Sometimes during a difficult car project, all you need is a little luck. Oh, you gotta be kidding me, is this thing gonna work? So far, my concept van that I've nicknamed the Space Van has been a bit of a roller coaster I was able to get the van's gas engine to start almost immediately after getting it back to my shop, but it never started again. I was able to charge the high voltage battery enough to drive an EV mode, but then it stopped dead in the street and I've never been able to drive it again. I had the motor bracket fixed and then the motor ripped it to shreds again.

I was even able to revive weak battery cells, but that hasn't made any real difference in actually being able to drive this van now. I've also locked myself in the back of the space Van twice, so clearly this thing is trying to kill me and it just seems that the space fan always gives me just enough to keep me motivated, but then shatters my dreams each and every time. I think I've gotten somewhere If there was any time I could use a little luck now would definitely be it. Alright guys, so I let the concept van sit over the weekend and I hadn't really gotten anywhere with this computer that controls the screen inside which is dead so if you guys saw the last video, you know I hooked up a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse and I just kind of gave it one more shot.

I was planning on sending the computer in to see if someone could fix it and this is where we've gotten it. and yeah, I think we just got lucky. So I'm gonna get The Mouse and the keyboard working and uh, let's see if we can see. All right? Whoa, This? This is it.

No way. So Sean The engineer one of the guys that built this van. He told me they had programmed a ton of really good stuff in here and this might be able to help me a lot with figuring out what's going on with the battery, but at the very least it should give me state of charge. Um, let's just try.

Whoa guys, this is like what I live for? This is so cool. No way. Okay, so right now I guess it's in hybrid mode I Don't can you switch it? You know he told me that the screen in there doesn't actually control anything in the vehicle. but he also started building this thing 15 years ago I Don't know.

maybe it does. Whoa. Electric gasoline? Oh here we go. Battery Yeah! I have I haven't charged it.

uh for a few days. so 310 volts state of charge is at zero. That is not good. but I Gotta say it's nice that we have this information because it can do the calculation on what the state of charge is.

You can't just simply go off of the battery voltage. There's a lot more to it and we don't know exactly how the battery was constructed, but they did back then. What is this savings? This is kind of cool. Brake Regen average Mpg 10 that's not good tuning traction for split Coast Down Regen Guys We have to get this van on the road to try all this stuff out.

This is nuts. Okay, let's go back. Uh audio I Don't think it even has speakers, but you know, whatever. They had to show this off they had to try and sell the van.

Uh, what is charge? Let's see unplug charge cord from vehicle before driving. Okay, so right now it is plugged in. That's the only way I can get this whole computer system to come on without turning the key forward. and even when I do that I don't know if it always comes out.

it's weird. This is Las Vegas This is totally fake. Like this is not connected anything. it's just a picture.

You gotta understand it's a concept car. So they were. they were trying to sell this. so a lot of this stuff is fake as you guys have seen.

uh, what is this Duke Energy thing. Oh, this is for charging time. The screen is not yet, it's not yet developed. I Don't know if it ever will be.

Although the old CEO is willing to talk to me, we might be doing a zoom and he's adamant on buying this van back so we'll see what happens with that a little bit later. But for now, what I want to see is you guys gave me some really good ideas on getting the screen to work, one of which was: I Found this little circuit board that was wrapped in tape and some of you guys had mentioned that that could be the controller for the screen like it might literally have an on off button I Didn't see it at first glance, but let's uh, disconnect this. We'll connect it up just like normal with the screen in there and keep going. Okay, so now we just have to plug this in.

There are four connections. Oh, and there's our light. Yeah, we're getting this red LED flashing so that's good. This is the cable that we hijacked to run into my computer monitor and then we have a USB and then we have this main plug right here.

