Update #23 - It lives! # 2021-08-24 I figured out why I couldn’t get the motor to spin smoothly - the 3-phase cables were connected backwards. d’oh. Correct 3-phase connections order. Here it is in all its glory. I’m just spinning it by manually passing in a specific current (manualid). There’s no load on the motor and no regen at this stage, so I need to be careful not to allow it to spin too fast. ...
Update #22 - continuing resolver woes # 2021-08-21 I’m still trying to work out the correct settings to get my MG2 spinning smoothly. I got a little more help from the OpenInverter folks and it looks like 4 is the correct setting for polepairs and 2 for respolepairs. I’m still not able to get the motor spinning properly though. It won’t start spinning from a stop on it’s own, you have to give it a push. ...
Update #21 - yet more resolver/polepairs/respolepairs debugging # 2021-08-19 I’m still working on getting my resolver wiring and my polepairs/repolepairs settings right. I got a little help from the OpenInverter community. It seems that it the ‘angle’ value tracked by the OpenInverter board is the resolver angle. This ’electrical’ angle is not the same as the actual rotor angle. It can be a multiple of the actual rotor angle. So, the fact that I’m seeing two full ’electrical’ revolutions for one actual physical revolution of the rotor is fine. ...
Update #20 - more resolver wiring debugging # 2021-08-15 Still trying to figure out what the right polepairs/resolverpairs settings are for this motor. I went back to check each of the four possible resolver wiring combinations to verify the weird behavior I was seeing last time. Wiring order : green, green/white, orange, orange/white Wiring order : green, green/white, orange/white, orange Wiring order : green/white, green, orange, orange/white Wiring order : green/white, green, orange/white, orange ...
Update #19 - motor pole pairs and resolver pole pairs # 2021-08-12 The motor is not spinning up from a dead stop. I can give it a little push and it will start to spin, but it stutters and makes some pretty unpleasant noises. One setting that I know that I don’t know is the motor pole pairs and the resolver pole pairs. I’ve been guessing at 4 for the motor pole pairs based on the fact that this motors older brother the gs450h has 4 motor pole pairs. ...
Update 18 # 2021-08-10 No update in a long time. I’m going to try and do updates more often. My high voltage junction box is almost complete. You can see the three kilovac contactors - the white cylindrical things. These are used to connect/disconnect the battery from the inverter. One is for the negative side of the battery, one is for the positive, and the third is a precharge contactor. ...
Update #17 - Paint removal # 2021-01-20 I’ve been busy with work for the past couple of months so progress has been a little slow. Mostly, with what little time I’ve had, I’ve been stripping paint and uncovering rust and dents. This evening, I tried to figure out where I might put some of the components. In particular, the batteries. The current plan, is to use a ~10kwh pack recycled from a BMW 5 series PHEV. ...
Update #16 - First spin # 2020-10-29 The next step in the Mustang EV conversion project was to do some bench testing of the inverter and motor together. After all, as far as I know, these two particular pieces of hardware have probably never been hooked up to each other by anybody. The inverter has come from a Toyota Yaris, while the motor comes from a Lexus gs300h. Here’s the bench setup. ...
Update #15 - EV conversion initial plan # 2020-09-30 At the end of August, I attended the 4 day EV car conversion course run by Damien Maguire and Kevin Sharpe. It was absolutely fantastic. I learnt a shedload. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of doing an EV conversion. One of the big takeaways from the course was the focus on opensource collaboration. There is a growing community of people out there, working together to share knowledge and develop open solutions to motor inverters, charging, battery management and so on. ...
Update #14 - Removing roof paint # 2020-05-15 Beginning to remove the paint.