Four Wheels Complete
We finished crimping in the spokes for our wheels. Over 196 spokes to make and then mount into the 4 wheels. Luckily we won’t have to do that again. We bought an old golf cart that we hope to use for steering and suspension parts. I threw all of the plastic away and removed the [...]
Blinkers and Adaptor Plates
I’ve been making a lot of progress lately, but it’s been a lot of little things that are difficult to write about. I’ll just lump them all together here in one big post. First I installed the new amber blinkers that I bought. Believe it or not the car originally had plastic lenses, but they [...]
Keying the Mainshaft
My motor has an output shaft of 1 1/8″ with a 1/4″ keyway. How do I mate that to the mainshaft with an OD of .920″ and no keyway? Well, I machined a collar to slip over the mainshaft with an OD of 1 1/8″. Then, I milled out a deep keyway, to make sure [...]
Sparkfire Adaptor Plate
Progress has been slow lately on the direct drive conversion for my EV. I’ve been a bit busy with life lately. There’s been a lot of planning and discussing with local experts concerning the best way to implement the direct drive system. I’ve settled on using the rear extension off of the back of the [...]
Loose Coupler!
When I took apart the transmission and motor, I found the source of the annoying squeak at low speeds: my coupler was falling apart! I thought I had used Loctite to keep the bolts together, but I couldn’t find any evidence of it. The coupler was loose on the motor shaft, and the clutch plate [...]
Pulling the motor
I had some time to spend on the EV, so I decided to get cracking. I have some ideas of how I’m going to solve the problem of the broken transmission, but it’s difficult to know if they’ll work without getting in there and measuring clearances and such. The first thing I need to do [...]
Bad news from the doctors
For the past few months I’ve been driving the EV Spitfire stuck in 3rd gear. “What?!” I can hear you say? “How do you do that?” You say this because you’re probably used to driving a normal gasoline powered vehicle. Let me explain… Internal combustion engines (ICEs) are much different than electric motors. Engines need [...]
