Sunday, August 5, 2012

Motor Mounted

My Netgain Warp9 ended up getting ordered on Monday, I got a call on Tuesday that the motor had arrived already.  This is why Netgain has such a good reputation for customer service.   I wish they included a lift eye bolt. I went to the hardware store looking for one but they didn't carry anything this large.  I ended up buying a large washed and using bolt from my left over parts bin to make my own. 

After getting the motor on the lift, I mounted the Canidian EV adaptor and hub. I was not able to mount the clutch yet at I had not ordered the replacement yet. I wanted to verify the hub would work with the Audi flywheel before I ordered. It fits and I found a high performance clutch on EBay that is on the way. 


With a few days until the clutch arrives, I decided to mount the motor to the transmission and  work on the motor mount.


With the motor hanging in place and a jack under it to level things up I took some measurements and started to build a motor mount.


The motor mount is made from some 4" square tube that I had ordered to much of for a previous project.  It was cut apart and welded together to make a mount.


I reused parts of the stock engine front mount to keep the rubber isolation.  The stock power steering fluid bottle mount to the top of the mount.  Not sure if it will be used or not yet, that all depends on the electric pump I find.


With all the weight on the weight hanging on the suspension, the front of the car is riding very high.  The weight of the electric motor is less than 1/2 of the old gas burner.  At this point the front end is about 3" higher than stock.  This is with the new clutch installed and the motor installed for good.  I didn't get any pictures of the new clutch going in because it went in so fast.  One problem I did have was the clutch alignment tool that came with the clutch kit did not fit the flywheel adapter.  One of the nice things about an electric motor that it spins free.  A little trial and error and spinning the motor I was able to get the clutch centered and pressure plate tightened down.  Even working by myself I was able to get slide the motor and transmission together without any binding.


At address the weight, I am adding some of the battery pack in front of the motor.  I build a rack between the frame rails to hold 11 of the 50 batteries.  They will go into a battery box eventually, but they are set in place for now to see how they fit.


One problem that I found is the clearance to the boss on the transmission for the starter bolt.  It will be trimmed at some point to get some more clearance, I should be able to get about 2 1/2 inches.  You can also see the piece of angle that I out on the motor mount, I was going to use this to mount the controller.  However, now I'm thinking of mounting another 8 batteries over the top of the motor and mounting the controller vertical on the front of that battery box.  That will leave quite a bit of room behind the motor for thing like the power steering pump and the vacuum pump for the power brakes.


 One interesting thing I found is that the frame rails are not the same between the two sides.  The left side is about 2" higher than the right side.  It is a little hrad to tell in this picture since I had the left side of the car on a jack, but the bottom of the battery rack is level with the bottom of the front body mount frame.  There is a 4" spacer on the left side and 2" on the right.



Even with batteries mounted 2" below the right frame rail, there is still room for the stock belly pan to go back on to clean up the under side of the car.



Next up is the rear battery boxes and I need to get back to the wiring bundles that you see torn apart in the pictures.

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