My Dusty 71 GMCe Electruck

[Gregski]

please don't knock these little Home Depot torches until you've tried a proper torch like this Benzomatic TS8000, cause it doesn't matter if its the blue bottle or the yellow one, it has nothing to do with the type of gas or fuel but everything to do with the proper mixture

[Gregski]

she's gettin' there

[Gregski]

not bad for an email administrator

[Gregski]

then i decided to work on the battery brackets, but since I have a $2 dollar Harbor Freight saw on a $200 SWAG saw table, I couldn't even cut through 4 inches of 1/4" angle iron

[Gregski]

so guess what showed up at the blue flower pot today

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by rickcdewitt

I bet you could use the heat generated by your transmission and its cooler lines to send heated coolant to the heater core without too much difficulty?

that is an interesting point Rick, a lot of the Electric Vehicle components are liquid cooled as well, the Inverter (drives the motor), the Battery Charger, the DC to DC Converter (acts as an alternator) but I am not sure if even all those components generate enough heat to warm the cabin or defrost the windshield, let me ask the good ol' folks on Open Inverter dot Org FORUM why EV Swappers don't do just that, as it is a good point you are making

one idea I am toying with is using the Chevy Volt onboard battery charger and DC-DC Converter (you know sorta keeping it in the GM family, this being a GMC and all) I could have also used the Volt 18 Kw battery pack but my OCD wouldn't allow it as the cell modules are of three different sizes unlike the even BMW "cinder blocks" I decided to go with

please keep the ideas comin' I luv it

[Gregski]

alright so I want to show you my band saw setup for cutting that aluminum (no I am not bragging) but I want to prove to you that I aint B.S.ing either, if you look at this page you will see that the SWAG table is $150 plus $30 for a footpedal (a must in my opinion) and a $60 dollar guide, so total comes to just over $250 with tax and license, shipping, finders fee and clear under coat, hee hee

SWAG PORTABAND TABLES & ACCESSORIES

I saw this SWAG table and saw setup on here from another forum member so I aint taking credit for that invention, ha ha I just forget his name/handle, holler at me if you know it

so the point is the table is nice, it is friggen nice (don't ask me about that Craigslist charity buy piece of junk metal cart I got it sitting on, it looked huge in the ad, SURPRISE!)

anywho the saw itself is a BAUER from Harbor Freight, now I swore on my first born I would never ever buy again anything from HF with a cord attached to it, but I must have done this at a moment of weakness, well this junk cuts crooked, always has, and last night it would not cut through 4 inches of 1/4" aluminum angle, eth?

So then I see this YouTube video: Harbor Freight Portable Bandsaw Review

[35boulder]

Well I'm coming to this thread late. Just read thru the entire thread. Very interesting and well done with the pics and explanations. Like others have said this is all well over my head. I'm in to the end. Good luck.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by 35boulder

Well I'm coming to this thread late. Just read thru the entire thread. Very interesting and well done with the pics and explanations. Like others have said this is all well over my head. I'm in to the end. Good luck.

welcome and it aint all that bad it's easier than a gasoline powered engine so let's review the six pac

1. motor (one moving part, no brushes)
2. inverter: changes Direct Current to Alternating Current
3. converter = alternator
4. charger (same as your laptop just bigger)
5. throttle (if you got a drive by wire rig, similar thang)
6. controller (same as a PCM, ECU, brain computer black box)

truck still has brakes, steering, radiator, wipers, blinkers (ahem those things you don't use if you are in California) etc.

[Mike Bradbury]

This is an intriguing build. SEMA had an electrified C10 a couple years ago and it seemed that every possible nook and cranny was filled with some component to support the electric motor. The engine bay was full of batteries and the bed floor was lifted to accommodate more batteries, the inverters, converters, chargers, and controllers. Your design seems to require a lot less space. Is it just a matter of miles per charge, so they packed in more batteries or has the tech evolved enough to make everything smaller?

