• Welcome to the Land Rover UK Forums

    You are currently viewing the site as a guest and some content may not be available to you.

    Registration is quick and easy and will give you full access to the site and allow you to ask questions or make comments and join in on the conversation. If you would like to register then please Register Now

Series III Full Electric Conversion

g00se78

g00se78

Accelerating Away
Hi, first post so I'll jump in with both feet.

Over the past few months I've been collecting parts to do a full electric conversion on my 1978 Land Rover Series III. This car already has an upgraded 19J engine, discs on front and the larger rear drums, so is a good candidate.

The basic plan is to use the motor and inverter stack from a Nissan Leaf, along with a 24 kWh battery pack. Everything is reversible, so I'm not committing too many crimes against a classic vehicle.

The standard output of the Leaf motor is roughly twice that I have from the current diesel engine, but with full torque delivered pretty much from zero revs. Not sure what the final weight will be, but I'll try and weigh it before the conversion for comparison. Range I'm guessing will be around 50-80 miles, depending on speed driven.

I'll also be carrying out a bit of a refresh on the car. Mechanicals aren't bad, but everything could do with a refresh and paint. I have a few rust holes to deal with, which I know will shock some people.

I'll keep a track of conversion costs. Currently estimating around £6k, but I'm sure I'll go over that once complete.

Any questions, please fire away. I'll try and answer them as best as I can.
 
I'm interested in seeing how this works out. I see a lot of talk about Tesla this and that, but i'm quite keen on butchering other probably older hybrid vehicles for the electric stuff if I were to go down this route. Surely cheaper too.
 
Good to hear this might be of some interest.

I've looked at a few options for the conversion, but the main reason for using Nissan Leaf parts is there is plenty of spares availability, generally good Japanese reliability and an active modding and hacking community for the inverter side. I don't have any high end coding skills, so I'm hoping this sort of conversion could be done by anyone who can do standard car wiring - albeit the 400v systems for EVs are a bit more dangerous if handled incorrectly.

IMG_9716.jpeg

This is the candidate for the engine swap.

IMG_9527 (2).jpeg


It's already had an engine swap before to the 19J TD. It will be good to tidy the engine bay up a bit.

IMG_9337.jpeg


This is the motor and inverter stack. From initial measurements it's a perfect fit and should give me a bit more space in the engine bay. One of the things I like about the SIII is I can take all the wings and panels off to give me space to work!

4A19BAC2-5E6A-43B3-8AB1-D8CB3BCA6AA7.jpeg


I've already disassembled the Leaf battery pack. These modules can be broken down and distributed around the car. I'm thinking to put some under the front seats and the rest between the chassis rails above the diff. Trying to keep the weight low and fairly central.

The Leaf pack is designed to be passively cooled, so I don't need any complex cooling for the batteries.

The motor will need coolant - but I'll hook this up to the existing radiator (overkill probably), with an electrically driven water pump.

No power steering to worry about, but I will need to add an electric vacuum pump for the servo brakes.

Motor stack will connect to the current gearbox so I still have full AWD capability. Odometer and speedo are driven from the gearbox, AIUI, so that won't be affected.

Brakes should be fine, and I will have regen braking with this motor, so they won't get used as much.

Not sure what the final weight will be for the whole car, but I'm hoping less than 200 kg over the current weight (that's just a wild guess). Motor weighs less, and I'm going to strip a bunch of parts from the car, but the battery cells are probably 250 kg all in.

The other thing you get with electric motors is very good torque control. This car is already quite good off-road, so adding electric should make it really good. :)
 
welcome to the forum, i will be very interested to see how this pans out. there has been a lot of discussions about the viability of going electric before now, if it will work out for you though then fair play. i'm certainly not against the idea, especially if its all completely reversible, so i will be following this. be sure to keep up with updates, i couldnt find much on home conversions.

could the battery carrier sit under the rear floor? when i have considered things like this before that was always where i thought it would go. not been under a 88 in a long time but with the 109 its just a big void that seems pretty safe from damage. it would also keep the weight low and centred.
 
There is a nice void just below the tub rails where batteries could sit and with a little ducting be very nicely cooled down. Might need a guard depending on how off-roady things will get.
As you won't be needing the fuel tank, I suspect a fair few of them will fit there regardless. Though I assume the more you can realisitcally fit in, the further the range.
It's hard to scale the motor unit from the photo, but you saying it will actually be smaller than the normal series/TD/200/etc type engine is interesting. It looks almost upsidedown!
If it ends up being less than £10k for the conversion then it has me very interested indeed.
 
Yes, that’s where I’m thinking. Place batteries where the fuel tank/battery bay would normally go in my car, then some more under the rear tub. I want to do it so you wouldn’t know it’s an EV and don’t lose any cargo space.

More batteries means more range and potentially more power. But in reality you just spend more and get a 30 kWh or 40 kWh pack, which takes up the same space.

The Nissan modules come with handy frames, which I can tie into the chassis rails and outriggers.

The motor/inverter stack is slightly smaller than the current engine block. The motor itself is quite small, it’s all the power electronics that take up the space. Theoretically they could be mounted elsewhere in the engine bay, but Nissan make it easy to keep it in one place with all the cooling.
 
I'll also be following along quite closely, as I believe a similar conversion is in the future of a fair few series in the next decade or so.

I doubt many people on here will take offence to you future proofing your series, but I know some other forums might not be quite as accepting...
 
It's nice to see the actual nuts and bolts of the conversion laid bare.
I'd think the best place for the heavy stuff is where the previous fuel tanks were located, with a nice thick steel bash plate.
Remember that military versions had a tank either side, it's a simple matter to weld on a NS tank outrigger
 
jsybearpig said:
Very interested to follow your progress.
Also worth checking out Jaunt from Australia (https://youtube.com/c/Jauntmotors) - they go into a lot of detail about how they’re doing their conversions (battery placement, etc).
Click to expand...
Yeah, I watched his videos with interest. Although his approach (similar to others) is a completely custom setup. Very nice job it was though

My aim for this conversion is to keep it as ‘OEM’ as possible. So if a part goes wrong you just phone up the scrappy and order it. Should avoid potential obsolescence issues as well as keep the price down. People are always crashing Nissan Leafs it seems. :)
 
30EK42 said:
I'd think the best place for the heavy stuff is where the previous fuel tanks were located, with a nice thick steel bash plate.
Click to expand...
Yep, and keep the weight low.

Nissan did a good job of keeping everything watertight in the Leaf, so I’d like to try and do the same here.

Electric motors don’t need air to work, so no need for a snorkel. ;)
 
Serious Series said:
Are the batteries and other electrics fully waterproofed?
Click to expand...
Less so now I've taken the battery cells out of their protective enclosure. :)

I intend on making new waterproof enclosures once I've fitted them to the chassis.

The OEM HV connecters are rather neat and water resistant. As is the inverter/motor stack.
 
IMO the Series Land Rover is probably the most apt vehicle to convert to electric drive.
Lots of space for the batteries all over.
I thought of doing it long before the electric car became common.
At that time control gear was best without any semiconductors, just basic mechanical switching.
It was buying all the lead-acid batteries that put me off doing it.
Now the world is your oyster for electric drive gear.
I presume if the gearbox is staying in place it will be driven almost all the time in top gear?
Or is that going too?
 
Back
Top Bottom