I Bought a concept car that cost over two million dollars to build 65 people over the course of four years got together to build this van in hopes of getting a 450 million dollar loan from the government. Now it's definitely a concept car and a lot of what you see in here is totally fake. but I Gotta say they did have a few really cool ideas. The goal was a 100 mile per gallon delivery van and after speaking with the head of marketing and hearing her passion right Focus was primarily voice of the customer I was determined to get it running again.

The van they called the Bright Idea hadn't been on the road in over 12 years and I definitely ran into some issues. Okay, okay, but I managed to get the gas engine running and the vehicle moved about three inches. It's moving now. much of the government's 450 million dollars was wasted on companies that went under.

So I'm dying to see if I can get this thing to drive and to test its capabilities as a delivery van, because if it truly gets anywhere near 100 miles per gallon, that means this one-of-one concept van from 2009 had the potential to completely revolutionize the automotive industry as we know it, and this could have been a massive missed opportunity. Or maybe there's a good reason why they didn't get the Grant and this thing's not built that well. we are going to find out. Luckily we have about four hundred dollars worth of plywood back here.

No way. Get out of here. Get out of here. There's a see-through panel for the motor.

Are you kidding me right now? Then there's no screws in it. Although there's one, there's one you know what? this reminds me of. C6 Corvette ZR1 with the clear hood that this is basically that this is the clear Hood over a gigantic motor. Oh my gosh, this thing is Big.

and yeah, this bracket right here is totally broken. I Think this Mount is also broken right in here. Oh yeah, that's broken. Okay, so this is a rubber mat over a wood floor.

This is all wood. I'm gonna go ahead and assume that wouldn't have made it into the real production vehicle. This is a prototype after all. But yeah, there's a lot of wood.

and then that's carbon fiber. So this is an aluminum, carbon fiber wood steel plug-in electric hybrid concept van. It still smells like clay and I think I'm gonna be forever smelling clay. which isn't bad I kind of like it.

First thing I want to do is get the bracket off so we can have that welded. so I was about to Jack This up we have Jacksons and everything but check this out. The concept space van or whatever we're calling this thing. it's on air.

Look at this. I Hope this still works all right. It's not crusty in there or anything. changing a flat tire would really stink.

Although you'd need compressed air to do what we're about to do. but let's see, Go slow. Oh, it's moving. How much further will this go? Okay I think that's it.

Yeah, that's about it. No way this thing's on air. It's still really difficult to change a flat tire, but they probably did this because of the clay molds and all the weight that they were adding to this. They just put some pretty cheap airbags in the back.

Awesome look at how much room I have now. This is great. Well I still got a jacket up though because I need to get underneath there and see if we get this bracket off. They are definitely made it a lot easier though.

Okay, there we go. I have the motor supported so we can remove these brackets. Okay I heard it hit the floor. We're good.

There we go. Oh yeah, she's broke. The passenger side is a lot worse than the driver's side. This one is sheared off.

Okay, so it looks like there's only two bolts. one here and one here holding this bracket to the motor. Come on now, whoever put this bolt in it's gonna call you Bob Bob why'd you tighten it so much? Jeez. Oh there we go.

Okay I'm just being weak. Bob Never mind. He did a great job on this bolt. All right here we go.

Okay, there's that. Okay, it's a little scary. Not gonna lie. Okay, we need to get another.

Jack in here. I've supported the motor with another Jack just in case. I Gotta loosen up the mount on the top. Please don't hurt my hand please.

Ah Okay, yes. Oh thank you Brand idea. Thank you for not completely destroying my hands. Yes! and I will get to this top mount first the next time we do this.

Okay, look at this little stubby guy. That's all that's holding it in at the top. I might only do one side at a time. Okay, and let's see.

Yep this is a little motor mount. It's in good shape All right. we don't need to replace those. See if I can get out of here now.

Oh okay. getting old I did it I Have to weld this together but wow uh, this is. this is not good. It's missing some material I think too.

I Have an appointment with my guys at Fluid Motor Union tomorrow to get the bracket welded up. So right now let's get into some diagnosis. We have an OBD2 plug just dangling here. so we think we have a four-cylinder out of a Dodge Caliber but I Want to make sure.

Oh look at this, it lights up cool. I'm gonna turn the ignition on and we're using the Carly OBD scanner right now. it's connected via Bluetooth to my phone. So let's go to Dodge Caliber and let's go 2009 and diagnostic.

Let's see if this works At least means it's the ECU out of a Dodge Caliber it's scanning I'm so curious to see what engine faults we have in the computer. Diagnostics Complete cooling fan issue. okay, some generic codes, fuel level sensor. who knows if that's even connected.

Cooling fan again to be expected that pretty much nothing is probably connected in this case, just the bare minimum to make the engine run. But let me show you guys how cool Carly is on a fully functioning real vehicle. Harley's a very portable and easy to use OBD2 scanner and it connects directly to your cell phone and I've used this to diagnose many things like check engine lights and something. I Love is their smart mechanic feature so you don't have to be a mechanic to diagnose and fix your own vehicle.