One question that has been bugging me with this build and maybe it has been addressed and answered but I missed it:

The 300 HP you will be generating is designed for a lighter Cadillac vehicle, will it survive with the extra load? Also if you decide to haul something in the bed and now it is 1000 pounds heavier, is the tranny strong enough to handle even more load? The trans may be strong enough to handle 300 hp but is it strong enough to handle the torque to move the truck in a respectable fashion not in grandma mode?

one of my nerdy pleasures is Battle bots. The subculture is a bit too nerdy for me but I do enjoy the creations and the carnage. Seems like the bots run fine under their own load but as soon as there is a pushing contest one of the bots batteries starts to smoke from being over loaded. In the scenario of using a Chevy Volt or BMW electronics that are designed for lighter loads, with he heavy truck smoke the components?


One last question: have you designed a place for the playing cards to hit the spokes so it at least makes some noise?

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

This is an intriguing build. SEMA had an electrified C10 a couple years ago and it seemed that every possible nook and cranny was filled with some component to support the electric motor. The engine bay was full of batteries and the bed floor was lifted to accommodate more batteries, the inverters, converters, chargers, and controllers. Your design seems to require a lot less space. Is it just a matter of miles per charge, so they packed in more batteries or has the tech evolved enough to make everything smaller?

you bring up some great points and questions so please allow me to address them one by one, if we are thinking of the same build here I think this was a Squarebody with a ridiculous over the top wide body kit on it, if indeed it was that build, I stopped watching after I saw what they were doing with the electronics

basically here is my take on SEMA builds in general, see if you agree or disagree, lets say we make side mirrors and want to build a SEMA truck to feature those after all SEMA stands for Specialty Equipment Market Association

here's what most knuckleheads would do, let's start with a 67 slant nose dime short box and extend it to a long box, since everyone goes the other way, lets not buy a 4x4 to begin with but reinvent the wheel and convert our 2WD to 4x4, if the truck is red lets paint it white, if we bought it as a white truck lets paint it black, of course you can not feature side mirrors on a stock cab so lets extend it and make it a 4 door

do you see where I am going with this analogy, the builders do so much stupid shiet that they loose sight of their original goal, my old supervisor goes to SEMA every year he invented something once and got into this stuff, having all access pass he saw and swears 50% of those cars do not move under their own power, they are incomplete, some guys get pissed if you try to look under the hood cause there's three 45lb gym weights there instead of the engine weighing it down

so now back to this truck, why so many components well they double built it, instead of making it a one rear motor truck, they installed both a rear wheel drive Tesla unit on it as well as a front wheel drive so that doubles all the complexity, think two motors instead of one think two inverters instead of one, plus extra electronics to make sure these two systems can co exist, they also were wiring up some Holley crap that me being an LS Swap guy had to Google and look up cause I had a WTF moment

so yeah Electric Cars < Gasoline Cars in terms of complexity and moving parts simple as that

my build is not a good example of that because my transmotor is a unicorn, more on that later

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

The 300 HP you will be generating is designed for a lighter Cadillac vehicle, will it survive with the extra load?

not being rude, but actually a 2010 Lexus GS450h with a V6 internal combustion engine and on par with the BMW M3 and arguably faster, according to the wiki combined 471 hp of electric motor and gasoline engine

but guys I am not defending this build, I don't care, I am not building this to go fast, I am not building this to haul things, I am having fun and building this for fun

this is not my first truck built, it is my 3rd and never once did I say I will tow a boat with this truck while building them, be it my LS Swaps or 350 Vortec engine rebuilds, it was always just a fart around hot rod build, the extend of labor that my trucks did was hauling a Christmas tree

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

Also if you decide to haul something in the bed and now it is 1000 pounds heavier, is the tranny strong enough to handle even more load? The trans may be strong enough to handle 300 hp but is it strong enough to handle the torque to move the truck in a respectable fashion not in grandma mode?

