[Music playing]
Welcome back. So we have the driveline installed, the 12-volt system established....
Something that's kind of important to a moving vehicle is the brakes and power
steering. Luckily today I have someone who is way smarter than I am. You might recognize him.
He's the one who helped me start my youtube channel... um what was that like eight years ago?
So we've kind of come full circle and should be an interesting day. Let's get started.
[Intro]
So way back when I first started my youtube channel I was a college student. This isn't
a story I've told a whole lot on my channel. And I had a jeep, a super old jeep, that had broken down
and I took it to a shop and the shop said it needed a, like a thousand dollar repair. But
I jumped on youtube and this guy had a way of fixing it for like 80 bucks
instead of a thousand. So I messaged him. I didn't know he lived in Utah at the time,
and I was like, 'Hey why are you doing this? Why are you making videos
to help people out?' Do you remember what you said back to me? And he was super nice,
he responded to me! I was literally just a random dude on the internet. Do remember what you said?
- Trying to reduce world suck.
- Yep, decrease world suck.
-My main thing is I read a book and in the book it said if you're of service you'll be
compensated. It was actually a recording... it started the whole self-help kind of thing.
I was in a dark place is why I started my youtube channel and it was a way to bring positivity,
help people, I feel good, they feel good. And just the general...
the general thing was to empower people and get them to be able to fix their stuff.
-Which makes him an incredibly useful asset on this project. And uh so yeah,
I started my youtube channel and I was doing like jeeps and motorcycles and stuff like that,
and then I branched off into cell phones and more of the electronic stuff, but
it's fun that we've come full circle and now we're working together again.
-Which is fun. It makes me excited to see how far you've come with your thing.
-So hopefully we can get the hummer today with some braking ability and power steering ability
because both systems are connected. What's really nice is that electric vehicles use
something called regenerative braking where the electric motor can slow down and take
some of the force from the moving vehicle and transfer it back into the battery, um
using, you know, the motor turns into a generator at that point.
-And when your tires are this big and you have that much rotational inertia
and mass with these giant tires, you need all the help you can get.
-So we do have the other motor over here, the one that was previously in the humvee. I don't know
if you can see that. So besides the fact that all of this is currently sitting outside of the
humvee. How come we can't use the power steering and brakes from this setup in our EV conversion?
-If cars would have stayed as small as they were in the beginning it would be fine,
but because we have bigger, stronger, heavier cars we need bigger, stronger, heavier braking, and
our legs just aren't up to that so we've come up with different means whether it's a vacuum brake
booster or a hydro boost system like this used to have. Instead of running it off of a belt off
the front of the engine we're going to use this electric pump in order to achieve the same thing.
-A lot of the bigger trucks these days like the Toyota Tundras and some of the Chevys are using
electric power steering pumps to decrease the load on the motor as well as it's more... it's easier
to adjust the levels of steering while you're driving. And I'm using the steering and the
braking interchangeably because like he said, we're using one pump to control both of them,
and it'll make more sense to all of us in a second when we see it happen.
-So this pump is off of a Toyota pickup truck, we think. They use the same motor,
the electric part of it for Priuses and all that kind of stuff. But this
assists. It basically takes whatever force you have and it just amplifies that force.
-So underneath here we're still going to try to use the same brake pedal,
and that brake line comes out up here into... you said it was the hydra boost?
-So see how the steering is here and the brake pedal is like right under that? There's a plunger
or rod that pushes into the hydro boost. The hydro boost increases the pressure going into
the master cylinder. The master cylinders like a syringe and then these uh brake lines
take that hydraulic pressure to each of the wheels to give it the stopping power.
-And we have this reservoir here. We kind of have some empty space on this side. So the
reservoir for the fluid is going to be up top, kind of like a gravity fed. And then the pump is
going to be down there mounted on the frame. And of course we'll clean up some wires and stuff.
-You ready?
-Ready. Let's get her.
[Motor sounds]
Right now we've got the clearance that we need to drill these holes.
This pump's going to have a home.
-So this hole punch leaves just a little small divot on each of our paint marking points
so that our drill bit can sit in the center and not swivel off path.
[Drilling sounds]
There she is mounted up and bolted through the frame. You can see the
back side of the bolts there. Now we got to get the hoses on.
-So this is the pressure hose that delivers pressure from the pump up to the hydro boost,
and then from the hydro boost onto the power steering. That has to have two different
fittings. There's nobody that makes one that fits a hummer and fits a Toyota pressure pump
so we had a fitting made, a hose made, and then this was reused from the hummer side so we were
able to source that and get everything nice and tight so it can handle the extreme pressure.
-So you're saying they don't make custom hoses for...
-Toyota to hummer..
-Toyota conversions...
-Being the trendsetters we are, it'll happen,
but we're the pioneers so we got some trailbreak blazing expenses.
-Heck yeah. First to do it.
Getting the drive line back in place.
I do like that the pump is rubber isolated right here, here, and up at the top with
these big rubber bushings. Kind of the same thing that are inside of these transfer case mounts,
as well as the mounts up here for the motor. The rubber isolation just helps keep everything from
getting damaged when it's going over bumps in the road or off-roading. Keeps things more safe.
-And quiet.
-When the pump is humming it hums the whole hummer.
You have to be really careful when you thread these in or else it can ruin your day.
So when you tighten it you can tighten it here, or here and have it chafe and die,
so we're going to go kind of in the middle so it's got some room to breathe.
-Remember one cool thing about the hummers is that they have that access
through the cab. They call it the dog house right?
-Yep.
- Brian can work on the hummer from inside the hummer. So right now at the bottom of the
reservoir we have this white teflon tape that we're wrapping in the direction of the threads
to help create a better seal from the reservoir to the tube heading down to the pump.
