First Drive!

I spent yesterday running the last PakTrakr cable through the center hump, and cleaned up a lot of wiring, putting it in wire loom and zip-ties.  I also did a better job of mounting the mid-battery box's exhaust hose to the opening in the steering rack area.  I then bolted the steering rack area cover back into place.

I charged up the pack, bolted the wheels back on and lowered it down to the ground.  This is the first time it's touched the ground since I trailered it over to the Paso airport cars how in May.  I bolted the steering wheel back on, and realized that there is no clearance between the windshield control stalk and the steering wheel, so I'll have to get an extender of some kind.

I suction-cup mounted my GoPro camera to the top of the targa rail, and ....

It works!  I'm really happy with the acceleration too.  I noticed a clunking noise coming from the passenger-side shock tower.  I'll check on that when I get the wheels aligned.  Also, the clutch pedal definitely needs about 1" more travel because it's not smooth getting the gears.

Now, I just have to put the rest of the car back together.

The Motor and Transmission are In!

I was looking forward to a 3-day MLK holiday weekend and making great progress on the car, with the specific goal of having the motor and transmission mounted in the car, the driveshafts installed and the shift linkage in place.  I managed to get all of that plus a little bit.

Alert readers will remember last weekend we mounted the motor to the transmission and placed it under the car, but stopped there.  I backed the assembly out and worked on separating and repairing the bundle of cables coming into the engine compartment.

I cut the tape wrapping I applied during tear down and separated out the wiring harness that leads to the rear brake lights from the accelerator, clutch and speedometer cables.  I noticed that the clutch cable's outer plastic covering was worn, so I cut out the bad part and slipped a section of heat shrink tubing over the damaged area.

The speedometer cable has a similar worn area, but the connector on the end is far too big to slip a piece of shrink wrap over, so it will have to live that way.

I mounted the new rubber transmission mounts, then pushed the motor and transmission assembly into place and jacked it up to where it was touching the front and rear mounts.  I snugged up the transmission bolts and ran the bolts into the front engine bar mount, pushed the whole thing forward and tightened all four bolts.

I was thrilled to get to this point.  My joy was short-lived though when I realized that I hadn't inserted the front shifter shaft into the hole in the firewall.  I put the lift back in, removed the front mount bolts, lowered the lift down enough to replace the shaft bushing in the firewall and insert the shaft.  I then raised the lift and bolted the motor bar back in place.  Then I installed the rear shifter bar, keying it into the front bar and the assembly at the shifter pivot on the side of the transmission.  I bought a bushing kit from Pelican Parts and replaced the allen keys and plastic bushings.  As Edd on "Wheeler Dealers" would say "The bushes have perished".  These nice new parts will give me factory-crisp shifting.

Unfortunately the rubber boot covering the shifter pivot above was missing on the car and seems to be unavailable on the market.  I'll keep checking but if anybody knows where I can get one, please let me know.

Now I moved on the drive shafts and this is where things got, er, interesting.  The passenger side drive shaft splines went into the hub like hot butter.  I tightened up the hub nut and the CV to the transmission.

Then I went to do the other side.  First I realized that I couldn't maneuver the shaft into place with the shifter installed, so I removed the rear shifter rod.  Then I found the shaft wouldn't fit in the space between the hub and the transmission, by about 1/4".  I had to loosen the 4 bolts holding the motor and transmission assembly in place in order to get that space I needed.

Then I found that the splines on the shaft wouldn't go into the wheel hub no matter how hard I tried.  I took it back out and tried to fit it into the hub from the tire side, still no luck.  Upon closer examination, it looked like the start of the splines on the shaft were slightly damaged, likely by Rainbow tightening the nut down too tight when they removed it.  I got a fine triangle file and gently filed open every spline.

I cleaned the splines on the shaft and the hub and lubed it, then jammed it in, with some help from a rubber mallet, on the tire side and pulled it out over and over until it went in all the way.  I then tried to put it in from the correct side and could just barely get the splines engaged, but no further.  I then noticed a small dimple hole in the end of the shaft and that gave me an idea.  I drilled the hole about 1" deep, then tapped it for a 1/4" x 20 bolt.  I ran in a bolt and grabbed the bolt head with my biggest hammer and pivoted hard against the hub.  To my amazement, it slowly slid into place enough that I could get the nut on and pull it in the rest of the way.  I then bolted the other end to the transmission and tightened up all of the mounting bolts.

I re-attached the shifter shaft, and then went to work, cleaning and installing the clutch cable pulley assembly.

Strangely there doesn't seem to be a protective cover on the clutch pulley assembly.  To me, it should be protected from dirt and abrasion damage.  I then installed the speedometer cable and zip-tied it to the clutch cable.  Behold the awesomeness of the power plant of the car!

A Very Busy Weekend!