Carly explains to you what the issues could be and even gives you diagnostic steps so you can fix it yourself and save a lot of money. Now you can use Carly to scan for codes, but you can also do coding for convenience features. It's really cool. so it's found all the control units that can be coded.

There are hundreds of options on some cars. This is one of my favorite ones. You can code lap timers into some cars. I Did this on an Audi S4 and it looks like a factory lap timer right in your cluster.

This is a Volkswagen Atlas SUV Let's let's give it a lap timer. Why not? All right. was successful. Let's see where would it be.

vehicle standard lap timer. So now we press ok and we are racing on something else That's really cool is I Just did a used car check. So this compares the mileage that's recorded in multiple control units and the VIN and it'll tell you whether or not your mileage has been tampered with. We're good.

Now you can use Carly as an OBD2 Scanner with their free version of the app. and if you guys want to do coding like you just saw, you do have to sign up for a yearly subscription. And what I love is that you can go on their website before you buy. Click on my link down below and you can see what Carly can code for your specific vehicle because on some it can do more than others.

Now the best part is if you guys click on that link and use code legit23 for a limited time, you're going to get 15 off your very own Carly OBD2 scanner. So click on the link down below. Now back to the Space Fan Billy Can you fix this? I Know you can fix this I Know you can fix this. What is it? One of one concept van bracket? It holds an electric motor in gotcha.

So right now Billy is hammering this down. He welded this up, grinded it down. You can't even tell it was welded and so the goal here is to bring these two together. This thing had Twisted in many different ways and he's just trying to duplicate its original form.

All right. this one right here. See that big divot in there? It cracked everything. So being that it cracked everything.

I've got to weld this and then fill that in too. Wow, that is too nice. look at that. I Left the welder for some strength on the back side since there's nothing that bolts on that panel.

It's beautiful. Billy Thank you again! I'm bringing the space fan by when I Get it driving nice I'm driving now I May need to get this piece reinforced in the future as clearly there was a design issue and it failed. but for now it should suffice. And a big thanks to Fluid Motor.

Union in Naperville Illinois If you need your car modified or simply repaired the first time, check them out. I'll leave all their info down below. all right back in the Grand National Parts hauler she goes and if you guys like Lambos they work on Lambos But if you're into Buick Grand Nationals you may like this guy right here. I've never seen a GMC Cyclone in person.

This is my first time This thing's got 40 000 miles. It's meant they're fixing the air conditioning on it. Mark my word people. I will have a cyclone probably a typhoon first, but that's definitely on the bucket list.

And check out what's in OJ's live with engine issues that right there. that is my dream spec typhoon. I Promise we're getting right back into the van. but just just look at this beauty.

It's got a little patina. It needs some work. It's perfect. It could be brothers.

It could be brothers with this. We're back at the shop and even though this may be temporary, I'm still going to put a little bit of black paint on here. Look at that like it never happened. Well I got a little carried away and painted the entire bracket.

It's looking much better now. This thing is a pain in the butt to squeeze through here. Oh good. Okay, there we go.

Never checked anything up that way, but desperate times call for desperate measures. All right. I think that's lined up sort of. okay.

I got it one started. We are almost there. Well you know, for the mounting of the motor we still have to figure out how to charge this battery, but we're getting there. You're gonna say I have a shop with lifts, but pushing this thing over is kind of a pain in the butt so we're working on the ground here.

it says Bosch Invent for life Like all right. Bosch Calm down All right. We don't need any inspirational quotes. We know we got to buy all your parts anyway.

Should just be like Bosh We make everything. Ah, this is a pain. You drop the washer no worse I dropped the bolts I did it. It's nothing more comfortable than resting your head on a jack.

It's a good cushy metal. Oh this is so exciting. We're totally gonna fire up this high voltage battery as low as it is right now. and I just want to see it not bounce around like crazy.

All this bolt can't turn fast enough I mean the goal is to get this thing driving I mean preferably on EV Power but at this point I'll take anything I can get I just want to be able to move this all right. Last bolts all right. Motor bracket is done. Now let's move on to figuring out if the high voltage battery is any good and if it is, how are we going to charge it? Because according to the one engineer I've been speaking with, this van is supposed to have a specific charging cable back here and all we got was Rags some wheels and Clay this is a drawer isn't it? Oh what is in this? No, there's no charger adapter.

Darn. But we got cool stuff. Hospitality Pass coupon is not valid of detached right? This is a garage pass. Okay, cool.

A bunch of business cards little metal things might use these in the shop to put bolts in. All right. I Gotta say, this storage stuff is pretty cool in here. It's aluminum, very lightweight, very well built.

Also not 100 on this box here. See yeah, just it sticks onto the wheel. Well huh? Okay, let's just go ahead and put that back there. We go.

That's good. right now we're going to plug in our safety loop like that. So now the high voltage battery is connected again down she goes there we go. the high voltage battery is under this panel right here and then we have this blue Anderson connector that says in and I believe These two leads here go right to the battery and then this black and red go to this contactor uh board I believe is what this is and then we have the two high voltage wires that are orange corrugated tube.

