Here’s How Canada Can Escape EPA Rules to Build Plug-In Hybrids. #RamRecharger [EP13]

Here’s How Canada Can Escape EPA Rules to Build Plug-In Hybrids. #RamRecharger [EP13]

All right, guys. This episode we see if Lee still has a job. Make sure that these brackets didn’t need a pile of modification to work using CAD because you know me, that’s kind of the first time we’ve used CAD. And what’s more exciting is we have a lot of updates on the engine choices that we’re using and the emissions issues that we’re having with the government. We’re having a big update for you guys. Very, very excited about this. Let’s get into the episode. Here we go. [Music] This is the process that we’ll be using to put our electric motors underneath any and every single pickup truck that’s been built in the last six decades. And while we’re building the kit, we build everything that we can’t change first. We’re going all out with laser cutting and bending and folding. So, we’re going to spray your uh Dodge Ram is long box under the rail. We’re going to do it in our premium liner, which has our UV protective top coat. All right, we got all the plates in the back ready to be powder coated. We got the right guy for the powder coating. Undoubtedly, you guys have seen Chase’s video where he said the government has no regulation for us to use an off-road engine on the road. By making that video and it going sort of viral, we got attention of the federal government, which is pretty phenomenal. We just got our battery brackets back. Lou uh 3D scanned everything and designed everything. Who’s Lou? Lewis. Who’s Lewis? He’s the weird guy up on the computer upstairs. That’s Lou. It’s Lou. He uh chipped out measurements and everything he did on the brackets here. So, we’re going to cut them open and see how they look. But, I just want to take a look at the brackets that come off the frame to the battery brackets. Right in here, this is what I’m talking about. This is why Lou makes the big bucks. We’re going to find out if Lou should get paid or not. We get to decide. Yep. Look at those dimes. Yeah, that’s nice welds. Lou is out in Wisconsin right now. I told him these came back and they weren’t even straight and I had to cut them all apart. So, he’s going to come back stressed out. These look great, though. This will be going right like this. And then that’ll bolt right through and kind of be a support as well. Try and get them powder coated. Either a nice black or maybe the same paint that’s on the frame. [Music] Pretty wicked though, eh? Weird looking one. Oh, that’s pretty sweet. They spell it right or Oh, yeah. Right there. Edison. Is that the right way? Probably not. It’s probably going to fit like pretty cool, dude. But we don’t know what what no side is. Yeah. No side. No side. Pretty good looking brackets, but uh you you printed Edison backwards, Lou. Yeah, these are awesome. So Lee did a perfect job lining up the bolt holes, but Baxter just doesn’t have enough experience and he’s rushing it. He’s forgetting lube and he’s not working with his fingers enough to get it ready. All see all you’re doing you can you can change whatever angle you want on the bolt. You stick it in. You just feel around. You wait, you know, you warm it up a little bit. Don’t forget the lube. You just spin the nut on. No problem. Just like that. It’s on. It’s a little messy. Don’t worry about that. Questioning around. It’s part of the fun. We’re going to go back to working over here. Young guys just want to like ram it in. Take a picture. Send it to their friends. Look what I did. Now it’s stuck in there, too. There you go. Okay. So, now we’re just going to throw a couple bolts in on the top. And then we’ll grab the battery tray. the holes line up with the battery and the tray. Y So that’ll determine where we drill the holes for that side. So in the Land Cruiser, the frame was wider, so we put the batteries in the middle, and that worked out pretty slick because we were able to uh put wires and cables on both sides of the battery. The Dodge frame is actually a lot narrower. Now, you can see by how far these uh cab mounts come out, which means that we put the batteries closer to one side. We either had like 3/4 in on one side or we could have like an inch and a half on one side and let them matter. I I think I think I’d like it to sit on Oh, you you want them to hang. He probably intended it for it to go. We rationing on the nuts and bolts around here. We don’t got enough for I went to town and I cleaned them out. It’s embarrassing. [Music] Okay. So, even though this this is where this is where that mix is because we scan the track, it doesn’t mean that the the scan it’s an older truck. It could be twisted a little bit, could be bent a little bit. And the computer doesn’t like that. It likes seeing straight lines. It doesn’t like seeing a little twist and a little bend this way. And that’s what could have happened here. Um the computer says no, it should be right here. In reality, it’s not. We’ve got this this tapering in a little bit. This bracket on this side lines up and this bracket on this side lines up with the holes. And this bracket on this side lines up with all the holes. But we’ve got just a little bit we got to trim off on this one. Like when