My Electric CF Bedford van

A Quick Lesson in History This is one of a number of what was basically a prototype production electric vehicle during the late 70's. Other vehicles were :- The Dodge 50 series, with various bodies. The Freight Rover Sherpa panel van, and going right up to the 7.5 ton Leyland Terrier. They all shared the same type of power plant, they were ELECTRIC. The main two companies that were the cause of this little flourish of EV's were Lucas and Chloride who had helped each other for sometime but in April 1981 they joined forces to form a new company Lucas Chloride EV Systems to develop and market drive systems for what then was high performance electric road vehicles. The UK Dept of Industry also agreed to provide financial support for a 5 year period.
Pictured here is the Lucas-CAV traction motor which was fitted to the CF and the Sherpa range. These motors are huge measuring nearly 2' long and 1' in diameter but they produce a thunderous 40kW. These are mounted at the back of the vehicle under the right-hand rear door. Power is fed from this via a step down gearbox and then to the conventional rear axle which is now turned 180 degrees over so the input shaft now points rearward to accept the power from the step down gearbox.
This is the controller for the motor which is fitted into the area where the internal combustion engine was. These controllers are very complicated with logic circuits and two control circuits one for the field windings and one for the armature winding of the motor. It also featured regenerative braking which allowed the motor to be converted to a generator under braking to help put back power into the batteries. I would go into the operation of the controller but it does get a bit tedious, if you E-Mail me I can give you a run though.
This is the mass of batteries that powers the whole thing. It consists of thirty-six 6 volt monobloc 184 Ah batteries wired in series giving a stunning nominal voltage of 216 volts DC. They are positioned in the centre, under the vehicle between the front and back wheels, as they weigh just over a ton. The first vehicles required these to be removed to allow them to be topped up with distilled water but this was a long and laborious job so Chloride invented the centralized watering system known as Autofil.
These are a couple of pictures of my van. This one shows the heater which is a diesel space heater type rated at around 4kW to heat the cab. You can also see the lead and plug and socket which allows the battery to be recharged. You may notice that the braking system has a servo for assistance. This requires a vacuum which isn't a problem in a conventional engined van but in an electric one it requires the use of a vacuum pump. This is situated under the heater.
This is a view from the rear showing the position of the motor and the stepdown gearbox it is connected to.
The batteries, as I have said before, are very heavy and awkward to remove and the watering system in its day was very clever consisting of interconnecting pipes throughout the battery pack. When I came across this vehicle it had been laid up for over 3 years and some of the pipe work had perished. The battery tray was very corroded so it was decided to put it into the rear load space and to board it over in the future, not forgetting to put in plenty of ventilation to allow any explosive gasses to be vented to the outside.

My Van History From The Beginning

I have always been interested in EV's but never managed to get much further than American books on the subject. So just as a laugh one weekend I placed an advert in my local paper under the 'Cars Wanted' section, it just said I was after parts or information for electric vehicles.

I heard nothing for several weeks then, out of the blue, I found a message on my answer phone from a guy not 20 miles away saying he had three electric Bedford CF's laid up in a farm for the past 3 years. So, off I went and inspected each one and picked the one I felt was more likely to be a runner. A sum of money was agreed (which was quite reasonable) and my purchase was duly towed home by a friend of mine using his 5 ton military truck.

The first job was to remove the battery pack and place it into the rear load space to make it easier to work on. This was done with the help of a couple of jacks and a JCB tractor, remember these weigh over a ton

Many people said that the batteries would be dead after standing for so long but after topping each one up with distilled water (this can take up to an hour to do - 36 batts means 102 cells to top up) a voltage check was made on each of the batteries. The results ranged from 0.5 volts to 4.5 volts giving a total pack voltage of 130 volts well short of the nominal 216 volts. It was decided not to put the pack on the Chloride charger meant for the batteries as this would have fed them with 25 to 30 amps which could have damaged them due to their poor state. Instead each battery was trickle charged at around 0.5 amps. This was done until it started to show signs of response which was anything between one day to one week. Once 6 volts had been reached I moved the charger onto another battery and continued to charge it. It took over 3 months to bring the pack up to around 200 volts and it was at this stage I decided to hook it up to the Chloride Spegal charger, but with a current limiting resistor to restrict the charge to around 10 amps.

The first full pack charge went well and it came time to test the drive system and controller. This proved not to be very successful as all I got was a whine from the controller and no movement at the wheels. So was the controller at fault or the motor? A quick check on the fuses found the field winding fuse had blown. The problem was now, had it blown due to the motor being dead or the controller being dead? After a few days of circuit tracing it was decided that the power transistor that limits the field windings current was blown and had allowed the full pack voltage across the motor rather than limiting it to around the 5/8 amps that it requires to run. A new transistor was sourced and duly fitted and hey presto it cured the problem. I have now found out that this is one of the weak spots in the controller.

The first run out in the van was a short affair of just one mile. After which it was recharged still using the limit resistor. This continued for several cycles of charge, drive, charge, drive until a range of 25 miles had been built up. This is were we are today and is the most range I will expect out of these batteries as they have had a hard life being left uncharged for so long. The moral of the story here is charge them long and slow and you will be surprised with the results. If you are wondering why I haven't replaced the batteries this is because a new set would set me back nearly £5000. Although it would give me a greater range, this is offset by the cost and as 25 miles suits my use it does seem a bit pointless.

Driving The CF

The CF drives like any other van apart from the fact it has no gearbox and no gearleaver so it is very similar to an automatic. You select your direction (forward or reverse) via a switch on the dashboard, from then on all you need to do is apply the throttle to move in the direction selected. All you hear then is the whine from the controller and you move away. The clever part is when you decelerate, the controller converts the motor into a generator which not only slows the vehicle down but also replaces some charge back into the batteries. This option was switchable which allowed you to turn it on or off. This was due to the fact that in poor weather conditions the regenerative braking could start to lock the rear wheels and the results could be quite alarming, similar to applying the hand brake on a normal vehicle, so in bad weather it was advisable to turn off the regenerative braking for safety.

So who drove these and what has happened to them now.

The vehicles were supplied to electricity companies, the Post Office and local councils in the main, as a drive to being more economical with lower maintenance costs and a totally greener way of travelling. Which in the main they were, but many of them suffered from electrical faults in the controllers and driver abuse, due to the fact they had to be returned to their recharge point at the end of the day, rather than being taken home like the petrol/diesel variants could be. This did not go down too well with the drivers as they then had to bring their own vehicle in from home everyday.

The vehicles were heavily subsidised by the Government over 5 years due to the cost of the batteries. New and more powerfull batteries were always on the drawing board but these never came to anything and after the 5yr program finished the money was withdrawn and slowly the program folded up. Lucas and Chloride still exsist but now back as two seperate companies again and you will be hard pushed these days to find anybody who can remember this little project.

The vans were sold off one by one, mainly at auctions. Once the range of the vehicle had dropped off to a level that was not acceptable, the replacement battery costs were so high that it was not a viable option to have them replaced without any sort of funding. Also once Lucas and Chloride split up spares for the electrical drive and controller also dried up since most of it was one off custom built stuff.

There are several still running around, mainly CF's or Sherpa Vans owned by individuals. If you own one please E-mail me and we can pool information.

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