Then they go to black and red and then there is another Anderson connector that says out and then we have the orange connectors that go back down into the floor there and eventually lead here to the motor. All right. So we're going red, red, black to Black What do we have? 289 volts? That is Awesome guys that is seriously awesome. I've been messaging back and forth uh with Sean the engineer one of the many Engineers uh that worked on this van.

He said we should be at about 325 for a good working battery that's been normally charged. I Said maximum voltage output is 350 volts and after sitting for like 12 years, we're at 289. That's really good. So if we saw Zero we'd be in really really bad shape at that point I'd probably be looking into replacing, uh, the lithium battery.

But at 289 that means we could probably just charge this thing up. And I mean it's going to be severely degraded. We're going to find out once we get on the road. hopefully.

But that's awesome guys. That's one of the most expensive parts of this entire van. And I I Think we're gonna be okay. The voltage reading we're getting indicates about a 10 ish state of charge.

so really not bad for sitting for over a decade. But 289 volts is still enough to hurt you. So let's disconnect this guy again. There we go.

we're safe, and now let's get into this guy right here. This plug never went into production. Uh, so Sean The engineer explained to me that this is an early JH 1772, which you see on pretty much all electric cars outside of Tesla Um, and it never went into production. But my hope is that the pins from this connector will swap over into a normal J1772.

Inlet So I've ordered one of those. It's coming in tomorrow. So right now we have to disassemble this, see what kind of pins we're working with, and cross our fingers that it'll just be an easy swap. All right, let's get this.

Let's get this prototype out of here. Okay, what do we got? What do we got? Let's peel this back. We're hoping to see a total of five wires that are being used. That would be nice.

With this pulled out, we can see what's going on with the wiring to a certain extent. now. Two of these should be the signal back to the charger, but this car is using three. So I'm not exactly sure what's going on.

and I did just get my J1772 Inlet in the mail I've already disassembled this, but you can see here that we have a total of five pins, so I can pop these right out and they can be crimped into the wiring. But we don't exactly know what to do with these guys here. The thing is, we have no idea how they coded the signal on this van, so it might not be a typical J1772 protocol that communicates back with your charger to let it know that it's charging. So if this doesn't get that signal back, it's not going to send any power.

It's not going to charge the van. So right now we need to figure out what's going on with the Charger and this is one of the most hacked up things I've ever seen. I think as far as wiring goes, but see this gray wire right here? that's the ground. and they have a bolt with multiple nuts just grounding all sorts of things.

This is like a two million dollar prototype. It's the only one I've ever really seen up close myself and I am so curious now. I Want to get my hands on More Concept a prototype type type of vehicles to see if they were all built like this. like I know that this was just a show vehicle in the production one you know ideally would have been put together a lot better.

I mean they are using wood for the floor so this thing can't even really be driven in any inclement weather. but I'm just so curious. like what is going on here like this is this is this is yeah, this is what in the world is what. This is a high voltage power wire and we can see the copper strands behind the insulation I mean that that is not good.

Like what? What is this? What is this guy here? It's got nothing going to it. What in the world is any of this stuff really? What's the meaning of life? I don't know, but I want to get this van to charge so let's figure out what we can do without. you know, burning the shop down. They have no code going back, no signal, nothing.

Uh, these are those three smaller wires the yellow, blue and green and they just go to an empty connector that doesn't go to anything. I'm trying to get this charger out of here, but I believe that they built all of the cabinets around this after it was already installed. You can't get to any of the bolts from the bottom. There's a total of four of them two back here in here and you can't really get anything in here.

This would be a total nightmare to remove. I'm just gonna leave it for now. I Think we're gonna have to go to Plan B and plan B involves me chopping up a brand new extent chord that I just bought from the hardware store. So basically what most people think of as their electric car charger which is mounted on the wall is not actually the charger.

The Chargers are on board so that big thing we can't remove with a huge heat sink is an on-board charger. Essentially, what's mounted to your wall just closes two contacts and sends the power to the charger and the power takes over from there, converts it to DC power in this case to charge the battery. So The plan here is to Simply feed this car 120 volts from a normal wall plug right into that charger without having a fancy little connector. Okay, so I just pulled back all of the black electrical tape and this is what we have.

Uh yeah. So what we know right now is that this is ground for sure. This is the large gray wire and what we need to know now is what is our power and what is our neutral. So we're dealing with alternating current right now, so we're going to have three wires.

Typically white is neutral and yeah, AC neutral says right there. That's nice and then black should be power. It says volts in there. That's probably the power.

Now, because of this spaghetti bowl of wiring, we are going to double check which one is neutral in power. Let's get to testing. We're going to take a lead with an alligator clip from our multimeter. So what we're going to do now is test continuity and this should make an audible beep when we're on the right wire.

And that is definitely not it. So hopefully it's this guy. Yeah, there we go. All right.

We have continuity here. So the right one is our neutral. I'll carve a little I don't have any room to carve. Okay, that's neutral.

