Advanced Mechanical Products (AMP) - Electric SKY Conversions

Griz said:

It appears that the space where the gas motor used to be is the battery storage space. Each back wheel is driven by their own DC motor. No drive shaft, no differential, no fuel tank in the trunk.

Click to expand...

Well maybe it won't take up quite as much space as the gas tank but it looks like they're putting the charger and converter back there, no info on actual size of components?

So, there I was. . .It has been a minute hasn't it? Decided to update this thread as it pertains to the AMP car.

First things first I still have the AMP'd Sky in my garage on jack stands. The drive unit is out and apart, the batter pack is completely disassembled, and the process to put everything back together has begun. The biggest hold up is supply chain issues.

Pictures are on instagram @NomadperformanceEV

Battery pack:
There were 108 Lifepo4 cells that were originally rated at 100AH's. Safe Voltage range is 270V-394.2V
issues identified:
I found 2 cells at 0 V's and 1 bad BMS (battery management system) cell board. The cells were swapped with an AMP'd Mercedes conversion. They should be closely matched due to the timing of the swaps. However, who knows about the abuse each vehicle saw. All batteries have been balanced to 3.2V's and we are awaiting the material to put them back into modules, and reinstall them into the battery boxes. We are awaiting straps to arrive on Tuesday to build the modules.

BMS:
Elithion Lithiumate Pro
Issues found:
The enclosure had seen better days and was allowing water intrusion. This caused corrosion on a cannon plug connector and arcing between soldered pins. In the process of replacing the receptacle and cannon plug. However, one connector is currently on back order. Upgrading to crimp connections over solder. We also found the current sensor next to the drive unit subframe enclosure in the same condition. Except the corrosion was far worse.

Drive unit:
2 HVH250-090 SOM motors in a custom case. They are rated at roughly 87 KW/117HP and roughly 240 ft lbs tq each at 350V. Coolant is ATF fluid that runs through the rotor and over the stator with a reservoir below. The patent can be found for the coolant system via google.

Issues identified:
Low voltage harnesses from the motors to the external casing were not shielded. I have added shielding to the harnesses. After a conversation with Cascadia Motion this appears to be the issue with erratic temperature sensor readings. The driver side gearbox also had been disassembled previously by unknown parties. Several screws were stripped, not fully tightened down and you could see pry markings along the casing. The motors are friction locked to the case and require an oven to remove them from the casing. Which was the real reason I contacted Cascadia Motion and Borg Warner. I was deferring to the experts on the motors. lol.

Charging System:
High Voltage battery charger: Elcon charger, Owner complained that it blows fuses on 115V and I have yet to test that. That will be addressed during ops checks post reassembly.
12V system: Delphi DC/DC

HVAC System
Masterflux Sierra.
Issues found:
AC enable wire loose in engine bay. I can not find the other end currently. With how the heater is tied to the steering wheel I don't know exactly where in the interior it was initially tied to. I plan to dismantle the dash and locate the AC on wiring and use my wire sniffing tool to locate it in the bundle. Does anyone know where I might find the wiring diagrams for the Sky? I have the service manuals, but no wiring diagrams.

General wiring:
The general wire management on this vehicle was horrendous to say the least. We have moved the HV wiring away from the low voltage wiring, ran bundles through Adel clamps that previously were installed, but had nothing ran through them. We have removed wiring that was cut on both ends with no apparent location for it to hook up to. We are rerouting the J1772 harness away from everything else as much as possible. We are certain there are issues with shielding throughout this car, and that's a huge problem when running 115V/240V AC next to unshielded wiring. We are also sure that we haven't addressed all issues, and will run into more once we put it all back together.

Personal thoughts:

I can not blame AMP for everything when it comes to the vehicle. There were obviously some design choices I don't understand the reasoning behind. The choice to not allow the BMS to protect the battery pack from over discharge. I get the not wanting to leave someone stranded argument, but it does bring into question as to the lesser of two evils. Leave them stranded or deplete the battery below salvage voltage and cause a $16k (current cost) battery cell replacement, whatever elithion charges for cell boards in bulk ($75 if ordered one), and labor. More than likely close to $22k-$25k in repairs. Things like not shielding the small harnesses within the drive unit case could have been done by someone else other than AMP. I would expect an electrical engineer would have wanted them shielded. I just don't know. All I know is they weren't shielded and the faults related to the drive unit we are seeing are 100% EMI related.

I am writing this post more or less to vent and review what I've done so far on the vehicle. I was hoping to have the car back on the road by the 24th. I've had the car for 6 months come the 30th, and I didn't want to keep it past that point. However, between mistakes I've made and supply chain issues it appears I will have it for at least another month. Color me sad.

Just adding some recent pictures. The battery pack was fully in this past week. However, I was missing one entire cell bank and one cell was reading 2.2V. The bank was one single wire that was loose and required 1/3 of the pack needing to be removed to get to it. The 2.2V cell wasn't fully tightened down. One screw out of 864 isn't bad, but shouldn't have happened to begin with. In the process of getting the last bit of the battery back into the car this week. Will be posting a video series after I am done with the car.