It's a puzzle

It's a puzzle, but the pieces seem to be coming together. I rounded up some scrap metal from 3 old bed frames to use for battery racks. On Thursday Matt and I sized up where we could put battery racks. We cut the pieces and positioned it in a place where we could use existing bolt attachments in the frame.

I am using a skill saw with a grinder like blade to cut the angle iron:

We had thought about welding it, but were worried about having enough power for the welder. I picked up nuts and bolts and a cobalt drill bit and on Saturday we bolted it together. We then added a another peice of angle iron closer to the firewall to hold one more battery. So at this point we are ready for 3 batteries. Three others will go in the back.Matt had a hitchhiker on his tool bag:


Sunday: Ready to figure out where to put the controller. I got a piece of aluminum to serve as both a heat sink and a place to mount the controller. We tossed around many ideas, and finally decided to mount the plate on the rear angle iron and use one of the bolt holes in the firewall as a third point. We are also planning on mounting the contactor and the shunt on the aluminum plate. Here is where we will mount the plate:We also spent a lot of time figuring out where to put the throttle box. We actually never did figure out where to put it, but we decided to incorporate the cable holder so that we can place where we want as one unit:

We got busy

On Saturday we started out by trying to remove all the clutch components. We were able to take out most of the components but not the shaft that drops down into the bell hosing. We will be welding that into place so that it cannot move.
Next step was trying to get the shaft coupler to slide easily on to the shaft. We cleaned up the shaft, greased up the parts and slid it on. It stopped at a certain point like the week before. Then we tried rotating it. Bingo, it slid right on. So we just noted the angle so that when we were ready to slide it on with the motor attached it would slide right in.
We bolted the adapter plate to the motor with 4 bolts.
We then measured how far down the electric motor shaft we would position the coupler. We put a stack of washers at the bottom of the adapter plate so that we could slide the coupler down that distance.
We next attempted to put the key in the keyway.
The Key was too big, just barely. We decided too try so sand it down a little so that it would fit:
To our surprise we were able to sand it down enough so that it would fit. (After 2 sanding sessions). We then slid the coupler down the shaft and tightened up the set screw.
With everthing in place we slid the motor into place. We found that we had to come from underneath to get enough clearance.
The motor was in place but the bolt holes did not line up. OUCH!

There is one bolt that sticks out of the transmission. We decided the best option was to make that hole bigger.
We took the motor off, and went to town with the dremmel with a little grinding tip.
Next attempt with the motor had 2 of the holes lining up nice and one still a little off. We decided to go with this, and use a smaller bolt in the hole that was not lining up.
We took the original engine mount arm and put it in position to see how we might be able to use it to secure the electric motor. Lo and behold with some small modifications we could bolt on the motor with some extra washers. We drilled 2 new holes, which was fairly easy through the cast aliminum.
We bolted in the modified mounting arm and now the whole transmission motor unit feels very solid.
Wow, we made some solid progress today. We were at it for about 5 1/2 hours.
Next up battery racks.

At long last.

At long last we got the shipment of parts in, although we are still missing the "contactor". That will be arriving soon. We were hoping to get the motor hooked up today but we ran into a couple of snags. We found that the shaft coupler (see photo and video) would only slide onto the shaft so far and then stop. We are checking with Wilderness EV to see if this is normal. We also needed bolts to attach the adapter plate to the motor. The other snag is that the motor mount that was sent from CEV was the wrong size.




We ended up cleaning up the transmission and getting the gauges ready, figured out what sizes of bolts we would need and called it a day.

More ICE components ripped out

We got another early start this morning. We removed the gas tank. 4 bolts hold it in place and several hoses. Nothing overly challenging. We jacked the car up and put it on blocks to get underneath it. Then supported the tank on the jack while we removed the bolts. Then lowered it down, and poured the remaining fuel into a Jerry can.

We then removed the exaust system. We had to break out the Dremmel grinding tool to get the rear joint appart.
I now have an engine in both the front and rear of my Mercedes. I am ready to take that puppy to the iron recycler. One more picture is what it now looks like in the engine compartment.

ICE engine out of there

Last night we tackled removing the ICE engine. At one point it felt like it was tackling us. First I had to make a run to the hardware store for a cheater bar and a socket to remove one of the bolts. Then the engine just did not want to squeeze out of there. We finally removed one of the mountings of the trans axle in order to pull it out. Where does it go? Ace Iron, to get melted down. We had the help of a couple of neighbors, Noa and Nelson to move the engine away from the vehicle, big Mahalos, guys! I have the kit ordered from Wilderness EV. It has to ship through California so it will take a while to get here.

My other car is a Mercedes

Ever see one of those bumper stickers?

Well in my case it's actually true. I drive a 1981 240D which runs on waste vegtable oil.

Check out my video on youtube:

The project begins

Matt and I brought the car to the car port where we will be doing the conversion. We got an early start, broke the tools out and started preparing to take ICE engine out. Things went petty smooth, we realized we did not have a 10 mm socket that slowed down things a bit.
. We have a Chilton manual and were more or less following the directions there. The major roadblock we hit was taking off the exhaust, as the bolts would not move. We eventually resorted to breaking out the Dremmel and cutting through the bolts.
We have a block and tackle set up so next time we are going to pull out the engine. Guys, wipe those grins off your faces, this is supposed to be hard work. We put in about 4 hours today.