Wayland’s Words

Today, with my forklift service truck backed against the dock at an industrial dairy, I was approached by a trucker who’s big rig had a dead starting pack. This particular dock I work at often, is perhaps 50 feet away from where the tractor-trailer rigs pull in to offload their tanker trailers full of fresh milk from surrounding dairies. These aren’t light duty…quite the opposite, they’re the BIG machines, Kenworths, Peterbuilts, and Freightliners, that pull dual tankers filled with heavy liquid behind the tractor. Anyway, as I had just staged my service truck and was getting out of the cab, the driver of a massive Freightliner came up to me to ask if I had jumper cables, as his rig wouldn’t start. I told him, “Boy, did you run into the right guy!” I went on to explain how my service truck had every conceivable cable and or battery combination he could want. He seemed relieved I was willing to lend a hand.

He followed me around to the back and came inside my truck’s workshop on wheels. He was a bit taken back at the stainless steel workbench, the roll-out extending drill press and flip-out bench grinder, the microwave, the stereo system sporting a 10 inch JL Audio sub, and the inverter system with its bank of 6 Trojan T-145s. He took one look at all the batteries on board, and said “Yeah, I can see you don’t have any shortage of power on board this truck!” About that time, the pair of trucker from the adjacent big rig came in to have a look-around in my work truck. Of course, they had to have a demo of the sound system, so I cranked it up with U2’s latest CD…they got quite a kick out of the tunes.

What really got them going though, was when I told them how I was going to jump start the Freightliner….that’s when I pulled the twin Hawker 24V jump start set off the shelf. One of the truckers said, “Those tiny things aint gonna do nuthin.” I just laughed and said, “We’ll see about that.” I then tried to quickly get them up to speed, telling them how I was an electric car drag racer, and how using 28 of the tiny batteries, I used to pull 800 amps form them and run low 13’s. I then added that the car now runs high 12’s….this raised their collective eyebrows! I next told them the little batteries were 8 years old,
but that they would start the dead Freightliner in 30 seconds or so….more jabs and doubts from the truckers.

I grabbed the 8 gauge 12 foot alligator jumper leads, my LEM clamp-on ammeter, and handed the twin Hawker pack to the trucker looking to get the jump start. The four of use went over to his rig. The starting pack consisted of four, 75 lb. group 31 AGM starting batteries, all in parallel, with 4 gauge cables! The engine was gigantic, a Cat 310, 385 hp diesel. As I told them what was about to happen before their eyes, all of them thought I was nuts. I confidently proclaimed that the little batteries would effortlessly boost his pack up in just 30 seconds….they didn’t believe a word of any of it… a classic moment. Who could blame them? This massive tractor had 300 lbs. of batteries just to start the damn thing! Now, here was this kook of a guy with these tiny batteries and little cables about as big around as a thin pencil with medium sized alligator clips on the ends, telling them it was going to fire up a monster Cat diesel…..yeah, right! The other driver of the Peterbuilt tractor was laughing at me, but I simply said, “I bet you it starts in 30 seconds.” At this point, he pulls his wallet from his back pocket, opens it up, and displays hundred dollar bills, saying, “OK, how much you wanna put up?” Confident to the point of being annoying to them, I smiled and said, “You know, I just can’t in good conscience, take your money, so put it away.” He just laughed, thinking he had backed me down from my proclamation of what was about to happen.

To add to the dramatics of it all, I asked the trucker to get in his rig and try to turn it over, saying, “I want to see just how dead it is.” The other driver, the Peterbuilt guy, took this as a sign I was loosing my confidence and snickered some more…I ignored him. With the twist of the key, the Cat’s giant starter motor went, “CLICK-Uhhhh—RRRRRR”….then, silence as the starter stalled. I said, “Yup, those are some dead batteries!” And with that, I instructed the driver to stay in the cab, and wait till I gave him the go ahead to try to start again. I then snapped the Anderson connectors together between the Hawker pack and the 12 foot jumper cable set, secured the one lead, and clamped the ammeter around the second lead as I clipped it onto the other battery post. With an ample spark and a nice “SNAP”, the Hawkers did their thing and sent 130-140-150, then settled back to around 130 amps into the four big 12V batteries, as I began timing the boost for 30 seconds. I pointed out to my audience, that the tiny batteries were charging the truck’s batteries at more than 100 continuous amps….more raised eyebrows. The 8 gauge cables started to get pretty hot in a hurry, but that’s what keeps things safe and the current at reasonable levels. At the 30 second mark, I said, “Hit it.” The big starter spun over like crazy as the Cat diesel barked to life and fired up in seconds with ease! I then, unclipped the Hawkers and looked up to see the Peterbuilt guy’s jaw hanging open in total disbelief! I guess it’s hard for non EVer types to understand how a battery pack so small you can hold it in one hand, can do the work of 300 lbs. of batteries. I of course, restated that the batteries had been brutalized for years at the drag track, and that they were eight years old.

