i should have gone to sleep a very long time ago but im here watching an aging wheels video the SECOND it comes out! thats a first! and soo worth it! oh and i shared it on discord to my brother who is also a fan of your channel robert so your wecome! cant wait to see your next upload! :D
I will say it over and over, but the whimsy in your editing and presentation make watching your videos such a joy to watch. I love the silly bits you add in post as well as the intentional filming choices you make throughout.
I second this! Makes this content stand out between all the car fiddling channels out there! Enjoying the videos and always watching them fully - no ff-ing for aging wheels!
@@SimuLord agreed. the low-stress "because" reasoning behind everything on the channel gives it a very fun and light hearted vibe. no challenges or anything like that, just silly ass cars
Agreed. The editing and vibe is the only reason i watch this channel. I couldn't give a flying hoot about cars, but his joy is contagious. Love a person who loves a thing so much they can make you love it too
I’ve done the same thing to turn on my radio, to test my new speakers on my 2008 Civic while I was waiting on my rebuilt engine. It was rather funny. I was surprised it didn’t throw any codes for open circuits (all of the engine wiring was disconnected).
sad that in most of EU this probably would be illegal as hell to take anywhere on the road :/ so these projects are much more common in the US than here in the EU where i live
I really appreciate your “get to the point” video style. It always feels like project car videos take up a lot of time for a little bit of content. You tackled and completed two main components of this project, all in under 20 minutes. The project I most compare it to is the Electric Hummer project from JerryRigEverything. Every video of his on the Hummer has been drawn out to the point of feeling like nothing has gotten done. To be fair, he doesn’t have the same skills as you do, but that doesn’t mean he needed ten videos on hooking up and making battery boxes.
I appreciate the compliment, and I do try to trim the fat on my videos as much as possible, but I can definitely see the other side. I'm probably going to spend a month on these battery boxes. Getting only one video out of that, while pleasing to the viewer (and me from an artistic point of view), is perhaps not the best business move. After all, the video is the thing that makes money. It's also a bit disappointing to have days worth of work trimmed down to a couple minutes. That said, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
@@agingwheels The video is what makes the money, but the viewer needs to find value in the video for you to make the money. If their isn't enough content in the video, getting views will be hard. If their is too much content in the video, you are leaving money on the table. Then their is the question of "how technical are you going to be?" I think you have the right balance. Keep doing what you do and you will be making money off every video into the future. That is... If RU-vid doesn't screw things up... again.
As a follower of both channels, the reason why I follow you both is not for knowledge acquisition or training, it's for entertainment. Therefore the more videos you make, the more you entertain and I look forward to the next video every time! I definitely rather have 4 videos in a month with small updated than having one every month with a major milestone. As a business point of view, views bring the money to the workshop for the further purchase of parts. Fewer views means less money which means less content to watch. I love your videos, sense of humor and humility when working. Just keep doing what you do and I look forward to seeing your next release! 🤩
@Aging Wheels please do! I have always enjoyed the heck out of your editing. (Especially grinding the rivets on the roof of the bus, mounting light fixtures and any time you cut many pieces of something)
Milspec aviation connectors might be your ticket for the battery. MS3509 (750A sustained/1500A peak) is the highest I could find, definitely fine as a pair.
Threaded rod has a tendancy to chew through the radiator tubes that's why there are specific plastic radiator fixings for oil coolers and things. you should be able to source a pwm controller or variable speed dc motor controller that will work fine to control the speed of those fans. Awesome build so far!
They make easy connectors for putting a fan on a radiator for hotrods and such, I have on my t bucket. 10/10 recommend, it’s like a zip tie with a flat washer head
I have 2 concerns about your quad heater core setup. The first being the numerous airlocks that they're going to cause, and the second being that the airflow through them won't be great. The fans are going to suck much more air through the exposed parts of the radiator, and probably very little through the cores. Hopefully the whole setup is overkill enough that it won't be a big deal, but I really think you're better off with just a second normal radiator. If you want to salvage the heater core idea, then they'd work a lot better spaced like an inch or so away from the rad, with a shroud to make sure all the air is going through the cores first, then the rad. You could use your fancy-pants plasma CNC and sheet metal brake to fabricate this shroud pretty easily.
Or shifted to one side, so that the fans can be split operation. Maybe put ac on the other. Vacuum bleeding the system will help, but pockets will develop naturally as parts hit boiling point. So you’re right in that the ends should be pointed up to allow it to clear on its own. My design was much more lazy. Exhausted everything to the cabin, and let the automatic climate control sort it out. Overkill for the motors/inverter, but the battery and I were happy.
well you see the advantage he has is the car needs far less cooling than a combustion engine he only needs to cool a couple hundred degrees and not the near 1000 that a regular engine would produce so partially restricted air flow won't hurt much.
