A long time awaited, the engine has finally braced the engine bay where it will sit powering our 944. There is plenty of space for the batteries to sit in front of and a top the engine. We used a piece of 2x4 to hold the engine in place for now as we will begin to measure and accurately cut and drill the holes for the aluminum that will replace the wood.

We continue to plug along cleaning the interior using loud and obnoxious tools to grind away any remaining glue which, to our surprise was distracting to say the least for the shop owner. Most of the gritty work however, is complete and we are now really ready to focus on all the mechanical features so that we can move back to our garage as soon as we can.

The batteries are due to arrive March 5th and with the Brackets near completion and wires to be purchased soon, we should be well on our way to completing the car 1 month before schedule. This doesn't include any cosmetics of course :) We want to leave that to the end.

It's great to finally see the engine where it belongs. Please browse the pictures section to view the engine placement and other new updates.

So, work has been progressing steadily on the 944. The interior has almost been fully cleaned out, including the pesky sound deadening material which is turning up in places all over the car. A heat gun and chisel are making the removal of the insulation straightforward, but still time-consuming. Apparently there is almost 100lbs of this stuff in the car! Talk about overkill. Yesterday I removed the rest of the interior paneling and dyed it all black. With the black door panels, the car already has a lot more class.

The clean-up of all of the wiring is almost complete as well. Whatever is left is getting tidied up and tucked out of the way. I'll have to do some thorough testing of all of the features before I pack it all away too carefully. So far though, it looks like all of the lights are working properly. The gauges may need some tweaking to work properly. 

I think that I have also figured out a solution to hub/adapter problem. I purchased a keyed hub from Princess auto which fits the Warp9 motor perfectly. I also bought a pulley gear which is designed to be welded onto the hub. I will have to cut off the gear teeth, and then drill all of the holes to properly match the flywheel. For the adapter plate, I met with a local machinist who's going to see what he can put together for me that will work. It's not going to be as pretty a solution as a custom fabricated plate that I could buy online, but it should significantly less expensive. 

Hopefully Graham will snap a few more pictures of the progress this week. It's all starting to come together. It's really the interior work that's taking up more of our time so far unfortunately, but the end result will be worth it.

I received an email from DEVA (Durham Electric Vehicle Association) and am glad to see that there is a lot of interest in our business. Many members are interested in converting their vehicles and would like know more about us. We will be scheduling a presentation at the Durham College Whitby Campus for DEVA on March 4th, 2010.

The battery brackets that will be mounted in the engine bay and rear passenger seat are now starting to take shape. WIthout a shop to work in and use of specific tools such as a drill press, metal cutter this job would be much more difficult but with the help of these items the brackets are coming along nicely. A strong and steardy design has been made using a few simple pieces from home hardware. The brackets seen in the picture are to carry 18 of our lithium ion batteries, a case will be designed to contain 4 cells each and will sit on two rows. Hopefully, the rest of the brackets will be in place by the end of the week!

Well, this weekend really began our adventures in building an EV. Up until now, our work has been completely destructive: removing parts and pieces that we would no longer require. On Saturday however, we installed our first new part - the vacuum pump! It may not sound like much, but it's really gratifying to finally be adding new parts into the Porsche. Of course, we're still working on sanding and painting the interior and engine bay, but having a functioning part just makes the difference. We found a nice spot for the pump right underneath the brake booster, which keeps the tubing lengths very short, and also won't interfere with any of our planned battery locations.

All in all we only worked for about 8 hours over the weekend, but we got a lot accomplished in that time. I'm thinking that the 200 hour estimate for a conversion may not be too far off the mark for us.

Next weekend we'll be taking some photos of the 944 in its new home, and adding some photos of the vacuum pump too.

Well, we just moved our 944 to a real shop: Hunter Motorsports. Now that the car is getting nice and warm, it will make work a lot easier. There's still a lot of sanding/priming/painting of the interior to do, and it just wasn't working in the -20 degree weather. Progress has been irritatingly slow so far, but I'm very optimistic now that we're in a shop that everything will start to fall together nicely.

So, the first of our EV parts have started arriving. On the weekend I picked up the package sent from EV Source, which had our fuses, disconnects, vacuum pump and a bunch of other goodies. Everything was exactly as ordered. I mistakenly only ordered one Anderson disconnect, which means I got half of a device really. Two halves are needed to make the disconnect work. And it's huge! I had no idea the disconnect would be so large. I'm going to have to rethink its location. The idea is that this disconnect can be pulled apart manually, even while under load, as an emergency cutoff in the case of an accident, fire, runaway motor or anything else. I'll probably mount one end of the connector solidly to the chassis, and attach a steel pull-wire to the other end and mount a handle inside the passenger compartment. Other designs have involved using a foot-pedel, but I think that a hand-pull should suffice. The 1500W heater is actually a lot smaller than I expected, which is a bonus. It'll be a lot easier to attach some ductwork and a fan this way.

