Vehicle Mounts Refined for Year 3

This was a very busy week for Mary the Malibu! We have been inspecting many of the mounts found in our vehicle. We’re doing this to either improve their design or to remake them out of aluminum to shave of some pounds.

The mount to the high voltage distribution box (HVDB) has been redesigned and is now made out of aluminum. Just as it sounds, the HVDB is responsible for distributing the high voltage electricity from the lithium-ion battery modules to the high voltage components under the hood. The HBVD also got a new home and was moved to the top of the P2 inverter to increase serviceability.

New HVDB mount.

We have also been redesigning our Bursa mount, which is found in the trunk of the vehicle. It's responsible for changing the current of charge to the energy storage system. The former mount was made of steel, so we redesigned it and made it out of 6061 T6 aluminum instead! The final product shown on the right.

We are now trying to think up ways to redesign the Micro Auto Box Controller (MAB), which was donated by sponsor dSPACE. The former mount was made out of heavy steel, but with the use of the PlasmaCAMM cutter, we are prototyping ways of light weighting this mount. There isn’t a final product yet, so stay tuned!

Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for day-to-day updates and progress.

Do you have any experience with light weighting? Help us by leaving a comment below.

Build Upate 2.3.14

Virginia Tech may have gone on Christmas break, but many team members stayed hard at work in the Ware Lab. They spent the majority of their time working on getting an engine test stand operational. The goal of this task was to validate our engine controls and to improve the engine harness by rewiring several of the signals. Task completed.

After the engine was rewired and it was working on its own, we added our custom P2 generator motor to the stand. Then we added the wiring for the inverter to the engine harness. Validation complete.

Wiring harness for engine test stand.

What’s next?!

Over the course of the next week, we plan to add the transmission, the third and final piece of the front powertrain, to the test stand as well. We also plan to validate more of our front powertrain controls and determine whether we have solved our transmission leak issue we've been having.

Once we can check off those tasks, the powertrain will be reinstalled into Mary and she will finally be ready to roll as a charge-sustaining hybrid!