@@jonthefuzz Radiators rely heavily on temperature difference to work efficiently though. It's much easier to cool something with ambient air that's around 200f, because you have over 100 degrees of difference. With batteries though, you only have tens of degrees difference to play with.
The airlocks are something I hadn't considered, but vacuum bleeding will help that. Something that helps me out immensely is that this cooling setup is pretty massively oversized, so I should be good. If I find out this doesn't work, easy swap and knowledge gained!
I was curious, do you plan on upgrading your blinker system to all electric, so you don't have to constantly worry about maintaining your blinker fluid levels? Been loving this series.
there's been a lot of work done to reverse engineer the CANBus protocol that pump uses. it might be worth pulling those wires into the interior so you can do fun things in the future like reduce assistance at speed, or completely turn the pump off when you're going fast enough.
*LEARNING TIG* is very much like learning gas welding [IMO] and when I was taught to gas weld [at pannel beating college] was to first just learn to join two bits of metal together by melting the two parts into each other - learn to control the "pool" - then when you get that sorted learn to dab in extra bits of metal to the pool with the rod
The best I know from dealing with electric lift equipment is Anderson connectors, for your case specifically power pole 180s, they can take 350 amps at 600v BUT they are stackable, for your case you can do a 4 by 3(or a 2x6, or 2 2x3s etc) configuration for 12 connectors(6 for each pole) matted together as a single unit for 600v at 2100 amps(or two, but if you make multiple connections, it might be a good idea to only stack the positives or neutrals in a unit, so in case of disconnect you don't draw all the current from only half the connectors), there are likely better solutions, but in battery operated forklifts and lift equipment Anderson is the standard, and it's made to be unplugged every day since the batteries are charged directly from the connector, I've never used equipment with such a big connector so the matting forces might not be plesnt to plug and unplug though(note pp180 is originally rated 180 amps hence the name, but they have been retested with larger wire, and ul certified with 350 being the current , current rating I believe with 3/0 wire, but they get derated for ambient, at 50c they are limited to 310 amp I believe or there about)
Powerpoles are great, but they're not weather sealed and are only IP20 (finger safe) rated when they're connected. I would worry about handling a block of them attached to a battery un-mated, especially in dirty shop conditions. They do have some weather sealed variants available that might work, but they're more custom.
@@Skyhawkson yeah agreed for weather sealing(rewatching, that alone means I didn't recommend what he asked for so its null and void since this isn't what he wants), I wouldn't worry about handling them though unless it's actively raining while unhooking it, kinda the point of them to be able to handle them, as far as weather resistance 90% of that can be fixed with a healthy amount of dielectric grease, still probably wouldn't trust it for sprays or direct water submersion, but by itself would probably be enough to stop any corrosion issues, regardless in a automotive situation you would probably stick the block into a box
Anderson connectors go up to 2000A, they are found on electric forklifts and the like, kind of an industry standard by now. they are not IP rated though. 2nd point: heater cores usually have a way higher fin density than front mounted radiators. this causes way more air resistance, and given that right next to them is a path with way less air resistance, and there being barely any pressure, these will barely flow any air, and as such, will cool very little. They are also not made for the the same flow in coolant, which might be fine. I fell for the same cheapness trap for another project, getting air through these requires a significant pressure. Good call on the PP rings though, the bare aluminium of the radiators very much does not like stainless steel, and will make cauliflowers very quickly in salty wet conditions.
I wondered about the fin density. I think it'll be fine considering the cooling system is pretty dramatically oversized for my needs. It's not a hard swap if I'm wrong!
Gotta say I was a bit sad to hear that this will never be taken to a track, I would love to see a quarter mile rip when it's "finished". Either way, I still love it, it's gonna be such a sleeper.
imagine just being on the road in a super sporty lamborghini and having less horsepower than an electric converted early 2000s ford hatchback with a massive dent in it. i love this vehicle
I just imagine like a group of people who own expensive cars all in a call and then one of their buddies is late and they explain the experience of how they somehow got horribly by a Ford escape of all things
I’m no expert welder but the one thing I do know about Tig is that it must be clean. Clean the mill scale then clean everything with acetone and I do mean everything from your filler rod to your metal. Dedicate something to only grinding your tungsten wether its a grinding disc, diamond wheel, grinding stone does not matter just dedicate it only to your tungsten grinding to avoid contamination. Lastly make sure you have pre gas on and post gas on to avoid the weld turning to crap. These few tips have greatly improved my tig welding like I said I am no expert but these definitely helped.
