Tesla powered race car Ep9 – Problems
[Applause] hi everybody Richard gen here from Electric classic cars and in this week’s episode it’s finally time for another race car update let’s get into it right before we get into this episode proper the key not amongst you have probably notice I’m not wearing my usual gray
Boring top and that’s because we finally sorted out the mer shop that’s right mugs t-shirts hoodies all in the shop Banner below this video so click on there if you want some goodies but I just want to explain a little bit behind the background of the artwork that’s on
These things because a few years ago I commissioned an artist over the Netherland a very talented guy with some ideas that I had around what would have happened if the world went electric back in the 1900s instead of petrol you know through the 1950s retro futuristic automotive design design era where when
They had all those massive fins on cars right through to the 80s so there’s three prinses done which are fantastic I really happy with them one is what a gas station might have looked like in the 1950s if it was a charge station rather than petrol station the other is in the
1950s there um in motor shows there was always that um concept car going around on a plinth uh really futuristic something like out of uh 1950s sci-fi m movie so I wanted to kind of recreate what that would have looked like if it was an electric version of one of those
Cars and the final one kind of you know doesn’t really need much introduction it’s a DeLorean so what else am I going to do with a DeLorean so there’s a 1980s inspired n uh DeLorean print as well so they’re available on mugs t-shirts and hoodies so if you’re after um something
Like that click on the shop Banner below but into the video now in the last episode we asked for a little bit of help naming this beast and it was a two horse race between bug zapper and kilowatt although there were quite a few people that also liked Beetle Juice as
Well but it really became a two horse race between bug zapper and kilat and I was easy either way Tim did you have a preference you did I did but I’m not I’m not sure I should say I caught like kilowatt you like kilowatt yeah it’s a
Bit more aggressive is it well you’re going to be disappointed because not the first time the name that won was bug zapper so this is going to be called bug zapper we’re going to have it down the name down the name down the side of the
Car zapper it’s going to be spelled in the old frank zapper styly as well so bug zapper is going to be the official name of this car but I think it’s time to give you a little bit of an update as to what’s happened since last time
Because it’s been a while in the last episode although the car was moving the drive shafts that we had on were just temporary ones they were a Tesla drive shaft welded to an Audi drive shaft just so we can get it moving around the workshop but I had strict instructions
Not to put my foot down and boot it because they would have snapped but now now we have the proper drive shafts they are big beefy boys they’ve had tea treatment and apparently I have free reain to boot it it’s more on that later so what we’ve got we’ve got a Tesla and
On one end and an Audi R8 on the other and these are completely customade drive shafts specifically for us so the drive shaft are on what else have we done I have to admit I’ve already had a little bit of a play in this car it’s too tempting even though it was horrible
Weather this week you can probably see there’s a load of mud and dirt over there and the tires are already scrubbed but it’s a good job we did because we’re quite often on our episodes showing you finished products and that’s mainly because we do the these episodes in the
Weekends and in the week is far too Manic and crazy and noisy in here to do any filming um but engineering is all around learning and improving things and that’s what we’ve done this week in this because we’ve learned a couple of things and broke a few things as well which
Means now we’ve done a little bit of R&D and improved it enough to take it out for a proper spin to today bearing in mind we’ve got 1,000 horsepower in this vehicle four-wheel drive big Tesla Sport Drive Unit in the rear another Drive Unit in the front so we got a lot of
Power and a lot of torque to put to the road and one thing we’ve learned or to put it another way one thing I broke was the front motor mount I was doing some hard launches and the motor mount broke so just to give you some context of how
These motors are normally mounted in a Tesla they normally have this Mount here on the side which has a pickup point there and there that mount it to the actual vehicle itself these are mounting to the motor and then the other pickup points there’s only two is over here so
That’s the other Mount that normally mounts to the car but we haven’t got the space to be able to put that mount in so we made our own mini Mount if you like there but what we found was on a hard launch the whole motor was doing that