Clip it on right there. So now this should make our beeping sound. There we go, All right. And then we're just gonna double check our work here.

It shouldn't beep here. Nope, because that is our neutral and we're not checking continuity there. It's always good practice to go back and check over your work. So yeah.

cool, That's it. Power Neutral ground. Now black and white is industry standard, so black is the Power white is the neutral and then the other one. This pin here is going to be the ground.

now that we know that we know exactly what's going on here in our extension cord and we have to drop this off. All right. We're going to take this 35 extension cord and chop it just like that. And I'm just going to take a razor blade and we're going to cut off the insulation on the outside to expose our wires.

There we go. All right. Neutral, power, ground. Next, we're going to use these super Old Wire Strippers Because I can't find my good ones to strip the insulation off.

The wires should work. Now there we go and we'll go right down the line. There we go. All right.

Cool. Okay, so we're never going to use this prototype Inlet again. So we can just cut these wires so we know this is our neutral and then this is our power. which is black.

So I'm just gonna label it black. That's power. There's that. And then we definitely know which one is ground.

okay. and then these guys don't. They literally do nothing. So we'll just cut all these.

There we go. It's a one of one prototype early J1772 connector. This is like EV history right here. I'm Gonna Keep It All right.

Let's give ourselves a little bit more room to work with here. All right. there's this guy. Goodbye.

look at that. These these black ones. They don't go to anything at all. We'll uh, we'll tape this up and stick it back where it belongs.

All right. So on second thought, now that we've gotten all of this out, there's no reason to have this connection here in these orange wires. And we'll just do one of these. Bam Bam! Now we'll strip these off on the car neutral.

We have our heat shrink ready to go twist these guys together. All right. So I have some old school solder that doesn't have the flux in the solder itself. So we'll put a little bit on the wires and it's always best to heat up the wires from the bottom and I like to melt the solder from the bottom as well and let it kind of soak into the wires.

There we go. Perfect slide our heat shrink over. There we go. And then we have our little creme brulee if you shrink.

flame thrower Dealy! I don't know what we call this. I call it the creme Bru layer because you can creme brulee stuff. Not that I've ever done that before, but it is delicious. I Like creme brulee? All right.

here's our finished product. So we have our neutral and power. Ground is in this little corrugated tube and uh yeah, here is our extension cord plug. Pretty cool.

Before we can plug this in, we need to plug this guy back in. so this will make the connection in the high voltage battery so it will be live after this. There we go. All right now, we can charge and if this charge works in theory, this van should work again.

We should be able to move it. It should be able to power that large electric motor. that Bosch electric motor. Uh, that is now being suspended properly and held to the vehicle with a bracket and the van should move.

I think I mean who knows though, with that massive wiring? who knows. So I've opened up the big door just in case we need to push the van out in case something bad happens. But here we go guys. we're gonna plug this in.

This is a like 35 cord. This could fix our two million dollar concept van and make it work again. Or Something's Gonna Pop Oh, it's making noises. It is making noises right now.

Oh, get that. Get out. Look it. that is lighting up on its own.

No way. I Know I haven't plugged in the normal 12-volt battery just yet so we're gonna do that now. All right? Okay, uneventful. Thank you.

That's good. We got some loud noises going on here. There is water cooling uh for this EV system here so that could be something with that. I'm not sure.

Let's go inside and see if anything else lights up that didn't light up before like the screen. so we've never seen that light up before. Uh, okay. here we go guys.

Okay, still don't have this Center screen working I Don't know if the center screen actually works though. to be honest with you, it could just be a dummy screen or something. But I think in some of the press footage in the magazines, this was lit up and it looked cool. It looked like like an old iPhone or something back in the day.

All right. So there's no sense in trying to get this in to drive right now because it's charging. so let's see what's going on back there. I'm gonna get in the back.

Oh whoa. Okay, so we have brake lights that are on. This one was never on. Wait a minute.

Do we have headlights? We have headlights now? No. All right. no headlights. That's okay.

Okay, so I'm going in. I'm going in folks. I Hear some other buzzing going on and uh, hopefully nothing's getting too hot back here. Oh, this guy's woken up.

Yep, we got some lights on and what about our charger? The fan for the heatsink still has not kicked on. Um. I'm just kind of going around here touching things make sure nothing's overheating. so plugging in the high voltage battery is definitely woking this van up to a certain extent.

This is awesome guys. Can we drive this van in this video? Can this get back on the road on? Eevee Power I don't know, but I'll tell you this much. I'm gonna stay here for like all 10 hours that it might take to charge this battery because I don't trust it I don't trust it All right? we need to find out what this buzzing noise is. I'll make sure nothing is burning out right now I Can't tell what's buzzing? Oh yeah, it's gotta be this.

I don't know what that is. So this is the little coolant reservoir overflow right here and you can see it still has coolant which is a good sign. So I haven't traced everything back. um, but pretty much all modern.

EVS have a cooling system for the battery um, and even for the motors and stuff like that, so that's most likely what that's for. We got to find a heat exchanger though, which is always in the front. It's very janky janky. Grille Oh there we go.

