GE 9" Motor Test

Well I got the pressure plate and flywheel and clutch on the GE today. I also installed a new DE bearing. We did a 12 volt spin test and its ready to install into the Ghia. Decided on the GE for now because it was the fastest motor to get ready for the car. We will put in the Kostov at a later date. I am also going to be testing the Kaylor setup to test the Regen function. Hope that will go well. I may do that test first. It will be done at 72 volts.

Pete :)


YouTube mucked up the volume of the beginning and it is making a funky sound at the beginning of the video. It is not like that on my computer. Might need to change the video but that would mean changing all the links so it will stay.

Fun

Got my plates for my Leaf today. Got my plate holders yesterday. Perfect timing and I only had to spend 15 minutes in the DMV to get business done with the plates.

Have a look :)

Transmission

Well I had a nice surprise today. My transaxle arrived from Rancho Transaxles today. It is nice to see that it arrived safe and sound. It is a Pro Street with Super Diff and 3.44:1 R&P Gear. This is a swing axle trans for the Bus. It also comes with the Bus Nose Cone for shifting.

Electric VW

The project has begun. It will be an interesting project as we not only will be converting it to electric but I am going to try my hand at roll on paint. It will require lots of sanding between coats but I want to do a good job. I have been reading up on the process. The wife asked which motor was going in last night. I said either the old GE that was in the first Ghia or the large Kostov motor. She said that huge thing! I said yup with a smile on my face. I need to order some rubber parts for the car as well as seat covers and carpet and dash pads. All of which are available to make the car look like it was when new. I want an nice after market steering wheel too. I am not sure yet how low we will make the car. We will retain the original transmission which will limit our speed but it will still be freeway drivable. If we keep the car we will replace the transmission with a nice pro street with the 3.44:1 R/P gear set. After driving Jack Rickards Duh I liked the way the car shifted and ran. Smoothly.

I may even try my hand at belly pans with this build. There is plenty of space both width and length to make a nice pair of shallow belly pans. Now I need to figure out how to keep the cells from sliding around in the belly pan. In other words how do I keep them from sliding so I don't short out the tops because the pan will be an aluminum pan.

Here is the link to the photo album of the car as it sits on the trailer the morning after we towed it home. It is as we purchased the car. The cars purchase price with a good non-op pink was only $1300. That is an excellent price for such a solid vehicle. If you do purchase a like vehicle do be prepared to do some work. But I put this out there because you need to know that you can find good solid projects for a decent price still. They can be hard to find but they are out there. With patience you will find your project and for goodness sake don't get sucked into a rust bucket.


Photo Album of the Project Ghia

Quick look

The Ghia has had one repaint. Little damage on this one. It is a solid vehicle but prep for painting will commence as well as getting the electrics in place. It will need new tail light so I am going to look for real glass lenses instead of plastic ones. It is the last year of the good body design before they put on the large tail lights. The numbers are to remain with the Ghia through 70. I plan on trying out the roller paint technique. This is a perfect car for trying that.

Ghia

69 Ghia arrived home this evening. It is not perfect but a very good solid car that will suffice for an electric conversion without too much expense. Rolls easy and has just about all the components needed. It does need new interior but has seats, all the interior stuff to replace. I can get that for a decent amount. I do not know about how much rubber will need replaced but some will. I will eventually set it up and lower it for a nicer look. Should do fine. I have a few controllers to test so I should have something setup pretty quickly.

69 Ghia

Well once again I have done gone and purchased a VW Ghia. It is an original Red 69 Ghia. It needs work but its not rusted or rotted out. I need a test bed vehicle to do some testing with and this will fit the bill before my Bus is ready. I found a new Clutch and Pressure plate setup for the VW. It is a dual disk able to withstand engines into the 800 plus HP. I may consider one down the road. Might do it and test it and report to the maker to see if I can get a sponsor for my Buggy. That is a slow project too. Much of the slowness is due to my full time job.

Walnuts

Well its not EV's in general but our first harvest of the year of our Chandler Walnuts are in. The first of the nuts are falling. We don't have many but we do harvest, shell and sell our all organic Chandler Walnuts. We put in 25 trees two years ago. Another 10 will go in this winter. We have persimmons to harvest too. Only one tree but it gives us plenty of good eats.

Kelly Controller

Well my Kelly Controller finally made it back home. No cost and fixed. They said it was the power board inside. They said that the internal components are modular in nature to make repairing easier. So if a component goes bad the component is removed and a new on inserted. Why it failed was not revealed. Not sure they even know. So they did not replace the controller. Power board was just found to be defective and they replaced it. Now I must try again to see if it works properly.

Pete :)

Transaxle

Well I purchased my Transaxle for my Bus project today. Buying it outright with no core. I purchased the Pro Street with a 3.44:1 Ring and Pinion. Three weeks and it will be home. Now I can start putting in the new suspension components. I might not do much video production on that but I will do some. We are going to do the boat too. That will get some good video when we start on that. We are pushing the Bus project and the FAST charging project. A few small components for the fast charging scheme are on the way this week. Talked to Synkromotive this week and got some excellent news from the company. I will be bringing Synkromotive Controllers next Conference and will be bringing along the a Live Demo. The controller is more for your average sized vehicle and is for on the road use and not built for racing. It will however provide excellent street performance and with Fast Charging will be a game changer. More from Synkro coming as well on the AC side. It will be awhile but it is in the works. Got some ideas for Synkro on that front too. For now it is only DC. Fast Charging can be done from Direct DC or AC. No extra charger will need to be purchased. So an excellent controller/charger for the price of a controller! How sweet is that.

Pete :)