2005 Early

Motor

Pulled the twin motor drive unit out of the car and converted the two 8 inch motors into world's first 'Siamese 8'.

The two motors were torn down and all parts were rebuilt. Next, various hot rod tricks were applied, new parts were designed and created, and after motor artisan Jim Husted of 'Hi-Torque Electric' and Plasma Boy came up with a plan, a custom extra-long stainless steel shaft was fabricated by 'Dutchman Motorsports'. Below is an early drawing of the proposed extra-long motor shaft required to make the Siamese 8 motor possible.

The two armatures were conjoined at their heads as they were pressed onto the new shaft with their respective commutator ends at the far ends of the shaft, who's large splined output end mates into the female splines of the new aluminum driveshaft.

Drive type

Direct drive. No reverse.

Driveshaft

Replaced two piece steel driveline with its center carrier bearing, to a new large diameter single piece all aluminum driveline from 'Inland Empire Drivelines'. Driveline loop.

Rear axle

Dutchman heavy duty Street-strip Ford nine inch rear axle setup with 31 spline racing axles, 4:57 gears and Detroit locker. Air shocks & traction bars.

Wheels & Tires

Front - Eagle 5 spoke 13 x 5.5 alloys with 4 bolt Nissan rear drive offset and 175/50/13 Nitto Exit GS radials.

Rear - Eagle 5 spoke 14 x 6 alloys with 5 bolt Ford front drive offset and BF Goodrich 'TA Drag Radials' (24" dia.)

Batteries

Removed and replaced the 24 Orbitals @ 288V with 29 smaller 12 volt, 24.5 lb. Hawker 'Aerobatteries' 26 ahr @ 348V nominal, 710 lbs. total pack weight. The original rear seat area enclosure that had been in the car since '98 had finally outlived its usefulness and was removed. (center) An all new tray was designed and built to hold the new batteries. (right) A new base plate and new hold-downs were made to secure the rear batteries into the sunken well area.

Controller

Removed and replaced the Godzilla 1400 amp controller with Cafe Electric's new 'Zilla' 2000 amp controller (left) and Hairball interface (right) featuring programable automatic series-parallel contactor control. The aluminum plate that held the Godzilla 1400 amp controller and bridged over the previous dual motors between the two strut towers was removed. The new Siamese 8 electric motor (center) is in full view with easy access. The new Zilla Z2K controller (right) is now mounted on an aluminum bracket mounted to the right fender inner panel, while the 'Hairball' interface and the three series-parallel contactors (left) are on a mirror image bracket on the left fender inner panel. At the time of the eft and center photos, the Hairball and contactors wiring had not yet been done and the controller was not yet wired up. The high current motor bus bars and cables shown in the center photo were later changed to the different wiring scheme as shown in the rightmost photo under the above 'Motor:' category.

One of the advantages of the Hairball & Zilla combination, is the ability to capture data and plot it to see how the car's electric traction system is performing. The graph below clearly shows how the battery pack reacts to the heavy loading of the Zilla controller, where the motor sections wiring shift from Series to Parallel occurs (peak 1/4 across the graph), and other vital information.

Due to the new location of the controller, it's cooling tank and pump was relocated to the firewall location.

12 volt system

The factory 12V starting battery mount that had held the twin small Exide 12V batteries was cut-away to make room for the new aluminum mount plate that holds the Hairball Interface. A single 8 year old (still in great condition with 12.85 static volts) 13.5 lb. Hawker Genesis 16EP 12V 16 ahr battery replaced the previous pair of 12V batteries and was located at the leading area of the new mount plate:

We also removed the 1st gen. 20 amp Todd PC20-LV DC-DC as it was unable to operate even at 1/2 the new pack's voltage. A second generation Todd 30 amp model DC-DC converter was modified to run at 336V input and installed on the behind-the-seatback-bulkhead aluminum plate. The blue and green (with the tacky yellow crimp style butt splice connector) wires were internally connected (soldered after the converter's voltage doubler to the high voltage caps.) then routed outside and connected to the 348V battery pack.

Other Mods

  1. Made new rear seat battery box.
  2. Removed contactor bypass.
  3. Reworked quick-pull emergency disconnect with 4/0 power cable.

Car weight

2416 lbs. (est)

Races and EVents

  1. 6-25-2005 White Zombie & drag racing videos on display at Seattle's Gasless on Greenwood Car Show.
  2. 9-2-2005 'Wayland Invitational I'...best ET 12.87
  3. 9-3-2005 White Zombie on display at the 'Electric Breakfast'
  1. 9-4-2005 Final Woodburn drags...JW receives Ed Rannberg Award. (left) Tim Brehm wearing T shirt and big smile, becomes team Plasma Boy's driver and tears up the track with White Zombie. (right) Car and driver.
  1. 9Tim set a new world record best ET on his first day of driving White Zombie with a 12.598 @ 103.92 mph. Here's the time slip for the back-up run that sealed that record.

Carnage

Zorched a brush holder due to a flash-over incident during the burnout at Woodburn. Take a look at the left area under the Zombie's nose in this photo from that memerable burnout, and you can clearly see how the flash-over illuminated the pavement! Though there was way too much wheel spin off the line, Tim Brehm still pulled off a nice 12.65 @ 104 mph run with just 7 of the Siamese 8's total number of 8 brushes making contact with their respective commutator bars. Photo on right is a close-up of the rear motor section's brush end bell and the effects of the vaporized brush spring incident.

