[MPaulHolmes]

OK, Gas is expensive. Don't get me wrong! I like choking on carbon monoxide as much as the next guy, but we have decided that it is time. My wife and I have been planning an EV conversion for the last several months. We don't have a dang car yet, though (lots of close calls, but we will have our car, by hook or by crook, by June 20th). We are hoping (settling?!) for 40mph top speed with horrendous acceleration. We are thinking of a Geo Metro.

We bought an $85 Curtis 300amp 48v controller on Ebay ($100 with shipping). I wouldn't have guessed that you could run a car on 48v, but there it was, bigger than life on youtube, the infamous Forkenswift... So, we will upgrade the controller later, but for now, this is fine.

We just bought a 6.7" GE DC Series wound 62 pound motor. It was $127. Not spectacularly cheap like if I bought a whole forklift and removed everything, but I live with my mother in law. She wouldn't go for having a forklift crushing the driveway.

We just bought an engine hoist for $100 (on sale) at Harbor Freight.

We picked up 8 6amp 12v chargers on sale for $20 each at Harbor Freight. The idea is later I will upgrade the controller to 84v, with a 12v auxiliary battery for running the electrical system of the car like lights and heat.

We bought a drill press at Harbor Freight on sale for $45. This will be used for making the adapter plate between the motor and the manual transmission bell housing. We will probably use 2 plates (thanks Lee Hart!). One attached to the motor face, and one attached to the bell housing. We'll probably use 0.25"x12"x14" (or so) steel plates. This will be explained in detail later. Spacers to be figured out later.

We got a whole bunch of 2 gauge welding cable with battery leads already attached. 12 battery cables that are about 12 inches each, and they all have battery attacher things (??) professionally attached already! 6 battery cables that are 7 feet long each with battery attacher things already attached. It was a very good ebay deal for all of them.

We bought a $2.99 volt meter from Harbor Freight, which will be used as a 0-400 amp ammeter (but the scale will be 0-200, oh well).

Today we bought a dual Curtis contactor/emergency disconnect switch rated at 72v (all in one object, hopefully this will also work for 48v?) on Ebay for a very good deal. It has a continuous current rating of 250 amps. It can handle 400 amps for several minutes at a time, good for later use too when we upgrade.

For a pre-charge resistor, I'm using 4 10 watt 10 Ohm resistors in parallel (for a grand total of 40watt, 2.5 Ohm.
Here's a few pictures of some of the stuff I'm talking about (plus my Ebike).