a very nice touch.

We took off the seat and trim, and then the battery box cover. I had done this already before, so it was very quick, but Nick was there as well and hadn't ever seen a Vectrix opened up, so he got to apprentice and learn what to expect when we do his. Pulling out both halves of the NiMH battery pack was pretty easy. I already knew how to do it, and this time I had a set of helping hands and a chain hoist. I put some plumbers tape to the lifting rods on the pack and hoisted it straight up. Much easier than trying to straddle the bike and lift....
I still can't believe how well the LEAF modules fit. It's like the bike was built around them.

The stack of modules I'm going to use is from the unit of 24 under the back seat of the LEAF. It has a nice set of bus bars and BMS wires, which is however too long. The orange plastic, bars, and wires for the last 6 cells needs to be cut off. However, I want to keep them as nice as possible, so we can use them on Nick's bike. So, I traced back the wires all the way to the wire harness connector. The easiest way to do this is with a continuity tester.
I finally upgraded from $5 Harbor Freight multimeters to an actual nice (expensive!) unit. One handy feature is a setting that makes the multimeter beep when a circuit is complete. I put a jumper wire into one of the pins on the connector and then touched the other probe of the multimeter to the connections until it beeped. When I found one on the end that would be removed, I snipped that wire. Once all the wires in that last section were snipped, I cut open the taped-up part of the wires, and pulled them out.

I then snipped the plastic to remove the tail end from the main section of orange plastic/bus bars/BMS wires. This gave me a separate piece with several feet of wire on it that we can use on Nick's Vectrix.

Hi guys,
I was able to swap some software around and get the drivers working right, so I could use the Grid Connect PEAK can adapter. Which also means that I could upgrade my motor controller and battery charger software.

But since I pulled the NiMH pack out of my cycle yesterday, there's no power to the bike. Sooooo......

Since the LEAF cells were right there, I bolted them together, wired them up, and ran power to the cycle with the LEAF modules still sitting on the ground.

I was then able to power up the laptop and Vectrix and do the The Laird software upgrade.

To my pleasant surprise, the next time I looked at the instrument cluster, it said 90 MILES on the display!

Now, I just have to get the LEAF modules INSIDE the scooter. I need to modify the threaded rods and end plates that squeeze them all together.

I also ordered a Cycle Analyst.
Pretty excited to have made it this far already!

Yep, this is as much work as I'm going to get done on it in a while. Now I have to figure out all that tedious stuff, like adding connectors to all those little BMS wires.
I also have to figure out exactly how I'm mounting the batteries.

At this point, I'm leaning towards reusing the "end plates" for the cell modules from the 12-module blocks. Those plates were plain stamped steel, fit the shape of the batteries, and already have threaded holes for the matching rod.

Switch the bike to km per hour to see the battery voltage correctly on the Est. Range display.

I did test switching between miles and Kilometer, and sure enough, it shows battery voltage when I select Kilometers. The battery is at 147V, which works out to 4.08333V per cell. From the charging diagrams I've seen that seems like a good number - full, but not too full.

I did test all the LEAF cells, (before charging) and they were all within one one-hundreth of a volt to each other.

That's OK. I needed it to connect the can bus adapter, but I was working with The Laird on getting the right version of the software, and he had me change a different file, so I'm all set on drivers now.

I did some work making the plate to hold the battery pack together.
I cut one piece of one of the "large" plates from the LEAF battery pack that held four stacks of cells. It already has four threaded holes in it, but that's for 6mm threaded rod. Unfortunately, the rod used in the pack isn't threaded all the way, just at the ends. So, if I cut it short to make it fit the size of my battery pack (24 inches long, plus a little extra for nuts and bolts and end plates) one of the ends won't be threaded anymore. I don't own a 6mm tap and die set. Actually, in my area, anything metric always costs MORE than standard.

I looked at a couple different ways of shortening the rods and decided that the best thing to do is just go over to standard 1/4"-20 threaded rod. Part of the reasoning on that is that 1/4" is just a hair larger than 6mm, so I can tap out a 6mm threaded hole to a 1/4" threaded hole without even having to pre-drill. (I tried drilling out one of those holes, and wrecked a drill bit doing it....)

I cut 1/4-20 rod to about 25 and a half inches, and threaded them into the holes on the plate. Looks like it should work well for the project.

Should I weld the back side of the rods? I need them to not spin, and the back of the threaded rods (on the far front of the battery pack) won't be accessible anyways.

I have a bunch of photos for you at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10155531284410165.1073741941.866440164&type=1&l=192a31c49c