See Ya….John Wayland

This year’s EV drag racing season is going to be a very active one for me. I’ve got two racing projects on boil at the same time, the new fortified 288V White Zombie, and the Purple Phaze minitruck 156V high current drag truck. Bother are moving ahead nicely, I’m happy to report, but this post will concentrate on the new ’single motor’ for White Zombie, the Siamese 8.

Having pulled the twin 8 motor drive from the car, my electric motor rebuilder, Jim Husted of Hi Torque Electric and I have been hard at work. To get rid of vibration and losses, I needed to somehow, shorten the long twin 8 drive about 3 inches in order to make the rearmost section (the front motor’s brush end bell) clear the car’s front frame rail…this, so the twin motor drive unit could drop down and be positioned parallel to the road surface instead of at the angle it’s been at. Having the drive unit shorter will not be enough to affect this result, as the car’s cross member also needs to be redesigned with a reinforced C shaped cut-out to allow the twin motor drive to sit lower. Finally, the steering tie rod is also in the way and would need to be modified.

Currently, both motors are identical, with the standard 1.125 inch keyed output shafts and with smaller 3/4 inch rear shafts on their brush end bells. The front motor’s rear shaft does nothing, other than get in the way, while its main output shaft that points towards the rear of the car is coupled to the rear motor’s rear brush end bell shaft. The floating coupler makes noise and vibration, and the keyway of the front motor’s output shaft shaft is hogged out and was ready to break. The rear motor’s output shaft was mated to a Dutchman flange coupler which had come loose and was wobbling…time for are a rethink of things.

Enter the solution….we’ve come up with a new, one piece motor that is essentially, the two motors joined at their heads, the Siamese 8. It will have one common shaft, four bearings, brush end bells at each end of the motor, and dual cooling fans in the mid section. The splined output shaft exits out one of the brush end bells, modified with an aluminum ‘cap plate’ that will house the output bearing sandwiched to the brush end bell bearing. The armatures will be carefully positioned so that combar segments line up exactly with one another.

Building it is very interesting. A custom long shaft is being machined with a larger diameter center ‘bump’ and a long splined final shaft end. Assembly goes like this….the center mid-shaft bearing will be pressed on first. Next, the re-machined output end bell of one motor will go on and mate to the center bearing. On the other side of the bump, the second custom center section bell goes on, also mating to the center bearing. Next, each fan gets pressed on behind the bells, followed by each armature. The motor bodies with their fields then slide over and fit into the center bell section, where custom brackets then pull them together and make up the new long motor body. The modified brush end bells have thick, arced copper busses hand warped and copper-welded to interconnect the brush riggings, replacing the wimpy 6 gauge factory brush interconnect leads…a trick I used on my race modified Kostov years ago for higher current transfer between brushes. Both end bells will be painted inside with dielectric coating, too. One of the brush end bells will then have the cap plate and output bearing, where the long splined output shaft will exit.

The result, will be a new super long Siamese 8 motor that doesn’t require the bulky aluminum dual motor mount anymore, and that will be about 6 inches shorter than the previous twin motor setup. Without the mount under and around the motor case, the new motor will sit lower, too, and just clear the steering tie rod. The cross member, however, still needs to be modified.

I’m working with Exide on a fresh set of batteries for both White Zombie and Purple Phaze, and right now, it looks to be a good thing that this will happen. With the higher power the 288V pack can deliver, with the new motor, and with the new aluminum driveline and zero vibration at high revs, White Zombie should be running consistant mid to low 12’s this year.

As things progress, I’ll give updates.

See Ya…John ‘Plasma Boy’ Wayland