To some people, what's behind me might look like a massive pile of junk, when in fact,
to the right person it's extremely valuable.
Today my new electric Hummer will be donating all of his guts to someone who can use them.
(Whisper is an organ donor.)
And he will be towing his guts out this garage all by himself.
The original Hummer H1 Alphas could tow around 9000 pounds, and since my new electric motor
has about the same power as the original alpha engine, I'm assuming my capacity is about
the same.
The main thing I'm worried about during this towing adventure is the cooling system since
it is installed but not quite dialed in yet.
Luckily we can keep tabs on all the electronics with today's sponsor, HP and the new Dragonfly
Pro.
I can plug HG's new laptop directly into my EV Humvee and get immediate real time data.
When I have a complex electric vehicle conversion with a million variables that can go wrong
at any time, it's helpful to have a laptop that just works and doesn't contribute to
the chaos.
HP has 24/7 live customer support with a real person whenever you need it, day or night.
And a convenient customer service button built right into the laptop.
The HP Dragonfly Pro has an adaptive 15 hour, best in class performance battery life.
A 14 inch full HD touch screen, quad speakers, and a matte black exterior.
And it's manufactured with recycled materials in both the body of the laptop and the packaging.
I'll have this laptop with me during the towing trip today to keep tabs on the Hummer.
But if you're in the market and want one of these laptops for yourself, I'll leave a link
down in the description.
Speaking of which, let's get started.
[Intro]
The military uses something called a rigid mounted pintle hitch...also super common for
industrial and agricultural towing, and it looks a little something like this.
This is called a lynette ring and when combined with the hitch, it allows for more range of
motion, meaning you can tow in more places and it tows better off road.
And it's also way better for the higher weight applications.
However one downfall is that it's super loud.
Civilian ball hitches are quite a bit more quieter and quite a bit more common.
However, an apocalypse vehicle is more useful if it has both.
[Drilling sounds]
[Little kid] What are you doing with the truck?
[Zack] Working on it.
[Little kid] Is it broke a little bit?
[Zack] Usually.
[Little kid] Is it always broken?
[Zack] Yeah, pretty much.
I'm going to install a new airlift bumper for federal military parts.
That allows me to keep both hitches.
[Drilling sounds]
And of course, my airlift helicopter mounts just in case we ever have the need to get
airlifted by a helicopter.
You never know when you might need it.
The new bumper is rated to tow 14,000 pounds, but I'm never going to even come close to
that...hopefully.
[Drilling sounds]
Now with the new bumper and hitch in place we are ready to get rid of that.
[Squeaking sounds]
With everything loaded including the trailer weight, we're right around 3,300 pounds.
We have the 4 tires, the engine, the gas canister, an air filter.
We have the radiator, we have the transfer case, a differential, transmission, lights,
drive shafts, almost enough to rebuild an entire Humvee if you have the body.
This body, though, is in use.
And now it's time for my Hummer to officially tow its guts out.
Ba-dum-chz.
So as of right now we have about 160 miles on the odometer and I've noticed that the
motor starts overheating slightly before the battery pack does.
The battery temperature doesn't really change at all.
We're not pulling that many amps as we're driving around under 50 miles an hour.
And we have two different cooling loops.
One that loops around for the batteries, and one that loops around for the motor.
So what I've done is I've pinched the loop for the battery so it gets less coolant.
I'll add a more permanent valve later.
And with it being pinched, more fluid, more coolant is going to be flowing through the
motor and the inverter, Hopefully keeping us cool with the 3000 pounds behind it.
It'll be interesting to see what happens.
[Music playing]
As far as power goes, it's definitely not as strong as say my Rivian or any other electric
vehicle that I've towed with.
But at the same time it's got quite a bit of juice.
I would say it's comparable to my Tacoma towing something if you remember that truck.
One interesting thing though, is with all the information I have on my dashboard, I
can actually see the voltage drop as we accelerate.
We started off with 420 volts and when I accelerate and go uphill, we can drop down all the way
to 389 volts.
As I'm pulling more amperage the voltage goes down, but when I stop accelerating it evens
out.
We'll have to see how many volts we end up with after the trip is over.
No...about 10 miles into the trip my low voltage system completely cut out.
Apparently my 12 volt battery died.
Luckily it died right across the street from a used car dealership who was kind enough
to let me borrow a 12 volt battery of their own which I jumper-cabled up to mine to get
us back on the road.
For some reason my 12 volt battery just died.
My DC/DC convertor tripped the breaker and wasn't recharging the batteries.
So I lost my power steering, display, my brakes.
Nothing to do with towing, but like I said, earlier, there's a million different variables
of things that can go wrong.
Just gotta figure out why that DC/DC tripped.
I think what the problem is is that the 40 amp breaker I have is too undersized for what
the DC/DC converter can output.
So if the battery dips too low, the DC/DC tries charging it too much, tripping the breaker.
That was it right there, the trip.
So if I install a larger capacity breaker, all our problems should be solved.
It's a $15 fix.
Looks like we went about 28 miles and dropped about 27 volts on the battery pack which is
interesting.
Temperature-wise we are up in the yellows which is a little bit concerning especially
since today is not all that hot.
So I probably do have to work on the cooling system situation a little bit more.
Probably just dialing in the pump and the radiator ratios.
But besides the whole 12 volt battery fiasco dying, I think it went pretty well.
Our max speed was probably around 45 miles an hour.
I would not trust this on the freeway just yet.
And that means in order to get these parts where they belong, I have to switch trucks.
Taking parts out is always much faster than putting them in.
Remember at the beginning of this video when I said that this pile of junk is extremely
valuable to the right person?
Well the right person is here.
So inside of this black Humvee is Nacho from the Tactical Nacho YouTube channel.
-What's up!
I've been daily driving this Humvee for the last 3 years because I'm a glutton for punishment.
And I know the value of spare parts because they all go bad.
-And I hope the parts that we have given him are useful.
If you're curious about what happens to these in the future, feel free to subscribe to his
YouTube channel.
I'll leave a link for that over here.
-If any of you guys are Humvee mechanics, military, and you can give me some insight
into upgrading to a 4-speed, I could use it.
-He has a 3-speed currently and I think they're swappable but I've only taken them out before
and now I have a one speed Hummer.
-A one speed.
[Laughing]
-Alright, thanks a ton for watching and I'll see you around.