took it for a 6 mile run today no issues Mot monday 8:30 
have to admit I've never been nervous about an Mot before
have to admit I've never been nervous about an Mot before
Z3 EV Conversion
- Thread starter Andybpowell
- Start date
Passed MOT no advisories 
only problem is my face hurts from the silly grin plastered on it ( I obviously don't smile enough)
only problem is my face hurts from the silly grin plastered on it ( I obviously don't smile enough)
Great news Andy, I’m very pleased for you!
Tony.
Tony.
had to share this it just made my day just have convince the DVLA now
I may seem over excited but when you've spent as many hours working on something as I have on this project you'll understand
I may seem over excited but when you've spent as many hours working on something as I have on this project you'll understand
Congratulations on getting your project over the line. Have you got any performance figures yet? 0-60, 1/4 mile etc and expected range.
does this mean you can now pay £0 VED? as it is fully electric, and also get a green stripe on the reg plates?
The project is far from finished I'm afraid I'm currently running on a 9Kw battery pack so can't push the car. BMW claimed around 30 miles electric range on this battery pack in the 530e which is 500kg+ heavier than my Z3 and I will eventually fit my 22Kwh pack to this car which should do the job nicely considering I do less than 20 miles a week as for performance the leaf motor that is fitted has the same Bhp as my old Engine but lots more torque so I would hope that performance would be on par with the original car when I have the 22Kwh pack fitted and can open it up
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Sadly not yet, although the Z3 is MOT'd as electric it's not yet registered as such so untill I have been through that process with the dvla I get none of the perks
I've been putting together my documentation this last week for the DVLA although I've taken hundreds of photo's of this project I didn't take them thinking about what the DVLA would want to see in mind so I've be going back and taking even more based on information from @Tom Cheesewright and Jamie Jones from the Open Inverter forum who have both had experiance of this painful process they were both very helpful Thanks.
In the mean time I have been getting on with a couple of jobs on the Z3 that I've been putting off.
The start button isn't strictly necessary but during testing it's been a pain having to switch the ignition off to put it back into start mode not because I'm too lazy but I don't want want the controller powering down when I'm tweaking the software as it can make it difficult to determine if the software changes are having the desired effect so any way I purchased a start button to replace the cigarette lighter had to make up a couple of washers to make it fit and make a small loom for it but I hope to get it in tomorrow
The other thing I've been doing is sorting out the heating as the only heating I currently have is the heated seats. this ended up getting a little complicated but what doesn't with me first I removed the centre console (that was fun) and discovered that the radio wiring loom had been absolutely butchered so I cut the whole lot off I have a plan for that anyway,
The cable for the heater control was opened all of the way and bent over and cut off so the air will always flow through the heater matrix
and the lever was cut off from the back of the control knob
I then fitted a potentiometer into the back of the control knob mounted on a piece of plastic and plastic welded it in place
I then made up an adapter plate the same size as the heater matrix fitted with 2 X 200 Watt PTC heaters I have fitted each one with a thermistor so that I can monitor their temperature and fitted this in place of the heater matrix
I made the controller from what I had to hand so it's a bit of overkill, the micro controller I used has Bluetooth and wi-fi on it not sure they'll ever be used
I also have a thermistor fitted in the car to monitor cabin temperature so the controller can actually control and maintain cabin temperature
In the mean time I have been getting on with a couple of jobs on the Z3 that I've been putting off.
The start button isn't strictly necessary but during testing it's been a pain having to switch the ignition off to put it back into start mode not because I'm too lazy but I don't want want the controller powering down when I'm tweaking the software as it can make it difficult to determine if the software changes are having the desired effect so any way I purchased a start button to replace the cigarette lighter had to make up a couple of washers to make it fit and make a small loom for it but I hope to get it in tomorrow
The other thing I've been doing is sorting out the heating as the only heating I currently have is the heated seats. this ended up getting a little complicated but what doesn't with me first I removed the centre console (that was fun) and discovered that the radio wiring loom had been absolutely butchered so I cut the whole lot off I have a plan for that anyway,
The cable for the heater control was opened all of the way and bent over and cut off so the air will always flow through the heater matrix
and the lever was cut off from the back of the control knob
I then fitted a potentiometer into the back of the control knob mounted on a piece of plastic and plastic welded it in place
I then made up an adapter plate the same size as the heater matrix fitted with 2 X 200 Watt PTC heaters I have fitted each one with a thermistor so that I can monitor their temperature and fitted this in place of the heater matrix
I made the controller from what I had to hand so it's a bit of overkill, the micro controller I used has Bluetooth and wi-fi on it not sure they'll ever be used
I also have a thermistor fitted in the car to monitor cabin temperature so the controller can actually control and maintain cabin temperature
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Ha! I've done something very similar with my heater controls. Though I'm using a water heater rather than PTC.