That's got to be it right there. Yeah, see that it's right behind this. Grille This is the heat exchanger. It looks like it sustained some damage here, but it's not leaking and you can see the fins in here.

It's pretty large. That's nice. If you guys were around for the first video, you know this fitting, uh, was leaking I just had to tighten up some clamps and that fixed that. Uh, and we still have coolant in there, which is perfect.

That means this hasn't gone dry. and look at this. these are for the heater core. uh I I Guess this has a heater core maybe out of a minivan I Don't know I don't know, but uh, this car has no heat.

No. AC And I've discovered also that a lot of it is made of literal wood. That's wood. The floor back there was obviously wood.

Yeah, very, very prototype. There's no airbags on this van. there's no wipers. I Mean it's yeah.

I Don't even know if the screen works so we probably don't have a radio with speakers. I Mean how you gonna build a delivery van for the government with no radio? Everybody's got to listen to tunes and you know what else I find to be very odd is that these clay molds are not finished and they don't really look. you know, exactly like the van. So it's like how are these not finished but this is, you know, finished.

As far as Aesthetics and everything, the body work, the paint, everything's done. That means that there are more clay molds out there. A final clay mold for the bright idea of van or or the space van as I Call it all right. It's only been charging for like about 20 minutes, but let's see if we can read our DC Oh look at that.

304 volts. We had like 289 before. This charger is definitely working. Can we watch this in real time? Can we watch the voltage grow? We're at 304.8 Can you give me a nine? Give me a 9999.

There we go. Nine nine. We're watching this charger in real time. This is so cool guys! This is awesome! Listen: I've worked on a lot of uh, strange and interesting projects on my channel.

I Had the Pontiac Banshee concept car that I found in an auction for a thousand dollars. That was a replica of a Pontiac concept car that was built by the same guy that ended up building Knight Rider kit cars for the reboot of Knight Rider A ton of history behind that one I had of course the low Rider Fiero Again, another thousand dollar car. maybe that was eleven hundred dollars abandoned in a parking lot of a gas station. this was on the front cover of Low Rider magazine.

It's probably a 50 60 000 build. Uh, that thing was abandoned. We put batteries in it. We got the Hydros to work.

It was so so much fun. The Supercharged NFL Limo Suburban with a bad transmission that I fixed up. That thing was so cool. Definitely not that fast, but a fun little project.

So anyway, I'm definitely into weird, weird cars. If you guys ever see a weird car on the internet, it needs to be bought by me. Just send me an email legitstreetcars Gmail.com All right, look at this. we're at 305.

Yep, it's moving on out. All right guys, It's hours later so we're gonna unplug this back to its resting state of Silence Our instrument cluster is turned off. All right guys. here we go.

I'm very nervous for the noise this thing might make. We have everything connected again. Oh it didn't do the crazy banging motor thing from before I mean it did nothing like obviously we fixed them out but we still would have like seen heard something I don't know. Okay, hang on.

Oh okay. what started the gas engine? oh it moves. Get out of here. it's moving.

It's got the gas engine on though. but it's moving. Hold on reverse, it's still in. Drive Oh oh wait, hold on.

still in. Drive Hang on. it says reverse. look it says reverse.

Let's see, no, it is. I don't know what it's doing. it's going crazy. Oh wait no, it's a reverse.

All right. Uh, let's put it back in the park. That's it All right. I'm Gonna Keep charging I'm Gonna Keep charging we're gonna get up more.

It didn't do the crazy motor thing where it just goes nuts. It moves. It is seven o'clock at night I am the only one here and I am a complete idiot I Am an idiot except that I brought my cell phone in here. that's what.

I'm recording on right now. there's if you guys saw the last video. I Don't think there's any way to get out of this van. No hold on a second guys.

There is definitely no latch. No nothing. No I am an idiot I am an idiot I am trapped in the space van. You gotta be kidding me right now.

Oh come on, come on dude. All I gotta say right now is I think my phone's at like 23 percent so I gotta call someone obviously. but this is bad if I did not bring myself on my personal cell phone with me I would have been in big trouble. All I wanted to do was just check the state of charge without it plugged in and I am an idiot.

Okay I'm 38 years old and I'm trapped inside of a space fan. There's definitely nothing over there. Uh, these we noticed were loose but I don't think I'm skinny enough to fit through this this whole carbon fiber thing. Nothing no pass through but can I shimmy through here? No.

I'm not a small animal. All right. the flash is blinding me on my phone otherwise you wouldn't be able to see me. Hang on.

Let me show you how dark it is in here. Yeah! I'm right right here I don't know if you guys can see me. it is very dark in here. Luckily I'm not claustrophobic.

Um and luckily again I have this cell phone on me. Um so my wife and my kids are loaded up in the CTS-V wagon to come rescue me. They just got done with a soccer game so I think this will be a fun, fun little experience, especially for my kids. In the meantime, I have been working since six o'clock in the morning.

Uh, they're gonna be here in about 30 minutes. I'm gonna take a nap I Just heard the fans of my CTS-V shutting off. They run like all the time. You gotta look into that, but that means my family's here to rescue me.

