Here is a 2 and 1/2 minute, 4 MB movie showing a few pics of the install and the first drive:
First Drive (you might need to right-click and save to play it)
| The gas
motor has already been removed. It was removed from the bottom, and the
car lifted high enough to drag it from under the car. Prepartory work included removing the engine lid -- don't forget the Porsche 911 is a rear engined car. Since the motor lid has a wire for a light, it wasn't easy to take it off all the way, so we tied it onto the car. The white sheet wraps the air conditioner condenser, and you can also see the air conditioner compressor hanging by bungee cords. Many conversions remove stuff like this before installing electric conversion parts. Since this car was purchased not running, I wanted to make sure it drove OK before taking off more stuff than I had to. |
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The
motor is heavy enough it was hard to lift under the car, so we put the
motor+transmission package on a couple of skateboards to roll it under
the car. The motor weighs about 82 kg (180 lbs). It is a Kostov, a Bulgarian forklift motor that has been modified with higher temperature wiring, better bearings, and Kevlar wrapping to hold things together at high rpm. John Wayland, a http://www.NEDRA.com racer, has pushed V8 levels of power drag racing his Kostov motor. The black metal piece between the electric motor and Porsche transmission is an adapter I designed, machined, and welded myself. You can see some information about that on my main page, http://ExplodingDinosaurs.com . |
| The
skateboards were pretty wobbly, so we put the motor on these wood
blocks to stably hold it The black U-shaped thing on the back of the motor is a rear motor mount I designed and built. Soon I'll put some pictures of its construction up on http://ExplodingDinosaurs.com . The white rag pads the metal edge of an access hole that also served as a handy handle to lift the motor. Note the motor has four terminals. The closer two terminals power the armature, and will take hundreds of Amps and hundreds of Volts. The further two terminals power the field, and take tens of Volts and tens of Amps. I just wired them together for a simple test of just 36 Volts. Wired together like this, the motor spins about 500 rpm. Note the wires cross, so the motor spins in the desired direction. |
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Most air cooled gas engine
Porsche motor installs put the motor in from the bottom, and do
everything from the bottom. You have to lift the car pretty high to get
the gas motor underneath; some people even remove the rear bumper and
some bodywork. The electric motor is much smaller. I probably could
have put the rear wheels on a couple of 2x4 wood blocks and slid it
under. I don't know of anyone that uses an engine hoist to do an air cooled gas engine install, but for the electric motor it worked great. The electric motor has a strong lifting eye. I prefer hanging a motor to balancing it on a jack! Thanks for the loan, Ken! |
Many thanks to Mark, Kyle, Ken, Ed, Michael, Elizabeth, and Kristen -- family, EV club members, and neighbors. Mark and Kyle had been through the drill installing an electric motor, and Mark had done it on his Porsche 911 -- this was incredibly helpful! Ken's hoist made the job much safer and easier, too.
I threw in a single battery, wired it up with jumper cables. The car coasted down the hill, and stalled. It turns out the shifter wasn't adjusted, so when I thought I was trying to get 1st gear I was actually grinding 3rd, and when I tried for "2nd" gear I actually got 4th. Small wonder the car wouldn't climb the hill in 4th! This is no big deal, I just have to loosen a bolt and adjust how the shifter grabs the shift rod.
After the first try stalled out, we tested the car in neutral. Yes, the motor spun. On the level driveway, it would sloooooooowwwwlllly go forward and back. My neighbor Jason had a couple of old batteries, so he donated them to the cause. Now I was up from 12 Volts to 36 Volts! Muhahahahahahaha (mad scientist laugh). Now the car would actually drive on level ground, forward in 4th, and backed up the hill in reverse. The jumper cables got hot, and the old batteries started getting weak, but I made it up my hill to my garage. I had plastic tarps over the batteries, and safety goggles on -- the finished car will have much better isolation from the batteries!
It's hard to see, but the speedometer visible through the steering wheel goes to 150 mph (240 km/hr). Wouldn't it be great to "need" that much speedometer range?
Here again is the video of the first drive:
First Drive 4 MB (you might need to right-click and save to play it)
Here is the video of the motor getting installed:
Motor Install 13 MB (you might need to right-click and save to play it)
You can see more about my electric car, and my other car adventures, on my main page:
http://ExplodingDinosaurs.com