we did the Land Cruiser, because it was so tight, I basically put the battery in here, put the brackets around it, and welded it in place because I’m like, “This is where it has to be.” Now, we got a little bit of room that we can play with. We do have to modify these things. We’ll see how much the uh the holes line up on the the slots on the bottom. If not, we’ll uh we’ll have to remake this bracket. We could just cut this and back here. And we can reweld this and just slide the whole plate back so we don’t have to redo this. Then we don’t have to get a new bracket because you’re such an incredible welder. Cuz I taught you. You could do this. Like nobody would even know if it wasn’t on camera. Like nobody would know. But I still want you to sign a backter to do this. [Music] Put on top. Oh my. We only have two. And the weight of it is going to tip the bracket forward. So we don’t have to put the bottom ones in. Just for lining things up, but we need them on the top. You dropping nuts around here. Dropping beats. Actually, you turn the hip box off. We’re on camera. We don’t have the right. [Music] Oh, it fits. So, we’re going to go right to about there. And actually, they do line up. No, that’s on that side. Oh, yeah. That’s right. Unfortunately, we have to go like right here. There’s one without a nut. That’s fine. Oh, we got three. Call that one the Lance. Lance. Yeah, that’s Armstrong. You don’t follow the tour to France? No, I do not. Okay, so that just fits. Uh, you want to grab a piece of cardboard? [Music] Not hit the exhaust. Yep. Four and a half here. Four and a quarter. Does this frame change though too? Yeah. So the frame like you almost have to do it here and here. [Music] So we got lots of room. We can go all the way there. There’s no mistakes. There’s a tiny gap in between the bracket and the thing and we’d like to weld this solid, but I was thinking to Lee and I told him, I want perfection. So, there’s no way he would have left that gap on purpose. So, what he probably meant for us to put a rubber in between this surface here and here. And that’s a nice isolation uh between the brackets. So, what we’re doing is basically just shimming that, tacking it. We’ll get a nice little rubber pad from between there. Um, and then we can tell Lee, he did a perfect job. Can you say it? Perfect job, Lee. So, we just think, look how tight this gap is. It’s perfect. Once you shim it with a mud flap, tack it in place. I’ll weld them solid. We’ll do the back one. And then I’ll get you to drill these holes cuz you love drilling holes. You texted me this morning, didn’t you? Can I drill two dozen holes in a frame? It’s pretty framework. Yeah. [Music] All right, we got all the plates in the back ready to be powder coated. And we got the right guy for the powder coating cuz he’s the powder coating guy. The guy covered in powder coat. What color are you using today, dude? I’m covered. At least you’re wearing a mask. Yeah. How’s it going? Good. How about yourself? Good. You got time for a couple brackets yet? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right on. [Music] All right. So, we were just going to do black and then Jude goes, “Hey, I got a blue.” Look at this. That’s That’s insane cuz this is the like I know it’s my camera, but that’s pretty close. Nice. All right. Well, we’ll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow, you’ll look like a smurf. Yeah. All right. So, next morning, um like an idiot, I took the camera and didn’t leave Baxter the camera, but Woo! Look at the smile on that guy’s face. He’s like, that is beautiful. Yeah, they seem to look pretty sharp. Wow, that looks amazing. All right, let’s put them on. Let’s get some batteries in this truck. [Music] All right, got the really nice brackets all bolted in. What do you think? Looks all right. So, we’re going to remove these. Obviously, they’re loose. We’re going to put the batteries in, bolt them down, and then uh see this truck drop about a/2 in. Get the battery lifted up. Yep. Give her [Music] easy uh side shift that way. Okay. Down. Nice and easy. [Music] All right, so we got our batteries in, but now we got to talk about our little 2.8 Cumins here. Uh, it is due for an oil change. Now, if you’re new to the project, you’re like, “Well, Rich, truck isn’t done yet. Why are you doing an oil change on an engine on a truck that’s not finished?” Well, this engine has already 15 hours of hard dyno testing on it at the McMaster University. And the reason uh it we took it there was to get ahead of an issue that we thought might arise and did actually arise. Um, and that is emissions. Now that this thing is a hybrid, we’re definitely going to be using synthetic. If you guys know the hybrids, they shut down and then go full throttle again, do its charge cycle, and then that’s it. So, we need to have the best protection during those cold starts. But when it’s running, it’s full load turning that generator. So, it’s much better heat protection and cleans the sludge and keeps all of that working as best as it possibly can. So, we’re going to put some Shell Rotella full synthetic T6 in this. This will get us to the next dino session and through our next dino session and from there it’s going to be towing that Airstream all the way