And yes we are working on 400 volts of battery...I think we're still good though!
-This is the return when the work's done and the fluid comes back to roost, it goes in this way.
-So this reservoir tank is what holds the liquid until the pump needs it,
and then the pump takes it, pressurizes it and uses it for the power steering and the brakes.
-This is the mama bird mouth that feeds that.
This is the baby bird mouth that gets the cool stuff coming back.
-Because after the fluid comes from the power steering and the brakes, it goes into a cooler.
-There's a relationship between pressure and heat, they both go together.
When pressure increases, temperature
increases. And when pressure drops, temperature drops. This is a high tech hose cutting device.
If you just kind of roll the hose it hits the blade and cuts it where it's thinner and you
get a nice clean edge. So it's got a bunch of nylon or cotton or something in it to prevent
expansion, and that way it can handle the pressure without creating weird stuff.
And these clamps are doing us proud. A sign of a quality hose set up is these little washers. They
just help to cap off the end. Just like a two by four, if you put wax on the end it doesn't warp.
If you protect the ends of your hose then those fibers won't conduct unwanted things into the
hose that can degrade its integrity. And if you have spray silicone, man this goes a lot easier.
When it's done this shouldn't spin, it means you got pressure against it.
-So as far as power connections go, this is the main connector right here and then the ground
is just running off to the side here with one of these bolts. And apparently this connector
can handle 75 amps worth of energy, so I assume that at peak power this might also be able to pull
75 amps. But I think that peak 75 amps is only going to happen when I'm turning really hard at
a standstill or pressing on the brakes really hard and it's not continuous. I'll have to measure that
when we finally get it running. Either way, it's going to need some pretty beefy wire,
some 10 gauge, and one of those connections which luckily are also available on Amazon. It's a
pretty standard connection. And I can run it back to my 12 volt control panel that we saw earlier.
So each of these large metal connectors have a little metal lip inside, and that metal lip is
going to catch on this 90 degree angle here on the tip of this. And it is now secure.
And the connector can just come together like this,
but since i don't want it to turn on yet we're going to leave it disconnected.
The wire.
I covered a lot more of this in my 12 volt video, but a quick little recap is that when
the key switches on, this row of fuses also get power and it sends power to the signal wire
of this relay here. And when this relay gets power it sends a lot more amperage, up to 60,
out this output down here, which then goes to the power steering pump. Assuming, of course,
that the power steering pump does pull a reasonable amount of amperage. If it pulls
more than what this relay can handle, then I'm gonna have to find another solution,
but that's what this is all about. That's what life is all about.
So Brian, what's this?
-This is uh dex merc. It's just hydraulic fluid that has all the right properties and additives
to be used in a transmission or a power steering system.
-Tell me if i say anything wrong. We have the reservoir sitting here going down to the pump, and
then the pump comes up here the hydra boost which runs the power steering and the brakes, right?
-Uh specifically for the brakes. So the power steering is coming from the gearbox down here. You
call it the power steering gear or power steering gearbox and it boosts the ability to turn.
-Perfect. So then as the loop comes from the brakes to the power steering we have this
hose right here which comes over and eventually will be attached to a radiator for the cooling.
So everything is connected right now and the key is off so we shouldn't hear anything
when I plug it in. But we did just fill it up with fluid and I'm told by Brian here that it
might be a little bit turbulent starting up because there's air bubbles inside.
But if I turn the key... are we ready? Are we sure we're ready?
If I turn the key, we should turn on the power steering and brake pump.
All right. So far no leaks though.
-Go for it.
-Those are the air bubbles coming up.
-You'll notice that the level of the fluid's gone down significantly. That's
in direct proportion to how much air was in the system and it's now come up.
[Tires squeaking]
See what I mean?
-Yeah. That's cool.
So we tentatively have the power steering working with two kind of caveats. One,
it's kind of loud so I'm going to try to sound deaden that later. The second thing is I'm using
a regular relay to power the power steering pump. We think that by installing this guy we will,
the solenoid, will be able to have more power running to the power steering pump.
-A power steering pump's about the size of a starter so it makes sense a starter solenoid
like a fender mount for a Ford would be suitable for it. You can hear the pump slowing down.
When it slows down like that that's a sign that it's not getting enough power.
-So now we install the fire hydrant solenoid, we'll see if it fixes that problem.
-This is like a big relay. You've got these two poles and we want them to clap together
solidly, and we just need to see if this is can be used as ground or not.
So we need ground and power. This tool is cool because you can take the terminal here and now
this is getting ground all the time, and we know that because, let me turn the sound on...see it
light up green? And when you send power it lights up red so it's nice because you can be able to
test a device or circuit or whatever because you can put power and ground where you want it.
-All right so we have the solenoid parked right here and it works a lot the same
way as a relay does where you have the two wires, you know, one's ground and one signal.
And then this is pulling power from the battery and sending it directly to the power steering.
-It's still running good, it's not stopping like it was before.
It would slow to almost stop. This is lugging through it.
-There we go now we just need to make a little quieter. If you can think of any ways to make
this hydraulic pump any quieter let me know down in the comments. I'm thinking if I drive
with this longer than a couple minutes I might start to go crazy. Maybe using the
original hydro boost isn't the best option. It does work though and we did learn a lot.
Alright we are done! We have power steering and brakes now, both of which are very
important to safety. Huge thanks to Brian for helping me out. He definitely
made this project possible. This part of the project possible. Where can they find you at?
-You can find me at Brian'sMobile1 on youtube, instagram, and facebook.
-Alright. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.