De-ICE'ing

I drove the Ghia down to Ottawa yesterday, with the back seat full of parts. The drive was uneventful. I had brought along a jerry-tank of gas because the goal was to get to Richards' with just fumes left in the tank. I made it without running out -- and, as I would find out later, with only 1.5L left! So that was the last run for this car with gas.

All photo's are taken at REV Consultants Ltd. in Ottawa, Richard Lane can be seen in a number of them, as I was behind the camera.

After a quick video of the car running with its old engine.

Before we started it looked like this:

We took some measurements to ensure we'd be able to tweek the suspension back to its stock ride height:

Jacked it up and disconnected wiring and fuel lines:

Pulled the air intake, fuel-vapor canister and heater box tubes:

Removed the muffler and loosened the motor bolts:

Dropped the engine:

Voila!

We then stripped the fire / sound insulation out of the engine compartment, and removed any other bits and pieces. The pile of discarded parts has grown quite a bit!

So far, we've worked on the car for only two hours -- I had expected this to take all day.



Ha! We spent the next hour and a half trying to get the gland-nut off the clutch / camshaft. After numerous futile attempts and one bent wrench, we stopped for lunch and to collect our thoughts. After lunch, Richard pulled out the welding machine and welded a 5 foot long 3"x1/4" metal bar to the 36mm socket we'd been using. It was out 5 minutes later.

We cleaned up the flywheel, clutch and preassure-plate and got to attaching all this to the motor using the kit from CanEV.

This is the Netgain Warp9 motor, considerably simpler than the internal combustion isn't it? Cleaner too!

This is the motor with the transmission adapter attached:

These are the parts which will mate the motor shaft to the clutch assembly:

Here they are on the motor:

At this point, we've mounted the clutch assembly (sorry, no photo) to the motor and are preparing to position it.

While I had known we would be missing an inch of room behind the motor (at the back), I hadn't counted on how much room we'd need to insert the motor into the tranny. So a decision was made, on the spot, to remove the rear appron: that part of the car between the two sides of the 'trunk', just in front of the bumper. It will be bolted back on later... with modifications for the 'trunk' latch which is right above the motor's tailshaft (in the way!).

The motor slid right in and was bolted into place:



We then tested the motor by applying 12V to it. It spun right up and made the wheels spin. I couldn't have asked for a better end to the day. You can see a short video of the car running with its new engine here.

The clutch works well too, so the next step is the battery boxes!