You can make the fans run two speeds if you use a few relais to switch them in series for low speed( each fan basicly gets 6 volts)and paralel for hi speed. Did this on my Citroën cx and it works great.
The reasons that didn't immediately pop into my head is because the trans cooler for the Escape is integrated into the radiator. I didn't even think to look at trans coolers for other vehicles
Does anyone else have a feeling that radiator setup is going to be reworked before all is said and done? I really can't wait for this project to be finished, it's so cool.
I did electrohydraulic power steering in a CRX and measured current draw. I don't remember the exact numbers, but the pump idling was about the same as one headlight, while it topped out at full lock, that is full pump speed and full pressure at surprisingly low 30 or 40 A at 12V.
Really enjoying your EV conversion project and very jealous that I don't have the time and resources to pursue my own. Regarding your interconnect question I think you just need to work your problem backwards. Start by looking at what kind of wire or combination of wire you need to run your 2000amps between components and from there you should be able to find connectors that can accommodate your wiring harness and as a result you should have your interconnect that can accommodate 2000 amps. If you want my opinion about your 2000 amp requirement; I'm not sure if its needed thinking about when I charge my EV. My Kona EV draws about 100amps while charging at a DC fast charger and a Porsche Taycan consumes 400-500amps (I'm running the numbers from memory, so please double check) while charging and I believe to accommodate that amount of current the cable between the charger and car is liquid cooled to prevent the cable from becoming to hot. Anyways my point is I think maybe you can get away with maybe using two connectors of the coda style and I don't think you need to worry about the 2000 amp draw, sure you may hit 2000amps, but I don't think you'll draw 2000amps consistently enough and/or long enough to warrant anything much beefier then two of those coda connectors (perhaps even one).
I would think something like a pair of half width radiators side by side would be easiest to deal with. Dunno if they're still around, but 90s civic all aluminum "race" radiators off ebay were great for this sort of thing, compact, nice thick core, all welded construction, easy to alter, good for several hundred hp in a light combustion powered car and dirt cheap.
Back in the most horrible time in my life, when I was in high school, I had an old Chevy station wagon that originally had a 350 diesel in it. When I got it, someone had put a gas engine in it, but the car still had the hydraulic power brakes. That would have made an EV conversion pretty easy, but I can't imagine why anyone would do an EV conversion on a 1985 Caprice wagon. EDIT: Connectors - you might see if you can get a battery connector for an electric forklift. The really big ones do 2,000 amps or more.
You may want to look into a full sized mennekes disconnect plug. They’re more for AC high amperage situations, but the idea behind them is that you have to essentially trip a disconnect switch before you can unplug it, to prevent a 1000A arc from turning everything within a few feet into plasma. Not sure they make exactly what you’re looking for, but you could also do a few lower rated plugs in parallel if it’s cheaper
You're going to want to think about the continuous vs. peak power for the connectors, and wires and fuses too for that matter. It's going to be an unnecessary battle of absolutely massive cables and unobtanium connectors to specify your peak power as your continous power.
My new favourite channel! I'm all for EV conversions and I love how this one is coming together. Thanks for sharing the process and your learning experiences!
I just love the style of editing, and phrasing, and pretty much everything, with all the silly self-reflecting commentaries you add. Just love how it stands out professionally, while seems less professional. In the world of pitchperfectanxious..err..well.. perfectionism it's a refreshing sip of springwater. Grats, and handshakes from Hungary, a place finally someone in USA knows for sure exactly where it is😅 A tip for the Lada: Turn it into a VFTS Have a look on youtube, and be amazed. Considering the road regulations in your state being much more forgiving you'd have a unique, road-legal meanmachine
I love this project! I dream of doing an ev conversion but getting the parts or a destroyed car is extremely pricey... So I'll just have to sit back and enjoy your project. 🙂
I love how overcomplicated you made your cooling system. For reference next time, that radiator has a built in automatic transmission cooler. Its a heat exchanger that is in the water tank of the radiator. You could have just plumbed the second loop into that.
That only works if the two fluids are at similar temperatures. Otherwise your low temperature fluid will become a heat sink for your high temperature fluid.
@@jamesashe in the case of this EV your battery temperatures and controller temperatures and such are all the same relatively low temperature. Which actually means it's going to be very inefficient because you want the larger temperature difference between the ambient air and the coolant. That said, the capacity of this cooler is so much larger than what he needs that it doesn't matter and you will be near ambient temperature on the output anyway.