Was kind of snapping and when they say snap literally snapped one of the mounts and that mount there got bent as well so what we’ve done now is improve that mount there to be a really beefy Affair I think it’s in 6 mil steel there now
And added two other mounts as well as the standard mounts there and there we got a mount here and at the rear as well so that’s completely stopping any movement now and I can see it because I can see the Drive Unit in between my feet when I floored it before it was
Doing that now it don’t move so that’s one thing we’ve learned this week that apart from the fact I can break things but we knew that already Tim definitely knows that we did um we’ve improved that so that should stop that the other thing is the handbrake so no race car or rally
Car is complete without a silly stick so let’s have a chat about the silly stick now another thing we’ve been developing is a fly off handbrake which is this thing here but what is that well back in the days of rallying when me and Tim were going
Health leather in the forest of Wales this kind of thing was used quite a bit essentially why you have it H or what’s different actually about that and a normal handbrake well a normal handbrake in a car is ratcheted it’s got button on it and it’s usually if not always cable
Operated but these are different there’s no ratchet on these you can’t go like that and it stops the car from rolling back it’s literally an onoff type of aair and when you use it is coming into a corner a really tight corner and you want to just flick the background you do
Turn the wheel do that and that’ll start the slide and then you continue the slide on the throttle as it just power slides around and then you’re off again so I’m I feel a lot more comfortable when I’ve got one of these cuz it’s it
Kind of gets you out of jail when you’re really in a sticky spot and you think oh my God that’s too much speed I need to get the backround round you go and off you go so I’m a lot more comfortable having one of these now initially I
Wanted to use this which is my old gear shifter out my Beetle because it looks so cool Billet aluminium I just love the design of it and we shoehorned it right in the corner there and we used it had a hydraulic handbrake um M cylinder there but unfortunately it just didn’t have the
Power to stop the back wheels cuz don’t forget an electric car it’s not just the wheels you’re trying to lock up but also the wheels are directly connected to the drivea through the drive shafts to the electric motor so you got the uh inertia of the electric motor to stop as well CU
There’s no clutch to disengage the motor from the wheels so you really need quite a powerful hydrolic handbrake and that just didn’t have the the beans if you like to stop those uh rear wheels mainly because it needed more leverage uh we tried different diameters of mass cylinders in there and
That really didn’t uh do the job so now we’ve developed one that’s down there big stick which is more usual for hydraulic handbrakes for anybody it’s into drifting and stuff so that now is working a treat haven’t fully tested it so today we’ll give that a little bit of
A go as well just to see if that’s fixed it but that’s my silly stick on a previous episode I mentioned that our Workshop manager Tony said we’re going to need power steering for this and I thought no I’m a manly man yes this is a race car I’m not going
To need power steering how wrong was I because we couldn’t even turn it at a low speed out the workshop it was that bad so Tony you were right I was wrong hold my hands up but now we’ve installed the power steering so the e- pass system is there
You can see the motor there that’s the controller for it but the other thing we’ve added as well is a speed sensitivity system as well because with power steering you need it a low speeds but over i’ say 15 M hour you kind of need the assistance if you like to drop
Away to nothing so that you can really feel what the road’s doing and that’s where you need a a speed sensitivity you know controller to to send that speed information through to the power steering unit and that’s what this little box is down here so we have a a
Little black box that communicates via can gets the speed information in and provides a a square wave output that the power steering ECU understands to be able to drate the assist of the power steering so it’s all in there just untested so it’s another thing we’re
Going to be looking at today the time has come to take the Beast for a spin and the guys have been so kind this week they’ve even put the wind screen in which is the first time that’s been in so one thing that’s not getting any
Easier is getting in and out of this thing there we go that’s it that’s the way I found the most easiest so far it reminds me getting in and out of the 914 rally car it’s like Dukes of Hazard like Dukes of Hazard yeah right safety first get me belt on
