Anyone know where I can get a workshop manual for an Excite 64

T1 Terry

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Location
Mannum South Australia
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MG4 SE SR
I'm new here, so be gentle. I am in Australia, so you can't come around and egg my house for what I want to do :lol:
I recently bought a stat write-off MG4 from a salvage auction and want to use it as a donor to convert my '74 VW Kombi to electric.
A workshop manual or You Tube videos on how to dismantle the whole car would be very helpful, both to avoid damaging anything and avoid making an ass of myself ....

T1 Terry
 
Sounds like quite a project. You'll have to post it on Youtube as you go along or get a TV company interested.
Good luck and I hope you know what you are doing around EV batteries and the high voltages they produce.
 
I'm new here, so be gentle. I am in Australia, so you can't come around and egg my house for what I want to do :lol:
I recently bought a stat write-off MG4 from a salvage auction and want to use it as a donor to convert my '74 VW Kombi to electric.
A workshop manual or You Tube videos on how to dismantle the whole car would be very helpful, both to avoid damaging anything and avoid making an ass of myself ....

T1 Terry

Calling all Australian members, collect eggs and meet at Terry's house this afternoon... :LOL:
 
I'm new here, so be gentle. I am in Australia, so you can't come around and egg my house for what I want to do :lol:
I recently bought a stat write-off MG4 from a salvage auction and want to use it as a donor to convert my '74 VW Kombi to electric.
A workshop manual or You Tube videos on how to dismantle the whole car would be very helpful, both to avoid damaging anything and avoid making an ass of myself ....

T1 Terry
That's a huge project, and I wish you luck with it. Rear wheel drive EV for a rear wheel drive VW, makes sense to me. Please keep us updated with progress.
 
Wow, thank you very much, that should keep me busy for the new few yrs just reading all that stored knowledge, and I've only opened the first two links :rolleyes:

T1 Terry

Sounds like quite a project. You'll have to post it on Youtube as you go along or get a TV company interested.
Good luck and I hope you know what you are doing around EV batteries and the high voltages they produce.
Thank you for your interest. I've been playing with my two Priuses, so only around the 200vdc range so far, only managed to get myself once with the extended range 74 cell LFP battery, that was enough (around 270vdc) to learn not to use the metal body to hold your balance while touching a cell terminal, disconnect the negative terminal first :oops: 40 plus yrs as an auto mechanic and do a dumb thing like that ....

T1 Terry

It's not an MG4 but it is MG, and it is Australian:



This bloke has a few related videos worth a watch.

Thank you Kiwi, I will watch them in the breaks between rewiring the 240-vac electrical system in my just purchased motorhome so all the circuits are double pole and the 15 amp ones separated from the main GPO circuits. Then I can finish wiring up the 24v 5kva Victron inverter, I've at least finished sorting the 12v circuits and 24v circuits and routed them separate to the 240v stuff ..... some people seem to like living on the edge when it comes to wiring, I'm not one of them :lol:

T1 Terry

There is an Aussie at reinCARnation on youtube who has a series converting the MG electrics internals into a Porsche. Really good info.
Thank you Big Al, I'll add those to the watch list

T1 Terry

Calling all Australian members, collect eggs and meet at Terry's house this afternoon... :LOL:

Ohmlettes anyone ?

You might get some resistance to that ;)

Get your hat and go ohm before you get hertz ?


Great to see such an informative site has members with a similar warped sense of humour as I have :lol:
You'll need a good throwing arm to get from the road to the house, the ferocious mexican hunting dog will attack if you get too close (chihuahua) :eek:

T1 Terry

That's a huge project, and I wish you luck with it. Rear wheel drive EV for a rear wheel drive VW, makes sense to me. Please keep us updated with progress.
Thanks, it sounded straight forward ... until I started reading the links to all the PDF's @ leonkerman put up for me to read o_O I'm not sure how they got all that gear in one vehicle and still have room for seats :lol:

T1 Terry


Yes, seriously, it's a really interesting project and do keep us up to date with it. Pictures would be good!
When I get started, there are a number of forums I have to post the progress on, including the AEVA forum (Australian Electric Vehicle Association) where I'm a member.