Just started making that noise when I plug this in. That's the noise it's been making while it's charging. but I've had it plugged in charging for a while now and it wasn't doing that. Okay, that might just be nothing I don't know.

there's just a lot of unexplainable stuff here with the old Space Fan, but ah, no screen yet. Now if you're wondering, Yes, it's a little stressful trying to figure out issues with the space van or problematic cars like my CL65 but at the end of the day they are just cars and I've been through much worse and I found that in tough times it really helps to talk to someone. which is why I'm really excited to introduce to you today's video sponsor Better Help betterhelp makes finding a therapist. Easy By keeping everything online, you just answer a few simple questions and better help can match you to a professional therapist in as little as a few days.

Then you just schedule your session, meet your therapist and you're Off to the Races. It's just that easy. Now it can be hard to find a good therapist and Better Help's mission is to make finding a therapist more affordable and more accessible so you guys can get the help you need right away. Whether you have a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety, or even if you're just going through a difficult time and simply need someone to talk to, Therapy can give you the tools to approach life in a very different way.

Now, finding a therapist is a little bit like dating. You might not fit perfectly with the first one and with better help that's not an issue. They will switch you to a new therapist at no additional cost. You don't have to worry about insurance or who's in your network or any of that stuff.

They really take care of everything. It's a One-Stop shop. It's super easy to get matched up with a therapist. All you got to do is click on my link down below or go to Betterhelp.com Legit streetcars.

When you do, you're going to get 10 off your first month of better help. So if you guys are struggling, if you need help with anything, if you just need to clear your mind, give them a try. click on the link down below And a big thanks to Betterhelp for sponsoring this video. Let's do this: I'm going to plug in the uh, the safety loop underneath the battery there.

That's that big orange plug that will disconnect the high voltage power to the motor into everything else. I Just want to plug that in and see if anything changes on that computer screen, huh? Okay, so the touch screen input is working. You can hear a beep. Okay, this just is not lighting up I never I never got it to do that.

but then again, the computer wasn't working so that makes sense. Where's the key? I'm going to try turning the key forward here and we'll see what happens. Nothing I'm gonna shut the whole system down. We'll kind of let it, maybe reboot all together and the only explanation I can come up with for why the computer just works is in the last video.

I Did find that it had a little 2032 car remote style battery in there that was totally dead I put a good one in there and it didn't work immediately after I put that in, but it's possible that it reset the bios, which is the basic input output system. That's what kind of like reboots the computer every time you start it, which I learned from you guys. A lot of you guys in the comment section know a ton about computers, so everybody had mentioned to restart the BIOS and maybe it just that's what I was going to do and maybe it just did it. Sitting over the weekend let me know if that makes any sense.

I unplugged the van that computer has now shut off and then all I'm doing is plugging back in the charge cord and then this lights up and our monitor Works without us turning the key on. Um, but let's see. Okay, I just heard a little beep so it's booted up back there. Yeah, we would have seen something by now.

Okay, so it's still not working, but this is what I was talking about. So I found this in the last video and some of you guys had said that this is basically a remote. It wasn't really plugged in all the way, but I plugged it in in the last video and it's got a bunch of tape and what looks to be buttons. so let's let's pull the tape back.

Oh, this is definitely another one of those Indiana Jones Discovery moments and Indie usually just blows dirt off of stuff and then sees what's written and then has to get it translated and all sorts of stuff But it's taking the tape off of this circuit board. It's pretty much a Indiana Jones movie and I'm I'm Indy oh what do we got? What do we got? Okay, that's everything. Uh, this green light is not working. but yeah, these are definitely buttons.

Let's see. Okay, so far. nothing. Yeah, they're not.

Are they labeled with it now? Oh here. Like this one says menu. Oh here. Power I'm holding it right now I Mean this would be weird if you had to like do this every time you get the screen to come up.

especially because it was taped. but that's not working. This one says menu That's not working. Select I Think that's not working.

Turn the key forward, see if we can get anything to happen here. I'll hold power down again. Yeah, the touch screen is working. We can hear the beeps.

Well, it's disappointing. I Really thought we had something here. It really stinks. That could just be a bad screen.

This plug was a little funky. It's possible the circuit board is bad. Yeah, we got. no.

we got no green light here. All right. Well hey, I'll take a win. We got the information we need.

