Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

had to get remotivated to install that headlight wire harness, and let me tell you it aint no fun on a GMC as you have to run the high beam plugs through the low beam cavities and it's a fun little hand cutting exercise

and I just had to clean off half a century worth of black tar off them gold barb connectors, let me know if you know what I am talking about and if you managed to transfer some of that evil black stuff to yer favorite T shirt by accident? asking for a friend

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

bought some rust and dirt on random truck parts from salt of the earth good people Joe and Marie up in Orangevale, California [best kept C10 truck parts secret in Sacramento]

and boy Joe was right them visors cleaned up real good with just half a can of spray elbow grease

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I also went to town with some paint and lacquer thinners on them tri colored armrests before attempting to spray paint them black(ish) with whatever paint I had left

a million and seven light coats being the key in this application for optimum stickability

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

and then this happened...

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

the inside door handles are supposed to be spring loaded ! who knew ?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

so I decided to give the original ones a shot at rebuilding them, basically you gotta drill out the sorta rivets and replace the broken snap to coil springs

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

how we do in the Good Enuff Garage, even the smallest of bits get media blasted before being powder coated, here's a comparison of a dirty set and one that has been cleaned

someday I will finish rebuilding those

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

yes The Greg is dreading doing this part...

the passenger side triangle window seems OK(ish) but the driver side most def needs a rebuild, how many of you have experienced the joy of replacing them rivets ? show of hands please

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

It's not a fun job. Very tedious and kind of a struggle. I found this video helpful: https://youtu.be/WiZOiHmcb_w?si=SqP7FiVnRwmFDAcg

There is a cheap rivet tool that you can get, basically a piece of tool steel with the end machined to mushroom the head of the rivets as you hammer. I actually welded this tool to a c-clamp and it helped, but I found it to be a 2-person job and use the tool as intended with a hammer and find a good setup to backup the other end of the rivet so you can get solid hits.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

thank you for that link, I have watched and followed Jerry's videos to do my windows in my '54, he does good work

I hope to find a video for when someone does the whole door reinstall cause if you are like me and had a bunch of components missing you don't know what you are missing and what goes where

as far as that crappy punch tool I literally had to get two of them to finish a job once cause they are junk and single use only

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

saving a spot for them finished winderz pics

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Going to integrate the aftermarket Intellitronix digital gauges with the EV BMW Lexus GS450h VCU ver 2 hardware

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

can't wait till she get's new bed sides next year, SUMMIT Road Trip anybody ?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Range Test #3 - didn't quite hit 35 miles and I babied the hell out of it, No Freeway driving at all, mostly residential and kept it under 45 miles per hour, gentle and took me well over an hour

so I am calling this the 30 mile battery pack, and NO I aint saying run a 9 kWh battery back, of course it is too small, but you know what for a quick install for a Proof of Concept it is absolutely brilliant and makes for a functioning "One Errand At A Time Truck" aka the OEAaTT

"hey dad, can we go to Subway?" yes kid, no problem, "hey honey can we also go to Target?" ... tomorrow baby, tomorrow, ha ha

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Dash is looking good! BTW, the bacon and coffee I understand. The rest however is way over my head! :lol:

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

LoL, me too !!!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Target tomorrow- funny!!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

It's the cut off wheel trivot on the kitchen counter that got me.....I think Gregski should start an ask "Mr Wizard " Youtube show, try and explain to slow brains like me how ya do that.....(not the trivot.....the whole battery/ Lexus fundamentals of wiring.) "Bacon on the side" is also a good catchy title.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

baconOnTheSide.com hmmm ???

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

TOP SPEED TEST #1

82.7 MPH

so took her on the Highway for the first time and OH MY GAWD she drove like a dream, effortless! I just jumped on, on one entrance and did not stay on too long cause I had no idea how far she could go on speeds upwards of 65 MPH, but she did fine. Keep in mind she has no side windows yet and that creates drag, and I didn't fully commit on this first test, so this is just a start. Also only running on one motor in that Lexus GS450h transmission aka MG2, we are not sending any torque commands to the smaller motor aka MG1 at this time, this is on purpose.

My truck Specs:
215/65 R17 tires
3.73 rear differential

Speed tests should be performed on a closed course / private road.