Plasmaboy Quotes

  1. Feb. 27, 2005 "The only reason White Zombie has a two piece driveline, is because with the old Ford nine inch rear axle setup, the input flange of the third member's pinion was offset 4 inches towards the passenger side. I bought the rear axle setup used from someone else's project and never changed it. In order to keep the driveline from rubbing against the tunnel wall on the passenger side, I had to use small diameter tubing. I also had to use really thick gauge steel (read that 'heavy') to handle the torque. Because it was so small in diameter and due to the long total driveline length, it required a center carrier bearing and extra U joints, as one long and small diameter driveline would have turned into twisted rubble. Now that I have the all new Dutchman competition axle set up just right with the pinion dead center in the tunnel, I am going to a 4-5 inch diameter one piece aluminum driveline...no carrier bearing, no support brackets for it, and one less U joint."
  2. "The driveline will simply slide onto the rear motor shaft, then bolt up to the input flange of the rear end....simple, reliable, stronger, lighter, and hopefully, the absolute end to all the vibration."
  3. March 5, 2005 "Last night, still in our work uniforms, and with the front of the Wayland property adorned with dual service trucks, Tim Brehm and I attacked White Zombie. After about 3 hours of wrenching, wire disconnecting, and marking and tagging of all wire looms and connectors, we pulled the twin motor drive unit out of the car."
  4. March 25, 2005 "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. 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 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."
  5. "The new motor is coming along as scheduled. Jim has done a great job so far. The armatures from the two Warfield 8's are in remarkably good condition, as are the fields. The center aluminum coupler fits outside one of the motor cases and inside the end of the other one, machined just so to make the two pieces go together like one long housing. I'll be at Dutchman Motorsports to discuss slip joint spline options. When it's essentially put together, we will run the motor on just one armature and field section, and time it's brush end bell first while we measure and record rpm and current at certain voltage. Next, the same will be done with the second armature and field section powered by itself, and we'll adjust that end bell until we get the exact rpm and current at the same voltage. In theory, both end bells should end up positioned exactly the same as to the number of degrees advance, only on opposite sides of the field center point to get these results. I'm hoping the Siamese 8 will pull about 1200 amps @ 7000 rpm."
  6. April 27, 2005 "I'm pleased to announce that I've received full battery sponsorship from Hawker and their newest division 'Hawker AeroBatteries' for White Zombie! The car will drop 350-400 lbs. of weight (compared to the current 288V version sitting in my shop) and should gain extra hp!! I'm using the Hawker AeroBatteries model AB 29, a 24.5 lb. 12V AGM with a short circuit current of 2400 amps. With just 710 lbs. of batteries and with about 50-60 lbs. in other weight savings (the lighter Siamese 8 motor, the aluminum drive line, etc.), the new 336V White Zombie will weigh about 200 lbs. less. With more hp and higher revving ability on tap, a vibrationless drive train, a free turning rear axle setup (brake drag has been eliminated), and ~ 2300 lb. curb weight, the car should run mid to low 12's this year at terminal speeds in the 107-110 mph area."
  7. May 11, 2005 "Dutchman Motorsports has completed the high strength stainless steel dual armature shaft for White Zombie's new 'Siamese 8' motor....quite simply, it's a work of art and a shame to hide it inside the new motor! Jim Husted and I went over how the new motor will go together, and everything from the color of the field sections (purple) to the new solid copper brush interconnects that will replace the wimpy stranded wire interconnects was discussed. After the armatures, center bearing, and fan are pressed onto the shaft, it will then be high speed balanced. When the armature assembly is ready, the motor gets fully assembled and hand timed. The completed Siamese 8 motor fed from a 336V supply should give White Zombie even more muscle, perhaps as high as 300 hp."
  8. "We wanted to have the new Siamese 8 setup to be as simple as possible. The new design got rid of the obvious, the two separate motors and their motor bracket-mount in favor of a single unit that still acts like two motors (25 lb. weight savings), and so it also eliminated the motor-to-motor shaft coupler. It also got rid of the rear motor output flange, the flanged U-joint coupler that attached to it, the heavy all steel two piece driveline, and the center support bracket and carrier bearing assembly. Now, there's just the Siamese 8 with its splined output shaft, and a light and strong aluminum driveshaft (10 lb. spinning mass weight savings) that slides onto the motor shaft. The new motor is also 7 inches shorter than were the twin motors on their mount bracket, so the Siamese 8 sits flat and parallel to the ground, unlike the old twin motor affair that was so long it had to sit on top of the front transverse frame rail of the car and poke downward so the back end of the rear motor would clear the tranny bell housing body tunnel."
  9. "This should be a fun year of EV drag racing. I'm planning the Wayland Invitational, a NEDRA sanctioned EVent to coincide with the Woodburn races."
  10. Pre-Wayland Invitational "I'm also working with others towards trying a 336V pack of 26 ahr Hawkers that will shave 400+ lbs. out of the car."
  11. Post-Wayland Invitational "There are many ways to convince folks to drive electric. Last Friday night White Zombie absolutely wasted a 400 hp Corvette, and absolutely wasted 'The Ultimate Driving Machine', a tweaked and tuned BWM M3. Streetable big block Chevelles are now fair game for my little 'ol electric Datsun, too."