from Ontario to British Columbia. So, we chose this engine only because it was a crate engine that we were able to install in a vehicle that was older than 2000. So, it only has an EGR. It’s not a tier 4. Um, and it says specifically on this thing only to be installed for year 2000 and older. We weren’t really interested in what kind of engine. As long as it was a diesel, reliable, we didn’t have to worry about it running and we could focus on getting the bugs out of the rest of the hybrid kit because other engines will come along. But we ran into an issue. And undoubtedly, you guys have seen Chase’s video where he said that the government has no regulation for us to use an off-road engine on the road. All right. So, it’s not as if the government saw what Edison was doing and said, “No, we’re making laws that that prevent us from doing what we’re doing.” It’s not the case. It’s just that those laws don’t exist yet. In North America, the emission testing for tier 4 off-road is a different system than tier 4 on-road. For on-road, you do the drive cycle just like we’ve already done. It measures the exhaust coming out as you’re speeding up, as you’re slowing down, as you’re idling, as you’re going up a hill. For an off-road, it’s full throttle and steady. Because they’re different, we can’t take an on-road and put a tune on it for a generator because now we’ve modified the original system and now it doesn’t fall under the tier 4 emission testing for the drive cycle for an on-road again. So, we’re a Canadian company, you guys know that. Um, but we follow the EPA rules and the EPA sets the rules for all of North America, which is Mexico, United States, and Canada. Basically, the EPA in the United States says, “Uh, this year we need this much NOx and this much carbon monoxide and Mexico and Canada say, “You know what? That sounds good. We’ll just follow what you’re doing.” By making that video and it going sort of viral, we got attention of the federal government and we are actually invited to Parliament on October 2nd, which is pretty phenomenal. We get to go as invited guests. But what we’re hoping for, fingers crossed, is that they recognize Euro 6 emissions just like Australia. So in Australia um the manufacturers are able to decide whether they want to comply with the EPA or with Euro6. If we were able to use Euro6 engines, that would open up an entire new market of different engines and manufacturers for both the semiis and for the pickup trucks. It would be pretty amazing um to have those European diesels, those nice light fuel efficient diesels. Um I just went to Scotland. We got upgraded to a Mercedes GL430 hybrid which had a 3 liter inline 6 diesel. It’s 350 horse, 500 some odd torque and 42 m to the gallon is unbelievable. If we can throw something like that in there rather than this rattly old Cumins. Just think of how awesome that’s going to be. Chase and I get along so well because we think along the same lines. I had kind of a backup plan for mission testing this thing right away. He also had a backup plan for the semis if we ran into issues with hybrid, whether it be parts or lawyers or or laws, whatever that is. They were going to also build conventional driveline trucks with your typical ring and pinion axles and an 18-speed. We’re happy to say that we’ve got approval uh from Environment Canada to use Cumins engines in the semiis with a traditional 18-speed. And that means that while we’re sorting out everything else, nobody’s sitting idle. The shop is being used. The money is flowing in so that we’re not wasting time and money. We’re going to keep going on this uh ram. I want to get sound deadening inside of this from be quiet. And before we do that, I just got to put a little bit of paint on the floor. Make sure that the rust is under control. It’s going to start looking like a pickup again real soon. Here we go. [Music] All right, so we got the Ultimate from Be Quiet on the Firewall and our truck is now ready for all the latest conspiracy theories cuz it’s got it little tin foil hat on. Unfortunately, we did just do the 55 and the Silverado, too. So, I’m a little bit short, so we’ll order some more of that. Now, the V comp goes over top of that yet. Um, we’re going to glue that on in a little bit. Um, but before we do that and poke all the holes in from the other side because we need to have all of the bolts to hold the HVAC and the hydro boost on there. Once we have that on, we can poke all the holes from the other side again. Um, we’re going to put the uh heat insulation on there yet from Be Quiet. Would you be quiet? Just trying to work, man. And uh um and then we’ll go back to our uh hydro boost. So, this was the vacuum brake. Um, and it’s a direct bolt-on for Dodge second gen Hydroboost. The earlier ones had a vacuum pump on it and still utilize the the brake booster, but it’s better brakes using the hydroboost. On a Land Cruiser, we went with a vacuum pump and the original brake booster just to see how that works. And the advantage to that is it only runs when it runs at a vacuum. So, you don’t have to listen to the pump all the time. We wanted electric power steering with that. So, we can compare that to uh a hydraulic pump on an electric motor that runs the all the time because