Cleaning and Testing

Work on the bug stopped in February because of all the birthdays and sickness in the family, but this weekend, I got back to work on it! It was mostly cleaning, organizing, testing, and research, but it’s finally moving again.

The WarP9 motor arrived from the freight company (I had my concerns about that one), but that led to some major concerns about the adaptor plate and coupler setup. I may need to send the plate back and get another one. I have some emails out to manufacturers to figure out what I’m missing (in parts or math).

It was warm enough to take the seats outside (they were taking a lot of garage space after removing them from the bug last month), and I cleaned out the squirrel evidence. The 70s was a wild time–instead of using foam like a sane person, they used a hemp-like material that was a squirrel’s dream building material. After cleaning that out with a mask on, I got all 4 seat pieces into the attic for storage until I can reupholster them. They also have metal hooks under there to hold the seat covers on–I almost gouged a finger even through the gloves. the reupholster job will be an interesting one

In the hiatus, I also received my Vero Electric BMS v2 system. I was putting off testing things, but Saturday was a day for overcoming barriers, so I got the BMS set up and tested. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I was surprised that it was pretty easy to set up and use. I daisy chained the 4 modules together (I need 1 more cable from Vero to connect the 5th module), and I was able to see all the data on the laptop as soon as I got it configured. I don’t have the charging system yet, but the BMS recognized all the batteries in their current charge state–which was more than I expected. I’m pretty excited to get the charging system and see how it all works together.

I’m narrowing in on the motor controller and charger setup that I want to use. My plan is to get the whole system functional on the table before I start running wires through the chassis. I wanted to use the “warp drive” motor controller from Netgain, but apparently they’re not making them anymore. The Kelly controller looks like it’ll to the trick.

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