Open up! Thank you! Hey I got it to charge? Yeah! I'm glad you had your phone to call me too. Listen, if I ever don't come home by like midnight I am locked in my space fan from now on. That is the new rule. I'm gonna get a handle or put a wedge in.

Yeah, we'll figure something out here. Thanks again! It's the next day. It's the day we are going to attempt to drive the van. So I unplugged it last night because I don't trust the van I plugged it in this morning.

It's been charging for about five hours. so let's unplug it and see what kind of voltage we have. Let me show you how I got locked in this thing multiple times I walked in ah I'm trapped again. Luckily Max is here today.

This thing just it likes to swing. see now that's where I gotta keep it so that's yeah I need to fix that I know. So remember we started at 289. we got up to like 305 yesterday 3 17.

Okay, it's a little lower than I wanted man with yesterday and today it's a total of like seven hours of charging. and when I had my Chevy Volt on a 120 Outlet it could take like 10 hours or 12 hours or something like that. So if this is roughly the same size battery then yeah, we need to charge it more. but let's just go for it.

All right? Well, we don't have a storage solution yet for this. I mean we kind of do. We got room in there. we're just gonna feed it in and that's about it.

really. Again, this is temporary. We're going to do something nice in the next one provided this thing doesn't explode and burst into flames on our first drive. We'll treat it well if it doesn't burn to the ground.

How about that? Okay, there we go. just like Factory I'm not gonna lie. I uh I'm nervous and I have to pee even though I just peed about an hour ago because I was nervous about this I'm gonna go pee again. but I'm not bringing you with oh yeah, I'm nervous.

There's not much in here. not much in the tank. There's a lot more in the tank of that battery than than in me. because I don't want to get stranded.

All right guys. here. we go here. we go.

Oh my gosh, Why did it do that? This is crazy. Why did it do that? Why did it do that? We have good state of charge. We had 305 and it didn't do that before. That doesn't make any sense.

Stay man. That was really disappointing. It moved. It moved with 305 volts.

Let me check the voltage again. This makes no sense. Yeah, we're 315. all right.

Well I'm hoping it doesn't do it again. I'm gonna try, but if it does, at least I can give you guys a view of the action here and our Mount is still solid so that's good. I Just shut it down early I Don't want to break them out again. This is really weird.

All right. Uh. I'm gonna try just to reset everything. I'm going to disconnect this, the main high voltage, and the 12 volt under the hood.

All right. All right, let's give it a few minutes disconnected and hope for the best here. All right here we go. Got our clicks back? good.

Plug this guy back in. get it. This is so annoying. All right.

I'm just gonna see if it'll go on the gas engine. At least we won't get the motor shaking around. Ah, we'll be good now with that. Come on Now what happened? Space Fan.

Everything was going so great. Now nothing's working. Yeah, this is not cool telling you. Roller coaster ride here with space vans.

Let me tell you. let me try. Uh, disconnecting the battery again. What else could this be? Well, this thing is freaking out on me now it doesn't want to do anything.

This is ridiculous. Okay, let me try closing the door. Why? Why? Why go to park? It won't go into gear. It will start now though.

I Let the battery be unplugged for like three minutes. I'm just gonna try this again. I Don't know. Okay, ah darn, you know what.

I'm gonna try and do I'm gonna try and start it with it plugged in a little behind the back plug. Just curious I didn't do it Okay I mean it shouldn't drive plugged in. but then again, this this car probably has no safeties whatsoever. But let's just see it's in Drive nothing reverse nothing.

It's not starting the gas engine anymore and now it's just like stuck on saying it's in drive. Oh there we go now. Park. let's unplug it.

Come on baby. All right, let's try again. All right. she starts, she won't move and uh yeah.

oh it went into gear. it just went into gear. Oh I'm driving the Space Man I am driving the space fan. This is insane I can't really see much I might hit a car Maybe Get oh, we got the shoot.

We got the we got the cord. Let's just Jam that cord in I don't want to take it out of gear right now. All right. So I even have working seat belts.

Oh I Do okay. Is it click? Yes, it does. All right guys. I Am uh still in the process here of backing up.

We had to roll up the extension cord. Oh yeah, I am okay I am able to give it throttle like I just give it throttle. Okay now let's see. will it go in a drive? The big question? Yes, it's in drive.

Oh, power steering's not the best. Oh, no. What is that? That's got to be the rear motor still connected. It's got like a clutch assembly.

Okay, if I go really slow, it's fine. All right, that's cool because the speedo work. Nope, nothing works. Everything is fake.

Uh, there we go. I would say as soon as I get up to like five, it starts to shake around. All right. Of course we're in a very bad spot right now.

Let's see, it's not starting and I literally have people right behind me trying to leave. Okay, I won't even go in reverse. Okay, luckily my neighbor's really cool. So yeah, it's in drive right now.

but it's rolling back. The only problem is if I leave it in Drive and then all of a sudden it goes into drive and we're pushing. We're in bad shape. Yeah, oh yeah, now it's It's still in neutral with the key off.