T1 Terry
 
Great to see such an informative site has members with a similar warped sense of humour as I have :lol:
You'll need a good throwing arm to get from the road to the house, the ferocious mexican hunting dog will attack if you get too close (chihuahua) :eek:

T1 Terry
Wishing you the best of luck with the job there - hope you’re keeping pictures for the before and after story. ?
 
As I mentioned in the opening post. This vehicle has been in a collision with either a tree or a white post on the right hand front. The lower ball joint has popped, the lower control arm is bent up at 45* at the point the lower ball joint bolts on, the right hand front guard is crumpled, headlight and other bits missing on the right hand side ... and the steering wheel and passenger dash airbags have deployed. It has been sitting for a while and the 12v battery is completely drained.

I put a charger on the 12v battery today. Things clicked and shuffled and what ever, then the 4 way flashers came on. Went through the process of trying to get it to drive, I could release the park brake and select neutral, but that was it. The dash beeps and a warning to evacuate vehicle shows on the display in front of the steering wheel .... and that's about it. Still can't turn the steering, nor could I get it to stop flashing lights and telling me to evacuate.
I disconnected the main positive cable and that shut everything down and I've left the charger running on "Power Supply Mode" (because I couldn't get that to do anything else either) it says it's putting 2.2 amps into the battery .... and I'll try again tomorrow.

T1 Terry
 
Mmm. It's not sounding like the very best case scenario, but I guess you anticipated that.
I was hoping for the best, while being prepared for the worst, it was a stat write off after all. Today is predicted to exceed 40°C, so it might be a good time to read through the manuals @loenkernan posted the link to access, in the hope something turns up there. Also a Google search on how to bypass a deployed airbag might shed some light on the subject.

The steering did work on the back of the tilt tray when the operator put his jump pack battery across the 12V battery terminals, so that is a new fail item .....

T1 Terry
 
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I put a charger on the 12v battery today. Things clicked and shuffled and what ever, then the 4 way flashers came on. Went through the process of trying to get it to drive, I could release the park brake and select neutral, but that was it. The dash beeps and a warning to evacuate vehicle shows on the display in front of the steering wheel .... and that's about it. Still can't turn the steering, nor could I get it to stop flashing lights and telling me to evacuate.
That incarnation Youtube channel had something similar, there was a module that detected it had been in a crash and from then on it couldn't be reset.
Removing that module made everything else forget about the accident.

It was only a couple of videos back.

btw, that was @siteguru 's site I linked to, he's the one who grabbed the stuff from MG.
 
The steering did work on the back of the tilt tray when the operator put his jump pack battery across the 12V battery terminals, so that is a new fail item
Presumably, the battery contactors aren't going to come on until they see the all clear from a higher authority (ECU), so the DC-DC won't be working, so the 12 V battery will be dead or weak. I'd say that the power steering takes a lot of current from the 12 V battery, and with a weak charger across a nearly dead auxiliary battery, the power steering isn't going to work. Once the 12 V battery is fully charged and/or replaced, that may well come back. Though operating the power steering without a solid auxiliary battery might have blown a fuse I suppose.

Normally, the 12 V battery will be getting 100+ amps of assistance from the DC-DC when power steering is needed (i.e. you would usually be in ready mode, hence the DC-DC would be operating).
 
Thank you both. I found a thread on this forum MG ZS EV OBD software for airbag reset etc regarding the "evacuate vehicle" warning and how to sort the problem.
Hopefully, disconnecting the airbag ECU and the ABS ECU will not stop the vehicle main computer from operating.

Thank you Coulomb for the info regarding the power steering being 12v, I hadn't thought of that ...

T1 Terry

Finally got the screen to light up, it shows 268km on the odometer, can't hope for much newer than that.
I'm guessing the lane departure caught someone by surprise and speared them off to the right and into a white pole, there was a drill core like piece of timber in the hole where the tow coupling screws into .... definitely not a feature I want to transfer to the Kombi, they are enough of a handful in a cross wind, without the steering going bonkers as well .....

T1 Terry
 

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