OK, I have deliberately and purposefully weighed every single component I removed off of the vehicle and recorded it and I list every item that is going to be installed on the truck, and the Electric version is coming out lighter than the OEM gasoline powered one, so please tell me where is the extra 1,000 pounds coming from?

again not being a jerk here I just take this stuff very seriously because there is so much misinformation on the web about EV conversions it drives us swappers bonkers, and don't get me started on the myths about my transmission (like it must have 650 volts to spin, and I have vidoes of spinning it with only 30 volts)

Coming Out-----------------------------Going In

35 lbs AC/heater delete------------------0
38 lbs front bumper-----------------------3 lbs fiberglass roll pan
30 lbs rear bumper------------------------3 lbs fiberglass roll pan
71 lbs exhaust--------------------------275 lbs transmotor
35 lbs fuel tank--------------------------40 lbs inverter
673 lbs engine/trans--------------------24 lbs drive shaft
16 lbs drive shaft-----------------------360 lbs battery pack*
-------------------------------------------34 lbs charger*
-------------------------------------------?? lbs dc-dc converter

=======================================

898 TOTAL roughly*----------------------741 TOTAL roughly (so far)

not counting additional 100 lbs of gasoline after all we want to be fair, no gas no go

[Mike Bradbury]

Let be back up a bit here because I sense some bristling. I am in no way shape or form skeptical of your build. I have actually contemplated an electrified truck and the spirit of my query stems from a stand point that this may be a future build for me and I am asking pointed questions to that end.
You seem to be a guy who looks before he leaps so I was interested if you had done research into the capacity of the transmission and the extra weight of a truck vs sedan. I understand that your electric truck will be lighter in its electric state rather than in its ICE version but still heavier than the Caddy the trans motor came out of.
The Extra 1000 pounds I was referring to was the weight of a load in the box. I understand that you are building for fun (like most of our builds should be) even if it is intended for work, but the reason for the question is because you are blazing a trail for others on the board who may attempt this, myself included. Others who may want to haul things in their truck and I was curious if you had come across any specs on the strength of this platform other than HP.

I am excited to see the outcome. Please don't take my questions as interrogations. Quite the opposite, more like inspiration.

Cheers,
Mike

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

Let be back up a bit here because I sense some bristling. I am in no way shape or form skeptical of your build. I have actually contemplated an electrified truck and the spirit of my query stems from a stand point that this may be a future build for me and I am asking pointed questions to that end.
You seem to be a guy who looks before he leaps so I was interested if you had done research into the capacity of the transmission and the extra weight of a truck vs sedan. I understand that your electric truck will be lighter in its electric state rather than in its ICE version but still heavier than the Caddy the trans motor came out of.
The Extra 1000 pounds I was referring to was the weight of a load in the box. I understand that you are building for fun (like most of our builds should be) even if it is intended for work, but the reason for the question is because you are blazing a trail for others on the board who may attempt this, myself included. Others who may want to haul things in their truck and I was curious if you had come across any specs on the strength of this platform other than HP.

I am excited to see the outcome. Please don't take my questions as interrogations. Quite the opposite, more like inspiration.

Cheers,
Mike

ah that helps thanks Mike for the explanation, honest answer is I do not know or have all the answers but stick around and we shall test, experiment, and find out together as much as we can

[yuccales]

Originally Posted by Gregski

the extend of labor that my trucks did was hauling a Christmas tree

When done with this awesome build, you will have the onboard power for a lighted tree!

[plantman]

Hey Gregski.Cool build .read the whole thread.
Subbed

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by plantman

Hey Gregski.Cool build .read the whole thread.
Subbed

omg you did?! that just made my day, more shinanigism to come

[Gregski]

just some cool random crap JSCRC

[Mike Bradbury]

Sorry I keep referring to it as a caddy, somewhere I thought I read you were using a Cadillac. I like the Lexus platform as the geniuses at Toyota make a much more reliable vehicle.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

Sorry I keep referring to it as a caddy, somewhere I thought I read you were using a Cadillac. I like the Lexus platform as the geniuses at Toyota make a much more reliable vehicle.

ha ha, no worries I was actually going to start calling it a Cadillac transmotor as a joke

anyway you got that right, please check out this video series called Can't Kill A Toyota Inverter by an Irish block who calls himself Damien Maguire

[Gregski]

so I made some more regress...

a takin' stuff apart Fun Level = 4

and check out them convex floors [ok I'll give ya a minute to GOOGLE that, lol] right!? we're gonna feature them in our Have You Hugged Your GM Engineer Lately segment HYHYGMEL out on PBS tomorrow!

[Gregski]

managed to get that feller out

[Gregski]

then it was time to liberate the windscreen or as you Americans like to call it the glass above the bonnet, LOL

[Gregski]

the key is simply a wide stance