Paul MacCready

Paul MacCready passed away recently, It saddened me greatly. Though I only had the pleasure of meeting him a few times in person I've known his work far longer.

I'm back from a well deserved vacation in Sweden visiting family and friends. It's been a while since I last posted an update on the conversion; before leaving on vacation things were very hectic so I just didn't have much time for blogging.

Looks like a car!

After getting the motor into the car it was time to return to the somewhat insane task of hand painting the car with a roller.

Lemony

This is the final chapter of the father's day saga. When we left off I had just mounted the motor to the transmission and given it a test spin. Next task was to get the motor and engine hoist home to the Fiat.

Camry Hybrid?

After mating the motor and transmission I decided to give it a test spin.

(click to play)

I borrowed a Hawker Odyssey battery and a contactor and hooked it all up, miraculously it worked. The gearbox is in fifth gear in the video and there's no oil in it so it's quite noisy.

Alignment Disc

The father’s day weekend was a busy one. I had originally planned to mate the transmission and motor on Saturday and put it in the car on Sunday. However, since Sunday was lost to father’s day I decided to attempt to do it all in one day.

First order of the day was to add an alignment disc to the shaft coupler.

Coupler Ingredients

This weekend I spent some time in the machine shop making a shaft coupler for the car.

The two main ingredients in my design are a Mitsubishi clutch plate and a sprocket I bought from surpluscenter.com for $12.

Some parts I need for the shaft coupler will not arrive until Monday so I spent this weekend figuring out how to mount the motor in the car.

Sputnik?

I started off with a cardboard mockup of the motor to get an idea of where things end up. The motor already has mounting flanges for a S10 pickup truck welded to it so it seemed like a good idea to make use of them.

I spent the memorial day weekend making an adapter plate for the Fiat transmission.

Adapter Plate

On Saturday I headed over to Industrial Metals supply company in Sun Valley and bought a 3/4" X 16" X 25" plate of aluminum. They had a pile of these plates selling for $1.89/lb, it came out to $50 plus change after tax.

This weekend my friend Scott came over and helped me clean the transmission. Don't ask me why, well, I guess it's payback for helping him move.

clean transmission

Where there was once a solid layer of grime at least a quarter of an inch thick, you can now see clean metal.