Something Tim tells me to do quite often is belt up belt up yeah right so to switch a car on or switch this race car on it’s so easy all you’ve got is essentially that wakes everything up instantly it’s got power to the iPad Mini which has got the EV controls app
In it which tells me all I need to know there so we got uh you know Direction so if I put my foot on there brake I can change it to forward and reverse and back into neutral um other bits and pieces on there that I need to know my BMS screen
Is there so I can see what the cells are doing what the voltage is so time to put on the steering wheel and take it for a spin let’s Go [Applause] you can’t get it out four-wheel drive for some reason it’s not wanting to go into rear wheel drive so on the settings here if you have a close look at the settings here if I go uh into the settings here and I put it into rear wheeel drive
Which it is in now so that’s R WD and I go back in here if you zoom in on the screen there Tim you’ll see in forward uh the amps to the front where is the amps to the rear and amps to the front of there so in rear wheel drive
Mode you should only get amps to going to the rear if I slowly put my foot down now you’ll see amps to the front and amps to the rear what’s going on there so yeah that’s something that we’re going to have to look at so I’ll have to
Uh contact Chris at EV controls and figure out why it’s not doing as we expected but as far as power is concerned oh my God this has got ridiculous amounts of power uh I’ll just put it in neutral before I touch the throttle again cuz if you even breathe
On the throttle you are just accelerating into the future like you would never believe but in four-wheel drive mode yeah that works very scary I need to be on a track I’m just going to do a standing start nothing too dramatic four-wheel drive mode I just want to see what
Launch is like and particularly what that front motor is doing down there I just don’t want to see it moving about again so uh right you ready Tim yeah hang on not sure I’m ready [Applause] A I’m liking this man this is nuts that is stupidly quick yeah there’s some work to do though back in the workshop Man that’s nuts uh okay I’ve uh I’ve stopped play because there’s some things I’m not happy about and I don’t want to push things until uh we got them absolutely right equally I want to get this on a track really so number one oh my God it’s quick it’s insanely quick um
Yeah the thing we need to snag now is uh I can’t put it into uh rear wheel drive only or front wheeel drive it’s only stuck in four-wheel drive for some reason so I definitely need to fix that uh otherwise there’s no way we’re going
To be able to do drifting um uh so that’s one thing um the silly stick is okay but travel is far too much so I’m having to pull it from there all the way back to about there um so two things we can either do on that we can either
Increase the bore of the master cylinder I think that’s a 625 I’m pretty sure I got a 75 on the Shelf so we could try that or um increase the pivot point so if the pivot point is kind of there we could move it further up so it gives it
More Force for less movement down here or or sorry more movement on the bottom side of things and less movement up the top so I’ll have a check with Tony and see what we wants to do on that whether or not it’s going to be a massive
Cylinder swap or a pivot check swap on that but apart from that my adrenaline’s still going it’s a monster an absolute Beast of a thing um before we can get it on a track I want to get the suspension on so that’s going to be the next thing
We’re going to sort out as well I think after Christmas we’re going to get the suspension sometime in January body workor going to be coming back as well then because that’s with the fiberglass guy at the moment he’s got to increase the width of the uh archers to be able
To get them around the wheels but uh yeah slick tires slick tires yeah well they’re nearly slicks now just after that think there’s much left of the tires they’re not otable are they no so uh yeah mitchellan uh tires slicks will definitely be going on at some point as
Well so uh yeah I think it’s a very very capable race car scarily quick massive amount of power but because it’s got so much power we really need to get the other some pieces spot on before we can actually take it on a track and release
That power so on that note I’m going to have a lie down I hope you enjoy this episode and we’ll see you on the next One
It’s time for another race car update.
In this episode we finally reveal what name we’re going to call it thanks to you guys, the most popular suggestion was “Bug Zappa”.
We have the proper driveshafts fitted to it at last, which means I get to experience what all that Tesla performance unleashed in a car a fraction of the size and weight of a Tesla is really like. But it’s not all good news. We encounter some problems too.
Merch store:
https://electricclassiccars.store/
