Hello John,
I am also using the same Nissan Leaf battery modules. I made my own buss bars using pure copper soft draw air condition tubing that comes in 50 foot or 100 foot rolls. Use the 3/8 inch OD tubing for the cell mid test studs and use the 1/2 inch OD tubing for the power studs. To straighten out the tubing, we use the same method when we roll out large copper wire, by having some one standing on one end of the tubing and another person rolling it out on a hard floor surface. After rolling the tubing out, it will have a slight bend it, but this will straighten out by pressing it out. First cut the tubing with a tubing cutter in the lengths you need. I press the tubing by using a large 4 to 6 inch wide jaw vise. You can either purchase aluminum jaw covers or can make them by using 1/4 inch thick angle aluminum. I glue a series of round magnets on this aluminum angle so it will stay on the vise jaws. This jaw cover will protect the copper tubing from being mark up with the vise jaw teeth. When placing the copper tubing to be press, make sure you place the tubing with the curve facing the jaws openings in the vise. This curve is so slight, so make sure you mark it for the right orientation. I had to use a cheater bar over the vice jaw handles. Use a length of ridged steel pipe that will slip over the handles. If you can find a gorilla to help you, this will work too. Next, mark out the distance of the holes, center punch, and drill the holes. To drill these holes I use a drill press with a drill press vice. Use a drill bit that has a small center bit in the larger bit combination. This gives a cleaner cut. After you drill the holes, you can use a larger standard drill bit, like a 1/2 inch bit to use to slightly ream the sharp edges of the drilled holes. The studs are about 5/16 inch in diameter, so I use a 3/8 drill bit to make the holes. You do not need any contact paste on these buss bars connections, because they are a copper to copper contact. Before installing buss bars to any electrical connection, make sure you clean the buss bars with either alcohol or lacquer thinner. After cleaning and installing the bus bars, do not touch them with your bare fingers. Use those throw away latex gloves that you can get by the box. Just touching the bars leaves a oil that can increase the resistance of the bar. Torque the to about 60 inch pounds using a inch pound torque wrench. I cover the handles with black foam air condition insulation, which can be slip on or off. Roland ----- Original Message ----- From: John Lussmyer via EV<mailto:ev@lists.evdl.org> To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List<mailto:ev@lists.evdl.org> ; Jay Summet<mailto:j...@summet.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 11:27 AM Subject: [EVDL] Seeking Advice: Reusing the battery modules from a NissanLeaf On Tue Mar 24 10:10:43 PDT 2015 ev@lists.evdl.org<mailto:ev@lists.evdl.org> said: >I'd like to hear any first hand accounts or links to >tutorials/howto's/photos of anybody who has done this before. Well, I have 120 modules in my F250 conversion. >4) Does anybody sell bus-bars that would be appropriate for a 3-5 cell >parallel pack? If I make them myself, any suggestions for material type, >size/width? The plan is to connect each "pack" of 3 cells in series >using my existing lead acid connection cables. (basically, replacing 20 >6 volt batteries with 16 7-8 volt batteries...) I had mine made out of 1/4" thick copper at a local machine shop. I also bought slighly longer bolts to hold the busbars to the modules, since the original bus bars are pretty thin. >As one Leaf has 48 cells, I'm using 3 cell packs for now, but am >considering leaving room to expand each pack into 4 or 5 cells >later...(extra holes on one/both ends of the bus-bars that stick out a >bit...) That would make things MUCH harder. The modules are held together by long rods that go through the entire stack. You'd need to put module-sized spacers between modules to leave room for future expansion. There are also heavy metal end-plates at each end of a stack. -- Worlds only All Electric F-250 truck! http://john.casadelgato.com/Electric-Vehicles/1995-Ford-F-250<http://john.casadelgato.com/Electric-Vehicles/1995-Ford-F-250> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub<http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub> http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org<http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org> For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA>) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20150324/d476ce58/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