It's just on a computer monitor, so we just need to figure out a monitor situation. But right now, what I really want to do is reconnect the high voltage battery to the rest of the vehicle, see if anything's different. We really got to see that state of charge. go.

You know, above zero. That could be pretty much all of our issues and I did trickle charge these cells for a really long time and two of them on that module That was giving us issues. They just they won't charge up all the way. They're giving me a lot of problems I've had them baking for like 15 hours each and they get up to a couple volts and that's about it.

so that could be an issue. This guy's going back in there. We go all right. I was poking around in here and take a look at this right here and that.

look at this connector. This guy right here for the screen looks like it plugs in there so we have a couple of screws. we're gonna take out one there and this guy here of course. Yeah, the touch screen still works so right up against the seat.

it's making deep noises back there. Okay, this stinks I can't get this off I Don't want to break it but I gotta plug I Gotta try to plug that in. Let's snip these little guys. Okay, now we can at least move that around.

with the zip tie cut. we should be able to get around these capacitors. It's got to get plugged in right there. I could break this all off, but I don't want to if I don't have to.

This should be a game. like an arcade or something. Can you plug this guy in? Oh yeah, look at that better. won that game.

Sweet! I'm gonna put this guy back in and I don't remember having a green light right there. We got our red light. I'm gonna press some buttons here see if they do anything. I'm gonna turn the key here.

Hmm why don't you turn on screen. We disconnected the van for a few minutes and I just plugged it back in so let's see what happens here. Buttons still work, still have no screen though. Press some buttons here.

This one says power but it's spelled totally wrong. P-o-e-w-e What in the world? Oh yeah, look and then when I oh oh some kind of clicking noise. This van is so weird. getting new clicky noises with that green LED light coming on.

no screen. Still, we found what looked to be a Smoking Gun one of four of the connectors basically wasn't plugged into the screen and it's still not coming out. Give me a break Space fan I Need more of that luck. Oh there's that light again.

still no screen and she's gone and another weird noise coming from down below. Okay I just turn the key forward. that still works. Still beeps.

how are you not working? You had something completely disconnected and now it's not. Yes What? I found on the Internet the screen. look at how old this box is I think this is. just old new stock.

It had a quality control sticker thing taped over I Don't know. but yeah, here it is. So this just took a few days to get in and instead of having this right here, it has one of these. But other than that, everything looks to be the same.

So we got our three connectors. This should work right? right? Okay, so we have VGA cable going in and wait. This guy. okay, that's connected.

Oh, it's working. Yes, we got it. The screen was bad. That was it.

I knew that all along it was disconnected though. Inside, you'd think we would have been able to get the other one to go. but we got it guys. Nice! Echo Automotive So oh okay.

this is just for the screen itself, so we don't really need to mess with that. There we go. All right, so it's on. VGA Come back to me.

Come back to me. No, Oh there we go. Windows, she's booting there. we go.

Everything's back. perfect. Screen's a little weird. There we go and let's see here.

Yeah, here we go display. So we're plugged into the charger right now so we have 324 volts at zero state of charge. All right, let's pull this film off. I Think that's messing with our touch screen.

see if that's gonna be any better now. All right. so it goes a little crazy. Okay, yeah, I've been charging this for upwards of 48 hours and this Bb4 cell it's just no good and other ones are a little bit low.

I Haven't been charging them for a while but yeah, Three Two and this one is just at Zero and I just unplugged the individual charger. Okay, at this point I am thinking we do have to start disassembling this battery. We have to take that module out of there. Uh, with that one cell at zero, there's a very good chance that the BMS the battery management system is just seeing that it has individual Taps to the cell and it could be essentially shutting the entire system down.

which it should if you have a dead cell. So we're gonna dissect now. Anytime you're working with high voltage batteries, you have to be very, very careful. You can literally die if you touch the wrong part of the battery.

So we're definitely going to be using our lineman gloves and we have a guest today Josh from Electrified Autonomy so he has his own company where? well. I'll let you go ahead and explain it. sure. So, uh, I do electric vehicle conversions and I've worked on both Electric and combustion vehicles for about 15 years.

