EV Attack project

[Jeff]

I've been struggling over the last week to identify and resolve a serious door-to-hinge alignment problem, and deserves a special "dishonorable mention" for the person who fabricated the passenger side door hinge, and the location they chose for the hinge eyes that are welded to the windshield support.

When I tried to place the door to the body/hinge to check alignment, I discovered the hinge on the passenger side is located a full 15mm forward of the drivers side. And, the hinge is angled forward, aggravating the error accumulation to the point the hinge will not fit into the door frame. Crap!

Fortunately the driver side door fit is OK. Not great, just OK. Based on a herd of detailed measurements I collected of the driver side door and hinge assembly, I have been able to calculate the errors in the passenger side.

To correctly resolve both of these errors, I will have to cut the two hinge eyes from the windshield frame on the passenger side, carefully align them, and then precision weld the eyes back to the windshield support frame.

This is a critical bit of welding to say the least. And probably include generous amounts of regrinding to clean up afterwards.

And, the body is already installed and glued together with tubes of adhesive.

Months ago, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of sloppy grinding and rework done on the passenger side windshield support hinge eyes. I chocked it up to being a Monday welding job by a new hire at Dick's shop back in '04 when 'ol #30 was fabricated. I had no idea it was going to unfold into a major rework nightmare.

I've taken a bunch of images of the hinges and their welded eye positions, showing just how badly they screwed this car up. I'll edit them to indicate the error stack, and post them in the next message.

Since I'm at a standstill until I resolve this Bratislavan crapfest, I'm working up the stomach to cut the hinge eyes free tomorrow.

I did not find any mention of these hinge problems in the various builds from the past, so it appears I'm on my own here. If anyone has something to add, please let me know.
Wish me luck.

Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

OK, here are some images of the driver side door that do fit OK to the hinge.

Note the distance of the vertical arm on the hinge to the vertical support, as well as the radius at the base of the windshield support.

Note the location of the eyes in relation to the cutout on the windshield support.

[Jeff]

Here are some images showing the same relationship on the passenger side.
Note how the vertical hinge arm is considerably forward when compared to the driver side images.

Note how the hinge eyes are 15mm forward of the cutout as compared to the driver side hinge eyes.

[Jeff]

Here is an image of the door resting to the body. It will not fit because the hinge arm is too far forward to fit the recess in the door.

[Jeff]

The mis-welded hinge drama came to a close yesterday.

I cut the hinge eyes from the windshield support, fixtured the door to the car, and tack welded the hinge eyes back into place. Then I cycled the door to check for interference with the body and the fiberglas windshield surround.
All appears OK, and the door cycle geometry matches the driver side exactly now

I fabricated full-length backing plates with spot welded nuts to laminate on the inside of the doors at the "L" shaped hinge arms. The material is 0.100" thick steel, 2" wide, and supports beyond the length of the individual arms.

These parts were fabricated before I followed the K-1 video sticky tape transfer process to determine the door alignment, and the holes were pre drilled in the hinges to make it easier.
I felt much better using a reinforced approach than just rivnutting the crap out of the fiberglas doors.

I'm now working on locks and closers.

I bought a couple of high end electric linear actuators with encoders, and electric draw-down latches. The motorized draw latch will complete the closure cycle after the actuator has completed it's cycle. A small PIC program for each door will operate as a simple state machine to handle the door cycling.


Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

Well, as it turns out, the passenger side door hinge rework was so good that I decided to repeat the whole procedure on the driver side windshield support.

As you can see by the image of the driver side door installed, there is a huge error resulting in the door being inset approximately 10mm when closed.

Additionally, the door swing arc interferes with the fiberglas windshield surround.

This error is caused by the depth of the hinge with respect to the door. I could resolve the inset problem by "shimming" the hinge arm from the door with some random material to get by, but I just can't do a hack job. Now that I understand the hinge design, geometry, and it's affects very well, I'll probably be cutting the eyes free and doing it all over again on the driver side.

I assembled the windshield to the car without adhesive to check the door fit and other interference issues. Aside from the driver door, everything else is OK.
I included an image of the car sitting in the lift bay of the prototype shop with all the exterior pieces on.

Regards, Jeff

[flyinfej]

Thanks for the updates Jeff. Yeah, I still have a huge gap between the top of my doors and the hood. Prolly not bad enough to attack the hinges, but still annoying that it wasn't better engineered.

[Jeff]

I took a break from the door saga and spent the day assembling the headlamp clusters.