Okay, okay, yeah, let's push. yeah. I am so disappointed right now. I'm just letting this thing reset.

I Don't know. I've disconnected the battery for about three minutes. Um, the mount in the back. It's all broken again.

Let me show you. yeah, you can see right there that's broken. This side had a little crack before and now it's a it's a big crack. This whole thing's got to come down all right at this point.

I Just need to get it back in the shop. All right, how does this thing go into gear? Dude, one more time. One more please. Oh, we're in.

we're in. No. What did I just do? Oh okay I See I see hang on I clicked it down into Park Darn All right. we're in drive now.

Let's just see. as soon as it goes into gear, you can feel and hear it. Of course now it won't go in reverse. Great.

Oh no. I think you get one shot every time you disconnect the battery to reset everything and then it freaks out. All right guys, It's the next day and we were able to push the van back in the garage. It took a total of four of us to do this.

It's uh, very hard to push, especially with the slight uphill into the shop. but it is here. Let's go see what our battery voltage is at 299. Yeah, man, that's not good.

All right. let's plug it in again. Right now it's fully connected. It's not doing the thing it's on EV it's on EV it.

but it's in drive. It says it's in drive but it's going backwards if I go to reverse. Oh, reverse is Drive okay I Just wanted to give this one more try and it is working in EV mode. No way.

I Had just plugged the battery in for about 15 minutes. It did go back up to like 319 volts in just like 15-20 minutes of charging. Oh my gosh, we are moving an EV only mode right now I Have no idea what happened yesterday. You gotta be kidding me.

All right. So yesterday, right about this speed it would Circle it is making some weird noise right now we are driving an EV guys. Unfortunately, the motor brackets are completely trashed at this point. Oh it's making a weird noise and it says it's in reverse.

This is one of those situations though where I haven't learned any anything I don't know, did what it did yesterday and now it's doing what it does I can't even talk right now I'm gonna drive this thing like a half block. The speedo does work I don't know how accurate it is, but we're getting up to 10 miles an hour. We are driving the Space Man on Pure EV Power Now the scary part is is because the screen doesn't work I don't even know if the screen would tell us this I'm sure it would. We don't know what state of charge we're at I mean we were at like 318 yesterday, went down to 299 this morning.

Uh, like I said I put the charger on there for 15 to 20 minutes and it said like 318 319 again but we don't know if this is just gonna tank down and then that motor is gonna go nuts and I I don't want it to go nuts this far away. It took four of us like 20 minutes to push this 20 feet into the shop. Oh what was that? Oh, this thing better not start freaking out here. I was just getting comfortable.

Yeah, that noise is getting weird. Oh no Oh I can feel it kind of going in and out. Oh no no no no no no no stop. Oh no Oh that is not good.

Oh no, we're like a block away from the shop. It took us like a half hour to push it 20 feet yesterday. Let's go check voltage I shouldn't have driven it this far. Oh what are you gonna be at now 313.

So yeah, we've lost a little bit of charge in just like the last five or ten minutes. I wonder if it gets below that certain state of charges when the whole system just freaks out? But what's weird is we were at 319 yesterday. I I don't I don't know I don't know I'm curious if anything has to do with this 12 volt battery I had this on a charger last night and this is a good battery so we should be all right. Yeah, 12.8 Okay, yeah, we're good here.

I Guess the good part is is that we have a normal extension cord and if I run back to my shop and get like 100 footer we might be able to plug into some business here. if it needs a little bit more juice I don't I don't know, we just need to make it like one block. I'm going to disconnect this battery for a few minutes and we'll see what happens. Hopefully it resets things.

We're not in the best place to be broken down, but people can still get around. All right. It's a space fan folks. Nothing to see here.

I'm gonna reconnect and I'm wondering why the gas engine isn't taking over at this point. But then again, what's what's the point of really wondering anything with this van? Who knows. Oh, it's not doing the shaky crazy thing. Okay, all right, we gotta disconnect that thing.

We got to disconnect that thing. Oh my gosh, at least this makes kind of a little sense when I go to drive, it starts doing that crazy thing I don't know why in the beginning I was doing it just even in park. All right here we go again. I don't know how many times I've taken this on and off drink every time I've removed this and now our hope is that the gas engine kicks on and takes us to the promised land and does nothing at all great.

I Like to say I've gone on multiple trips where I drive like 800 miles back in some unknown vehicle and this one is just one block, one block. With all of this all right, we're gonna reset. We got good neighbors here I'll have to make the connection right now. Ah, I'm just kidding.

Look at this. What are the chances? All right? Here we go. We ran this underneath the van. All right.

it's making the noise. it's doing the thing. Don't hit my van. Just gave this like five minutes.

I Don't even really want to try it on EV I Just wondering if this will wake anything up. You lock yourself in there. Max Heavy heavy months? Yeah. I'm gonna try one last time with the EV motor.

The mounts are already destroyed. so whatever. This movie, oh my. God No, No darn it.

