Motor Dry Fit!

Well I am still in discussions with Electric Car Company about my adapter.  I just heard from Steve at Rebirth that a adapter from them will be a 7-10 day lead time.  Lesson learned...

So yesterday I pressure washed the 178,000 miles off grease of the car so when I work on it I don't look like a coal miner. :)

And tonight I deiced to go ahead and dry fit the motor without the hub.  I first needed to layout the motor cradle so I found a short section of heavy wall 1.25" pipe that had a nice tight fit over the input shaft.  This allowed me to measure the height and see that the cradle fit really well if I welded it to the sub-frame.

The cradle is the same style I used on the leadwing.  It's actually a mount for large high pressure cylinders (9" OD) in military ships.  It even comes with a warranty plate circa 1988.  Either way it is very stout, comes with all the hardware, and was $30 for two of them shipped!  :)

 It will need some modification but for now I just tacked it into place to dry fit the motor.

I am glad that I went with the 9" motor as once I put on the adapter on the assembly weighed over 210lbs!  This really wasn't bad to lift, carry and man-handle into place, but if I had a 11" (~350lbs) I would have definitely need a hoist.

Anyway the motor fits in really well. I am going to trim the cradle away some before I weld it all in as I think I can lower it about another 1" to give a little better CG.  Seems excessive but this is the heaviest single item on the car.

You can also see the the great space in front of the motor for one of the pack modules (with the help of my assistant).  I was originally planning on splitting the pack into 2 modules but it would be a little too long.  So I am going to do 3 instead to fit between the the frame rails.

I also test fit the controller.  That Soliton1 is such a great piece of eye candy that I couldn't tuck it off into a corner.  So just like on the leadwing I am going to put it front and center.  I am considering 2 options: This first is mounting it parallel to the motor.  Looks nice and would be fairly easy to mount.

And a 4 year old in thedriver's seat making motor noises makes it even better :)

I might even put it in a bit of an angle just to show it off more and get a little more clearance in the front for the pack. 

The other option is to put in perpendicular.  I am planning on putting in a strut tower brace so it would be REALLY easy to mount the controller and it hides the wiring by pointing toward the firewall.  But it doesn't look right....  I'll do some more head scratching but I am leaning towards putting it in long way.  I think if I did it sideways it would be a detail that would bug me.

Of course every knows that blowing bubbles on your controller is good luck for an EV....

If only the adapter was correct I would be really close to hooking up a few SLAs and driving arounf the driveway....