We have also started exploring the idea of moving to another garage. The shed that we've been using is getting awefully cold. If anyone in Toronto or the GTA has a spare bay they want to lend us, please let me know!

So apparently Net-Gain has started the production of their latest motor creation: the Warp11 High-Voltage. To be blunt - this is amazing. It's basically a Warp11 motor that has been reconfigured to allow for much higher voltages (up to 360V) and much (much!) higher rpms. It can even provide regenerative braking if set up properly! These are very, very sellable features. The fact that you can spin this motor up to 9000rpm is going to provide the largest benefit in my opinion. It will be even easier to use this motor in a direct-drive application, or for achieving much better performance while leaving in the original transmission. Plus, since motor amperage is a function of the difference between applied voltage and back emf, doubling the allowable applied voltage will actually allow much higher amperage to be supplied to the motor, which equals much higher torque. Now, these 2000A controllers may actually be useful after all. Getting a system voltage as high as 300+ volts could be a challenge, especially while trying to maintain a 1000A+ output. But, with the falling LiFePO4 prices, we could be looking at some pretty powerful new EVs on Toronto roads soon.

It looks like by the time we get our 944 on the road, it will be obsolete. I may have to plan to convert my Miata using the 944 parts, and then buy a whole new system for the 944. Budget permitting, of course.

OK, so I managed to find a few good pictures from the past month or so, and I figure I'd post them all now. 

I also wanted to mention that I've been in discussion with our Toronto based electronics manufacturer ElectroCraft, and it looks like we can jointly offer a simple upgrade for any Hybrid car on the road, allowing the owner to plug the car in overnight for charging. This would be an inexpensive upgrade, and would allow drivers to maximize their electric mileage. We can also explore more thorough upgrades like adding extra batteries. Just drop me an email to discuss.

I've been getting a number of emails lately from people interested in electric cars, which is great! Once the 944 is done, I'll be happy to give demonstrations, and in the meantime I'll answer as many questions as you can throw at me.
 

 

Well, a lot has happened since the last post, and once I find my camera again, I'll post some pictures.

After Graham brought in the engine lift, we made swift progress getting the gasoline engine out of the Porsche. We had to squeeze the engine a bit to pull it out of the top of the engine bay, but it was a lot easier than removing a ton more parts to drop it out of the bottom like our instruction manual told us. There was a small issue with one bolt with no space to get at it, as well as stirring up a huge cloud of fiberglass fluff, but eventually we succeeded.

That same weekend we sold the engine, along with all of the other accessories we had pulled out and had no use for, to Brent at Hunter Motorsports in Mississauga. 

There were a few more things to remove once that the engine was gone, including all of the fuel lines, coolant hoses, heater core and some extra wiring. I ended up pulling out the entire dashboard to get at the heater core, which may not have been a great idea. The plastic parts of the dash were so old that I ended up breaking just about everything. It'll take a bit more custom work to build in a new dash, but I wasn't impressed with the look of the old dash anyway. Plus taking out the heater core removed a good bit of weight and freed up a huge amount of cabin space. 

We then began the journey of putting everything back together again and starting the new build work. The transmission was the first part to go back in. It went back fairly easily, although we had to clean and repack one of the CV joints which had fallen apart when we removed it from the transaxle. 

We also started a more thorough design of the new system and finalized all of the components that we needed. We split the car into three systems; battery, motor, and integration. Graham took on the battery system and ordered a set of Thundersky LiFePO4 batteries from EVComponents in California (who ships directly from China). The pack is a set of 50 100Ahr batteries, which will give us a system voltage around 160-180V. This pack should give us an easy 300A continuous current, with more for quick starts when we want it. 

We also sent in our order to Darius at ElectroCraft Systems in Toronto for the main controller, battery charger, throttle box, and 12V cross charger. Darius is making us a systems using a new board design and higher amperage components - I think it's his third controller version. It looks like it will be a great set of components. 

I also set up an order through EVSource from California for all of the extra components that we need, like the main contactor, fuses, disconnect, speed sensor, ceramic heater, and some other miscellaneous bits. These parts may ship before Christmas, but everything else will arrive mid-January. That doesn't leave us with a whole lot of time to prepare everything for their arrival. 

I also went to my firs EV Society meeting last Thursday, which was great. There are a lot of people out there interested in EVs. I met a fellow who might be interested in machining the clutch adapter that I need, and maybe even fabricating some motor mounts and a battery box as well. For a project as complex as this, having the right connections is crucial.

I've also done a little bit of planning for the headlight relocation work, which I think will give a nice modern look to the car. I already sold the headlight motor, so I have some extra incentive to get the light relocated properly. I even bought some fiberglass components, and with a bit of practice, we should be able to make some excellent and lightweight replacement parts. Every pound shaved off the car will make a big difference in mileage and acceleration. 

Ok, that's pretty much everything up until now. Some photos should be posted soon.