1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Recently purchased a 48v '98 DS from my brother-in-law. He had taken it in as payment for some mechanic work. The cart is pretty rough, the batteries were bone dry, top is gone, seat is rotten..., but the price was right. I've been lurking here a while and decided to convert this cart to lithium batteries and I've ordered 14 Nissan Leaf packs to get started.

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Nice!

Bit of advice; go with a zeva bms and you'll have a lot of support here on the forum to help with any troubleshooting.

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Great platform for anything you want to make out of it. :thumbup:

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Thank you. I have already sent Ian an email. Pretty sure I’m going to use the Zeva BMS16 with a CAN enabled TC charger. Trying to decide if I want to use the expensive gigavac or the relays that Sergio has described.

What is the method I’ve seen mentioned about connecting the Leaf cells together to normalize/balance them? It looks like you simply connect all the positive terminals in series while also connecting the negative terminals in series., but I can’t be sure I understand that correctly.

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Welcome! Looking forward to seeing your build!

Ian is really good about explaining your options, and is usually pretty prompt in replying. And as NCPW stated, there are quite a few of us on here using their system and will share our experiences and advice.

As for balancing the cells/modules, I'll look back through some threads, it's been discussed before, and I'll link the thread to this thread when I find it. I didn't have to worry about it when I got my pack, they were balanced.

Other than that, what are your plans? If you let us know what you will be using the car for(pavement, off road, hills, hunting, etc.), we will be able to give advice on mods and so forth. Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Our home is in a very rural area, several family members live nearby, so the cart will mostly be used by my wife and 3 kids to ride around. I am fairly certain that I have a series cart, no regenerative braking on this thing. There is about a 4" lift already on the cart with larger tires and I'm going to try to keep the motor and controller stock for now. The kids don't need a torque monster.

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Update:
A lot of work on the cart since I started my project. Finished up painting the body last night. I have changed the motor to an Admiral and have an Alltrax controller. Still have to get all that wired up and many other things to do.

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Good to see you are making progress. What did you use for paint?

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Monstaliner was my paint of choice. Cleaned it, scuffed it really rough with a DA, cleaned it a few more times and rolled two coats on. The color looks light in the shop lights, it's called Midnight Special.

I'm happy with it, especially considering how likely it is to survive my children.

I bought a 1 gallon kit, but I barely used half of it.

Re: 1st cart project, 98 DS refurb & lithium conversion.
 

Tonight I’ve started working on my lithium pack.