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?
Since I don't have a truck I loaded the motor+transmission and a partially disassembled engine hoist into the back of the Camry.
Transfer
I drove home slowly as the car was riding very low with 500lbs of metal in the back. It gave me a feel for what it would be like to drive around in a lead sled EV, I'm glad I will have light weight nickel batteries in the Fiat.
I got home around 5pm and after a short break I assembled the engine hoist and started transferring the motor and gearbox. It took me about three hours to coax it in there on my own. It didn't help that I never managed to remove the shift leaver. The Haynes manual suggests that a firm tug should remove it but no amount of pulling and tugging has been able to loosen it.
Finally In
This is when I realize that the holes drilled in the motor "wings" for the mounting bolts where just a smidgen to small. It's of course to tight to get in there with a hand drill or even a file so I decided to leave it and just use smaller bolts for mounting the motor. At this point it was getting late and I still had to return the engine hoist so I declared victory and took a dinner break.
I forgot to do a couple of things in the hurry:
- I forgot to put oil in the transmission. I think I can still snake a tube into the refill hole though so it shouldn't be a major problem.
- I forgot to grease the transmission shaft before putting on the shaft coupler. I can still get in there through the clutch lever hole though.
Hi Peggus,
I've been interested in EVs for about a year now and currently drive a '78 124 spider.
I chanced upon this site and am really impressed with the amount of good work you've put into this project.
I'm a systems engineer here in Australia (PC networks and stuff) for a company that does retirement villages and and have often thought I could use the batteris from the de-frib machines to build an EV. I've seen Fiat X1/9s been converted before and started going down that path to find a glider when I chanced upon this site.
My 124 actually needs a new clutch and I was going to start prepping to do that, but now I'm super keen to see how your conversion goes and rather than replacing the clutch, I'm thinking I might be able to remove the ICE altogether (pity I put a new head on it a few months back....)
Anyhow, I thought I would drop you a line and let you know that you have a few people on the other side of the world interested in what you're doing.
Good luck and keep up the good work. Hopefully I can use your experiences down here...
Thank you for your encouraging comment.
I'm not sure what sort of batteries are used in de-frib machines. If you can give me the model number and manufacturer of the batteries I might be able to tell you if they're suitable or not.
I presume they replace the batteries on a fixed schedule so it may very well be a good source of almost new batteries.
-Peter
roughly 10-20kW to propel car on level road. more for accelerating and climbing hills. My controller is capable of ~60kW for a couple of minutes