In addition to that, I also make Vehicles drive themselves so he's here to make sure that we don't die. No pressure. Josh So we've already pulled the uh fireman's disconnect so that we've split the battery pack in half. so we should have half.

the voltage. Nominal voltage is about 325, so we should be. you know, 160 or so volts. that also leaves one side of this module completely disconnected.

So we should be safe removing one of the wires from one side of the pack. We'll wrap it in electrical tape and remove the other wire from the other side of the pack rack about an electrical tape. And then we should be able to pull it out and disconnect the BMS tabs. So we have two T30s to disconnect here.

This is our first one. Don't Drop them. Yeah, to be very careful here. These gloves don't make it easy to work with, but we don't want this tool to fall over there And you know what? I'm gonna go like this.

There we go. look at that. Yeah, I'm nervous right now. I'm nervous.

I Do not want to drop anything in here. This this stuff definitely kind of freaks me out there. We go okay and this is the power right now. and I'm going to hold this cable just in case it wants to fall foreign.

There we go. Okay, so now I'm going to be pulling this out next. I'm going to wrap this guy up in electrical tape, which is tough to do with these gloves. but that's okay.

he's safe. Don't want to get electrocuted today. Maybe tomorrow? Okay, there's that. We're just gonna go ahead and just do a little bit more.

It's gonna be a little sloppy, but okay. I Feel good about that. Okay now, I'm gonna try pulling this module up I Wasn't sure if these things were actually bolted in or they're just sitting here. and I mean I think they're just sitting here.

Oh, there we go. Let's see, we might be able to pull this guy up. There we go. Okay, another module should just come out oh so close.

This thing's heavy and it's hot in here. I'll stop. stop making noises that scare me and we got it. Oh, we got it.

I don't know why I'm not running this thing outside right now. I should be okay. So yeah, this is an air cooled battery. that's a little motor.

yeah, that just pumps air through this guy. and then there's a ton of open room in here. Look at that could fit a whole another bank of batteries and oh my gosh, yeah, there's a ton of room in here. So we have the module right next to our big door here and on a rolling cart just in case we just, you know, lights on fire and we just go like that, right down to the parking lot.

Uh, what do you think right off the bat? yeah I mean I Can tell as soon as we got the module out that there's something wrong with it. Um, so normally in uh, production cells you'll see packs that are similar to this, but they will have compression that holds them in very tightly on both sides And this is the reason why. Because as these sales go bad, they will start to Bow and puff and you can see this is even pushing the plastic out so this is no longer Square Wow, and uh, that usually indicates that there's some bad cells in there. Yeah, this one is boat as well.

Um, so the cell that is bad is the Bb4. Okay, all right so this is one cell. This is another cell. This is another cell.

so it's probably this one. I Guess so obviously. I'm not kidding about being safe. You really want to be safe, but especially with this one module out and everything being taped up over there.

We're good and this is only about 40 volts. Actually, this is the most bad cell. so it's like 35. Uh, it's only considered high voltage over 50.

So we kind of like don't even need the gloves at this point, but wear gloves all the time. We're just going to verify which cell is bad right now. There we go there we go. There's our Dead one.

So these are actually the Taps where it monitors the voltage. but these are between cells. So the cell pack itself is these two connectors right here. okay terminals.

So in order to get this out of here, we're gonna have to cut these straps that are holding the whole pack together and then we can take off this top. and then if we cut along these two terminals right here, we should be able to get that cell out. now. this may have some tension on it, so watch yourself.

Oh okay. so hang on a second that that one popped out. Oh okay. uh, that's fine.

That's probably part of the BMS those are just push in cables. Oh perfect. Okay, yeah. there we go.

Oh cool. Yeah. okay. I just gotta support the bottom and yeah.

slides right up. Yeah. Excellent. Oh wow.

