Coming soon, the greatest Favorit project ever! (Probably)

[mdk1]

Just got back intouch with this, glad it's all coming togeather after a few years.

Can't wait for it to be finished now.

[Robshaw]

Any further update on this ?

[favguy]

Well it looks like I owe everyone an apology! So much for April...

Parts got delayed from the US, the last of them finally turned up yesterday, hurrah!! so all raring to go, but... My daily drivers engine has just failed, so I've got to do a transplant on this first.

Should be able to get back to this in about 2 weeks time now.

Later all

Paul

[GaSelle]

Any news?

[Leon-y-k]

This is a fantastic project buddy!!! As others have mentioned, hats off to you, seriously this is brilliant!!

[softscoop]

Any news on this?

Can't wait to see it

[favguy]

OK, I'm back with some progress at last!,

Most of the original watchers of this thread have probably got bored and moved on by now as it's been so long since the last update !, I do know of at least some who have left Skoda for another marque and don't come here any more ! For those of you who are still watching the idea is to get the car at least road legal by the end of summer.

I'm thinking I must be in the running for the longest ever project build time award or something!

OK, so where had we got to... Controller first I think

As already mentioned somewhere in the mists of time, the car needs a controller. As an analogy, if the motor was the cars heart, the controller would be the brain, but enough of that... It manages the cars motor current and voltage parameters under all driving conditions to give us the power needed on demand via the throttle to actually make the car drivable. Put simply, with the type of series wound DC motor used in the car, voltage gives us speed and current gives us torque. The controller therefore does a mix and match of the two to give us the power needed up to a maximum power of 72Kw, unlike a petrol or diesel engine maximum torque is available from 0 rpm. Bearing in mind the original engine was 60Kw with maximum torque only available somewhere way above 3000 rpm, the car should perform nicely

I decided on an open source project controller for the car, the 500A Open Revolt. The parts can be gathered together to build this from various sources, but the developer of the kit, Paul Holmes, over in the US ( www.paul&sabrinasevstuff.com ) sells a complete kit of parts with excellent support for a very reasonable price, so I bought one from him. I have to commend Paul and all the others who've worked on this thing, it really is a nicely developed kit, also to Paul especially, for such excellent packaging and assembly instructions.

I finally got to building it over the last two or three weeks, sailing through the control board build with my 30 watt soldering iron, but the 100 watt soldering gun I had wouldn't touch the power board due to the large ground plane sapping away the heat so quickly. (When the intructions say you need a 200 watt iron/gun, they mean it!) I finally sourced a 200 watt iron (from Germany at 1/4 the price of UK irons, why do we pay so much more for everything in the UK??) with the biggest copper tip I've ever seen on a soldering iron which did the job effortlessly due to it's large thermal mass.

Below are a few pics of the finished controller, If you'd like to see the build procedure, it's available here: http://www.paulandsabrinasevstuff.com/VideoFilesMcontrollers.html

Having scratched my head for ages over what to do at the end cap regarding the control wiring, as it's left for the kit builder to deal with this and I didn't want to leave it just sticking out, I came across an 8 pin Bulgin plug and socket. These are compact, well made (bieng designed for 230v use) and also just seem to "look right"

The enclosure top turned up looking like nice shiny brushed Aluminium and I considered leaving it at this, but i'm pretty sure it wasn't anodised and due to our lovely damp UK climate that means it would have a not so nice white powdery oxide finish after a few months on the car so I gave it a paint system and finished it satin black. I might buy a nice "Open Revolt" sticker for it in due course.

I've got to do some more testing then I'll seal it up and bond on the end caps using PU adhesive sealant and post a finished pic.

In addition to the controller, I've done some more metalwork. Finishing the front battery rack, closure panel for the hole left by the radiator and modified, larger under shields to get the engine bay much more water tight than it was with the engine in it.

I've also sourced all of the vacuum brake system parts, contactor, pack fuse and main breaker.

I'll post picures of this up shortly.

Oh, I've also sourced and installed an Ah counting meter in the last part of the dash not already filled with meters!! This will act as an accurate "fuel guage" for the car. I'll post up some pics of this soon also.

So, we are slowly getting there. Left to do is build the control shelf above the motor, then it's component mounting, main pack wiring and conduits, control circuits wiring, battery placement, charger, DC/DC etc...

Although the car has been built for and is going to have a 153.6v nominal (144v under heavy load) lithium battery pack, I don't have funding for this as yet, so I've acquired some lightly used 110Ah 12v traction batteries, 72v worth. These will be used to allow me to get the car finished to the point where it can pass an MOT test and be registered and taxed for use as an EV. I'm expecting initial performance with the 72v Lead to be modest, something like a max. speed of 45-50 with a range of around 10 to 15 miles, so not too exiting, but at least I can get it on the road. I'm aiming to have this milestone done by the end of September at latest.

