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I'm currently in the throes of doing an electric conversion to my '70 XJ6. I bought it from the second owner with a seized engine after it had been sitting in southern California for twenty five years.
Over the past year and a half I've done the following:
- Dropped in a series 3 motor
- Took the car across the US on an 8,000 mile road trip (days after getting it running, mind you)
- Retrimmed the entire interior, done by BAS Jaguar in Palm Springs
- Took the external surfaces of the car to bare metal and resprayed it in its original color. At this time I also shaved the US side markers
- Covered the front end, hood and fenders in a clear vinyl wrap for road trip protection, and fitted LED headlights for those late night stretches
- There are many other details but the most important is the fitment of a Siemens 1pv5139 AC electric motor along with a controller of my own design. Currently the system is running on the bench and I'm about to begin teardown for the electric conversion.
I'll do my best to post updates here as I make major progress, but for now here's a quick video walk around of the machine.
Looks like I also forgot to mention that it has a Tesla model S 60 pack and DC/DC converter as of the past year or so
10 modules under the hood, 4 in the spare tire well. It’s just barely overweight up front and underweight in rear, judging roughly by suspension sag on level ground. Happy with it though!
Hey,
Dispense with the details because i kid you not, i'm doing the exact same thing! except with a 69 model.
AC or DC, what batteries will you use? how far do you want to go? performance or cruiser?
Thanks gentlemen! I'm super excited to make progress on the electric side of things. I'm an engineer by degree and trade and this has been a really awesome learning opportunity to branch into for me.
Originally Posted by itchyback
Hey,
Dispense with the details because i kid you not, i'm doing the exact same thing! except with a 69 model.
AC or DC, what batteries will you use? how far do you want to go? performance or cruiser?
okay itchyback, I'll scratch your itch.
The car will be AC direct drive (no gearbox) into the driveshaft using the aforementioned 1PV5138 siemens motor. It will be good for at least 400 ft-lb of torque so should be similar or better in performance to the original, depending on how much higher I can push that torque (shooting for 600ft-lbs). It fits directly in the space the transmission used to occupy and I've had a flange made to couple its output directly to the driveshaft.
I'm building and programming the motor inverter myself based on this circuit board: Paul and Sabrina's Cheap 3 Phase Inverter (AC Controller) with Field Oriented Control . At present, I have the board completed and fully operational, talking to my laptop over RS232 serial. Everything has checked out well so far, but I ran into a hurdle communicating with the optical encoder that senses motor position. Once I have the encoder signal reliably reaching the circuit board, I'll have the whole system running and can then work on the mechanicals.
Both the inverter and motor are water/glycol (coolant) cooled and I will be using the original radiator with them as an overkill item. Batteries, AC compressor, DC/DC converter and charger hardware are coming from a Nissan Leaf for a range of ~80 miles for the first pack.
Pack #2 should be good for at least 300 miles and is based off of a pack similar to what I do at my day job (NIO - Home).
One of the clever things that I think is really cool is that I'm converting the tachometer to be an ammeter. At full tilt, the system can consume 400-500 amps, depending on my tuning, so the tach is just a perfect range, scaled down by a factor of 10
All in all, this will be a cruiser with some decent performance used primarily as a daily driver and stealthily silent road trip car, with more trips after infrastructure catches up of course
haha, nice. I'm programming the motor to have some decent regen, enough to stop the car slowly on its own or drive with just one foot in traffic. That'll keep me off the vacuum system a bit
The brake booster is the only thing that is vacuum operated in a series 2 right?
I imagine that you could rig up some sort of a system where the pump fills a vacuum canister and is only on when the canister needs refilling. For efficiency's sake of course.
This one is a series 1, so all of the vents and the heater valve are operated by vacuum. Heater valve will be changing, but the vents will be on the same system. And lucky for me, the jag as a vacuum accumulator tank built in to take advantage of! Almost like it was built for this
My mistake, I meant to say series 1. Interesting, I was thinking the all of the ducts were mechanical in the s1 and changed to be vacuum operated on the s2. Of course I have very little knowledge of the s1 so i am not surprised to be wrong
You are going to have to get a pump that will be able to keep all of those devices fed properly and not rob tons of efficiency, although i suspect wont be too hard of needs to fill.
That reminds me, are you going to be converting the power steering pump to be electrical as well?
I've got an electric power steering pump ready for the job! I've also got to decide exactly where I want to mount that to keep it as quiet as possible. Hmmm
I just ordered my onboard 12kW charger and charge station/controller. Ouch, that was a big chunk
You can convert the vents to no vacuum with electric motors instead and the heater is easy with the VA Heater Servo. The only vacuum thing I have left
is the center vent - it could be easily converted to none vacuum. Note that I installed a GPS speedo that fits in the old speedo/tach shell and would work
in your installation perfectly. Antenna is under the center dash grill and the rest of the install is very easy...
I am looking forward to you filling the engine compartment with batteries.. Will the weight be near the old Jaguar engine and trans combined?
IRS should be able to handle the new motors torque easily. it is good for near 600 #.
Last edited by Roger Mabry; Jul 9, 2017 at 09:52 AM.
What can I say as a further compliment, that has not already been said.
1. That nest of wires and components on your bench remind me of my son's table. He developed a modernized control system for a pair of ancient mills. Wrote a program. Mills now cut blanks of alloy to form performance products. A similar but smaller one now produces stuff in plastic in similar manner.
2. The hot rod guys with engines that are cammed so as to produce limited vacuum use pumps. Electric powered.
3. Not sure the little vacuum reserve tank designed for the AC is adequate for braking. And, the hoses are puny and seem to be troublesome. Might be just age that embrittles them.
4. Batteries up front or in the boot, or both?
Addicted: I think the differential and drive line should be just fine. Tough stuff.
Electric series 1 XJ6 project