With the hub adapter in hand, it was time to mount the transmission to the electric motor.  I haven't seen an errata sheet for the EA kit, but I'd sure like to start one.  I've had issues with all 3 steps I've tried to do so far...  This weekend I'm very thankful I live about 3 miles from a Lowes store, as I made 5 trips there... 

Anyway, let's begin.

The first thing I did on Saturday morning was bolt the motor mount to the motor (duh).  You're supposed to position the motor with the wiring studs pointing down.  See how there are only 4 possible holes to bolt the mount to the motor?  Hard to get this wrong eh?  The bolt size of 3/8" in the manual and parts bag is too big, the machined holes are actually 5/8".  So off to Lowes I go.  I bolted it on, and it came back to bite me in the ass.

I then bolted the thick spacer and then the transmission adapter to the electric motor.  These get Loctite'd (not in the kit, off to Lowes I go) and torqued down.  I borrowed a small and large digital torque wrench from my buddy Gary.  These big bolts actually have hex key heads and of course there isn't one in the EA kit.  I don't have a hex key of the right size with a 3/8" or 1/2" socket that will snap onto a torque wrench.  So I saved myself a trip to Lowes and Macgyver'd one up.  I cut a part off of a proper sized hex key, and inserted it into a hex socket of the proper size that snapped onto the torque wrench.

Note that the instructions say only to put the "flat" part to the bottom and the left side.  I thought I did this right, as you can see in the picture above.  This will come back to bite me in the ass.

Next I placed the drive shaft key into the motor shaft, then place the two parts of the hub onto the shaft.  You gently tighten the screws pulling the two pieces of the hub together, allowing it to slide a bit on the shaft, to set the flywheel at the proper distance.

Next, I prepped the flywheel by replacing the throwout bearing and O-ring.  These are cheap from Pelican Parts and well worth the investment while you have everything torn apart.  The flywheel is gently bolted to the hub, and then you measure the distance from the outside edge of the flywheel to the transmission adapter plate, very very carefully to three decimal places.  You adjust the distance, and when it's right you carefully take the flywheel off and tighten the hub.  You put the flywheel back on and double check the distance, rinse and repeat.  When perfect, you Loctite the bolts and tighten everything down.

Next the clutch gets bolted in.  The existing clutch in the car was in excellent shape, with no cracks or evidence of oil soaking, so I saved a few hundred dollars by reusing it.  I did buy a clutch rebuild kit from Pelican Parts, and replaced the parts as I went.

Next I moved over to the transmission to prepare it for mating to the motor.  The focus is on the clutch throwout arm and bearing.  This is attached to the clutch pedal via a cable, and causes the clutch to engage and disengage against the flywheel.  The throwout assembly was very grimy and dirty, to the point that the bearing wasn't spinning against the spring tabs on the clutch.  I took it apart and cleaned it well and it started spinning freely.  I replaced the wear and tear parts on the arm, and made sure the arm itself was still flat and true.  The bearing wasn't sliding on the shaft well, so I cleaned everything off and sanded down some rough metal to 2000 grit, then used moly lube and it now slides like hot butter.

Now it was time to mate the transmission to the motor+adapter plate.  After some wiggling, I got it onto the splines and pulled the two together.  This is when I realized the transmission and the adapter plate didn't line up.  This is where the ass biting really came into its own.  It wasn't just a little bit off, it was a lot off.  I couldn't simply rotate the motor around until it matched up because the wire studs and the motor mount would be in the wrong place.  So I took everything off, including those Loctite'd freaking bolts.  I then figured out the correct orientation of the adapter plate to the transmission and  then bolted everything back onto the motor.  The adapter plate was nowhere near the orientation they suggest in the manual.  An accurate statement and a picture/diagram would have been a great help and saved me about 2 hours.  I should have double checked with a dry fit before bolting everything.  I've now learned my lesson and will do so from now on.

I bribed Fred again with pizza and beer, so he came over on Sunday morning.  We had the pizza but forgot about the beer which is probably a good idea.  We were going to be doing heavy lifting and there's no way I could do it myself.  The manual recommends an engine hoist but I figured two middle aged guys could handle it.

Flashing back to yesterday, the motor wire studs are in the right orientation and the adapter plate matches up with the transmission.  But the kicker is the motor mount on the other end is now wildly off.  Remember it can only be mounted in 4 orientations and unfortunately the orientation I need is not any of them; it's somewhere in between.  Now I'm thinking I was sent the wrong motor mount, or the motor manufacturer changed the spec and EA didn't know or didn't update the manual.  I wanted to move forward so I had to drill two new mounting holes.  Of course the position of the holes are blind behind the plate, so I had to insert sacrificial bolts (off to Lowes we go) into the two possible holes, then grind them to a point and lock them into place.  I carefully measured the gap from the mount to the motor, using a socket wrapped in tape to give the right dimension, and the center line of the mount.  I held it in the correct position and Fred tapped the plate with a rubber mallet on each point.  We then drilled out the hole locations and bolted the mount to the motor.  The ass biting was complete.

