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DC in a Subaru

JNHEscher

JNHEscher

Red Skull Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2020
Member Number
1892
Messages
2,840
Loc
Dogwood, MO.
Been wanting to ditch the EJ life and go zappy in the scoob. My thoughts were to go with a forklift or golf cart motor. From what I can find, even the performance motors from Plum Quick won't have enough cojones to move an Outback at reasonable speeds.

Reason for DC - lower (non-electrocuting) voltage, as in 48 volts. Two wires, PWM controller, and batteries being the main components. Fairly flat torque curve with brushed DC. Golf cart motors are pretty well enclosed.

Brat Industries has an adapter for the Nissan Leaf motor. AC is not what I want when I would like to spend some time crawling. That and it requires three wires, inverter, high voltage, etc. I can't seem to find the cheap Leaf motor and Cobalt battery combo that people talk about. And I want to keep the system as simple as possible.

I've looked at Netgain stuff, but that's talking prices that are way over what is worth putting into my car. Their motors are also vented, which is not the greatest for water crossings.

Thoughts on getting a close match to 165 ft.lbs., or at least powerful enough to move a car at highway speeds? Got a 6-speed manual in it now and have to keep that due to the front diff being integrated in the trans.
 
Forklift swaps seem like they are best left to the 5 miles in town commute crowd. With low voltage systems its going to be a bit of a struggle to get to decent amounts of torque. Going to the 96 volt range increase the selection significantly. Unfortunately, new motors and controllers that have that much torque are going to start at Netgain's prices. Torque to move on the highway is probably easy to get. Torque to accelerate on the highway may be more challenging.

In my experience, making power with toque cause more heat issues than creating power with RPM. They tend to be more efficient at higher RPM.
 
I'll keep poking around. At the moment, it seems this isn't even worth pursuing due to the cost.

What I most want in this is operation voltage that isn't lethal, sealed components, and minimal nanny features.
 
According to PQ, their Grizzly is their DC motor with the highest torque output. If I can find the 48-volt club car motor, trans, and tire specs, I might get somewhere.

Their AC conversion has more ponies and looks plenty simple other than an app with access that differs between end consumer and dealer.
 
You need to step back and reconsider the platform you're building from. Taking an already heavy awd car that's nearly at the limits of its wheel bearings and CV shafts and adding a bunch of battery weight to it going EV is not going to work well.

If you want more torque, put an ez30 in. You will be replacing clutches regularly but it's worth the power increase. Oh and don't kid yourself, you don't have the gearing to "crawl" anything. You'll be bashing your way through shit between stalling out. Which can be fun, but it's hard on parts. I've lived it, I had a loyale with an ej22 & a dual range 5spd on 235/75r15's that I beat the crap out of for years. It was a lot of fun and impressive what it was capable of for a car, but busted a lot of parts along the way.

A later grand vitara/tracker would be a better starting point.
 
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I'm not looking for more torque at all. Just somewhere close to the 2.5 torque.

I will not run a dual range MT. Fairly sure I already described my opinion about those. Currently working on a planetary low range to put in the extension housing.
 
I would seriously urge you to make the leap to a full high voltage 400v system and three phase AC motor. The performance and drivability will be way better. DC motors will feel and sound like a golf cart and you can't have regen.

Check out Resolve-EV, it's a VCU that will control all the Nissan LEAF components. So you can buy a wrecked LEAF and the VCU and have everything you need.

I've thought about Subaru conversions a lot but haven't come up with a good place to put the batteries without taking up the cargo space in the back of the car.
 
I'll study the Leaf swap some more. If I can come by the majority of the parts cheaply enough, I won't complain. What I don't want is a requirement to swap a bunch of digital controls into my car. I want to keep it simple and utilize as much of the stock Subaru instruments as I can.

Plum Quick does offer an AC conversion from a manufacturer that I have pulled upon my laptop. Regen isn't something I really find necessary, but the AC conversion offers it with control. Regen is something I would love to have as long as it isn't a costly mess.

As stated (and mis-stated), I'm not hunting for more ponies or torque. The Subaru split-case design is too weak to be sending more through it without a few thousand in upgrades. Especially with the dual-range design.

Don't know if the Club Car specs are the same across year and models. What I came up with for their electric cart trans, is a 12.3:1 reduction. My car currently has a 17:1 overall reduction in 1st gear.
 
If you use the Resolve-EV controller, the the setup is really simple. Honestly, it will have less electronics and wiring than your gas engine has. Like you say, it will be hard to keep the instruments functional but that's a small price to pay for 5x or 10x the performance.

LEAFs come in three levels of power: 80kw (100hp), 110kw (150hp), and 160kw (215hp) so you can pick whichever version is best.
 
J1000 said:
If you use the Resolve-EV controller, the the setup is really simple. Honestly, it will have less electronics and wiring than your gas engine has. Like you say, it will be hard to keep the instruments functional but that's a small price to pay for 5x or 10x the performance.

LEAFs come in three levels of power: 80kw (100hp), 110kw (150hp), and 160kw (215hp) so you can pick whichever version is best.
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Right on, man. I'll dig into all this Monday eve.
 
JNHEscher said:
I'm not looking for more torque at all. Just somewhere close to the 2.5 torque.

I will not run a dual range MT. Fairly sure I already described my opinion about those. Currently working on a planetary low range to put in the extension housing.
Click to expand...
I didn't tell you to run a dual range. It's just what I had. And the trans core never gave me trouble, the rear transfer gears and the front diff were the weak points, which are the same junk as is in your 6spd.

You have a fat car with shit suspension, shit wheel bearings, shit axle shafts, shit differentials and shit steering components. What redeeming features does a subaru have that makes it in any way worth investing time & money into modding for off-road use? And then electric converting it? Just switch to a more solid platform to start with, so you can enjoy the results of your mods instead of dealing with broken subaru parts constantly.

I know what I preach, I went down the subaru road before and it's a dead end.
 
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