Great video as always, glad to see the e-scape coming along! Just as a tip when cutting templates to check sizing I like to put cardboard in my laser, it makes dimension checking a lot cheaper than wood pieces!
This is one of my favorite projects you’ve done thus far. Also as usual, your sponsor spots are always hilarious.. hope that jalapeño didn’t greet you on its way out haha. I LOVE spicy food, so that’s a huge plus for factor haha.
I really hope you put four beadlock Forgestar, Welds, or RC Component wheels and drag radials on all four corners just to confuse anyone that sees an Escape on beadlocks and DRs until it launches.
High voltage 1000amp connectors: Hubbell MCC1 Anderson SB350 are only 300amp rating but maybe you can use 7 of them in parallel (probably more dangerous because of cascading failures)
7 connectors in parallel is easily the funniest thing I’ve read all day. Make the install look like starting up a fighter jet clicking over all the handles.
@@Mitch3D the common TE LEV200 series contactor is rated for 500Amp continuous and can handle 1000Amp peak, so it is possible with only two contactors
When connectors are rated there for a constant rating. just take a look at a Tesla wire harness and notice that they don't have connectors in parallel either. I would start by evaluating the way your harness of a typical Model X. In short it always comes down to heat. If a connector is rated for 350 amp (constant) then that's the average amp going through it to keep it in a safe temperature zone, aka not melt. You can have low and high variations in current (which is what happens in the real world) so note it can still take higher amperage.
It's difficult to find a connector that supports such high amps, I recommend you to use a big contactor and standard bolt connections, if you are worried for the waterproof factor, you can make water shields underneath the engine bay and use dielectric grease in the connections.
Im noticing a worrying theme of you pointing out issues and then reassuring yourself that they are not. Im sure these won't be issues though... :P (P.s. I'm so excited for this project!)
I like how I closed my eyes every time you began to weld because I'm currently learning how to weld in my collision repair shop and eye safety is fresh in my mind
16:16 I just use a hole saw to make plastic washers, sometimes out of aluminum or copper. A step bit can also fit in place of the center drill and you can adjust the height for different bore hole diameters. Also you prob already know, but the hole saws are also easily interchangeable on the hub.
Hey, Robert, will you be talking about the legal side of EV conversion? I know that hugely depends on the country and state but I’d still love to hear your story out. (Mostly because I like listening to you.)
I'm wondering - strangely wondering - if that pump was designed for a full 12 volts of power all the time its original vehicle was running... and perhaps those three CAN wires somehow regulated the power to the pump... What you think?
Proud V6 Escape owner here, thought I'd chime in on the brakes. The stock brakes on these are quite stout, and will drag the car from 60-0 in short order. However, I have warped the front rotors towing with mine. If braking does become an issue, Powerstop does make upgraded Z23 drilled and slotted front rotors for the Escape. I have a set waiting to be installed, I will report back with updates once they're installed. Take care.
Is that a Ryobi 1+ pocket sized bandsaw? Looks like it could be really handy, but they don't seem to be available in Europe 😞 (And Factor don't deliver here either, but I watched your ad for the entertainment value anyway!)
For the love of excessive mahogany, please buy a couple of Dewalt impact rated step drills! See the Project Farm video on step drills for their capabilities. Apart from being epic, the next step up can be used as handy deburring tool. 👍
I am amazed, that two of my favourite YT-chanels (Aging Wheels and Vice Grip Garage) use the same Volvo PS pump. For two complete different applications. One gos into a burnout truck and is held basically by zip-ties and the other one in to an electrified SUV with more braces than Forrest Gump.
Of all the things you did in the video, the big "life hack" moment for me was the "making your own bolts from a nut and threaded rod" Trick. Why didn't I think of that? I have a mig welder and could have don't this so many times instead of multiple runs to the hardware store and STILL compromising because they didn't have what I needed. Thank you!
I used the same Volvo pump on my conversion. You can also pick up a hydraulic pump from a Mercedes for brakes. It was wayyy quieter than the “kit “ I bought from a EV supplier. You only need the pressure switch to complete. Don’t listen to the folks saying you build is janky. Every custom conversion has to be a totally custom job. I redid lots of custom mounts and connections as I built my car. It’s your build, do it your way. Most doubters will never start!
To save power on the electric power steering. Add an accumulator and a pressure transducer switch to only turn on the pump when there’s a pressure drop. Swapping to a hydro boost brake system will save needing a vacuum pump.
6:15 I see a line of cars And they're all painted black With flowers and my love Both never to come back I wanna see it painted Painted black Black as night Black as coal I wanna see the sun Blotted out from the sky I wanna see it painted, painted, painted Painted black, yeah
