Electric car conversion: Project ForkenSwift

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by RH77

I guess if you haven't welded much before, you just have to try it, right?

yup, i'd always wanted to try it. can check that one off the list now.

[MetroMPG]

as of about half an hour ago, the forkenswift floor is fixed!






looking back through this thread, it's funny to read my changing assessment of the floor in this car: when i first looked underneath, i said there were "no holes!", then it was one hole, then two... amazing what amount of rust you can uncover with a grinder and a torch.

there are 2 more holes to fix under the hood: the inner fender walls ahead of the strut towers. that'll take about half an hour.

all together, i probably spent about 10 hours on the brazing (including set-up & clean-up on 4 different days). when i tallied it up, i thought, man, i could have just worked another 10 hours and bought a better car! but then i immediately realized i enjoyed my time spent learning to braze more than i would have enjoyed 10 hours of work.

[MetroMPG]

car's going in for safety inspection tomorrow. *fingers crossed*.

the only thing i'm not sure about is a tiny bit of play in the steering rack. hopefully he doesn't find anything else i missed.

click to zoom...



above: inner fender wall, before; inner fender wall, after



both rocker bottoms patched (sorry, no "before" - use your imagination and picture rust holes of different sizes)



[spider image broken! Picture tiny little spiders all over the inside of the passenger door]

spiders! hundreds of the little buggers - just hatched - to greet me one day when i opened the door.

[MetroMPG]

DaX asks...

Any word on the inspection?

no word. i didn't drop the car off until lunch time, and they hadn't looked at it yet when i called around 4:30.

so, tomorrow. the suspense is killing me.

my mechanic is going to be strict, because he thinks the car will get undue attention from the authorities after the conversion (why he thinks this, i don't know). he doesn't want to be held accountable if there are any questionable safety issues.

matt: you fried the spiders!! i put mine in a nearby bush. lovingly, one by one.

no, not really one by one. you can't see in the pic, but they're on a very fine web "mat" of their own making. i just grabbed a corner and the whole lot of them peeled off to be carried away.

[MetroMPG]

SVOboy commends my non-spider-killing behaviour...

Originally Posted by SVOboy

Ben says yay,

Good luck on the project though. I feel so dirty worrying about my own project when you're totally owning me.

[MetroMPG]

the forkenswift passed inspection!

woohoo!!

i think that is insanely funny, considering the net cost both cars is currently $89.85 (and dropping - sold a radiator today).

[MetroMPG]

And the crowd goes wild...

Originally Posted by krousdb

Wooot! Congrats on the forkenswift!

Originally Posted by SVOboy

Yeah, for serious. I'm so jealous, I h8 this whole gasoline thing.

[MetroMPG]

thanks! i was getting a bit tired of working on it, so i'm looking forward to taking a break this weekend.

[MetroMPG]

one of the things the car needed to pass inspection was a set of tires. so, on went a set of snows i last used on my accord which were sitting in the garage.

they're significantly bigger than the stock tires. the car has gone from stock 145/80/12 to 175/70/13 with wheel revolutions per mile decreasing from 954.303 (12's) to 890.595 (13's), or 6.7% from stock. (handy web calculator)

the effective gearing change should help things when electrified, since the electric motor's torque is way down low, and its RPM range isn't as high as the stock engine.

their rolling resistance is surely not great. (max sidewall is 35psi, and those blocky treads are sure to squirm in warm weather).

they're big winter boots for this little car, and it shows.

click to zoom:


fat treads



12 to 13 inch rims, before & after

at least i now have the tires mounted on a set of rims i can swap over to the blackfly when the depths of winter return, instead of relying on the crappy snow/ice abilities of the goodyear invictaaaaAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH's

---

why bother electrifying the car when it's already a hybrid?

a hybrid mix of suzuki, geo and pontiac!

[MetroMPG]

Dropped the torch off at Ivan's this AM, and we decided to spend an hour getting the red car ready for its ICE-ectomy.

We're pulling its drivetrain to get the transaxle mounts, axles & shift linkage. Despite using the exact same housing, the 4-cyl transaxle is offset further to one side of the engine compartment compared to the 3-cyl version, and we're going to need that extra couple of inches to shoehorn the electric motor under the blue car's bonnet. The electric motor is longer (not to mention much heavier) than the 3 pot.

We should have that drivetrain out in a couple of days if we put in an hour a day at it. I'll get some pics - the red car is looking pretty sad, all hacked up, stripped & dismantled, wearing the rusty 12 in. rims the blue car had when we bought it.

We also talked about swapping the master cylinder and front brakes between the cars since the red car has larger rotors, beefier calipers, and generally seems easier to stop without vacuum assist compared to the blue car.