Just musing over the next step

Today I did some little stuff on the car. Pulled the remainder of the fuel lines, removed a few pieces of stray hardware, and salvaged a few pulleys from the old engine.

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.

Just the forest

Sometimes I get so involved with the minutia of a task that I forget to see the big picture. Today was one of those days.

My goal today was to separate the transmission from the engine. There are six bolts that attach the transmission to the engine. Additionally there is an axle going from the transmission through a bracket on the engine.

So I figured I'd start with the easy part. Pulling the axle from the transmission. I had already pulled one axle so this one should be no problem. All I had to do was pull the axle out from the mount.


All I had to do was yank the axle straight out. Unfortunately the axle is held into the mount by a very tight bearing. It wasn't budging. And none of my bearing pullers fit on this bearing. Not to mention that none of my pullers would fit on the axle (it had a thin groove that only the "special" puller recommended by GM would work on).

Plan B. Remove the mount and slide out the axle and mount. That helped a little. The axle started sliding out of the transmission. But there was not enough room to move the mount. Part of the engine block was in the way.

Now the part about not seeing the forest through the trees. Why did I want to remove the axle? Because it was attached to both the transmission and engine. What had I already done? Disconnected the axle from the engine when removing the motor mount? How long did it take me to figure this out? Too long.

Actually, I can't take credit for the eventual solution. After I couldn't figure out how to remove the axle from the bearing I called someone who might know. The parent of one of my daughter's friends tinkers with cars and offered help if I needed it. After explaining the situation he says, "why don't you just remove the transmission. Then you can slide out the axle."

Duh! That sound was accompanied by the sound of me hitting myself in the side of the head. So six bolts later I have the transmission and engine separated. Axle slides out nicely (thank you Chris).

The rest was was pretty easy. Removing the clutch and flywheel. I also disconnected the engine and transmission from the cradle supporting it.



Before and after (cradle and steering rack)



Transmission bell housing, clutch plate, pressure plate, flywheel, and that pesky axle (still attached to the mount).

Just the big day

No not that big day. I've been married for almost twenty years. A different big day. The day the engine came out!

Over the last week I've been slowly working on removing the engine. There were 83 steps in the section for engine removal in the service manual. I think I followed 1-23, 25-30, 40-80, and 91-105 :-) Let's just say the service manual is really not the gospel, just guidelines.

Removing the engine basically means disconnecting every wire, hose, belt, bolt, etc that attaches the engine to something else. As I've mentioned prior some steps are straight forward while others can be improvised.

One such improvisation was removing the fuel line hook up to the engine. The manual called for one way. But since I did not have to worry about reinstalling that part a pipe cutter worked just as well. Same thing for the exhaust system. Finally got a chance to get some sparks flying with the angle grinder. It's all about the neat tools :-)


This is a picture just prior to removing the engine. The big red bar is an engine support. When all the bolts holding the engine into place were removed the support keeps it from dropping straight to the ground.


This is a picture of the engine being lowered with an engine hoist. Remember, its all about the toys.



The engine (plus some other stuff). The transmission is still attached to the engine (left side) as are the remnants of the exhaust system. Under the engine (black frame) is the cradle that holds the engine and transmission in the car. This along with the transmission will be reinstalled. A few other items in this picture such as the sway bar, lower control arms, steering rack will also be reinstalled.


And this is the big hole where the engine once was.

Just from the mouth of babes

Part of the reason that I am undertaking this project is that I like solving problems. Design, deconstruction, construction ... this project is one big set of problems comprised of little problems.

Now I'm not referring to problems in a derogatory manner as in, "I have a problem with my car." I'm referring to problems as in, "How do I get from point A to point B."

So as I was saying, there are lots of problems that need to be solved in the course of this project. Some problems you sit down and do research: how many batteries do I need? Some you make drawings to solve: what configuration do I want for the wiring? And some are just plain stupid: how the !*#& do I get part A to fit/unfit from part B? (See posting on the gas tank named Diablo for such a problem.)

As I'm disconnecting the last remnants of wiring/tubing/cables/etc from the engine and transmission I run into one of these problems (this problem is a problem in both the thinking sense and the derogatory sense). In a nutshell I needed to extract cables held in a very tight bracket by some very tight clips.

After unsuccessfully trying to extract the cables with finesse I elected to go with the brute force method! No luck. So then after mulling over the problem, followed by some more brute force, then some more mulling I was preparing to go back to the brute force approach.

At that point my sixteen year old son came down to watch. I explained what I was trying to do, showed him the cables and bracket and asked him if he had any ideas. He basically said just stick a screwdriver between the bracket and the clip and pry out the clip. Out of the mouth of babes! No need to tell you the result :-)

Just the fuse box

Didn't have a whole lot of time this weekend to work on the car. With Shana shipping off to college and being on call it did not leave a lot of time.

Still setting up to remove the engine and transmission. A few little things in the way. So all I removed was just the fuse box. Nothing exciting.

Just everybody came today

Everybody meaning UPS, FedEx, and USPS. I bet the DHL guy felt left out. That's OK. He comes to my office twice a week so I guess that makes up for it.

What all these visits really meant is that I got lots of packages. I'm still waiting for a few major items to arrive. Like the motor, the controller for the motor, and the adapter plate to connect the motor to the transmission. They are on they way. Just not here yet.

Continuing on the good news front I stopped by the local auto parts store and picked up "Box 2 of 2" today. Later on I assembled the engine lift. Hopefully this weekend I'll have time to start on the engine removal.

Just waiting for the packages

If you've been reading the blog to this point and are still awake you will have noticed that I haven't said anything about the EV components that are going into the vehicle. And that's because I don't have any of them yet. But that's all about to change.

This week I heard from Ryan at EVSource.com. Ryan is supplying me with the majority of the components for the conversion. By this time next week I should have them in hand. Lots of big boxes means Christmas in August!

Obviously, before I can install anything I still have to remove a few things. Mainly the engine and transmission.

So this evening I planned to put together the engine lift. That way I could pull the engine this weekend. I just picked it up last weekend so it was till in the box.

Just one problem. As I'm going through the instructions for assembly I notice I'm missing some parts. A lot of parts. How can that be? The box was sealed and everything in it was packed perfectly. Then I look on the side of the box and see "Box 1 of 2" on the side!

Guess I'll be stopping back at the local auto parts store tomorrow. Luckily I still have the receipt.