Be back soon,

Paul

[softscoop]

Looking good.

Nice to hear that the project is still going along

[blueR36]

Yes some of us die hards are still here, great update

[R1DAVIE]

Glad to hear this is still on the go, look forward to more updates

[favguy]

The controller has now been tested, so I fitted the end caps and sealed it up

[Jonny5ive]

Epic. That is all.

[MontyPythonFan]

Well done and keep letting us know how its going I think it was in the newish eastern europe cars there was a mention of an electric car prototype commissioned by the Czech transport ministry, based on the Favorit. Have you heard of it?

regards

Matt

[favguy]

Hi Matt,

This is probably what you're thinking of, circa about 1992-1994. They called it the "Eltra"

[pieman[vrs]]

Glad to see this still going

[BossFox]

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Glad to see this still going

Me too, I love this project.

[MartynVRS]

Great to see. Keep going!

[sorin_maican20]

The build quality and attention to detail is so amazing.

Can't wait to see more

[softscoop]

It seems that Skoda had a go at making this sometime in the mid 90's.

Apparently they stopped when it was near completion, as they couldn't fit in enough batteries. Clearly battery technology has moved on somewhat in the last 20 years

Seems to have an ammeter as a rev gauge, some sort of battery meter in the centre of the dashboard, and a fan or grille down the bottom - No idea what that's for though.

[blueR36]

They are not pampering their museum pieces are they, look at the mould on the steering wheel

[pieman[vrs]]

They are not pampering their museum pieces are they, look at the mould on the steering wheel

Should have seen the jabba sport vr6 felicia at le car centre, you would thought it was made of mould!

On another note, Mr softscoop can you make a post with all the pictures you got of these secret skodas!

At OP Free bump!

[Taylor93]

Is this project still gonig?

I would love to see it finished!

[favguy]

Hi All,

Am working on the car all this week now, ready for MOT sometime next week hopefully, so should have lots of updates and pictures by next weekend. Thank you all for your patience

Paul

[blueR36]

Great stuff Paul. The Mot guy will get a shock! Not literally !

[favguy]

Right, I'm back, so much for getting on the road by the end of September...

I've only got to finish some battery cabling, battery hold downs & 12v control wiring and I'm good to go for the MOT, I've done quite a lot of stuff over the last few weeks, so here is the update, in no particular order:

Starting with the controller, I managed to find a nice heatsink on ebay, so this was cut down to size and monted to the base of the controller by drilling and tapping four M5 blind holes into it, not forgetting a nice layer of heat transfer paste:

Should help keep it nice and cool.

I also filled the last remaining space in the dash with an Ah meter. This way I can keep track of Ah's used and know how much range I'll have left. This was a bit of a case of fitting a square peg in a round hole, and after much head scratching to decide how to best make it work, decided to set it in place with resin. So I set up the casing in the dash cubby hole, having first cut out the rear of the hole for cabling. It was taped up liquid tight at the rear and I poured in black casting resin up to the level where the front face clips on. Turned out quite well I think:

I'll throw this one in for good measure, although not directly related to the conversion:

Got rid of the awful original wheel by replacing it with a nice stitched leather sports wheel, and also matching leather gearknob. Note the "Electric" logo I had made for the wheel centre!

Anyway, back to the conversion...

Braking system, Managed to get a nice new Landrover vacuum pump from ebay for a steal, along with an Audi vacuum chamber, and adjustable (to -30Hg) pressure switch and guage:

Spent another few hours deciding on the best way to mount this lot and prototyping mounting brackets, then mounted it all together, think it turned out quite nicely:

As you can see I've got to finish to control relay and wiring for this, but have tested it down to -30Hg and held it for a couple of hours with no loss of vacuum, so far so good.

OK, so brakes are all but done, what's next?...

Control shelf, construction, component mounting:

Having thought about the best way to do this for some time, I ended up using a strut brace bar from a Felicia as an upper support for the shelf structure. The Favorit never had one of these, but as the Felicia's all got them, and as the Felicia is a rebodied Favorit.... it fits perfectly.

The front battery rack then acts as the lower mounting point for the control shelf frame.

I decided to build the shelf support frame from light weight galvanised angle as it keeps the weight down and is quite adequate for the weight of the control gear. It also saves me painting all that framework!

I decided to go the simple route for the control shelf itself, using 12mm external plywood. Cut and machined it as needed, then sanded, primed and painted it. Primitive but effective.

You can also see the front battery rack in the below pictures. This is built from more conventional 3mm wall thickness 40mm angle with captive nuts, and brackets welded in, so it drops right in and is bolted to the front outriggers in four places.

The flat panel you can see is the closing panel to waterproof the engine bay at the front where the radiator was.

I've also built an undershield to enclose the lower engine bay, It's not photographed yet, I'll come on to it later.

Control shelf finished, controller mounted and 70mm motor/controller loop cabling finished: