Electric conversion: Project ForkenSwiift

[skewbe]

Hmm, you probably have a lot of those cables to make. Do they all need to be flexibe?

[MetroMPG]

One of my first thoughts was to bend up a bunch of copper tubing and make buss bars for the interconnects for the batts that are grouped close together. But the impression I get from the EVDL is that solid buss bars are failure prone / loose prone, and that steered me off that path.

[Bill in Houston]

Can you tin the cable before you put it into the lug? Might keep it from wicking up so much of the solder in the lug.

[MetroMPG]

Might be a multi-step process to let things cool down in between.

[Gary Palmer]

You might try using a damp rag around the cable, to help keep the cable from getting hot enough to wick the solder up. You should also be careful to not use any more heat than just enough to get the solder to flow at the joint of the wire and the pipe. Any more heat than that and it seems to create a oxidation on the copper which is resistant to the solder sticking.

[MetroMPG]

Gary - good ideas. Can't use the cooling rag though, since the wire has heavy insulation above where it's stripped.

[MetroMPG]

Heard back from the forklift place. $7 CAD per lug - yikes!

I found similar ones on evparts.com for $3.60 US each, however there's shipping and currency exchange on top of that.

[skewbe]

Can you solder the heck out of the end of the cable then hammer it flat and drill it? (or pre-flatten then solder then flatten and drill?)

[MetroMPG]

We have a winner! I suggested exactly that to Ivan this evening.

PS - Ivan wasn't too happy with my home-made lugs (I will post some pics). He rightly pointed out that while the mechanical connection may be good, the flattened end of the copper pipe was much thinner than the lugs we have. So it wouldn't have had the same current capacity. Whether it would actually have been a problem or not in our application is another question...

[MetroMPG]

DIY vs OEM...