Look at how how puffed those cells are. Wow. Completely split the holders. Yeah.

so I recommend that we go ahead. Go ahead, cut the contacts on the bad cell and then try and sneak it out of this group. The important part is we have to do our best not to contact this to here or this to here because these are the positive and negative one pouch and this is the positive and negative of the next pouch. This is surgery now.

This is pretty thin metal so he's using a very sharp knife slice along it. Slice number two over clear. Yeah, that looks like we got all the way through. Nice.

good job. A little nerve-wracking Josh Tell everybody what you're currently building right now EV Wise? Uh yeah. So at home I have a 1992 Nissan 240SX convertible and I am turning that into electric and if you guys noticed here, we do have a flux capacitor. Yeah, yeah, a couple couple of them.

Yeah, big bang for the future fan. A little bit of that history here. so this is kind of crazy. Josh Emailed me about a month ago before I got my DeLorean so you know we hadn't talked about Deloreans or anything like that.

He came to the shop today for the first time and I'm like are you a DeLorean guy, he's like yeah I Love Back to the Future I'm like get out and I got the DeLorean you know in the shop I don't even know how this happens. That's such a weird coincidence. There we go. This should be the pouch we learned.

Yeah, we've opened up the garage door here. free now. All right here we go. Okay, there's pouch number two and Josh So each cell has two pouches.

It looks like yeah, it seems like seems like there's two pouches, uh, in parallel. so these are normally bonded together. Okay, and they are welded to the uh bus bars. Okay, now we just need to find a couple of whatever that is.

Yeah, right. I mean this couldn't have been something bright made in-house No, absolutely not. Yeah, no, this is probably from a major, uh, major Chinese battery manufacturer. Okay, I guess would be calb or yeah, there's a few of them.

Okay, one cool. This is great news guys. If we can replace uh, any of the bad cells like you just saw right there, we can get this thing going and the rest of them on there are measuring at 3.4 they seem to be fine. I've charged quite a few of these individually and they hold for weeks and weeks without me plugging it in so we might be okay.

Look at this guys. We found the cells. How much are these? Five bucks? Five dollars? What is this? What is this? Craigslist Yeah yeah, oh my. God I'd love to figure out where they are, but 21 days ago, no one's bought these.

There's no one else out there buying these things. Five dollars? They gotta be bad. A lot of research, project and prototype applications these can be used for. That's exactly what this is used for.

Absolutely. that's that's the battery well on the Spaceman that cost over two million dollars to build in 2010. We can now get replacement battery cells for five bucks on Craigslist and it's in they're in California Yeah, just south of San Jose I might have to pay some shipping I Don't know I don't know. All right.

Well, it's a few days later and guess what? the guy from Craigslist is not responding and I can't find these cells anywhere else. they have to exist I'm going to pop up the part numbers right now if you guys see any of these available. I Could definitely use your help. Shoot me an email at Legitstreetcars Gmail.com but if we can't find those, not the end of the world because Josh says the A123 14ah Prismatic cells are very close.

The dimensions are off by a little bit, but since I may be replacing everyone in that module, it won't really make that big of a difference. So I'll pop that up on the screen as well. If you guys find any of those cells for a good deal, let me know. they seem to be a lot more readily available.

So I'll have a couple of options. but you guys have helped me out in the past so I appreciate any info that you find on these cells. I Want to get this van back up and running and a big thank you to Josh Amazing dude! He really helped me out and he gave me the confidence to you know take apart the module I was I'd never done anything like that before so thank you! Josh Now we need to put the interior back together because we have a screen that works. So while we wait to figure out everything with the modules, let's let's go do that.

Running into my light. Get out of here light. Oh no, don't get out of here. I Need you? Oh, we have to transfer this bracket and there's some screws on the side.

One here and then one you get to through this little hole. There we go. We'll get this zip tie out of the way. All right.

there's our bracket, we'll transfer that over and I would just like to point something out. See the wear on this seat? This is mostly from me. Like the seat was in really good condition when I got the van and I haven't been getting in and out of it that many times or in any kind of weird fashion. This is just it's really soft but really bad material.