I opted for HID lamps behind the projectors since there was adequate space behind the wheel arch cover panel to mount the two arc lamp ballasts.

The silly-single filament marker lamp was reworked to accommodate a 3157 blade socket that mates to a 63 LED yellow cluster that works as both a turn signal and the marker lamp.

The taillights also have these 63 Red and Yellow LED cluster lamps using the original 1156 and 1157 sockets in the stock housings rather than incandescent bulbs.

These 63 LED cluster lights are *much* brighter than the original incandescent bulbs, and consume less power.

I had to fabricate some T6 support brackets for the brow of the headlamp assemblies. You can see the bracket in the image above the lamp rings. The bracket is bonded to the fiberglas brow flange, and screwed to the composite lamp rings with well nuts. The original K-1 design had only supported the composite rings at the bottom, and would not pass my BS test as-is.


Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

I have not posted an update for awhile. I kept busy on the build and worked out a few issues that the assembly videos didn't address.

The doors are basically complete. I did cut the driver side hinge eyes off and reposition them. The cycle geometry is perfect, and the door no longer strikes the windshield frame on opening. I'm awaiting a circuit board fabrication for the controller that actuates the power doors and expect that will be installed shortly. I'l post a video of the power doors cycling when it's completed.

I knew the rear fender inserts were going to be a pain.

Fortunately I was able to find the correct epoxy adhesive to bond the inner fenders to the body. Application was easy, it didn't run, and was tack cured in about 90 minutes. Full cure is 24hrs. It's made by Evercoat, and called Maxim. This is a long cure time version, part # is 100815. It's dispensed by caulk gun, and is a two-part epoxy that mixes in the tip. It's expensive at $36 per tube. I used one tube for each fender.

Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

I was suspicious of the rear inner fenders adequately supporting the back fiberglas section after they were installed.
As a hedge, I fabricated a 3" x 7" thin steel plate with arms that would be welded to the frame tubing near the rear shock towers.
I epoxy bonded the plate to the underside of the body after verifying body alignment, and then welded the arms. It worked great, the body is rigid and the inner fenders clear the support arms.

Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

I followed Flyinfej's lead on the Summit adjustable seat rails, and shamelessly copied his support frame design.

It's critical to keep the seat height as low as possible above the floor, otherwise you're going to have interference problems with the center console. Though the rear attachments were bolts through a hole, the front attachments had to be blind studs to permit full slide motion without striking bolt heads at the front.

After fabricating the recessed support rails from 2" wide "C" stock and 1.5" angle iron, I tack welded more angle stock directly to the top side of the sliding rails. The angle stock was bolted to the sides of the seats. The holes in the sides of the seats are slotted about .5" to allow for some front/back rail adjustment. There is a full length steel backing strip with spot welded nuts inside the seat walls that the screws attach to.

I also welded the steel lap belt eyes to the rear corners of the support rails.

Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

I finished closing off the sills and installing two pairs of booster fans that provide forced ventilation to the battery clusters located in the sills. A fresh air intake manifold has been installed over the fans to receive intake air from the front through passages on each side of the firewall. These fans are operational during charging.

Two images added: left and right side fans

Regards, Jeff

[Jeff]

I needed to fabricate new console side panels since the original fiberglas driver side insert was a mess with lots of holes. And I'm not using a fuel tank, so I decided to replace the passenger side bucket with a full length panel.

Both items are .090" aluminum, bent to accommodate the console geometry, and provide adequate leg clearance for the driver and passenger. As usual, it's all rivnutted.
These will have carpet attached to them, so I didn't bother to paint.

Jeff

[flyinfej]

Looking good Jeff. Hopefully you never have to service the cooling fans once it goes together! I packed a lot of my gizmos is the passenger side tunnel with no way of getting to them... When I get back to working on it I think I'm going to add some access panels through the floor so I can get in there w/o having to take the body off.

[Jeff]

Hi Jeff,
Some of the initial structural rework involved replacing the steel outrigger supports with 1.5" squarestock tubing. That gave me the needed area to cut the floor panel into separate panels beneath the two outriggers with room for the herd of rivnuts attaching the panels. This allows for battery pack and sill booster fan servicing. I attached an image of the underside of the car with both outrigger panels removed. I also included an image of the rear area.

I'm trying to avoid trapping myself with areas that can't be serviced. So far so good. The rear battery pack has me a bit spooked though. It's looking to be a real tight fit without dropping the motor for servicing the pack.

Regards, Jeff