The third day started of with a surprise from the Grounds department. They dropped of a second utility vehicle for parts. The newer UTV has some usable parts such as the hood, transmission, doors, and wind shield. The body is a little bit more rusty than the previous vehicle, but I think we can salvage some parts out of it.

After quickly removing the power and drivetrain out of the vehicle, we were able to open up the transaxle. This time we had the shift fork. The only problem is the bearings for the input shaft were in pieces.

Next steps are:
1. Fix the Transaxle
2. Mount the electric motor
3. Purchase sprockets and a belt to drive the transaxle
4. Install all of the electronics
5. Misc: such as cleaning and testing various systems

I hope that we can get more students involved in this project. Please email me at omar@siu.edu, if you are interested in working on the EUV.

The Utility vehicle was in an immobile condition when we first received it. Things were very apparent when we noticed that the engine did not have a drive belt connecting it to the transmission. In addition, the transmission seemed to make a strange noise.

The first thing we needed to do was to clean up our work area. After clearing out our work area, we started to dismantle the transaxle. We found that someone had already gone in before us and took out the shift fork. 

While part of the team was working on the transaxle, the other half started to work on the electronics of the EUV. We started to take unnecessary circuits out of the vehicle for weight reduction.

The motor will be in soon. Next items on the list is fabricating a way to drive the axles using the electric motor. The question is, will we have a differential or a solid locked axle?

More picture and posting will be up as the project progresses.

The School of Information Systems and Applied Technologies has graciously invited our program to work with them in building an Electric Vehicle. The goal is to build an electric utility vehicle that will be used by the worm farm program on campus. I hope that this venture will be the first of many.

First Work Day

The students started to take out the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), Fuel tank, Drivetrain and other components. The students that are working on the project are: Eric Anderson, Jin Woo, Nagib Karim, Dang Nguyen, Jains Ruff, Piotr Debowski, and Alex Richards. We have also started to remove some body panels to see where we can install the EV components.

Project
The Electric Utility Vehicle will use one 3 phase AC motor and 16 Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFeYPo4) 3.2v 100AH batteries. In addition, the EUV will be designed with regenerative braking capabilities to increase efficiency.

Pictures of the first work day.