cheaper pancake PMACs and controllers?
 

I've been mulling over the thought of building a hybrid system the past few days.
I've got a toyota mr2 spyder that I go do HPDE and time attack events with, and in desperate need for more power, but I also want to continue it being street legal.

I've been into the transmission a couple of times, and it really seems like I can just cad up a custom adapter and have it milled out to bolt a motor directly to the back of the transmission. It would take place of the 6th gear, so I would relocate the 5/6 shift fork to my own control rod, cable, and shift lever.
This way I can enable and disable the hybrid system, have motor+engine working the same single gear in 1-4th, and most importantly be able to drive the motor as a generator with the transmission in neutral and motor enabled.

Now the hard part is if I directly drive this, I have very little room to spare for a motor, maybe 8-9cm of axial length if that.
I was looking at Yasa and Emrax motors as they suit the space requirements in theory. But they start at like $4000
Are there any other cheaper motors out there anyone knows about that may work in my case? Or even DIY motors, if I can remove the motor assembly out of an existing hybrid like a prius or something, I can in theory build a case for it or integrate it into my adapter design. I'm only looking for 40-60ish hp

Alternatively I can probably use two gears or even a sprocket and chain to mount the motor in a better place but that's going to be a lot more engineering that I'm not really comfortable with.

Supposedly there are belt driven systems available that do 40hp. I'm not sure the GM starter system outputs that much ,but the ford system will when they get delivered. Just need room in the engine bay for a bigger alternator and rudimentary controls.

Yes what actually inspired me was seeing one on a newer silverado. I found the ones for Buick as well which would be a perfect fit for the car. That's what brought me to this forum, as I found the most info on them here. But it seems there was never a good solution made for driving them standalone, let alone as an assist setup.

After thinking about it though, directly driving the transmission would be a lot more universal as that's what 99% of the focus of EV tech is on, idk. Plus I could drive full electric as long as I hold in the clutch lol

Sounds like the electric reverse "gear" featured on some motorcycles could become an inspiration to achieve your goals. Usually it resorts to the starter motor to drive on reverse.

Any thoughts on driving the front wheels instead? Surely a pair of custom knuckles would be easier (to get right) than machining the transmission case.

Would be interesting too.


So would a belt-driven motor-generator unit, even though it wouldn't provide ability to operate on an EV-only mode so easily.

One advantage of the driving motor being on the input shaft of the transmission, is that it receives gear multiplication (or reduction). In electric bicycles this is a huge deal, and allows one to get away with a much smaller motor than is needed with a direct drive.

No wonder this has been the most usual setup fitted to hybrid trucks and buses, with a pancake motor where either a clutch pack or torque converter would fit. On a sidenote, and not considering Hondas as the early IMA didn't provide EV-only operation, I haven't seen pancake motors fitted to vehicles with a manual transmission, while a BAS-Hybrid can be integrated to a vehicle with manual transmission just like the IMA.

How much power are you trying to add? You could mount a watercooled RC inrunner where the PS idler is on the serpentine belt for about 5hp.

If you want power for HDPE and stuff without going crazy, you can mill the head a little and get the intake cam reground. If you can get the head on and off yourself, I think it'll cost you around 300 for a weld and grind on the intake camshaft and idk how much for milling the head but it can't be that expensive. I have a spare 1ZZ-FE intake cam that I was going to get reground, I can sell it to you for essentially just the cost of shipping.

Between cams, higher compression, and a precat delete header, I would expect around 20hp at the top end.

For more power than that, I think Ecky's suggestion of powering the front wheels is probably better. You ideally want a high speed low torque design to make it compact and light, but custom gearboxes aren't the easiest thing to sort out.