I looked at the water heaters but wanted to keep my energy use down also this method doesn't take up any additional space
I hope to get it all in and working over the next couple of days haven't actually written any code for it yet in fact I've never used an ESP 32 before I'm sure it'll be fine also I need to sort out my plan for the audio system before I can refit everything
I think PTC is definitely the way to go in the long run. Especially in more moderate climates like ours. Water heater just easier.I looked at the water heaters but wanted to keep my energy use down also this method doesn't take up any additional space
I hope to get it all in and working over the next couple of days haven't actually written any code for it yet in fact I've never used an ESP 32 before I'm sure it'll be fine also I need to sort out my plan for the audio system before I can refit everything
Sorry this isn't much of an update but I'm trying to keep everything up to date
My PTC heater controller was a partial success,because I basically used what I had to hand the power transistors that I used to switch power to the pair of 200W heaters weren't up to the job and were getting too hot so I went over to using a pair of 30 Amp relays this meant that I couldn't use PWM to control the heat output instead my controller switches the relays on and off very slowly to control the heat output this is not ideal as the contacts will burn out prematurely it's will do for now I'd show you some pictures of it working but there's nothing to see.
The start button is in and working again not much to see
Also the head unit and all of the dodgy wiring was removed in it's place I have fitted a Bluetooth receiver amplifier which has also freed up space in the center console for further instrumentation which will probably be a pair of 3.5" tft displays the one in the picture below is 2.8"
The DVLA have received all of my paper work so I'll just have to wait on that one hopefully not too long
I will probably get on with the instrumentation for now as I don't want to get too involved in case the DVLA want to inspect it
My PTC heater controller was a partial success,because I basically used what I had to hand the power transistors that I used to switch power to the pair of 200W heaters weren't up to the job and were getting too hot so I went over to using a pair of 30 Amp relays this meant that I couldn't use PWM to control the heat output instead my controller switches the relays on and off very slowly to control the heat output this is not ideal as the contacts will burn out prematurely it's will do for now I'd show you some pictures of it working but there's nothing to see.
The start button is in and working again not much to see
Also the head unit and all of the dodgy wiring was removed in it's place I have fitted a Bluetooth receiver amplifier which has also freed up space in the center console for further instrumentation which will probably be a pair of 3.5" tft displays the one in the picture below is 2.8"
The DVLA have received all of my paper work so I'll just have to wait on that one hopefully not too long
I will probably get on with the instrumentation for now as I don't want to get too involved in case the DVLA want to inspect it
I've made good progress with the display that's going to be fitted where the stereo used to be I'm only going to use one 3.5" display and have it menu driven to show differant pages take a look
View: https://youtu.be/lTxnrfj9wPM
And before anyone else asks it's just fixed in temporarily I'm not that much of a cowboy
And before anyone else asks it's just fixed in temporarily I'm not that much of a cowboy
I,m now considering going a bit more extreme with the touch screen and the center console. if I lost the analog clock and went digital with the heater and fan control just keeping the airflow control I could probably fit an 8-10" touchscreen in that would be really cool I fitted a 10" tablet in my 350Z that came out pretty good
What do you think it's really tempting has anyone fitted a tablet or large touchscreen in a Z3 ?
What do you think it's really tempting has anyone fitted a tablet or large touchscreen in a Z3 ?
I'm working on a double din head unit conversion. A full android one so that I can use the web browser to pull up info and edit settings on openinverter. Could use a webserver to send info from CANBUS as well.I,m now considering going a bit more extreme with the touch screen and the center console. if I lost the analog clock and went digital with the heater and fan control just keeping the airflow control I could probably fit an 8-10" touchscreen in that would be really cool I fitted a 10" tablet in my 350Z that came out pretty good
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What do you think it's really tempting has anyone fitted a tablet or large touchscreen in a Z3 ?
be careful with anything too small I went from this in my 350Z
to this
and the differance in ease of use and the range of possible uses was huge
Yeah I like the idea of a full tablet. I could go that route I guess. But I like the idea of all the integrated stuff - TPMS, reversing cam etc
Other than some paint I've finished the mount for my 3.5" display came out really well I'm probably going to paint it satin black I think thats about as near to the dash colour as I'm going to get
Very neat!