uh we need our steering and um our hydroboost to work. Now, we went with this steering box because we’ve got all the upgraded components from Synergy to uh keep this truck going straight down the road. So, I think the noisiest part of this truck will be the pump running, but I want to build both trucks different so we can kind of compare and then go from there. So, um, paint’s dry. We’re going to put some heat insulation on there. That will also help with the noise. And then, uh, Baxter’s looking so much forward to putting this dash back in again without cracking it cuz you took it out like what, 2 months ago, and you remember exactly where everything is and how it went, right? Yep. Yep. I’ll figure it out. Oh, that’s a very confident look there. Yeah, I’ll figure it out. Is not what I was aiming for, but uh, we’ll see what happens. [Music] All right. Well, that’s going on really, really nice. But, uh, if you guys wonder why sometimes I have multiple projects on the go, it’s because I thought I had more of the heat insulation because I have different packages of the be quiet stuff. a big package which I thought was the insulation, but that’s more of the VC comp stuff that goes on the firewall. And I had two of those and then one of these, but they’re all the VC comp. So now I have to order more and that’s okay. What’s that? The V comp is what goes over top of the Ultimate on the inside. So it’s one more layer. You’re going to love putting this dash back in again. Nothing’s going to line up. Everything’s going to be tight. Nothing’s going to fit. You can’t find your screw holes. But it’ll be so quiet. So then uh yeah, we keep going forward, I guess. Uh what to do next? What should we do next? It is Friday afternoon. Let’s go. Uh Dons. Let’s go hit up Dons. Who’s Don? McDonald’s. So the cigarettes aren’t poison enough, I guess. Eh, I don’t smoke. All right. So, we’re ready for our be quiet VC comp, which is another layer of insulation on our firewall. And you’re probably wondering, this is not stock here, and that’s because I had to make some room for the generator. Now, I glossed over that. I welded that all together and painted it, made it, but welded all the joints, but I didn’t really include it because it’s irrelevant to any project uh retrofit after this. The components that I made room for are now being shrunk into, say, the generator and the axles itself. So, we’re making room for components that won’t be in the next one. So, if you’re thinking, man, this retrofit is getting out of hand. You’ve done a complete oneoff um frame off restoration again and and who can afford that? We’re doing this because it’s a prototype showpiece. This is going to travel all over North America. It’s going to be pulling the Airstream from Ontario to BC to prove that the kit works. And we need people to look at it and and be impressed by the work. The retrofits don’t have to do all this work. You don’t have to pull your whole dash out. The AC system works with our HVAC chiller system. Um, and you don’t need to put the noise deadening in there, but when people hop in and drive this thing, I wanted to be nice and quiet and and I’m doing the best possible job that I can. Also realizing that it took a while for uh parts to show up. So, while we were waiting, we might as well paint it and powder coat everything while waiting for batteries and things like that. Now, uh it is a lot of work. It is definitely not a simple 3-day job to convert your entire truck into a hybrid kit. And we’re finding out as we go. I you guys know me. I want experience. I want real world data as to like how long is this going to take. We are exploring the option of building a full chassis as well. We’ve got engineers on that right now getting prices together of what it would look like to put a chassis together and then move bodies over your service body, your Ford, your Chevy, your Dodge cab, uh an RV, whatever that looks like. We’re figuring out a long a lot of stuff along the way, but nothing is detrimental to stopping us. We are going full steam ahead, working crazy hours. I’m the oldest one on the crew. Starting to feel the 16 20our days uh not just on this, but on the Land Cruiser and emails and traveling and seeing customers and going to Ottawa. And you are welcome to come join us in Ottawa on October 2nd. Uh the public is allowed to be inside the session kind of at the back. My family will be there. I hope to see you guys there all rooting for Edison because everything is heading in the right direction and uh I feel really good about uh the progress that we’ve made so far. So, thanks for watching guys. Remember, if you’re not filthy, you’re not rich. Get out there and work on it. You got to dream, make it happen cuz you’re the only one stopping yourself from doing it. Here we go.

@EdisonMotors wants to build plug-in hybrids. EPA rules say no. Here’s how we might change that.
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0:00 Coming up
1:32 Unboxing our battery brackets
3:07 Do our custom parts need customizing?
6:30 Test fitting battery trays
9:46 Powdercoating
12:05 Why we’re changing the oil
13:36 About that government red tape…
16:50 B-Quiet sound deadening
20:37 What’s next

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