Now that the majority of the demolition is over it's time to start on the harder part. Putting it all back together.
As you may have guessed the electric motor has to be attached to the car somehow. Specifically it needs to be attached to the original transmission. But this motor looks completely different from the engine that was removed. So how do you attach the two together? The answer is an adapter.
The adapter that I am using is custom part. It needs to be fabricated from aluminum or steel. I thought about machining it myself. That would involve buying a mill and tools to make the adapter components. It would mean learning how to mill the parts. And since the parts have to be precise (to the thousandths of an inch) it would mean a lot of trial and error. Given all of that I figured in the long run it would be better for me to farm out this part to a machine shop.
Electro-Automotive is a vendor of electric vehicle components. They make adapters for just this application. If they have previously made the adapter for the make and model of your vehicle they can make it easily. If not then you have to ship the transmission to them so they can make a pattern.
I was lucky in that someone else is/has converted the same vehicle. So they have the pattern in stock. All I have to do is send them a rubbing of the original transmission and flywheel. That way they know that they have the correct pattern. (Sometimes manufacturers change parts mid year so two cars that are supposedly the same may actually differ.) Below is the rubbing.
The original engine was bolted directly to the transmission. The two were designed to directly bolt together.
Not so with the electric motor. Since the motor and transmission were not designed to match an adapter needs to be fabricated that bolts to the motor on one side and the transmission on the other side.
In addition to attaching the motor and transmission, the drive shaft of the motor and transmission need to be coupled. In the original car the engine's drive shaft was attached to the flywheel.
Power is transmitted to the transmission when the clutch plate and flywheel are in contact.
With the electric motor the drive shaft will also be attached to the flywheel. In order to accomplish this a coupler needs to be fabricated. The coupler consists of a bushing and a coupling plate. The bushing is "squeezed" onto the motor drive shaft. A coupler is then bolted to this bushing and the flywheel bolted to the coupler.
Here's a blowup of it all.
4 comments:
Interesting Barry. I suppose since I read earlier that this was a manual transmission vehicle, retaining the clutch and pressure plate should be expected. Is there a woodruff key on the electric engine shaft to locate and immobilize the adapter bushing on the shaft? And another on the coupler?
Chris,
Both the motor shaft and bushing are keyed. The coupler and bushing are a taper lock. When the bolts on the coupler going to the bushing are tightened the bushing is compressed onto the shaft.
There is a better picture at http://www.electroauto.com/catalog/adaptors.shtml
Some conversions don't use the flywheel and pressure plate at all. They just couple the motor shaft either to the clutch plate or directly to the transmission shaft. They can still shift. Just a little tougher.
Hey dad =) r u having fun with sketchup to make the drawings?! 2 questions, whos dad helped you with the problem in the previous post and where did u get rubbing paper?
-Shay
1. Mackenzie's (?spelling) dad, a.k.a Chris.
2. Plain copy paper. The transmission was several pieces taped together. Used a crayon per Nancy, a.k.a. your mom :-)
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