I mean seriously. I might have gotten in and out of the driver's seat maybe like 30 or 40 times since I've owned this van and it's worn it down like it's got like a hundred and fifty thousand miles. It's crazy. It does feel really good though.

it's just it's just kind of thin I guess so. what's kind of cool is we can eliminate this harness right here. They used to go to this guy, which we're not going to be using any of this. This screen still has the same functionalities with this, but the screen looks fine.

It's not that has to be accessed like at all. That's why they had that one jammed in the dash wrapped in taped. No one ever messed with it. Okay, so the screen goes in somewhere here looks good and we have all of this that gets properly placed into its specific Groove like that.

now we'll just plug it in. we have USB I got this guy here and then our VGA I'm laying this all out there just in case you know you guys need to do this to your concept space fan. Then we have our Prius shifter going back in there we go Prius shifter is in and we just have four screws holding this guy in. We have four screws for our touch screen.

This one got me so excited in the last video. I was like sweet I'm not take the whole dash out but then I realized it had screws coming in from this way and I'm glad we got to take the dash out anyway to see that they use regular home insulation just jammed in here. Yeah, totally normal. I don't know why I'm plugging this in.

it probably doesn't work, especially this climate control. There's really no climate control Parts in this car, but we'll plug it in anyway. Random wires, great finish right there. It's looking like a real fake concept van again now.

we got to straighten out our insulation, tuck it in, and now we have the gigantic dash pad going in. Oh there we go. It's much better. just hide it all.

Nothing to see here. folks. Ship this off that stinks I'll have to include that in the Craigslist listing when I go to sell this thing I Think we're all clipped in though. ashes in a pillar.

going back in. That's it. That's it. and we just kind of.

This helps hold it in last piece to close up the dash. This guy right here. that ladies and gentlemen is how you reinstall the dash on a bright idea. Van tutorial: Yeah, I made another chip too.

This stuff is very, very delicate. but I Gotta say, overall this looks pretty good. I Joke around about the fit and finish, but it's a concept vehicle all right. Watch the screen.

doesn't want to work anymore. No input. what? Hey there it is. just takes a little while that whole thing is booting up back there, it's extremely slow.

There we go. Eco Drive Okay, so obviously this wouldn't be ready for prime time and I make fun of the van a little bit here and there. You guys have definitely been making fun of the band in the comments section, but everything is fake and kind of doesn't work on here because they needed to prove something specific that they could build a van that could carry a bunch of stuff and get 100 miles per gallon the air conditioning working. Windows A A real infotainment system that is all generally easy stuff in the world of producing.

Vehicles So they needed to get the loan and then once these would go into mass production. obviously they would have all of these convenience features they just needed to kind of like look like they were there. But yeah, so this crazy Mouse thing that barely works that wouldn't be there anymore? There we go. we're back.

All right. let's see what energy says with one module out? Wow, it's reading 41 volts now. Okay, that makes sense since all these things are in series and we just cut it by quite a bit. it's dropped in voltage significantly.

Oh man, one day one day we will fix you with new batteries. But I Gotta say having this working right now, that is a big big win. Although the touchscreen is very very finicky and I think I'm gonna have to space this screen out a little bit but just details details, we'll fix it all right. Turn off, There we go.

All right guys. Even though the van is not driving yet, we have made significant progress here. We have a path to getting the high voltage battery to work again. We've gotten the screen to work on the inside, the whole dash is put back together and hopefully I can find these battery cells.

so in the next one it might take me a little while depending on how long it takes to get these cells. We will rebuild the module, put it back in, and hope that that state of charge on the screen goes back up. I Also have a different plug that we're going to use so we can plug in a normal J1772 charger. so this thing could go to actual EV charging stations and just plug in like like a normal EV So anyway, in the next video, I'm driving this van no matter what.

it's not gone. knock on Space Fan air I Don't know anyway I Hope you guys really enjoyed this video. If you did, give it a big thumbs up, share the video with your friends, subscribe to see more of this kind of Madness and most importantly, have a fantastic day! I'll catch all of you in the next video foreign.