Update from Me in the Future: I did NOT have my torque set to Max on this test, I forgot about that!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

nice

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Gregski, that is awesome! Glad to hear it ran smooth! Here is my analog version of your "all time maximum speed". Never ran Goldie any faster then this. Got kinda spooky. :lol:

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Wow, I luv it, she done did 95 MPH? was there wobble or a whole lot shaking going on?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Reason Number: 5,499 to convert to electric

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Had good tires balanced well so pretty smooth. What was worrisome was the faster I went, the free play in the steering box seemed to get worse, plus the engine sounded like it was going to let go. It didn't.;) The truck let me know driving with one hand, working a camera with the other was a pretty dumb thing to do! :lol: As for gas prices, $5.25 per for the cheap stuff today!

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I will never understand why dingleberries block out their PUBLIC license plates when they list cars for sale for instance, it makes zero sense

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Yikes $3.42 for us here in VA.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

so been working with a friend from the East Coast on my digital gauges


EV Converstion: Artur K of MotoArt, digital gauges, introduction

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I noticed you have Temp, Oil and Fuel gauges. What are these actually reading.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

very good question:

Temp is coolant temp just like in a regular vehicle, a lot of the EV components are liquid cooled, so this truck still has a radiator and a cooling loop that goes from the liquid cooled battery charger to the liquid cooled inverter to the liquid cooled motors inside the transmission. The coolant is circulated using a Tesla electric water pump.

Oil is what we are using to monitor the transmission fluid that circulates through the automatic transmission and the oil cooler which is integrated into the stock GM radiator just like with a TH350 transmission.

Fuel is actually showing us remaining battery capacity at the moment simply based on remaining voltage level. Since the gauge is only a two digit unit we are doing a little trick and simply subtracting 300 volts from the total and just displaying the remaining voltage which ends up almost perfectly coinciding with 0-100 percent charge as the full charge of this battery pack is 398 volts, so it works out great.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Thanks for explaining it. I get the fuel gauge showing 59 percent. But the temp showing 23 degrees and the oil showing 35 psi. Those readings baffle me. Why so low?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I think in that pic we had certain things turned off so that they would not make noise in the video we were shooting and talking over and so the 23 is the minimum temp the gauge can show so 23° F the 35 is not PSI it is the PWM percentage that we are sending to the oil pump to control it's speed, that is dynamic based on torque.

We are editing a video with more detail and should post it shortly.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

I understand, thanks for telling me and I will be looking forward to seeing your video.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

My truck has had a SB 350, A BB 454 and now an LS1. My wife asked me if I finely had the Engine I wanted. I told her “ There’s always Tesla”. LOL

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

that would be an Excellent Choice! lemme grab my Volt Meter and I'll be right over to help you get started! and I'm sure we'll make a lot of friends on here ��

in related news, My Gawd My Truckulator Runs AmazeBallz! we may have raced a BMmer can't confirm nor deny ����

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

So I bought this truck back in 2017 as a Mom & Son project to force myself to spend more time with my newly retired mother. [that's a big lie] the truck was a total POS and her house was closer to the seller's place than my house, so I two wheel UHAUL car trailered it there instead ! but it's the thought that counts

we did wrench on it together and took a ton of pics which then I lost when my SSD failed literally as I was backing stuff up to the Google

Destination: Mom's House, where it all begin
Distance: 13 miles
Terrain: Streets (no freeway)


and here she is back where it all begin: (yup took mum around the block in this one, like I have done in all my prior builds)


.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

If you don't tell, than I won't tell what's temporarily holding my gauge cluster bezel in !

[ I hate these friggen things, and that's why I probably have sum cause I refused to pop them back in to whatever Honyota they came out of ]

you agree or disagree ?

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

Agree and the ones that are barbed.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

It took me 2 weeks, but I finally read your whole build thread. Very impressive. That's a lot of research to figure all that out.

When I went to Votech for autobody in the early 90s there was a Toyota electric truck they had built that stayed in the shop. We had to move it in and out for more room. It was interesting. It was a lot less complicated than yours. I can't remember for sure, but I think it had a bunch of lead acid batteries in the bed. The motor under the hood wasn't very big and it didn't have any cooling. Seemed very simple.

Re: My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck
 

wow thank you so much, you may be the First !!!

yes the game has changed tremendously since then, the one huge difference is that back in the 90s, most likely that truck was powered by Direct Current aka DC electricity (low voltage (96v or less maybe) / high current) so there was no need for a box called an Inverter. This made setup very simple cause all you needed was a motor + batteries + a controller, then simply by giving it more or less volts using a potentiometer aka a fancy volume knob you made it go faster or slower. These days we use Alternating Current 3 phase motors. This allows us to run much thinner wires and push less amps at much higher speeds aka volts (360+).

I built an electric motorcycle using those types of DC motors and yes lead acid, well gel batteries, called a Suzuki "Wattana" it should be out there on the InterWebs somewhere