No. now we're even at literally in a worse spot in the street. All right. No, we should be good.

Thank you, thank you. All right, it's been 30 minutes this time. Let's disconnect. All right, we got 321.

That's the most we've ever had. Let's roll all right. we're gonna do this on EV Power Hopefully Okay, okay. reverse is Drive we're off.

Okay, let's do this people. Please don't be any cars. No, we're good. Not sure if reverse even works I Don't want to find out.

Oh people, move out of the way. there's a car coming. Come on dude. move move move move.

It's a delivery guy. I Have one block. One block to go. This is the longest block of my life.

I'm gonna keep it at 10. we're at 321 volts. Uh, it's hard to tell what voltage it starts to freak out at that motor. the bracket.

it's on its last leg I Mean it. I don't know if it has any legs left. Honestly, if that thing starts banging around again, it might just drop out. Okay I shouldn't be doing this, but we're doing like 15 miles an hour right now.

I Can't see my shop yet. Come on. I Drive down this street like every single day. No problem.

Just relax I am on pins and needles right now and it is hot guys. It's like 85 degrees outside and this van obviously no AC the windows don't work I can see my shop I can see my shop. keep going. dude.

you can do it. Space fan please. Oh guys, we are almost there. We are almost there.

no problem. Oh, we're going too fast. All right. I Gotta slow this thing down.

All right? I Got about 15 seconds left of driving. Let me know guys in the comment section: what are you guys working on? what kind of projects are you working on right now I'm trying to get my mind off this van. Let me know in the comments section, what do you got going on? Oh this guy. No.

this guy needs to move. move move. There's a man walking in front of my shop. All right.

get out of the way dude. Yep. I know it's weird. heat momentum.

gotta get up the ramp. gotta get it up the ramp I made it I'm in my shop I'm in. We drove the space fan on. EV Power the gas engine just ghosted us, but we are back to legit.

Street Quarters in a much better spot in The Wash Rack Because this thing was clogging up the whole shop, we couldn't move it for a long time. Oh man, we got lucky 316. Just that one block Drive brought us down to the danger zone. All right.

I Just got off the phone with Sean the engineer who I've been texting with. This is the first time we've actually spoken on the phone. I sent him a message that I got this thing to drive and he called me so thank you Sean Super nice guy has been very helpful I Told him what was going on and he says there's a very good possibility that the issue we're having with the motor shaking like crazy is a low voltage issue with this high voltage battery. So he said if it's been sitting for 10 years or 12 years, there's a chance that the cells need to rebalance one of the cells or a few of the cells could be fully charged, but the others aren't and it needs to kind of bleed off and balance itself out.

And he said, unfortunately, this could take upwards of one week of having this thing plugged in the entire time. So I told him I don't really feel comfortable leaving it plugged in when I go home and he agreed he wouldn't do that either. So I'm only at the shop like 10 or 11 hours a day usually Monday through Friday So this could take me a couple of weeks of having this thing plugged in to maybe rebalance the cells so that we hopefully have a good high voltage battery now. I obviously need to get that bracket fixed.

That thing is mangled and I think I might just I don't know I might drop it out with the motor or make some markings on there so we know where we can brace it without getting in the way of the motor. But after I told him it drove down the street, the motor seemed fine. He's like the motor's probably okay. We're probably okay with the dog clutch as well, which is that differential looking thing that the axles connect to.

We might be in good shape. Oh, also he said that screen in there it has a ton of really good information so if I can get the screen working, he said it'll tell you all about the high voltage battery. They put a lot of like more in-depth diagnostic stuff in there and some and some cool stuff I can show you as well. He said it was a functioning screen.

So anyway, guys, we got this thing to charge. We temporarily fixed the bracket. at least we know how to get it out of there so we are making. Headway The Space Van has hit the road for the first time.

Uh, in about 12 years. so I hope you guys will join me in the next video. It might be be a little ways out though because of the whole charging of the battery situation and because I need to focus on my other van my 15 passenger supercharged. Chevy Express if you guys are new, I'm not just a van Channel I mostly work on cars.

This is just kind of coincidental. but I have to get the supercharged van ready for the Fill The Van with Cans event in Gilberts Illinois on June 24th, 2023, I will be there with the Vans interior gutted and the goal is to fill it all up with food and essential items to donate to a local food pantry and help people in need so you guys can come out. bring your cars. There will be food available to purchase and we can hang out all day.

Fill the van with cans. Talk about stuff! Maybe I'll rip one of the cars in the dyno over at Cannonball I Don't know, but I'll leave all the information down below. so thank you so much for watching. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up.

Share the video with your friends. We're almost at a million subscribers so if you've been watching these videos and if you enjoyed the content, consider clicking the Subscribe button. Most importantly though, how have an awesome day! I'll catch all of you in the next video. um this morning I didn't Black coffee and on ice and rage and yes, at that point I'd probably be looking into a new lithium-ion battery at that point I'd probably be at that point I'd Um now too 289 the voltage stop clicking back Okay, down she goes, not down she goes.

Come on, be strong. Alex Look at this spinners.