This video is sponsored by KiwiCo. More on them later.
You might have noticed that we've taken a break from building the electric Hummer recently,
and that's because of this guy. I'd like to introduce you to Jerry Jr. Say hi to the camera.
He told me yesterday that he wants to start helping out around here, pulling his own weight,
you know, all 8 pounds of it, and helping out with the electric Hummer project.
He looks a little bit nervous – not as nervous as his mom though. Alright, you ready? Let's go.
Alright, first thing. Do you have any screwdrivers?
Alright, cool. There it is. Thank you very much. How about a wrench? I think I need a wrench.
Nice. Thank you. Wow. That is much bigger than I anticipated. And finally I need
something really long and straight. Some kind of brace. Okay. Perfect. Wow, I'm really impressed.
Oh, okay. Wow, you have everything in there. Perfect. I think we're ready. Let's get started.
[Intro]
So another thing we can probably get installed today is the display, or kind of, you know,
the dashboard and readout of all of the pertinent information coming from the
motor and the battery pack. So as of right now, this is kind of my view from the driver's seat.
Over here we have the ignition, the whisper plate, all of my buttons for the headlights and things,
the blinkers right here, as well as a bunch of dials that were previously used with the
1995 Humvee components. But as you can see, things have changed quite a bit and these components seem
a little dated. There are companies out there that allow you to utilize these analog dials
with an EV conversion, but for me, I kind of like the blend of this futuristic display
mixed in with the...I mean it's not old, but the oldness of the '95 Humvee. So if
everything works out how I want, this display will be sitting right here and it will show
me my speed, how much power I'm using, and everything else that's involved with driving.
So it looks like when I was taking everything apart I got a little snip happy with the
wiring harness, so all the wires are already pre-cut for us which is nice.
And here it looks like there is some kind of rivnuts just holding everything in place.
And it looks like there will be plenty of room for wires to come up through the dash
into the back of the unit. And I will be cleaning up my wires here in the near future.
Now to get rid of all these gauges. One interesting thing about this dash
is that none of these dials are back lit inside of each of these little circles is a light bulb
that would illuminate and shine into the dials on either side to, you know, light them up.
And now with all the dials out we can fab up a little plate that will go around the
outside of this and let the new display sit down underneath. So when I say fab something up, I mean
we need something that'll attach this screen to the piece of material, the dashboard, that
had all of the speedometer and the gas meter and everything inside of it. And I'm going to do that
with a program called Fusion 360. So I have drawn up the bracket and cut it out of a piece of paper
and we will set it right on top of the dash, and the LCD screen should sit down inside of
there. And the cool thing is I can take this design and plop it on OSH Cut's website,
and that particular piece is only going to cost me $12 to cut out. I'm also including the EV
gas filler cap for the J1772, and then of course there's like a setup fee. But for the most part,
working with lasers is pretty inexpensive and we get to see the machine in action.
So I thought about laser cutting them out of copper or brass since it would look really
cool with the current color of the Humvee. But everything else is just
that shiny stainless so I think we're going to stick with that.
[Various
cutting
sounds]
Not too shabby. Now we have a functional LCD screen inside of our dash where the gauges
used to be. I put some blue painter's tape over the stainless so it doesn't get scratched up,
and at some point I might throw some threaded inserts down here under the plastic for a pinch
point behind it so it's also secure. But the four screws in the front are pretty solid,
so I'm not super worried about it as we're testing everything. Speaking of threaded inserts though,
the threaded inserts that were holding his panel to the dashboard were super rusted and
broke two of the bolts that were inside of them...Rust isn't good... Which means it gives us
time to test out our new rivnut tool. So I showed you what rivets do earlier. Those are like a more
permanent solution. A rivnut is also permanent, but you can bolt into and bolt out of so we can
remove this if we ever need to. Basically how a rivnut works is it's this threaded insert which
has threads inside of it. And once it goes into our rivnut tool here it squeezes it down so that
it pinches either side of a material. And I will show you. Once the threaded insert is on the tool,
the tool can go through the hole and pull the insert into itself to create that little lip,
permanently mounting the insert onto whatever material it's poking through,
which makes a perfect mounting point for anything else that needs to be stuck to the same point.
And now with the new threaded inserts we can get our LCD dash plate installed.
Now the back of the display can handle a whole lot of wires, but in order to power it on we just need
one red wire for the battery, one ground wire, and then one ignition wire. That should turn
the display on next time we turn the key. All of these wires are coming from that 12 volt
control panel that I have underneath the passenger seat. I have a whole video dedicated to the brains
of the 12 volt system if you want to watch that as a refresher. But let's see if the screen works.
Oh yes! Yes, that's amazing.
Awesome, we have a working dash. I am extremely impressed that worked the first time. Yes. And
there she is in all her glory. So it looks like we have information for, you know,
the amps I'm using, the regen coming in down here, state of battery. It'll be fun to see what it
looks like when we're done wiring up the rest of the high voltage components. I'm pretty excited.
The nice thing about the Adromeda electric vehicle interface controller is that it's customizable
and the perimeters can be adjusted for the pack voltage and discharge.
At the moment my screen is set up to display RPMs, but the revolutions per minute are rather
irrelevant when there's no transmission or shifting. The RPM of the electric motor is
basically just directly correlated with the miles per hour. Once I've input the gear ratios of my
EV torque box, differentials, and geared hubs into the display. I can plug in a mini USB cable
to the back of the screen and use my laptop to flash the information over to the new display.
It's nice having one display showing all of the information that normally would have come from
the gauges we took out earlier. Plus now we can see the new variables like pack voltage,
amp draw, and regen that we wouldn't have access to if we kept the original gauges.
Eventually the screen is going to get it's information from the can high and can low wires,
and I'll make sure to explain all that in a future video once I know how it works.
One thing that makes an electric conversion like this difficult is it's hard to make sure
everything is working without everything being installed. One component doesn't
work without another. But the whole thing should be moving pretty quickly from now on,
especially with little Jerry's help. The whole thing is just one giant puzzle. Speaking of which,
this video is sponsored by KiwiCo. KiwiCo is constructive entertainment. They inspire
kids and people of all ages to see themselves as makers. They provide fun monthly hands-on projects
designed to expose kids to concepts in STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
And the kits they provide are great for learning at home. KiwiCo offers 8 subscription lines
catering to different age groups and topics from toddlers all the way to teenagers and even adults.
The monthly crates are designed by experts and teaches kids through hands on projects and comes
with everything you need. No need to run out for extra supplies. My wife has been giving these
subscriptions away as gifts for birthdays or the holidays. The robot we are building today comes
from the Tinker Crate, and this robot teaches the basics of batteries and electric motors,
as we get this robot to walk. Kind of like what we've been doing here on the Humvee,
just on a much smaller, safer scale. I'll leave a link down in the description so you
can get your first month for free. KiwiCo is a good way for kids to learn at home and develop
a well-rounded skill set for when problems arise in the future. Learning and expanding your minds
today makes tomorrow's problems much easier. That free first month with your subscription is down
in the description. In the next video I think we'll be installing the onboard charger along
with the DC to DC converter as we prepare for the 450 volts worth of Tesla battery modules.
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