Now it's time to roll the motor+transmission out of the shop so we can mount the original 914 engine mount bar to the electric motor mount.  I used a nice hydraulic jack I borrowed from Gary, plus a furniture dolly and two pieces of plywood.  Not a recommended design, but it worked for me.

The manual's description and supplied bolts for the bar mount are too long - they run out of thread before tightening down.  The bolt goes into the engine mount bar, rubber spacers with metal sleeve (not listed in the manual), the motor mount and then a nylock nut.  Even by adding several washers it wasn't able to tighten down all of the way.  Off to Lowes we go for a bolt 1/2" shorter.  We bolt it on, then roll the assembly under the car and jack it up into place.

At this point we were losing the light and I decided I needed to clean and paint the transmission and motor mount hardware, so we called it a day.  We made a huge step on the project, but ran into a multitude of problems with the EA instructions and supplied parts.  I'm hoping the quality of the kit improves dramatically.

Drop The Engine!

With the 12-point star driver in hand, it was time to do the biggest project yet - dropping the engine and transmission out of the car.  The engine and transmission actually drop out of the bottom of the car, not pulled up from the top like most other cars.  Having read the other conversion blogs, I figured I could drop it down gently, but it didn't turn out quite that way...

Fred came over on Sunday, bearing pizza.  Feeling satisfied after a good lunch, we laid out our strategy.

First we removed the axles from the transmission at the CV joints.  Using the star driver, it was easy.  The driver's side axle can be locked with the emergency brake, but on the passenger side I had to wedge my knees against the wheel and hold it with my hands.  The important thing is to put a bag over the axle end because it's a greasy mess. You can zip-tie the passenger axle to the spring to keep it out of the way, but the driver's side is impeded by the starter motor.  You just have to work around it as you roll the engine out.

I have two hydraulic jacks, as you can see below.  We used a furniture dolly and two 2x4s, and brought the jacks up to just take the weight of the engine + transmission.

I removed the two bolts holding the engine brace, then the two nuts holding the transmission, and in 5 minutes the engine is no longer attached to the car.  The plan was to drop the front by a few millimeters, then the back, then the front, etc.  That worked well for an inch or so, but then the front jack lost its lock and slipped all the way down.  We tightened it up and jacked it back up about six inches.  We then dropped it evenly until the back jack was down as far as it would go.  We let the front down all the way, then brought that jack around to take the load off the back, then gently let the back down.  Whew!  Would have been better to have two of the blue style jacks, but it worked out.

A final issue popped up - even with the car up on jack stands, the car body was a few inches too low to roll the engine out.  We thought about using the hydraulic jack to raise each side and get a few more clicks on each jack stand, but that would involve a stack of 2x4s to get the needed height and I wasn't comfortable with that.  Then I remembered we had just taken several hundred pounds of the car, so I walked around to the back and lifted the car up.  It actually went up a few inches, so Fred raised the jack stands on each side as I lifted.  That gave us the extra space we needed.  I carefully rolled backwards, maneuvering around the driver's side axle and the tubing on top.  And here we are!

The engine and transmission are strikingly big for the place where they fit in the little car - hard to believe the clever Germans actually fit it all in.  Here's the big empty space from above and below.

We still had some light left, so we decided to pop the transmission off the engine.  I'll reuse the flywheel, clutch and transmission with the electric motor.  That way I can shift it like a normal car if needed.  There are four bolts holding the transmission to the engine.  We got three of them off easily, but the head of the fourth bolt was obscured by where it's located on the starter motor flange, and we couldn't get a socket or open-end wrench on it.  After some creative metalworking (because I won't be reusing the starter), we got the bolt out but discovered that this bolt is very long, and goes all the way through the engine mount to an exposed nut.  All we had to do was back the nut off from the other side.  Oh well!  We wiggled the transmission a little and it separated from the engine.  Fred supported it while I pulled them apart and it came off easily.

Next step is to take the pressure plate, clutch disc and flywheel off the back of the engine.  The pressure plate came off easily, after we jammed a 2x4 into the teeth of the flywheel to stop it from spinning.  I got some repair receipts with the car that show that the clutch was replaced in the past, and both the pressure plate and clutch disc look great.  They're both about .375" thick - I'll have to check to see how that compares with new, or if they should be replaced while I'm in there.  Also, they're both clean and dry - no sign of oil leaks that mean that they're ruined.

We tried to work on removing the flywheel, but the 5 bolts holding it on the engine just didn't want to release, even with my cordless impact wrench.  We gave it a good spraying with WD-40 and wrapped up for the day.  Probably my most productive day so far, and a lot to show for it!  I'll have to do some checking to see if there's a trick to get these bolts out.  I'll probably need to lock the driveshaft somehow.